by Nicholas Nikolov

Created on: June 26, 2008   Last Updated: February 14, 2012

Alexander the Great of Macedon was without a doubt the greatest military general and Emperor in the whole world, whose empire encompassed the entire Balkans and stretching across the entire Asian continent and reaching as far as the fringes of India.

He had a genuine sense of a humanistic caring way of ruling over his loyal subjects, more towards the Persians rather than the Greeks. His logic was extremely unique, or rather, unacceptable for a Greek in his time. If in acuality Alexander was Greek, he would never view Greece as arch-nemesises, the Persians, as equals however, Alexander did just that. He treated the Persians as kindred; even to the extent of adopting the Persian-style dress and providing Greek-military training for the Persian soldiers.  

Unimaginably, Alexander's gigantic Empire was forged from his overall destined glory to reach the far ends of the world that was driven by his ambition to be greater than any of the Greek mythological heroes: Heracles, Jason, Achilles and the rest; not to forget the ever-present mother's continuous prophecy-like inspirations of being destined to be god-like since his childhood. He also had an innovative and inventive brilliance in creating new strategies as a militaristic tactician, unseen before in antiquity, which brought him great success. A perfect example, ws the inherited Phalanx from his father, King Philip II of Macedon. This was the engine that powered his successive military crusades of conquering the known world, and thusly, greatly helped to achieve this feat.

The phalanx was the fiercest military formation of the ancient world. Each soldier in the Macedonian army was so well-trained and a cohesive unit, which undoubtedly made Macedon arguably the most feared and greatest superpower. Unlike the standard size phalanx, the Macedonian phalanx included a substantially large-sized platoon of 256 soldiers arranged in a square; 16-across and 16-deep. Each soldier was equipped with a 16-18 foot-long sarissa or spear, which was uncommon at the time for a spear to be that long as the norm of the length for a spear was about seven to eight feet-long.

His legendary victories in battle of Thebes in Greece, the main confrontations of Granicus, Issus, the Siege of Tyre, and the most important battle was at Gaugamela, which essentially was the final standoff for the conquest of the Persian Empire. Each battle was won by the practically unstoppable

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