Modern Historians - The Panhellenic Crusade of Alexander The Great
Modern Historians - The Panhellenic Crusade of Alexander The Great
Modern Historians - The Panhellenic Crusade of Alexander The Great
page 89
Alexander undertook as his first duty the liberation of the Greek cities of Asia
Minor from the Persian yoke.
page 91
Everywhere the liberation from Persian rule was greeted with enthusiasm, and
Alexander celebrated as the liberator.
page 94
The first point of the Panhellenic program had been quickly achieved: the Greek
cities of Asia Minor were freed from the Persian yoke and incorporated in the
Corinthian league.
page 116
his desire was here, as in the case of his previous conquests, to pave the way for
Greek culture.
Page 18-19
He adviced Philip as the ruler of the strongest state in Europe to bring the city-
states into concord, lead them against Persia, liberate the Greeks in Asia and
found there new cities to absorb the surplus population of the Greek mainland.
Page 31
His remark ‘if i were not Alexander, i would indeed be Diogenes’ carried the meaning
‘if i were not already King of Macedonia, President of Thessaly, the favourite of the
Amphictyonic league and Hegemon of the Greek community’.
Before engaging at Gaugamela Alexander prayed in front of the army, raising his
right hand towards the gods and saying, “If I am really descended from Zeus,
protect and strengthen the Greeks.” That prayer, appearently, was answered.
Page 92.
War, Philip had announced, ‘was being declared against the Persians on behalf of the
Greeks, to punish the barbarians for their lawless treatment of the old Greek
temples“
Page 101
“among the conservative Greek opinion there would be no regrets that Alexander
the Greek leader was invading the barbarians“
page 92
War, Philip had announced, ‘was being declared against the Persians on behalf of
the Greeks, to punish the barbarians for their lawless treatment of the old Greek
temples“
page 102
among the conservative Greek opinion there would be no regrets that Alexander the
Greek leader was invading the barbarians“
Page 123.
As for the hired Greeks in Persian service, thousands of the dead were to be buried,
but the prisoners were bound in fetters and sent to hard labour in Macedonia,
‘because they had fought as Greeks against Greeks, on behalf of barbarians,
contrary to the common decrees of the Greek allies’“
Page 256.
“Alexander was still the Greek avenger of Persian sacrilege who told his troops, it
was said ‘that Persepolis was the most hateful city in the world’. On the road there, he
met with the families of Greeks who had deported to Persia by previous kings, and
true to his slogan, he honoured them conspicuously, giving them money, five
changes of clothing, farm animals, corn, a free passage home, and exemption
from taxes and bureaucratic harassments.”
Page 261.
“But Alexander replied that he wished to take revenge on the Persians for invading
Greece, for razing Athens and burning her temples.”
page 61
Page 7
yet in the thirteen years of his reign as king Alexander III of Macedon, he went from
ruler of the leading state in Greece to conqueror of the biggest empire the world
had ever seen.
page 99
In 334 B.C. Alexander with his 35,000 Greeks crossed the strait which had been
passed by Xerxes, with his five millions, less than 150 years before. The Greek army
was scarcely more inferior to the Persian in number than superior in efficiency
page 205
Alexander was compelled to turn back. His fleet was now ready, and he descended the
Hydaspes to the Indus, in the autumn and winter of 327 B. C. His army marched in
two columns along the banks, the entire valley submitting with little resistance. Two
more cities were founded, and left with Greek garrisons and governors
page 128
Babylon surrendered and Alexander now had the Persian empire and its capitals at
Sousa and Persepolis under his control. After Granikos Alexander had already sent
back spoils to the Athenian Acropolis, to mark his taking revenge on the
Persians who had sacked Athens, and when he took Sousa he sent back to Athens
the statues of the tyrannicides who had assassinated Peisistratos’ son
Hipparchos, statues which Xerxes had taken in 480 (Arrian Anabasis 3.18.7-8).
* Lovett Edwards, Jacques Pirenne; E. P. Dutton, (1962) The Tides of History Vol.
1 Book,
page 230
page 229
The fate of Greece, from then on, was sealed. Her unity was to be achieved by the
King of Macedonia, even as formerly the unity of Egypt had been imposed on the
cities of the Delta by the Kings of Nekhen.
page 233
After restoring the unity of the Greek world by the conquest of the Ionian cities,
which were immediately incorporated into the Corinthian League, and
completing the occupation of Syria, Alexander restored the Egyptian Empire within
the frontiers formerly given it by Tutmes III, and united Greece and Egypt for the
first time under the same sovereignty
Page 38
Philip was not only the most powerful ruler but was also a descedant of Heracles,
venerated of all the Greeks, and as such the most natural leader fo the proposed
coalition.
Page 79
When the delegates from all Greece, except Sparta, met at Corinth the next year,
Philip laid his agenda, and proposed program, before them for discussion, and spoke
at length of the necessity of union for the sake of succesful prosecution of his
Pan-Hellenic ambitions in and against Persia
page 132
He [Alexander] next ordered the slain Persian noblemen and the dead Greek
mercenaries buried, sending back the survivors as captives to slave in the mines and
farms of Macedonia, because they, as Greeks in opposition to the decrees of the
Corinthian league, had borne arms against their own country
Eventually the Greek way of war would prove so superior to that of the barbarian
world as to enable a largely Hellenic army, led by Alexander the Great, to
conquer not only Egypt but most of Asia as well.
page 125
In the large scheme of things, Xerxes’ analysis was correct, as would be demonstrated
by Alexander the Great and his Greco-Macedonian invasion of Asia, 150 years
down the road.
page 198
page 199
Within a few years, a general named Ptolemy established a dynasty that would rule
Egypt for close to 300 years. These were Greek, not Egyptian, rulers of Egypt. Yet
they retained most of the roles and obligations of their pharaonic predecessors, albeit
with a distinctly Hellenistic favor. All of Ptolemy’s male successors bore his name,
and altogether there would be fifteen Greek rulers of Egypt with the name Ptolemy.
This is why this era of Greek rule is often referred to as the “Ptolemaic Period”
Page 10
Furthermore, when Alexander had made the Greeks masters of the East, they
transferred to it their own inability to unite. The Macedonia of the Antigonids, the
Syria of the Seleucids and the Egypt of the Ptolemies, like Athens, Sparta and Thebes
before them, wore themselves out in an inconclusive struggle which made them fall,
one by one, an easy prey to the foreigner – in this case to the Romans. Not with
impunity had the Græco-Macedonian dynasties assumed the mantle of the old
oriental despots.
*Samuel Eddy “The King Is Dead – Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to
Hellenism, 334-31 B. C.”
Page 335
In the East, religious resistance against alien domination was not new in 334 B.C., and
the reaction of Babylonians or Egyptians to their Persian overlords was the prototype
of the resistance offered their Hellenic conquerors.
Page 335,
Page 5
More importantly, occasional easy victories over Persian forces served to create a
contempt for Oriental strength and fighting power which remained part of the climate
of opinion during the years when a Greco-Makedonian regime replaced the
Achaemenids
Page 21
Page 31
Dareios is made to say that the Greeks are madmen struck with frenzy whom the
gods of the Persian Empire are about to defeat, and that Alexander is like a wild
beast rushing upon destruction.
Page 39
When the Makedonian satrap of Media, Nikanor, was sent by Antigonos to undo
Seleukos’ occupation of Babylon, the former’s forces included a contingent of
Persians. They deserted to Seleukos when their commanding officer Evagoras, satrap
of Areia, was killed, because they objected to Antigonos’ regime in Iran. This
episode shows that some Persians were at least willing to cooperate with
whatever Greek power seemed least likely to be a burden to Persis.
Page 94
Philip’s “new model army” was the first in Greek history to be structured and
trained on rational principles of military science
Page 99
The campaign began in the early spring of 334 BC. Alexander had assembled his
invasion army in Macedonia over the previous winter. It totalled 32,000 foot and
approximately 5,000 cavalry; and, when it joined with the adviance force operating in
Asia, the entire complement was close to 50,000. This was by far the largest and
most formidable expedition that had ever left Greek shores, but as yet
Macedonian numbers were far from exhausted
With the allied contingents that would normally take the field with him they
amounted to an army without parallel in GREEK history
page 10
Just as the Hellenic League had forbidden medism, so the corinthian synedrion
issued decrees prohibiting collaboration with Persia
page 92
Persis was to be a satrapy like any other, a subordinate part of the empire of the new
king whose prinipal centre of government woud be Babylon (Strabo 731). Its titular
governor might be Persian, but there was a permanent garrison of Hellenic troops
(Curt. v.6.1 i; Plut. AJ.69.3) to enforce the will of the victor.
page 189
The idea of the city-state was first challenged by the ideal of pan-Hellenic unity
supported by some writers and orators, among which the Athenian Isocrates ( 436338)
became a leading proponent with his Panegyrics of 380 suggesting a Greek holy war
against Persia. However, only the rise of Macedonia made the realization of
panHellenic unity possible.
Philip II of Macedon was anxius to pacify and unify Greeks at any cost.
In the end, the Greeks would fall under the rule of a single man, who would unify
Greece: Philip Ii, king of Macedon (360-336 BC). His son, Alexander the Great,
would lead the Greeks on a conquest of the ancient Near East vastly expanding
the Greek world and leaving it a world of large kingdoms rather than city states.
Historians say that Alexander’s career marks an important turning point in Greek
history, closing the Classical period and ushering in the Hellenistic world. The term
“Hellenistic” mean “Greekish”, referring to a fusion, with limits, between Greek
and Near Eastern societies, and so the emergence of a new culture and society,
made up of elemenets both Greek and Near Eastern.
Philip II of Macedon was anxius to pacify and unify Greeks at any cost.
http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2009/10/23/panhellenic-
crusade-alexander-great/