Download or read book Alexander the Great Annotated written by Jacob ABBOTT and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The celebrated Macedonian king has been one of the most enduring figures in history. He was a general of such skill and renown that for two thousand years other great leaders studied his strategy and tactics, from Hannibal to Napoleon, with countless more in between. He flashed across the sky of history like a comet, glowing brightly and burning out quickly: crowned at age nineteen, dead by thirty-two. He established the greatest empire of the ancient world; Greek coins and statues are found as far east as Afghanistan. Our interest in him has never faded.Alexander was born into the royal family of Macedonia, the kingdom that would soon rule over Greece. Tutored as a boy by Aristotle, Alexander had an inquisitive mind that would serve him well when he faced formidable obstacles during his military campaigns. Shortly after taking command of the army, he launched an invasion of the Persian empire, and continued his conquests as far south as the deserts of Egypt and as far east as the mountains of present-day Pakistan and the plains of India. Alexander spent nearly all his adult life away from his homeland, and he and his men helped spread the Greek language throughout western Asia, where it would become the lingua franca of the ancient world. Within a short time after Alexander's death in Baghdad, his empire began to fracture. Best known among his successors are the Ptolemies of Egypt, whose empire lasted until Cleopatra.In his lively and authoritative biography of Alexander, classical scholar and historian Philip Freeman describes Alexander's astonishing achievements and provides insight into the mercurial character of the great conqueror. Alexander could be petty and magnanimous, cruel and merciful, impulsive and farsighted. Above all, he was ferociously, intensely competitive and could not tolerate losing--which he rarely did. As Freeman explains, without Alexander, the influence of Greece on the ancient world would surely not have been as great as it was, even if his motivation was not to spread Greek culture for beneficial purposes but instead to unify his empire. Only a handful of people have influenced history as Alexander did, which is why he continues to fascinate us.

Download or read book Alexander the Great Annotated written by Jacob Abbott and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-09-11 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander III of Macedon, popularly known to history as Alexander the Great, was an Ancient Greek king (basileus) of Macedon. Born in 356 BC, Alexander succeeded his father Philip II of Macedon to the throne in 336 BC, and died in Bablyon in 323 BC at the age of 32. Alexander was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and it is presumed that he was undefeated in battle. By the time of his death, he had conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire, adding it to Macedon's European territories; according to some modern writers, this was much of the world then known to the ancient Greeks.

Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Philip Freeman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first authoritative biography of Alexander the Great written for a general audience in a generation, classicist and historian Philip Freeman tells the remarkable life of the great conqueror. The celebrated Macedonian king has been one of the most enduring figures in history. He was a general of such skill and renown that for two thousand years other great leaders studied his strategy and tactics, from Hannibal to Napoleon, with countless more in between. He flashed across the sky of history like a comet, glowing brightly and burning out quickly: crowned at age nineteen, dead by thirty-two. He established the greatest empire of the ancient world; Greek coins and statues are found as far east as Afghanistan. Our interest in him has never faded. Alexander was born into the royal family of Macedonia, the kingdom that would soon rule over Greece. Tutored as a boy by Aristotle, Alexander had an inquisitive mind that would serve him well when he faced formidable obstacles during his military campaigns. Shortly after taking command of the army, he launched an invasion of the Persian empire, and continued his conquests as far south as the deserts of Egypt and as far east as the mountains of present-day Pakistan and the plains of India. Alexander spent nearly all his adult life away from his homeland, and he and his men helped spread the Greek language throughout western Asia, where it would become the lingua franca of the ancient world. Within a short time after Alexander’s death in Baghdad, his empire began to fracture. Best known among his successors are the Ptolemies of Egypt, whose empire lasted until Cleopatra. In his lively and authoritative biography of Alexander, classical scholar and historian Philip Freeman describes Alexander’s astonishing achievements and provides insight into the mercurial character of the great conqueror. Alexander could be petty and magnanimous, cruel and merciful, impulsive and farsighted. Above all, he was ferociously, intensely competitive and could not tolerate losing—which he rarely did. As Freeman explains, without Alexander, the influence of Greece on the ancient world would surely not have been as great as it was, even if his motivation was not to spread Greek culture for beneficial purposes but instead to unify his empire. Only a handful of people have influenced history as Alexander did, which is why he continues to fascinate us.

Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Jacob Abbott and published by . This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic book, you'll an epic adventure back in time with Jacob Abbott's biography of Alexander the Great! Join us as we explore the life of ancient Greece and Macedonia's mightiest conqueror and military genius. With Abbott's classic storytelling, you'll journey alongside Alexander as he tames the wild horse Bucephalus, outsmarts the Persian Empire, and crusades to the ends of the known world-from Greece all the way to India! We'll watch Alexander inspire his army to pull off amazing victories and found new cities to spread Greek culture far and wide. You'll also see Alexander's flaws-his temper, vanity, and hunger for power-which grew out of control. Abbott brings alive Alexander's world of ancient kingdoms, warriors, adventures, and legends. See for yourself how the courageous boy who became king by age 20 earned his unmatched title: Alexander the Great! Join us on this quest back in time to experience the grandeur and glory of one of history's greatest conquerors!

Download or read book Alexander the Great and His Empire written by Pierre Briant and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-25 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic account of Alexander the Great's conquest and its impact on the conquered—now in English for the first time This is the first publication in English of Pierre Briant's classic short history of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian empire, from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. Eschewing a conventional biographical focus, this is the only book in any language that sets the rise of Alexander's short-lived empire within the broad context of ancient Near Eastern history under Achaemenid Persian rule, as well as against Alexander's Macedonian background. As a renowned historian of both the Macedonians and the Persians, Briant is uniquely able to assess Alexander's significance from the viewpoint of both the conquerors and the conquered, and to trace what changed and what stayed the same as Alexander and the Hellenistic world gained ascendancy over Darius's Persia. After a short account of Alexander's life before his landing in Asia Minor, the book gives a brief overview of the major stages of his conquest. This background sets the stage for a series of concise thematic chapters that explore the origins and objectives of the conquest; the nature and significance of the resistance it met; the administration, defense, and exploitation of the conquered lands; the varying nature of Alexander's relations with the Macedonians, Greeks, and Persians; and the problems of succession following Alexander's death. For this translation, Briant has written a new foreword and conclusion, updated the main text and the thematic annotated bibliography, and added a substantial appendix in which he assesses the current state of scholarship on Alexander and suggests some directions for future research. More than ever, this masterful work provides an original and important perspective on Alexander and his empire.

Download or read book Sources for Alexander the Great written by Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plutarch and Arrian have contributed more than any other ancient authors to our picture of Alexander the Great, but since they wrote four or more centuries after his death the value of what they said depends upon the sources of information on which they themselves drew. In this 1993 book the attempt is made to define and to evaluate those sources in a detailed study, analysing the historians' works section by section and comparing them with other accounts of the same episodes. This volume completes Professor Hammond's study of the five Alexander-historians begun with Three Historians of Alexander the Great (Cambridge University Press, 1983) and lays a basis for work in this area.

Download or read book Alexander the Great in Arrian s Anabasis written by Vasileios Liotsakis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arrian’s Alexandrou Anabasis constitutes the most reliable account at our disposal about Alexander the Great's campaign in Asia. However, whereas the work has been thoroughly studied as a historical source, its literary qualities have been relatively neglected, with no autonomous monograph existing on this matter. Vasileios Liotsakis fills this gap in the studies of Alexander the Great’s literary tradition, by offering the first monograph on Arrian’s compositional strategies. Liotsakis focuses on the narrative techniques and verbal choices, through which Arrian allows praise and criticism to intermingle in his portrait of the Macedonian king. His main point of argument is that Arrian systematically exploits an abundance of narrative means (military descriptions, presentation of peoples, march-narratives, anachronies, and epic elements) in order to draw the reader’s attention not only to Alexander’s intellectual skills but also to the fact that the king was gradually corrupted by his success. This book puts Arrian’s literary contrivances under the microscope, sheds new light on unexplored aspects of the Anabasis’ narrative arrangement, and contributes to the studies of Alexander’s prosopography in Classical historiography.

Download or read book Alexander the Great and His Empire written by Pierre Briant and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-21 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a short history of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian empire, from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. This book sets the rise of Alexander's short-lived empire within the broad context of ancient Near Eastern history under Achaemenid Persian rule, as well as against Alexander's Macedonian background.

Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Thomas R. Martin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-28 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains what made Alexander 'Great' according to the people and expectations of his time and place.

Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Anthony Everitt and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. “[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum . . . Its energy is unflagging, including the verve with which it tackles that teased final mystery about the specific cause of Alexander’s death.”—The Christian Science Monitor More than two millennia have passed since Alexander the Great built an empire that stretched to every corner of the ancient world, from the backwater kingdom of Macedonia to the Hellenic world, Persia, and ultimately to India—all before his untimely death at age thirty-three. Alexander believed that his empire would stop only when he reached the Pacific Ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that has meant something different to every era: in the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early twentieth century he’d even come to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time? In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexander’s life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homer’s great epic the Iliad as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror who in his short life built the largest empire up to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of remarkable cruelty. As debate continues about the meaning of his life, Alexander's death remains a mystery. Did he die of natural causes—felled by a fever—or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexander’s story that has eluded so many for so long.

Download or read book The Landmark Arrian written by Arrian and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander, widely considered the most authoritative history of the brilliant leader’s great conquests, is the latest addition to the acclaimed Landmark series. After twelve years of hard-fought campaigns, Alexander the Great controlled a vast empire that was bordered by the Adriatic sea to the west and modern-day India to the east. Arrian, himself a military commander, combines his firsthand experience of battle with material from Ptolemy’s memoirs and other ancient sources to compose a singular portrait of Alexander. This vivid and engaging new translation of Arrian will fascinate readers who are interested in classical studies, the history of warfare, and the origins of East­–West tensions still swirling in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan today. Enriched by the series’ trademark comprehensive maps, illustrations, and annotations, and with contributions from the preeminent classical scholars of today, The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander is the definitive edition of this essential work of ancient history.

Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Jacob Abbott and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-05 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than two millennia have passed since Alexander the Great built an empire that stretched to every corner of the ancient world, from the backwater kingdom of Macedonia to the Hellenic world, Persia, and ultimately to India - all before his untimely death at age 33. Alexander believed that his empire would stop only when he reached the Pacific Ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that has meant something different to every era: In the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early 20th century he'd even come to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time? In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexander's life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homer's great epic, the Iliad, as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror who in his short life built the largest empire up to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of remarkable cruelty. As debate continues about the meaning of his life, Alexander's death remains a mystery. Did he die of natural causes - felled by a fever - or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexander's story that has eluded so many for so long.

Download or read book Alexander the Great Lessons in Strategy written by David J. Lonsdale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-12-10 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a strategic analysis of one of the most outstanding military careers in history, identifying the most pertinent strategic lessons from the campaigns of Alexander the Great. David Lonsdale argues that since the core principles of strategy are eternal, the study and analysis of historical examples have value to the modern theorist and practitioner. Furthermore, as strategy is so complex and challenging, the remarkable career of Alexander provides the ideal opportunity to understand best practice in strategy, as he achieved outstanding and continuous success across the spectrum of warfare, in a variety of circumstances and environments. This book presents the thirteen most pertinent lessons that can be learned from his campaigns, dividing them into three categories: grand strategy, military operations, and use of force. Each of these categories provides lessons pertinent to the modern strategic environment. Ultimately, however, the book argues that the dominant factor in his success was Alexander himself, and that it was his own characteristics as a strategist that allowed him to overcome the complexities of strategy and achieve his expansive goals.

Download or read book The Persian Alexander written by and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander the Great (356-333 BC) was to capture the imagination of his contemporaries and future generations. His image abounds in various cultures and literatures - Eastern and Western - and spread around the globe through oral and literary media at an astonishing rate during late antiquity and the early Islamic period. The first Iskandarnama, or 'The Book of Alexander', now held in a private collection in Tehran, is the oldest prose version of the Alexander romance in the Persian tradition. Thought to have been written at some point between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries by an unknown author, the lively narrative recasts Alexander as Iskandar, a Muslim champion - a king and prophet, albeit flawed but heroic, and remarkably appropriated to Islam, though the historic Alexander lived and died some 1,000 years before the birth of the faith. This new English translation of the under-studied text is the first to be presented unabridged and sheds fresh light onto the shape and structure of this vital document.In so doing it invites a reconsideration of the transformation of a Western historical figure - and one-time mortal enemy of Persia - into a legendary hero adopted by Iranian historiographic myth-making. Evangelos Venetis, the translator, also offers a textual analysis, providing much-needed context and explanations on both content and subsequent reception. This landmark publication will be invaluable to students and scholars of classical Persian literature, ancient and medieval history and Middle East studies, as well as to anyone studying the Alexander tradition.

Download or read book The Iliad of Homer Annotated written by Homer Homer and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-13 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iliad (/ˈɪliəd/;[1] Ancient Greek: Ἰλιάς, Iliás, Attic Greek pronunciation: [iː.li.ás]; sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium) is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Usually considered to have been written down circa the 8th century BC, the Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, along with the Odyssey, another epic poem attributed to Homer which tells of Odysseus's experiences after the events of the Iliad.[2] In the modern vulgate (the standard accepted version), the Iliad contains 15,693 lines, divided into 24 books; it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects. It is usually grouped in the Epic Cycle.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles' imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War.

Download or read book The Campaigns of Alexander written by Arrian and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-07-31 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although written over four hundred years after Alexander's death, Arrian's account of the man and his achievements is the most reliable we have. Arrian's own experience as a military commander gave him unique insights into the life of the world's greatest conqueror. He tells of Alexander's violent suppression of the Theban rebellion, his defeat of Persia and campaigns through Egypt and Babylon - establishing new cities and destroying others in his path. While Alexander emerges as a charismatic leader, Arrian succeeds brilliantly in creating an objective portrait of a man of boundless ambition, who was exposed to the temptations of power.

Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Ian Worthington and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting new volume includes a selection of the most significant and representative published articles and chapters about Alexander and covers all the main areas of debate and discussion in Alexander scholarship.