亚历山大大帝(Alexander, Alexander III of Macedon，Alexander the Great，公元前356年7月20日-前323年6月10日)，生于马其顿王国首都派拉城，曾师从古希腊著名学者亚里士多德，十八岁随父出征，二十岁继承王位。是欧洲历史上最伟大的军事天才，马其顿帝国最富盛名的征服者。他雄才伟略，勇于善战，领军驰聘欧亚非大陆，使得古希腊文明广泛传播，是世界古代史上最著名的军事家和政治家。

　　Alexander the Great 356BC -- 323BC (亚历山大大帝)

　　King of Macedonia. Born at Pella in 356 B.C. to the first wife of King Philip II of Macedonia. At age 20, Alexander became the king of Macedon, the leader of the Corinthian League, and the conqueror of Persia. He succeeded in forging the largest Western empire of the ancient world.

　　As a teenager, Alexander was educated by the Athenian philosopher Aristotle. By the year 337 B.C. all of the Greek city-states had been conquered or forced into an alliance by King Philip II. He was planning to lead their joint forces in an invasion of the Persian Empire when he was assassinated in 336 B.C. at the wedding of Alexander's sister to the king of one his vassal states. Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedonia at the age of 19. The unhappy Greeks immediately revolted but were quickly put down by Alexander who quickly showed his genius as a military leader. Having subdued all of Greece, he picked up his father's plan and headed east to fight the Persians.

　　Alexander's army crossed the Hellespont--now called the Dardanelles--in the spring of 334 B.C. He stopped at the site of the ancient Greek city of Troy, scene of Homer's Iliad. He met the Persians in battle for the first time on the Granicus River, which flows into the Sea of Marmara, and smashed the opposing army. Alexander himself narrowly missed being killed during the battle. Following this victory, Alexander pressed on through Asia Minor, being checked briefly by the Persians at the city of Miletos. He was near present-day Iskenderun in southern Turkey when he learned that the newly-crowned King Darius III of Persia and his army were at Issos, to his north.

　　Alexander encountered Darius at Issos in October 333 B.C. Alexander's army attacked while the Persians were trying to retreat to the sea in order to escape. He cut them off and inflicted a crushing defeat with an enormous number of Persian dead. Darius fled. Alexander then turned south and invaded Syria and Phoenicia, intending to take the Mediterranean ports where the Persian fleet had its bases. It took a siege of eight months to conquer the Phoenician city of Tyre, on an island of the coast of Lebanon. It is said that in the final battle in July 332 B.C. 8,000 of the inhabitants were killed and 30,000 were taken as slaves.

　　During the siege, Alexander received an offer of peace from Darius. The terms were seemingly so favorable that Alexander's second-in-command, Parmenio, is said to have said that he would accept them if he were Alexander. "That," replied Alexander, "is what I should do were I Parmenio."

　　Alexander then turned south and took the fortress of Gaza, with a Persian garrison inside, after a siege of two months. He crossed over into Egypt, where he was welcomed as a liberator from the hated Persians. He founded the port city of Alexandria in place of the old Greek trading port of Naukratis. This was the largest of the 70 cities that Alexander founded during the course of his conquests. He visited the ancient oracle of Zeus Ammon. Alexander never revealed what the oracle told him, but his soldiers spread the rumor that he had said that Alexander was destined to rule the world.第二页继续...