Ancient Greece · Part 8 · Thinkers and kings · B2
Philip, Alexander and the Rise of Macedon
Part 8 of Ancient Greece: in twenty years, a kingdom on the northern edge of the Greek world conquered Greece, then Persia, then the road to India. Its young king founded the city we live in, burned a palace, and died at thirty-two with plans for more. Was going to, was about to, was on the point of and was to have, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the man who founded our city: Alexander. His body lies in his tomb, ten minutes’ walk from here.
There were not many Thebans left to say anything. That is part of the story too.
Macedon was a kingdom in the north of Greece, with kings, horsemen and gold mines. Southern Greeks argued about whether Macedonians were really Greek; most scholars now think their language was a form of Greek. King Philip II (359–336 BCE) created a new army, with soldiers carrying spears almost six metres long, and in 338 BCE defeated Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea.
In 336 BCE, Philip was murdered by one of his bodyguards. His son Alexander, aged twenty, became king. In 334 he crossed into Asia, and in eleven years he conquered the whole Persian empire, from Anatolia and Egypt to Bactria and the Indus. In Egypt, in 331 BCE, he founded Alexandria.
Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BCE, aged thirty-two, with no adult heir. His generals divided his empire: Ptolemy took Egypt and, later, Alexander’s body.
Or try our free games and lessons.