Voorwerp: Tetradrachme Attica Athene

Tetradrachme Attica Athene, Mascedonie koninkrijk. Voorzijde hoofd Alexander de Grote.
Achterzijde Tetradrachme Aesillmsquaestor-knots, troon en schatkist binnen krans. Lectuur BMC 82. Gew. 16.71 gram.
Afmeting Tetradrachme: 3 cm.
Periode Tetradrachme: 288 B.C.

A bith lifetime from the Macedoniêr Alexander the Grete, born in Pella, capital of Macedon. Alexander was the son of King Philip II of Macedon and of his fourth wife Olympias, an Epirote princess. On his mother's side, he was a second cousin of Pyrrhus of Epirus, who himself would go on to become a celebrated general, thus. There are notable examples of military genius on both sides of his family. According to Plutarch, his father was descended from Heracles through Karanus of Macedon and his mother descended from Aeacus through Neoptolemus and Achilles Plutarch, relates that both Philip and Olympias dreamt of their son's future birth.

In Philip's dream, he sealed her womb with the seal of the lion. Alarmed by this, he consulted the seer Aristander of Telmesso, who determined that his wife was pregnant and that the child would have the character of a lion. Another odd coincidence is that the temple of Artemis in Ephesus was set afire on the night of his birth. Plutarch's explanation is that the Gods were too busy watching over Alexander to care for the temple.According to five historians of antiquity (Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch), after his visit to the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa. Rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be Zeus, rather than Philip. In support of this, Plutarch (Alexander 3.1,3) claims that Philip avoided Olympias' bed because of her affinity for sleeping in the company of snakes.

In his early years, Alexander was raised by his nurse Lanike, who was Cleitus older sister. Later Alexander was educated by a strict teacher, Leonidas, himself a relative of Olympias. Leonidas' frugal ways are known to us to us through the extant record reportedly. When Alexander threw a large amount of sacrificial incense into a fire, Leonidas reprimanded him, telling him that he could waste as much incense as he wished once he had conquered the spice bearing regions.

Years later, following Alexander's conquest of Gaza, a city directly on the Persian spice trade route, the young king sent back over 15 tons of myrh to Leonidas as a retort. It was Aristotle, though, who was Alexander's most famous and important tutor. The famous philosopher trained Alexander in rhetoric and literature, and stimulated his interest in science, medicine, and philosophy. His gift to Alexander, a copy of the Iliad, was purportedly among the young king's most prized possessions, and was kept under his pillow, along with a dagger.

When Alexander was ten years old, a Thessalian brought a horse of such quality to sell to Philip that it was labeled a prodigy. As it turned out, though, the horse was so wild that no man could mount him. Young Alexander, recognizing that the horse's own shadow was the source of its fear, went to the steed and turned him towards the sun. Upon doing so, the horse calmed down, and the young king easily mounted and rode him. His father and other people who saw this were very impressed. Philip kissed him with tears of joy and said "My son, seek thee out a kingdom equal to thyself, Macedon has not room for thee." This horse was named Bucephalus, meaning "ox-headed" though there is the possibility that the name refers to the brand that denoted the horse's origin. Bucephalus would be Alexander's companion throughout his journeys, and was truly loved: when the horse died (due to old age, according to Plutarch, for he was already 30; other sources claim that Bucephalus died of wounds sustained in a battle in India), Alexander named a city after him called Bocephia or Bucephala.

Ascent of Macedon

Bust of Alexander (Roman copy of a 330 BCE statue by Lysippus, Louvre Museum).

According to Diodorus, the Alexander sculptures by Lysippus were the most faithful. In 340 BCE, Philip led an attack on Byzantium, leaving Alexander, now aged 16, to act as regent of Macedon. Shortly after, in 339 BC, Philip took a fifth wife, Cleopatra Eurydice. While Alexander's mother Olympias was from Epirus, Cleopatra Eurydice was a true Macedonian. This led to political machinations over whether Alexander was the best heir for the Agead throne. During the wedding feast, Attalus, the uncle of the bride, supposedly gave a toast for the marriage to result in a legitimate heir to the throne of Macedon. Alexander responded by hurling his goblet at Attalus, shouting "What am I, a bastard then?" In response, Phillip drew his sword and moved towards Alexander, but fell in a drunken stupor over the drinking couches. Alexander then famously remarked: "Here is the man planning on conquering from Greece to Asia, and he cannot even move from one table to another.

Following this episode, Alexander and his mother left Macedon; his sister (also named Cleopatra) remained. Eventually Philip and Alexander would reconcile the son returned home, but Olympias remained in Epirus. In 338 BC Alexander fought under his father at the decisive Battle of Chaeronea against the city-states of Athens and Thebes. Phillip entrusted Alexander with the left wing of his army, which entailed facing the Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite hoplite corps hitherto regarded as invincible. Though few details of the battle survive to us, what is known is that Alexander annihilated this corps. After the battle, Philip led a wild celebration, Alexander is notably absent from the accounts describing it.

It is speculated that Alexander personally treated Demades, a notable orator of Athens, who had opposed Athenian alignment against Philip. He went on to draw up and present a peace plan, which the assembled Athenian army voted on and approved. Philip was content to deprive Thebes of its dominion over Boeotia and leave a Macedonian garrison in the citadel. A few months later, the Leagu of Corinth was formed, and Phillip was acclaimed Hegemon of the Hellenes. In 336 BC Philip was assassinated at the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to her uncle King Alexander of Epirus. Theories abound regarding the motives behind the killing, but a common story presented the assassin as a disgraced former lover of the kingthe young nobleman Pausanias of Orestis. He held a grudge against Philip because the king had ignored his grievances regarding an outrage on his person. Some believed that Philip's murder was planned with the knowledge and involvement of Alexander, Olympias, or both. Still other theories pointed to Darius III, the recently crowned King of Persia. Regardless, after Philip's death, the army proclaimed Alexander, then aged 20, as the new king of Macedon. Greek cities like Athens and Thebes, which had been forced to pledge allegiance to Philip, saw in the relatively untested new king an opportunity to regain full independence.

Alexander moved swiftly and Thebes, which had been most active against him, submitted when he appeared at its gates. The assembled Greeks at the Isthmus of Corinth, with the exception of the Spartans, elected him to the command against Persia, which had previously been bestowed upon his father. The next year (335 BC), Alexander felt free to engage the Thracians and the Illyrians in order to secure the Danube as the northern boundary of the Macedonian kingdom. While he was triumphantly campaigning north, the Thebans and Athenians rebelled once again. Alexander reacted immediately and while the other cities once again hesitated, Thebes decided this time to resist with the utmost vigor. The resistance was useless in the end, the city was conquered with great bloodshed. Thebes was razed to the ground and its territory divided between the other Boeotian cities. Moreover the Thebans themselves were sold into slavery.

Alexander spared only the priests, the leaders of the pro-Macedonian party, and the descendants of Pindar, whose house was the only one left standing.The end of Thebes cowed Athens into submission. According to Plutarch, a special Athenian embassy led by Phocion, an opponent of the anti-Macedonian faction, was able to persuade Alexander to give up his demand for the exile of leaders of the anti-Macedonian party, most particularly Demosthenes.

Period of conquests
Fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire

Map of Alexander's empire.

Alexander's army crossed the Hellespont with approximately 42,000 soldiers from Macedon, various Greek city-states, and mercenaries and tribute soldiers from Thrace, Paionia, and Illyria. After an initial victory against Persian forces at the Battle of the Granicus, Alexander accepted the surrender of the Persian provincial capital and treasury of Sardis and proceeded down the Ionian coast. At Halicarnassus, Alexander successfully waged the first of many sieges, eventually forcing his opponents, the mercenary captain Memnon of Rhodes and the Persian satrap of Caria, Orontobates, to with draw by sea.

Alexander left Caria in the hands of Ada, who was ruler of Caria before being deposed by her brother Pixodarus. From Halicarnassus, Alexander proceeded into mountainous Lycia and the Pamphylian plain, asserting control over all coastal cities and denying them to his enemy. From Pamphylia onward, the coast held no major ports and so Alexander moved inland. At Termessos, Alexander humbled but did not storm the Pisidian city. At the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordium, Alexander "undid" the hitherto unsolvable Gordian Knot, a feat said to await the future "king of Asia". According to the most vivid story, Alexander proclaimed that it did not matter how the knot was undone, and he hacked it apart with his sword. Another version claims that he did not use the sword, but simply realized that the simplest way to undo the knot was to simply remove a central peg from the chariot--around which the knot was tied.



Alexander Mosaic, showing Battle of Issus, from the House of the Faun, Pompeii-wallpicksuere Alexander's army crossed the Cilician Gates, met and defeated the main Persian army under the command of Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Darius was forced to flee the battle after his army broke, and in doing so left behind his wife, his two daughters, his mother Sisygambis, and a fabulous amount of treasure. He afterwards offered a peace treaty to Alexander, the concession of the lands he had already conquered, and a ransom of 10,000 talents for his family. Alexander replied that since he was now king of Asia, it was he alone who decided territorial divisions. Proceeding down the Mediterranean coast, he took Tyre and Gaza after famous sieges (see Siege of Tyre).In 332 BC Alexander attempted to lead his army into Nubia. He was confronted with the brilliant military formation devised by their warrior queen, Candace of Meroë. She led her army in the opposition from on top of an elephant. Daunted by the prospect of defeat while engaging with her opposing army, he concluded it would be best to withdraw his forces and he chose to enter Egypt instead. During 332–331 BC, Alexander was welcomed as a liberator in Persian-occupied Egypt and was pronounced the son of Zeus by Egyptian priests of the deity Amun at the Oracle of Siwa Oasis in the Libyan desert. Henceforth, Alexander often referred to Zeus-Ammon as his true father, and subsequent currency depicted him, adorned with ram horns as a symbol of his divinity. He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the prosperous capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death.Leaving Egypt, Alexander marched eastward into Assyria (now northern Iraq) and defeated Darius once more at the Battle of Gaugamela. Once again, Darius was forced to leave the field, and Alexander chased him as far as Arbela. While Darius fled over the mountains to Ecbatana (modern Hamedan), Alexander marched to Babylon.

Statuette of a Greek soldier, from a 4th–3rd century BC burial site north of the Tian Shan, at the maximum extent of Alexander's advance in the East (Ürümqi, Xinjiang Museum, China), drawing from Babylon. Alexander went to Susa, one of the Achaemenid capitals, and captured its legendary treasury. Sending the bulk of his army to the Persian capital of Persepolis via the Royal Road. Alexander stormed and captured the Persian Gates (in the modern Zagros Mountains), then sprinted for Persepolis before its treasury could be looted. It was here that Alexander was said to have stared at the crumbled statue of Xerxes and decided to leave it on the ground, a symbolic gesture of vengeance.

During their stay at the capital, a fire broke out in the eastern palace of Xerxes and spread to the rest of the city. Theories abound as to whether this was the result of a drunken accident, or a deliberate act of revenge for the burning of the Acropolis of Athens during the Second Persian War. The Book of Arda Wiraz, a Zoroastrian work composed in the 3rd or 4th century AD, also speaks of archives containing "all the Avesta and Zand, written upon prepared cow-skins, and with gold ink" that were destroyed. But it must be said that this statement is often treated by scholars with a certain measure of skepticism, because it is generally thought that for many centuries the Avesta was transmitted mainly orally by the Magi. Alexander then set off in pursuit of Darius anew.

The Persian king was no longer in control of his destiny, having been taken prisoner by Bessus, his Bactrian satrap and kinsman. As Alexander approached, Bessus had his men murder the Great King and then declared himself Darius' successor as Artaxerxes V before retreating into Central Asia to launch a guerrilla campaign against Alexander. With the death of Darius, Alexander declared the war of vengeance over, and released his Greek and other allies from service in the League campaign (although he allowed those that wished to re-enlist as mercenaries in his army). His three-year campaign, first against Bessus and then against Spitamenes, the satrap of Sogdiana, took Alexander through Media, Parthia, Aria (West Afghanistan), Drangiana, Arachosia (South and Central Afghanistan), Bactria (North and Central Afghanistan), and Scythia. In the process of doing so, he captured and refounded Herat and Maracanda. Moreover, he founded a series of new cities, all called Alexandria, including modern Kandahar in Afghanistan, and Alexandria Eschate ("The Furthest") in modern Tajikistan. In the end, both of his opponents were defeated after having been betrayed by their men--Bessus in 329 BC, and Spitamenes the year after.