1. The Greatest Leader of All History…. Good guy or bad guy?
Alexander the Great
The Greatest Leader of All History….
Good guy or bad guy?

2. Beginning of Alexander
At the end of the Pelloponesian War, Sparta had control of the Greek lands.
Macedonia was a warlike culture north of the Greek lands that the Greeks normally looked down on.
The Macedonians were led by a young man named Phillip II. He had lived in Greece as a young man and respected their culture.
He eventually took over the Greek lands in order to be able to defeat the Persians.

6. Alexander the Great
Alexander was not only a military genius but a cultured leader as well.
His desire was to create an empire that reached to the ends of the earth.
However, he did not simply want to create a Greek empire, he wanted the ideas of those he conquered to play a part in the empire also.
Alexander wanted cultures to mix and the world to become like one large country.
This idea would eventually lead him to fail.

10. Alexander as a child
Alexander was taught by the great philosopher Aristotle.
Aristotle taught Alexander to love nature and science.
He also taught Alexander his own love for the development of governments.
Alexander was also a great fan of the story Homer wrote in the ILIAD. He kept a copy of the book beneath his pillow at night and memorized the entire story.
His mother told him he was a descendant of Hercules and Ulysses

13. Alexander as a young man
Alexander became a Calvary commander in his father’s army at the age of 16.
He helped defeat the Greeks at the battle Chaeronea.
His father died when he was 20 and he became king of the empire.
He decided to fulfill his father’s and his own dreams by conquering as much of the world as he could.

18. Alexander’s Legacy
Alexander left more behind him than conquered enemies.
He spread Greek culture through the middle east and Persia.
His army led to the spread of ideas that eventually became know as the Hellenistic era (the word Hellenistic means like the Greeks.”
He encouraged his officers and soldiers to marry women from the conquered tribes and territories. In this way he hoped to be able to spread as much Greek culture as possible.
Ideas from many different peoples were also brought back into Greece.

25. Break up of the empire
When Alexander died, his general fought for control of the empire.
His kingdom was divided into four empires
Macedonia, Egyptian, Pergamum, and Seleucid. These kingdoms used Greek as their official language (especially for business)and kept control of the people.
They encouraged Greek people from the Greek mainland to settle throughout the empire. In this was Hellenistic culture was spread.