Second section of RW (Historical Background)

Historical Background

Macedonia was the ancient kingdom that was established about the middle the seventh
century B.C. (Errington 2) and once conquered 90 percent of the historically known areas at that time under the reign of Alexander (Kurke 4). Its land is well suited to pastoral and agricultural activities and mountains of it are appropriate for stock raising and can provide abundant supply of wood (Borza51). Macedonia seemed blessed with a good environment for maintaining life. It was once, however, it was a mere marginal state on the northern edge of the Greek world and a target of continual attacks from its neighbors by the time of Philip II (359-336 B.C.)
(Errington 1-2). He succeeded in conquering Greek and built the foundation of prosperity of Macedonia which was succeeded to his son, Alexander.

   Alexander was born in July 356 B.C. as the eldest of Phillip’s sons. He was just under 20 years when he took the throne on the death of his father in 336. (Chesire v). After he crowned, he soon planned to set about the work that Philip II was fail to accomplish-the conquest of Persian Empire. It was under the reign of Darius III, who ascended to the throne in the same year as Alexander coincidentally.  He started invading into Asia Minor in 334 intending to subdue whole Asia (Cummings 123). The first victory over Persian was the Battle of the Granicus fought on the banks of the Granicus river (Bennett 132). In 333, he won against the Darius’s  70,000 troops with his 40,000 troops on the Gulf of Issus (Sacks and Oswyn 23). He proceeded to procession and ruled Syria. Then he moved to  Egypt later in 332 and founded Alexandria in the next year. In 331, he defeated Darius’s troops again at Gaugamela (Cheshire 70), which determined the fall of Persian Empire.  After he finally succeed to rule the former areas of Persian Empire, he launched  Indian campaign.  It is usually interpreted as Alexander’s desire to conquer the entire known world because the world is ended in India in Greek thought (Wikipedian 161 ) Finally, however, he gave up pushing on over the Indus River because his subordinates refused to follow him (Bradbury 76). Alexander the Great's umpire was at its peak- 2 million square miles. It stretched from Greece all the way to India (Skelton and Pamela51)