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| Alexander III (late July, 356 BC–June 10, 323 BC), King of Macedon (336 BC-323 BC), known as Alexander the Great, was one of the most successful military commanders of the ancient world. Following the unification of the multiple city states of Greece under the rule of his father, Philip II of Macedon, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, Egypt and many other smaller kingdoms in just 12 years. |
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By the time of his death in 323 BC, his empire stretched from Greece to present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern India. Alexander's conquests and the fusion of Greek culture with eastern cultures ushered in the age of Hellenistic Greece across much of Europe, Asia and northern Africa. Already during his lifetime, and especially after his death, Alexander's exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appears as a towering legendary hero in the tradition of Achilles. After his death his kingdoms were split up into three main sections: the Ptolemids in Egypt, the Antigonids in Macedonia and the Seleucids in Syria, Asia Minor and the Middle East.
Early life
Alexander was the son of King Philip II of Macedon and of Epirote princess Olympias. According to Plutarch (Alexander 3.1,3), Olympias was impregnated not by Philip, who was afraid of her and her affinity for sleeping in the company of snakes, but by Zeus. Plutarch (Alexander 2.2-3) relates that both Philip and Olympias dreamt of their son's future birth. Olympias dreamed of a loud burst of thunder and of lightning striking her womb. In Philip's dream, he sealed her womb with the seal of the lion. Alarmed by this, he consulted the seer Aristander of Telmessus, who determined that his wife was pregnant and that the child would have the character of a lion.
After his visit to the Oracle of Ammon at Siwah, according to all five of the extant historians (Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch), rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father was Apollo, rather than Philip. According to Plutarch (Alexander 2.1), his father descended from Heracles through Caranus and his mother descended from Aeacus through Neoptolemus and Achilles.
The ascendance of Macedon
Macedon was located in the northernmost part of classical Greece. In an effort to unite the rest of the Greek world against the ascendant power of Philip II, Demosthenes and others derided the Macedonians as barbarians. Olympias herself was from Epirus, another Greek state on the edge of classical Greek civilization, on the northwest of the Greek peninsula. Macedonians were keen to adopt the achievements of the southern Greeks, and Philip selected the noted Athenian philosopher Aristotle, who was born in the Greek city of Stagira on the Chalcidice peninsula, to tutor young Alexander.
When Philip led an attack on Byzantium in 340 BC, Alexander, aged 16, was left in command of Macedonia. In 339 BC Philip divorced Alexander's mother, leading to a quarrel between Alexander and his father which threw into question Alexander's succession to the Macedonian throne. In 336 BC, Philip was assassinated at the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to King Alexander of Epirus. The assassin was a former lover of the king, the disgruntled young nobleman (Pausanias), who after having been spurned by Philip in favor of another boy (also named Pausanias) had been raped by retainers of Attalus, one of Philip's senior generals and the father of his newest wife, Eurydice. His murder was once thought to have been planned with the knowledge and possible involvement of Alexander or Olympias, but in recent years Alexander's involvement has been questioned, and there is some reason to believe that it may have been instigated by Darius III Codomannus, the recently crowned King of Persia.
After the death of Philip, Alexander, then aged 20, was acclaimed by the army as the new king of Macedon. He immediately ordered the execution of all of his potential rivals and marched south with his armies in a campaign to solidify control of Greece and confront the Persian Empire.
Period of conquests
The defeat of the Persian empire
Alexander then proceeded across Asia Minor, defeating the main Persian army of Darius III Codomannus at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Marching down the Mediterranean coast, he took Tyre and Gaza after famous sieges.
In 332-331 BC he was welcomed as a liberator in Egypt and was pronouced the son of Zeus by Egyptian priests of the god Ammon at the Oracle of the god at the Siwah oasis in the Libyan Desert. He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the famous capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death. Then, Alexander marched eastward into Assyria (now Iraq) to defeat Darius and a third Persian army in the Battle of Gaugamela. When Darius was forced to flee the field after his charioteer was killed, Alexander chased him as far as Arbela. When Darius fled over the mountains to Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), Alexander marched to Babylon.
From Babylon, Alexander the great went to Susa, one of the Achaemenid capitals, and captured its treasury. Sending the bulk of his army to Persepolis, the Persian capital, by the Royal Road, while he stormed and captured the Persian Gates (in the modern Zagros Mountains), then sprinted for Persepolis before its treasury could be looted. He allowed the League forces to loot Persepolis, and he set fire to the royal palace of Xerxes as revenge for the burning of the Athenian Acropolis during the Second Persian War. He then set off in pursuit of Darius, who was kidnapped, and then murdered by followers of Bessus, his Bactrian satrap and kinsman. Bessus then declared himself Darius' successor as Artaxerxes V and retreated into Central Asia to launch a guerrila campaign against Alexander. Alexander declared the war of vengeance at an end with the death of Darius 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 imperial army). His three-year campaign against Bessus and his successor Spitamenes took him through Medes|Media, Parthia, Aria, Drangiana, Arachosia, Bactria and Scythia. In the process he captured and refounded Herat and Samarkand, and he founded a series of new cities, all called Alexandria, including one near modern Kandahar in Afghanistan, and "The Furthest" Alexandria Eschate bordering today's Chinese Turkestan.
Hostility toward Alexander
During this time, Alexander adopted some elements of Persian dress and customs at his court, notably the custom of proskynesis, a symbolic kissing of the hand that Persians paid to their social superiors, but a practice of which the Greeks disapproved. This cost him much in the sympathies of many of his Greek countrymen. Here, too, a plot against his life was revealed, and his Companion and friend Philotas was executed for treason for failing to bring the plot to his attention. Although Philotas was convicted by the assembled Macedonian army, most historians consider this one of the king's greatest crimes, along with his order to assassinate his senior general Parmenion, Philotas' father. In a drunken quarrel at Macaranda Samarkand, he also murdered the man who had saved his life at the Granicus, Clitus the Black. Later in the Central Asian campaign, a second plot against his life, this one by his own Pages, was revealed, and his official historian, Callisthenes of Olynthus (who had fallen out of favor with the king by leading the opposition to his attempt to introduce proskynesis), was implicated on what most historians regard as trumped-up charges.
The invasion of India
With the death of Spitamenes and his marriage to Roxanne to cement his relations with his new Central Asian satrapies, in 326 BC Alexander was finally free to turn his attention to India. After accepting the submission of King Omphis of Taxiles, he fought an epic battle against the monarch Purushotthama in the Battle of Hydaspes. He continued on to conquer all the headwaters of the Indus. Exhausted and frightened by the prospect of facing another giant Indian army at the Ganges, his army mutinied at the Hyphasis (modern Beas), refusing to march further East. Alexander was forced to turn South, conquering his way down the Indus to the Ocean. He sent much of his army to Carmania (modern southern Iran) with his general Craterus, and commissioned a fleet to explore the Persian Gulf shore under his admiral Nearchus, while he led the rest of his forces back to Persia by the southern route through the Gedrosian Desert (modern Makran in southern Pakistan).
After India
Discovering that many of his satraps and military governors had misbehaved in his absence, Alexander executed a number of them as examples on his way to Susa. As a gesture of thanks, he paid off the debts of his soldiers, and announced that he would send those who were over-aged and the disabled veterans back to Macedonia under Craterus, but his troops misunderstood his intention and mutinied at the town of Opis, refusing to be sent away and bitterly criticizing his adoption of Persian customs and dress and the introduction of Persian officers and soldiers into Macedonian units. Alexander executed the ringleaders of the mutiny, but forgave the rank and file. In an attempt to craft a lasting harmony between his Macedonian and Persian subjects, he held a mass marriage of his senior officers to Persian and other noblewomen at Opis, but few of those marriages seem to have lasted beyond his death a year later.
His attempts to merge Persian culture with his Greek soldiers also included having his officers marry Persian wives en masse, and training a regiment of Persian boys in the ways of Macedonians. It is not certain that Alexander adopted the Persian royal title of shahanshah ("great king" or "king of kings"), but most historians think that he did.
After traveling to Ecbatana to retrieve the bulk of the Persian treasure, his Chiliarch and closest friend Hephaestion died of an illness. Later Roman writers considered Alexander's display of mourning excessive (although it may not have been seen that way by his contemporaries). He conducted a campaign of extermination against the Cossaens to assuage his grief. On his way back to his capitol at Babylon, Alexander encountered many signs of his impending death, and he fell ill and indeed died shortly after he entered the city.
Alexander's marriages and sexuality
Alexander's greatest emotional attachment is generally considered to have been to his companion, cavalry commander (chiliarchos) and possibly lover, Hephaestion. They had likely been best friends since childhood, for Hephaestion too received his education at the court of Alexander's father. Hephaestion makes his appearance in the histories at the point when Alexander reaches Troy. There the two friends made sacrifices at the shrines of the legendary lovers Achilles and Patroclus, Alexander honoring Achilles, and Hephaestion, Patroclus. As Aelian in his Varia Historia claims, "He thus showed himself as the lover of Alexander, even as Patroclus was the lover of Achilles."
Many discussed his ambivalent sexuality. Diogenes of Sinope exhorts him [letter #24]: "If you want to be kalos kagathos [beautiful and good], throw away the rag you have on your head and come to us. But you won't be able to, for you are ruled by Hephaestion's thighs." And Curtius reports that "He scorned [feminine] sensual pleasures to such an extent that his mother was anxious lest he be unable to beget offspring." To whet his appetite for the fair sex, King Philip (who had already berated his son for speaking in too high a voice), and Olympias, had a high-priced Thessalian courtesan, Kallixeina, brought in. But the ancients were not all of one mind. Eumenes (370-265) claimed Alexander "was not comfortable with sex" while Athenaios claimed he was "a wild pederast."
Later in life Alexander married several princesses of former Persian territories: Roxana of Bactria; Statira, daughter of Darius III; and Parysatis, daughter of Ochus, and fathered at least two children. This would be in keeping with the ancient omnivorous approach to sexuality.
Curtius maintains that Alexander also took as a lover "... Bagoas, a eunuch exceptional in beauty and in the very flower of boyhood, with whom Darius was intimate and with whom Alexander would later be intimate," (VI.5.23). Eumenes writes that, previous to venturing further east, Alexander installed Bagoas in a villa outside of Babylon and required all his officers and courtesans, both Greek and Persian, to render him honors (i.e. to present him with rich gifts). Alexander's favor to Bagoas is also apparent in his subsequent appointment of Bagoas as one of the trierarchs, men of substance who oversaw and funded the construction of the navy for the journey homeward. Their relationship seems to have been well known among the troops, as Plutarch recounts an episode (also mentioned by Athenaios and Dicaearchus) during some festivities on the way back from India, in which his men clamor for him to openly kiss the young man and Alexander obliges. Whatever his relationship with Bagoas, it was no impediment to relations with his queen: six months after Alexander's death Roxanne gave birth to his son and heir Alexander IV. Besides Bagoas, Curtius in (VII.9.19), mentions yet another lover of Alexander, Euxenippos, "whose youthful grace filled him with enthusiasm."
The question of whether Alexander was homosexual, or bisexual, or even a "cross-dresser" (at feasts he occasionally donned Athena's silver dress) in a modern sense is controversial. Recently, many Greeks and Macedonian Slavs have expressed outrage at such suggestions regarding their national hero. They argue that historical accounts describing Alexander's relations with Hephaestion and Bagoas as sexual were written centuries after the fact, and thus it can never be established what the 'real' relationship between Alexander and his male companions were. Others argue that the same can be said about all our information regarding Alexander. Such debates, however, are considered anachronistic by scholars of the period, who point out that the concept of homosexuality did not exist in antiquity: sexual attraction between males was seen as a normal and universal part of human nature since it was believed that men were attracted to beauty, an attribute of the young, regardless of gender. If Alexander's love life was transgressive it was not for his love of beautiful youths but for his involvement with a man his own age, in a time when the standard model of male love was pederastic. See History of Homosexuality for more information.
Death
In the afternoon of June 10, 323 BC, Alexander died of a mysterious illness in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. He was only 32 years old. Various theories have been proposed for the cause of his death which includes poisoning by the sons of Antipater, murder by his wife Roxane, and sickness due to a relapse of malaria he had contracted in 336 BC.
In 1998, in an article titled "A Mysterious Death" in the New England Journal of Medicine, volume 38, , David W. Oldach, M.D. (a professor of pathology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine), and others (including eminent Alexander historian Eugene N. Borza), analyzed Alexander's symptoms as described in Arrian, Diodorus and Plutarch. Oldach dismissed the poisoning theory and diagnosed the king's final illness as typhoid, perhaps complicated by peritonitis and Guillain-Barré syndrome, leading to the possibility that a helplessly paralyzed Alexander might actually have been killed by his embalmers.
According to legend, Alexander was preserved in a clay vessel full of honey for food and interred in a glass coffin (due to the rarity of transparent glass in the ancient world, it would have been an incredibly expensive sarcophagus). A sarcophagus discovered in Sidon was allegedly Alexander's but it was proven to actually be the coffin of Abdylonymus, the one Hephaestion appointed as the king of Sidon by Alexander's order.
Legacy and division of the Empire
Alexander left a huge empire to his successors who fought for supremacy over portions of his realm. When the dust settled, virtually all of his officers had disposed of their Persian wives, and all but two of his top officers, his mother, his wife Roxana (Roshanak in Persian), his son Alexander IV of Macedon (323-309 BC), his illegitimate son Heracles (327-309 BC), his sister Cleopatra, his half-sister Euridice, and his half-brother Philip III of Macedon, were dead. Only one of them, (Antipater), died of natural causes.
Soon after Alexander's death, his soldiers elected his infant son, Alexander, and half-brother, Phillip, to be the successor kings. But young Alexander was just a baby and Phillip suffered from a mental infirmity. Under the circumstances the great commanders of Alexander's army, the diadochi, elected one of their own, Perdiccas, to be regent and chiliarchos. A soldiers assembly formally accepted him and thus Perdiccas was set to rule the empire until Alexander IV reached maturity. However, in the very next year, 322, Perdiccas fell into a conflict with Ptolemy, one of the diadochoi and current satrap of Egypt. The regent took his army to Egypt in order to punish Ptolemy, but during the event he was killed.
The diadochoi met once again and chose Antipater to be the next regent. But now Eumenes, former secretary of both Alexander and Perdiccas, didn't accept this decision and started a rebellion against the diadochoi. The empire fell into civil war. One of the diadochoi, Antigonus I Monophthalmus (satrap of Lydia), was able to stop Eumenes. At first, in 317 BC, he tried to defeat Eumenes directly at the Battle of Paraitacene in central Persia, but failed. Eventually, Antigonus had to bribe Eumenes' own soldiers to assassinate him. By this Antigonus was now the most powerful of all the diadochoi.
Meanwhile, back in Macedonia Antipater had died, but not before nominating Polyperchon as the next regent. Antipater's son, Cassander, didn't accept this state of affairs and started a new war (319 BC). During this turmoil, in 317, Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, tried to dominate Macedonia and Greece and become regent as caretaker of her grandson, Alexander IV. She also ordered the death of Phillip III. Her plan didn't last long. In 316 Cassander conquered Macedonia and sentenced Oympias to death. Now he was the regent.
Antigonus regarded himself as just having been one-upped and now fought against Cassander. The rest of the diadochoi worried that powerful Antigonus would defeat them all one after another, so they formed with Cassander a coalition against him in 315 BC. In 312 Ptolemy conquered Cyprus while Seleucus took Babylon, Elam and Media, where he defeated Antigonus' satraps. Then in 309 Cassander finally disposed of Alexander IV. The boy was by now thirteen years old and the following year he could legitimately rule according to Macedonian law. His mother Roxana was also killed. Cassander kept this all a secret for the next several years, until 305 BC. In the meantime Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Cassander signed a treaty of peace with Antigonos leaving Seleucus alone to fight with him. Seleucus nevertheless managed to defeat Antigonus and conquer eastern Iran. Then in 305-304 BC all of the diadochoi finally learned of the death of Alexander IV and pronounced themselves as the successor kings, each to his own territory. Antigonus accepted none of these other proclamations and started a campaign to become sole ruler of the whole empire. Ultimately, he was defeated in the Battle of Ipsus in Phrygia in 301 BC. In the aftermath Lysimachus took Asia Minor, Seleucus took Syria and Ptolemy took Palestine.
So Alexander's empire was divided at first into four major portions: Cassander ruled in Greece, Lysimachus in Thrace, Seleucus I Nicator ("the winner") in Mesopotamia and Iran, and Ptolemy I (or Ptolemy Soter) in the Levant and Egypt. Antigonus I Monophthalmus ruled for a while in Asia Minor and Syria, but was soon defeated by the other four generals. Control over Indian territory was short-lived, ending when Seleucus I Nicator was defeated by Chandragupta Maurya, the first Mauryan emperor.
Soon Lysimachus obtained Cassander's portion (285 BC), and the empire was divided into three major portions, controlled by the descendants of Ptolemy Soter ("the saviour") in Egypt, Antigonus Monopthalmos (literally "One-eyed") in Greece, and Seleucus in the Mideast. By about 281 BC, when Seleucus killed Lysimachus in the battle of Kurypedion, only two dynasties remained in Alexander's old empire — the Seleucid dynasty in the north and the Ptolemaic dynasty in the south.
After the battle of Kurypedion, Seleucus went to Macedonia and was killed by Ptolemaios Keraunos ("the thunder"), a son of Ptolemaios of Egypt, who escaped from Alexandria. Keraunos became new king of Macedonia, but in 279 BC Macedonia and Greece were invaded by Celts and Keraunos was killed. In 277 BC Antigonus Gonatas, the grandson of Antigonus Monophthalmos, defeated Celts in the battle of Lysimachia and gained control over Macedonia. The Antigonid dynasty ruled in Macedonia until Romans conquered the country.
Alexander's character
Alexander is remembered as a legendary hero in Europe and much of western and central Asia, where he is known as Iskander. To Zoroastrians, on the other hand, he is remembered as the destroyer of their first great empire and as the leveller of Persepolis. Ancient sources are generally written with an agenda of either glorifying or slandering the man, making it difficult to evaluate his actual character. Most refer to a growing instability and megalomania in the years following Gaugamela, but it has been suggested that this simply reflects the Greek stereotype of a medizing king. The murder of his friend Cleitus, which Alexander deeply and immediately regretted, is often pointed to, as is his execution of Philotas and his general Parmenio for failure to pass along details of a plot against him, though this last may have been prudence rather than paranoia.
Modern opinion on Alexander has run the gamut from the idea that he believed he was on a divinely-inspired mission to unite the human race, to the view that he was the ancient world's equivalent of a Napoleon or a Hitler, a megalomaniac bent on world domination. Such views tend to be anachronistic, however, and the sources allow a variety of interpretations. Much about Alexander's personality and aims remains enigmatic.
Alexander had a legendary horse named Bucephalus (ox-headed), supposedly descended from the Mares of Diomedes.
According to one story, the philosopher Anaxarchus checked the vain glory of Alexander, when he aspired to the honours of divinity, by pointing to his wound, saying, "See the blood of a mortal, not the ichor of a god." (In another version Alexander himself pointed out the difference in response to a sycophantic soldier.)
Ancient sources
The ancient sources for Alexander's life are, from the perspective of ancient history, relatively numerous. Alexander himself left only a few inscriptions and some letter-fragments of dubious authenticity, but a large number of his contemporaries wrote full accounts. These included his court historian Callisthenes, his general Ptolemy (later Ptolemy I of Egypt), and a camp engineer Aristoboulus. Another early and influential account was penned by Cleitarchus. Unfortunately, these works were lost. Instead, the modern historian must rely on authors who used these and other early sources. The five main accounts are by Arrian, Curtius, Mestrius Plutarch, Diodorus, and Justin. Much is recounted incidentally in other authors, especially including Strabo.
The "problem of the sources" is the main concern (and chief delight) of Alexander-historians. In effect, each presents a different "Alexander," with details to suit. Arrian presents a flattering portrait, Curtius a darker one. Plutarch can't resist a good story, light or dark. All include a considerable level of fantasy, prompting the historian Strabo (2.1.9) to remark, "All who wrote about Alexander preferred the marvellous to the true." Nevertheless, the sources tell us much, and leave much to our interpretation and imagination.
Surviving classical period histories:
* The Roman historian Arrian of Nicomedia wrote Anabasis Alexandri or "The Campaigns of Alexander" in Greek.
* Another Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus wrote Historiae Alexandri Magni, a biography of Alexander the Great in Latin in ten books, of which the last eight survive.
* The Bibliotheca historia ("Historical Library") of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, at least four books cover the conquests of Alexander and the actions of his successors, or the Diadochi.
* The Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus by Justin, which contains many provable errors of fact and is highly compressed.
* The Greek historian/biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea wrote a Life of Alexander and two orations On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great
Alexander's legend
Alexander was a legend in his own time. His court historian, Callisthenes portrayed the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis. Writing after Alexander's death, another participant, Onesicritus, went so far as to invent a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. (When Onesicritus read this passage to his patron, Alexander's general and later King Lysimachus, Lysimachus quipped "I wonder where I was at the time?")
In the first centuries after Alexander's death, probably in Alexandria, a quantity of the more legendary material coalesced into a text known as the "Alexander Romance," later falsely ascribed to the historian Callisthenes and therefore known as Pseudo-Callisthenes. This text underwent numerous expansions and revisions throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, exhibiting a plasticity unseen in "higher" literary forms. Latin and Syriac translations were made in Late Antiquity. From these, versions were developed in all the major languages of Europe and the Middle East, including Armenian, Georgian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Serbian, Slavonic, Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, Italian, and French.The "Romance" is regarded by most scholars as the source of the account of Alexander given in the Koran (Sura "The Cave"). It is the source of many incidents in Ferdowsi's "Shahnama". A Mongol version is extant.
Some believe that, excepting certain religious texts, it is the most widely-read work of pre-modern times.
Alexander also anachronistically appears as a saint in Eastern Orthodox churches.
Alexander's titles
A list of the various titles held by Alexander throughout his life (all dates BC). Titles which are unknown whether he used or not, and unknown dates that he assumed confirmed titles, are marked with a question mark.
* Crown Price of Macedon: 356-336
* Descendent of Achilles: 356-323
* Regent of Macedon: 340-336
* King of Macedon: 336-323
* Hegemon of Corinthian League: 336-323
* Son of Ammon-Zeus: 333-323
* Pharaoh of Egypt: 332-323
* King of Asia: 331-323
* Shahanshah(?) of Persia: 331(?)-323
* Basileus: 331(?)-323
Main cities founded by Alexander
Around 70 cities are said to have been founded by Alexander. Some of the main ones are:
* Alexandria, Egypt
* Alexandria Asiana, Iran
* Alexandria in Ariana, Afghanistan
* Alexandria of the Caucasus, Afghanistan
* Alexandria on the Oxus, Afghanistan
* Alexandria of the Arachosians, Afghanistan
* Alexandria on the Indus, Pakistan
* Alexandria Eschate, "The furthest", Tajikistan
* Kandahar (Alexandropolis), Afghanistan
Alexander in popular media
* A 1956 movie starring Richard Burton titled Alexander the Great was produced by MGM
* Numerous television series about Alexander have been created.
* From 1969 to 1981, Mary Renault wrote a historical fiction trilogy, speculating on the life of Alexander: Fire from Heaven (about his early life), The Persian Boy (about his conquest of Persia, his expedition to India, and his death, seen from the viewpoint of a Persian eunuch), and Funeral Games (about the events following his death).
* The British heavy metal band Iron Maiden had a song entitled "Alexander the Great" on their album Somewhere in Time (1986). The song describes Alexander's life, but contains one inaccuracy: in the song it is stated that Alexander's army would not follow him into India.
* A further trilogy of novels about Alexander was written in Italian by Valerio Massimo Manfredi and subsequently published in an English translation, entitled The Son of the Dream, The Sands of Ammon and The Ends Of The Earth.
* An epic animated retelling of the story called Reign: The Conquerer by Peter Chung of Aeon Flux fame debuted on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block variety show in 2003.
* Oliver Stone's film Alexander, starring Colin Farrell, was released on November 24, 2004.
* Baz Luhrmann had been planning to make a very different film about Alexander, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, but the release of Stone's film eventually persuaded him to abandon the project.
* Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso's 1998 album Livro includes an epic song about Alexander called "Alexandre."
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