ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE MAN AND HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS

This research paper summarizes and evaluates Alexander the Great's skills and accomplishments as a military leader and his shortcomings as well as the political gifts which formed part of his complex personality. Alexander (356-323 B.C.) earned the title the Great primarily because of his remarkable military exploits. His accomplishments as a ruler proved to be largely transitory. His lasting legacy was the preservation and spread of Hellenistic culture which his conquests made possible, but which never ran very deep in Persia and regions further to the East.

A king at 19 and dead of fever at 33, Alexander in a relatively brief span of time conquered most of the then known world, often in the face of insuperable odds, during the course of campaigns which involved arduous marches over 17,000 miles. He was able to do so in part because he inherited from his father, King Philip II of Macedon, a superbly trained and disciplined army, a burgeoning alliance with Greek city-states and a sense of mission. He was an exceptionally courageous and inspiring leader of men in arms. His innovations in military tactics enabled his forces to outmaneuver and repeatedly defeat the much more populous and wealthier Persian Empire in five years. He then went on to achieve even more remarkable victories in the remote, forbidding and hostile mountainous and arid regions of Central and South Asia.

During the course of his conquests, Alexand

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ught out the Persian host in the interior. However, his campaign nearly came apart in northern Syria where Darius, the Persian Emperor, moved his main force into a blocking position just north of and astride Alexander's lines of communications. Maihafer said that for one of the few times in his life, "Alexander was both outsmarted and outmaneuvered" (65). However, he quickly recovered his aplomb. After reconnoitering the Persian lines, he secured his flanks, and attacked at what he correctly perceived to be their weakest point, their left-center. Sensing a gap in the Persian line, Alexander swung through it and rolled up the Persian center. In the face of Alexander's pell-mell charge, Darius lost his nerve and fled the battlefield, thus ensuring another Macedonian victory at the Battle of Issus. Lucas said victory went to the Macedonians not only because they had the better battle plan nor even entirely because of Alexander's improvisations but also due to their "sheer hard fighting" ability (30). During this campaign, Alexander's dreams of unconditional victory over the Persians began to mature. After Alexander captured Darius' mother, wife and children at Issus, Darius offered to cede him the western Persian Empire plus the eq
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Approximate Word count = 2933
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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