Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #12 - The Tyranny of Alexander the Great

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #12 - The Tyranny of Alexander the Great

Okay, so we are doing Exximate Grade today. Let's review last class where we discussed the father-son dynamic between Philip II and his son Alexander. We said that the father, he is the founder and the builder of a great organization. And as such, he will have three particular characteristics unique to him. First of all, he will exercise

really good judgment because he's starting with nothing and he has to build up slowly his nation or his organization okay second thing that we said is he will promote talent okay he will be a very generous and fair-minded individual who who will actively spot talent and create a meritocracy okay the third thing we said was this person will be selfless, extremely disciplined, and this person will put the greater good before his or her own interests. And that will inspire loyalty from his or her workers or soldiers. We also said the sun will be very different, because the son is inheriting this enterprise

or this nation. The sun will focus on expansion. The sun will be a very aggressive risk-taker, okay? Second characteristic of the son is because he is under the father's shadow, he will promote obedience and loyalty, promote loyalty. And the final characteristic, the final contrast between the father and son is the son will be very selfish because the sun will be focus on personal glory. The reason why is the son is insecure, right?

The son will hear people in the background and shadows whispering, oh, everything you've achieved is because your father. And so the son is desperate, very anxious to prove his own self-worth, okay? So we see this dynamic in literature and in history, and in our life, in our own life. in our own lives, right?

This is a very common dynamic. Now, we said that this is really a thought experiment. But if you think about it, this is also an analytical model. It's a way to understand the world around us. And in an analytical model, we have to test if it's true or not. And if it's true, it does two things, okay? First thing it does is it explains.

Does it help us understand, better understand, the motivations and behavior of people around us? In last class, we focused on for the second, and that really helped us to understand his motivations and behavior, okay? Today, but the second thing it must do is predict. It has to predict the future. If this analytical model that we have is correct, and it will allow us to predict future events and behavior.

Okay, and that's what I propose today. I propose to use this model to predict the life of Alexander the Great. Okay? So from this model, we can extrapolate three characteristics of Alexander's reign when he takes over as king. Okay? What's the first characteristic of Alexander when he becomes king? Echko, do you have any ideas of what he will do as king?

Exactly, okay? So the first thing we will say is that he will focus on expansion. He'll be a very aggressive risk-taker. He will take risks that are not strategically wise. That's the first prediction we can make about him. what's the second prediction we can make about him based on this exactly we call this a tyrant okay he's he's become a tyrant a tyrant is someone who demands obedience from everyone okay does that make sense and so if he's a

tyrant what is he what is he gonna do to all these talented people that his father promoted he's gonna kill them right okay he's gonna get rid of them because he needs to promote his own people and because he's time of the people will counter his tyranny okay so we predict he will demand complete and total obedience from his followers and what's the third prediction we can make about him well the third prediction is that he the question is will he ever be happy when will we stop his ambition never okay so his ambition is boundless. So these are the three predictions we can make about Alexander

if he were to become king, just based on our understanding of the father-son dynamic. The first is that he will focus on aggressive expansion. He will take risk that his father will not take. That's the first thing. Second thing is he's going to become a tyrant who will demand total loyalty and obedience from his followers. And if you, for his own good, speak up and try to reason with him, he will see you as a threat, as disloyal, and as an enemy who must be eliminated.

The third prediction we can make is his ambition is boundless. He will never stop expanding. He will never stop going to war. These are the three predictions we can make based on this anarcho model, okay? And it turns out these three predictions basically cap to the essence of Alexander's life, okay? All right? So now I will solely explain the life and times of Axiom of Great.

All right. So any questions so far? Okay, so we are using this ethical model to understand the life and times of Alexander of the Great. And while we're doing this, we're trying to see if there are problems with this model, okay? All right, so we have to take a very skeptical attitude. We have this prediction model.

We're going to apply it to Xenna grade, and we're going to see that on the surface, it does actually capture well or explains well his life. At the same time, we want to be generous and skeptical, skeptical, okay? We want to ask ourselves, is it possible that we are blinded by? prejudice and maybe we are being unfair to accident under grade okay does that make

sense all right so let's start with the first major event in action the great's life which is a death of his father in 3 3 c bc e okay and Alexander right now he's only 20 and when his father dies he is automatically coordinated as king of the kingdom of Massalon now I want to explain the circumstances of Philip's because it's very important for us to understand the sort of psychology of his son. So two years before his death, Philip actually remarried. Now, remember that Macedon is a society that promotes polygamy. So Philip, at this point, already has six or seven wives.

The problem is that only one of his wives, named Olympias, has given birth to a son. and therefore a heir, okay? The son is Alexander. The other wives have failed to give birth to a here, and it seems Alexander will be anointed king at the death of his father. So when Philip Mary's, her name is Cleopatra Uridisi, it's extremely controversial, okay? It just sort disrupts the political order of Macedonia. The first reason is Cleopatra Uridisi, she is actually Macedonian. Before Philip married foreign wives for diplomacy reasons. And what this means is,

if Cleopatra Uriisi gives birth to a son, this son will be more legitimate here than Alexander. And this pushes Alexander out of the line of secession, okay? So this is extremely, controversial and it's like dynamite almost okay so that's first problem second problem is uDC is the wife of one of philip's great generals at atlas okay and actually at the wedding ceremony between ure dc and philip atlas gave a toast and he said here's a toast and i pray that nassadon will soon have a legitimate here and this is direct insult to

Alexander, okay? The other problem is that Atlas, his father-in-law is Parminion, who is really Philip's partner, okay? The greatest general that Massano has, the person in control of the army. Okay, so it seems like Alexander is being pushed out of the land of secession and Alexander and his mother, LNPS, are both freaking out okay so in 33c 336 BC at Philip is assassinated by his bodyguard and no one knows who why this happened okay but we know what happened afterwards what happened is first of all Olympias killed UADC and her daughter and son the son was going to be legitimate here to the throne now they're all dead.

Okay? That's the first thing that happens. Second thing that happens is Atalus becomes afraid and he's about to rebel, okay? And Atholus, again, is a general. At this stage, at this point,

Parmenian is now the kingmaker, right? Because Parmenian is now head of the army. He can choose to support Atalus, his son-in-law, and rebel, okay, and maybe become king himself, or he can support Alexander, okay? And at this point, the faithful decision that Parmenian makes is

he supports Alexander and he kills Atlas. And Atlas again, is his son-in-law. And this makes Alexander now the legitimate here to fill up. He's now king of Aslan. Okay? So from this event, we can surmise some things, okay? The first thing we can surmise is Olympias and Alexander are extremely ambitious, right? They will not be pushed aside.

If they see any risks to their power, they will act viciously. They're not afraid to kill. They will even kill the king in order to assure their power. That's the first thing. The second thing that's more important for us is Parmonion is absolutely very, loyal to Alexander because if you think about it, he's loyal to the memory of Philip. Philip promoted Parmenion to be his partner and in a show of loyalty and gratitude, Parmanian now is being loyal to the son, Alexander.

So that's the first major event in Alexander's life. Any questions about this event? Before I move on. Okay, so the second thing that happens is, remember, like Philip is now in charge of this white kingdom across Greece. And when people hear about his death, people start to rebel, okay? The Athenians want to rebel, the Thienians want to rebel, the Spaniants want to rebel.

And then to the north, the Illyrians rebel. So there are these rebellions. these rebellions the first thing that Alexander does is he mounts this extremely fast and decisive campaign to quell all eternal descent because ultimately his ambition is to complete the dream of his father the conquests of Persia right so he goes to Illyria which is north which is north to Macedonia and destroys all opposition next thing he does is he marches against Greece itself against thieves And Thebes is the main source of opposition, and Sparta and Athens both promised to send troops to support Thebes.

The problem is, Auxander gets there really fast, and he lays siege to thieves and destroys it completely. The next thing that he does is he decides to massacre all the males and enslave all the women. Now, this actually common practice back then in terms of warfare, but this is not done to Greek cities. You understand? The Greeks consider themselves special. And so in 404 BC, when Sparta defeated Athens in the Pelican War, remember that Sparta did not do anything. Sparta just basically said, guys, will you promise not to bother us again? And so Athens says, we promise.

That was it. So what Alexander did, destroying thief, which is one of the great cultural centers of the Greek world, that was like basically setting off a nuclear bomb, okay? And from then on, the Greeks were committed to overflowing Alexander when the opportunity arose. At the same time, Alexander, by doing this, by showing his ruthlessness, he was able to for now pacify on discontent okay people are now afraid of him and that's what actually wants he wants fear okay so now that eternal descent has been pacified now that now that his leadership has been legitimized he will now embark on the massive invasion

of Persia okay now originally his father Philip the second his dream was a unified Greek world okay what we would call Hellenistic okay or the Hellenic world because remember at this point you have these Greek Polars that spread all across the Aegean and the Mediterranean okay in North Africa in Italy in Asia Minor in Anatolia okay and and Phillips vision was to unify all these places but Alexander the Great his vision was actually to conquer Persia So he's expanding his father's vision. So he lands in Anatolia, which is like modern-day Turkey, with this massive invasion force.

And he's going against the Persian Empire. The way that the Persian Empire is designed is, is that really an empire? It's more like a confederation or alliance. So the provincial governors, who we call the sat traps, they're the ones responsible for defending their own terrorist. And at this point, the king of Persia, his name is Darius III, he's not really bothered by Alexander, okay? He doesn't realize that Alexander will pose a threat to his rule, okay? He just thinks this guy, he's like 20 years old, he's an upstart, doesn't really matter, so Darius doesn't really bother himself, okay? But he says an advisor.

This guy, he's a Greek, Menon of Rhodes. So he's Greek and he understands Greek warfare. And so they have this war council between the Satraps, the local governors, and Men of Rhodes. And what Men on Road proposes is a safest strategy to defeat Alexander, which is basically what we call a war of attrition. The idea is they will not encounter, not fight Alexander on the battlefield. Alexander right now possess the greatest army in the world, right? Let's not fight him. We will burn all the crops and starve his troops. At the same time, what we will do is

we will bribe Athens and Sparta to rebel against Alexander. And once he's overextended, he has no choice but to go home. Okay? The war's over. It doesn't cost us anything. The sat-trops refuse this plan because it would mean destroying their own property. Okay, so sets up to like, no, we can overwhel him. So at the Battle of Gwynethicus in 334 BCE, Alexander's forces destroy the Persians, okay? And this is the first major battle of this war. There'll be three major battles.

What's important for us is during this battle, Alexander displayed tremendous recklessness, okay? He rushed to the front of the battle. he led his cavalry and he was almost overwhelmed okay one of the satraps knocked him down and one of the satraps was about to kill him slash him okay but then at the last minute a man named clitus the black plaitis the black comes running in and he slashes he cuts off the satraps arm thus saving agendas life all right so at this point there are two individuals that Alexander should be most grateful for, right?

Parmonion, who basically, he was a kingmaker, and he announced that the army would be always loyal to Alexander, okay, and Pleidus Black, who saved Alexander's life in battle. And both of these men were individuals promoted heavily by his father for their talent, okay? So basically, it was his father's man that saved Alexander. So you would think Alexander would be very grateful

to these men, right? Unfortunately, he would end up killing both men, and this would forever change the course of his life. Okay? All right. So, after the Battle of Granaticus, Menon Rhodes was given complete freedom to do what he wanted, okay? So Mena Rhodes tried to stop Alexander,

and when he realized he couldn't do it because Alexander's army was too powerful, Men of Rode set sail for Greece. He was hoping to bribe Athens and Sparta to join the war and rebel against Alexander. And here, something that happens, and Alexander gets really lucky, okay? And we will find this in his life.

He gets very lucky a lot of times. And what is it that happens? When Menna and Road sets sail for Greece? And he's about to unite the Greeks and rebel against Alexander. And remember, Athens, Linz and Sparta at this point really hates Alexander. So what happens?

He dies, okay? He gets sick and he dies. And when Manna Rhodes dies, there's no more contact with the Greek world. And now Persia is left to basically defend itself. The Greeks cannot be counted on. There will be Greek rebellions against Alexander, but they will be sporadic, they will not be coronated, okay? So there is no choice.

no choice but to confront Alexander in two massive battles. So the first massive battle is in southern Turkey, Anatolia caught the battle of ISIS, okay? In 333 BCE. The second battle will happen two years later in Guacamola, in Mesopotania. And both of these battles are about the same, okay? So I'll explain what happened in both battles. So you're going to understand Alexander's strategy of war. All right.

So usually in battles, there are three major forces. There's something called the left flank, the center flank, and the right flank. And both armies are like this. Now in both battles, the Persians were heavily, the Persians heavily outnumbered the Greeks, two to one, okay? So it's a massive difference. And the cavalry is usually on the sides. Now there are some certain differences, okay?

The first difference is the Persian, the Persians have one leader, Darius. And he's in the center, be protected by his border guard called the immortals. The immortals are the best troops of the Persians, okay? The Macedonians have two leaders, Permanion and Alexander. Alexander is in charge of the cavalry, Permanonian is in charge of the infantry, what we'll call the phalanx. And in both battles, the same thing happens, which is, on the left side, Darius commits Moses forces against Permanion. So Permanion is being overwhelmed by superior numbers.

But here, the discipline of Permanion is just incredible, because even though they're being overwhelmed, okay, they're being outnumbered, and they're about to be outrun, they hold their ground. Okay? And then in the right, in the center, there's so much close. that eventually what happens is there's a small gap that allows Alexander to rush to Darius. Remember, Darius has been protected heavily because he's a king, right? And at this point, Alexander and his forces are overwhelming the cavalry of Darius. And they're about to close up, they're getting close to Darius. And at this point, what Darius does, and this is something you can never do in a battle.

What does Darius do now? And he does this in both battles, ISIS in Guatemala. What does he do now? He sees Alexander closing in, right? But his left flank is about to overwhelm Permanian. What does Darius do now in both battles? He runs away. When he does that,

Alexander is now free to go back and rescue Permanion and then the person's flee. Does that make sense? All right, so this is what happens in both battles, ISIS and Guacamole. So now that you have the basic overview of four battles, let's analyze this to ask ourselves, how great a commander is Alexander. And I want to make you, again, make the argument that he's actually not a great strategist. He's a great soldier, he's very brave, but he's not a great strategist, not like his father. The first thing I will say is this.

When military historians look at battles, they look at the wrong things. So they're usually looking at manpower, technology, and resources, what we're called wealth. And if we look at battles from this land, manpower, technology, and resources wealth, then we can argue the Persians were heavily favored in this battle, in this war.

right we can say that but I think this is a wrong way to look at a military strategy I think if you really want to understand who's a favorite who's the underdog you have to look at three different things these three different things are cohesion the idea of cohesion is unity right are these soldiers loyal to each other are they friends with each other okay second thing you want to look at is discipline how well-trained are these troops okay the third thing we'll look at is idea of devotion devotion just means how loyal are they to their leaders how much purpose do they have in the battle it does that make sense and what I want what I

want to show you today is look at these three things they give you a much better overview or analysis of who the better military is Okay? So if you just look at manpower technology and resources, then clearly the Persians are the heavy favorites, right? But you change your frame of reference and you will look at cohesion, discipline, and devotion, then the Macedonians are far superior, right? Because look, cohesion means they have a culture, they have a similar culture, right? They're all Greeks. Whereas the Persians are a multicultural empire that don't need to be the same language. language which means that all these different units that Darius has they're basically fighting by fighting by themselves so you're not coordinated okay does that

make sense that's the first thing second thing is the idea of discipline if you're an empire the problem with an empire is your soldiers don't fight that many battles right because you're an empire no one's going to challenge you so these soldiers even though they have these very expensive armor and horses they weren't disciplined they didn't have experience in battle whereas Alexander's army is Philip's army and for the past 30 years all they did was fight battle after battle against the Greeks okay so in terms of discipline the Greeks are far superior and and then you look at devotion um Darius is king why are people loyal to him because

he pays them right it's profit its interest whereas the soldiers under Pomeranian Alexander, they love their leaders. Their leaders have taken them to a victory, to lots of victory. So they're very loyal to him, okay? So just in terms of these, if you just look at cohesion, discipline, and devotion, we can predict that Alexander's army would win regardless of a strategy. And now you can also make the argument that the strategy that Alexander, employ right this we will confront the Persians head on Philip would have thought

this was a stupid idea okay because first of all you're outnumbered second of all you're on enemy terrain right you're an enemy terrain therefore they are able to deploy the resources much better than you are okay now the third problem is this the third problem is you can't afford to retreat you understand there's no place to retreat if you If your army ever breaks, right, if Permanonians gets overwhelmed, then you're all dead. Why take that risk, right? Also, before our full battles, it's just in Gagamola, Darius wants to negotiate with Alexander.

Basically, Darius said, I will give you half my empire. Right? That's pretty generous. And Alexander says, no, I need all of it. All right? So, historians will tell you that Gagamola is, this shows, military prowess of Alexander and but you analyze it properly I think you will see there are lots of problems with action a strategy in both battles okay he was

seeking risk that he shouldn't have and he sacrificed a lot of men that he didn't really need to sacrifice for example it was all about winning the war right personal glory whereas Philip was concerned about the safety and well-being of his soldiers so Philip would not have engaged in such a battle he would have preferred negotiation and then over time slowly overwhelm Persia okay does that make sense any questions so far about this analysis yeah great yeah okay so um great question so actually they didn't really trust the Greeks the Greeks didn't consider the Macedonian as part of

they didn't consider the Macedonian Greek okay and so when Alexander When Alexander developed his invasion force of Persia, they weren't that many Greeks actually inland. It was mostly Macedonian. Does that make sense? Yeah. But you're right. Given what Axiorn did in Thebes, he could not really trust the Greeks anymore. He couldn't really trust the Greeks, like switch sides.

And also, there were a lot of Greek mercenaries fighting for Darius in this battle. Menon of Rhodes was Greek. And he sort of knew the Greeks really didn't like Alexander. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. But again, we see this throughout history where a trouble army, because of cohesion, discipline,

and devotion, they're basically able to conquer the world, right? So you look at Muhammad, you look at Genghis Khan, right? And you look at Tamerland, you look at a lot of people, right? They were all tribal armies, but because they had cohesion, discipline, and devotion, they were able to basically conquer most of the world before they themselves devolved into civil war. evolved into civil war. So does that make sense? Okay, any more questions before I continue?

Okay. Okay, so while Alexander was campaigning against Persia, he was doing things that sort of annoyed his soldiers, okay? So for example, he conquered Egypt about much resistance. So we went to Egypt. And basically the Egyptians hated the Persians. For decades, for centuries, the Egyptians were trying to rebel against Persia about success.

So when Alexander came, they saw him as a liberator. So Egypt felt about resistance. The first thing that Alexander does is he takes a trip into the desert. He disappears for weeks. He goes to a place called the temple of Zeus, Amon. Amon is the highest Egyptian god and Zeus is the highest Greek god. So there are like a synthesis, okay? So this is the highest god in the world.

And this is found in the Issaid oasis. And Axenna goes to this oasis in order to seek counsel. He wants to see his future. And when he's at the temple of Zeus Amon, he's told that Philip is not really his father. Philip is not really his father. Actually, his true father is, take a wild guess, who the true father. is, Zeus, Eman, right? Alexander is the first son of God, right?

He's the son of God. He's like Heracles and dynasties. He's actually the son of God. And so when Alexander returns to his soldiers after this revelation, he expects his soldiers to acknowledge this fact, okay? So one thing is, in the Macedonian army, there's a lot of equality. between soldiers and officers right so if you're a soldier you are allowed to speak your mind but now

Accented demands if you come into his presence you must first kiss his feet which is the Persian custom okay you must first you must kiss the feet of your king and the Macedonians of course didn't really like this so now there's growing concern about the tyranny of Exxanity Okay? People like Permanion and Clydes a Black who are promoted heavily by his father are kind of annoyed. Basically, Alexander renounce his father. Philip's not really my father. I'm really the son of a god, okay?

Zeus Amon. Okay? So, okay. So now there's going discontent among his soldiers. Does that make sense so far? Any question before I move on? Is this clear to you? Okay?

All right. So, you know, in 331 BC, Gugamola, the battle of Gokomal happens and Alexander wins this incredible victory against the Persian King Darius. Darius runs away, but then he's eventually killed by one of his generals, okay? And the Persian Empire now is basically conquered. There's no resistance against Alexander anymore. There's some resistance but not organized resistance, okay? And at this point, Exander starts being a tyrant.

So the first major sign that he's changing is, in 3.30 BC, Parmonian is killed. Remember, Parmonian, you can argue was the man responsible for all of Alexander's victories, right? Because Parmonian is the one who's doing all the heavy lifting. He's being overwhelmed by most of Persian forces. He stands his ground, which allows Alexander to claim his victory.

In 3.3 OBC, Alexander orders Permanonian to be killed. And there's a lot of controversy around what happened. So I'll just basically tell you the basic facts, and then we'll analyze what happened. So there's a lot of resentment against Alexander in the army. And now and then there are these conspiracies. They don't go anywhere, but there are these conspiracies amongst officers to assassinate Alexander. And one of these conspiracies is found out, and one of the officers who finds out about this conspiracy goes to permanent son, okay, and tells the son, hey, go tell the king,

people are trying to assassinate him. The son, permanent son, he doesn't think this is a big deal, and he's kind of drunk, okay? So he doesn't, he forget to tell Alexander, okay? The plot is uncovered, and the son, Philolitis, philatis, he's implicated and he's tortured. They have nothing to do with the assassination, but he's implicated because he didn't tell Alexander. While he's being tortured, he also confesses to his father being part of the plot, even though there's no evidence implicating his father.

In fact, you can make the argument that his father is completely loyal to Alexander. And so just based on this, a forced confession under torture, which is completely unreliable, Alexander in the army decide to have Permanion killed, okay? So an assassin is sent and Permanonian is killed. Now, these are the basic facts, and there's a lot of argument about what happened, okay? So the most generous argument, the most generous interpretation is accident didn't want Permanian killed. He knows Permanian is innocent, but because Alexander was forced to kill his son, Philalaitas,

actually didn't feel he had a choice in the matter, okay? Because Permanian might want revenge. So to maintain stability and peace within the army, he had to get permanent killed. That's the most generous explanation. But there's another explanation that makes more sense, which is Alexander has always been jealous of Permanion, right? Because Permanon has the most legitimacy in the army. Troops feel more loyal to Permanonian than they do to Exander, right?

they've been they've, Pomonian, they're more experienced with Permanon and then with Alexander. And Permanonian was responsible for many great triumphs. So Alexander was jealous of Pomeronion. Also, there were these new young officers who wanted to climb the ranks. And to do so, they need to get rid of people like Permanonian, right? So maybe the conspiracy was a fake conspiracy and it was organized by these lower officers to implicate philitis and then in order to get rid of Permanion, okay? But regardless of how you interpret this, what we do know is after Permanon was killed, basically all the shackles, all the restraints on Alexander went away,

because there's no one in the army who can resist Alexander, okay? There's no one who can basically urge restraint. restraint and caution. So the next thing that happens is this. In the year 328, Clitus of Black is killed. Remember, Clydes of Black is the person who saved Axiard's life at the Battle of Granakis, okay? But Cladetton Black, again, he is a loyal officer promoted by his father. And now Clitius of Black has the same authority as Permanian once had.

So Clitza Black is now a threat to Alexander. So what Alexander does is he basically orders the Clets of Black to take some soldiers and go off to a faraway place. It's basically exiled, okay? Alexander is basically exiling him from the main army. And Clets of Black knows basically he's finished. So before Clets of Black is meant to go into exile, they have a large banquet, okay? And they're all drunk.

And Clets of Black now is angry. And he gets into a vicious argument with Alexander. And Klezer Black basically says to Alexander, you've betrayed your people, the Macedonians. You've come to Persia and you could only conquer a Persian without our help. And now you're turning into a Persian. You're adopting Persian customs, like forcing officers to kiss your feet. You're promoting Persian officers within your army. You're turning your back away from the culture that made you great.

Then he says something that really pisses Alexander off. What is one thing that you can save Alexander that would really piss him off? In fact, he would want to kill you now. Everything that you've achieved Alexander, it's because of your father. This is not you, okay? This Congress of Persia, it's not you. It's your father. It's your father who built this amazing army.

It's your father who developed this plan to conquer Persia. Okay? Alexander gets so angry that he's about to lunge at Clytis of Black, okay? But before he can do so, his party guard surrounds him and stops him, and they pull away his sword. And so this makes us think, he's been doing this a lot, okay? Alexander, the Great gets drunk a lot and kills a lot of people, basically. And then Kleds of Black, he's taking it out of the room.

But Klet's a Black is so strong, he forces himself back in the room, he starts to continue arguing against Alexander. Alexander then goes and takes a spear and throws it at Kleta Black, killing him on the spot. So Klessa Black is now dead. The two men who are most responsible for Alexander's victories in Persia are now both dead. Okay? And he's becoming more and more of a tyrant. afterwards there's a conspiracy there's a real conspiracy to kill him what

happens is this okay the king Alexander goes on a boar hunt with his pages okay his servants now the custom in Persia is the king has to write to the first kill but these are but his pages are Macedonian so they don't know this so when the pages is the first to kill the boar accent is so angry he beats the crap out of this page. The pages get together that night and they resolved to kill this tyrant. And they developed, they organized a schedule so that on one night they would be all in the bedroom looking after Alexander while he sleeps. And then, of course, they would take out their daggers and staff Alexander to death, okay?

That's a plan. What happens is that night they were supposed to do this act, Alexander goes out drinking. He gets drunk and he doesn't come back until the early morning when the pages are gone. Okay? At this point, when the pages gets nervous and tells Alexander about the conspiracy, and Alexander has everyone killed, okay? But during the trial, the pages accused Alexander of being a tyrant.

Okay, does that make sense? Then what happens is in 326 BCE, After Ex-Anon has conquered all Persia, he decides to take his army to India. Now his army is not happy about this because, look, there are lots of good reasons to invade Persia, right? The first reason is Persia is very wealthy. Second reason is Persia invaded Greece, right? So Persia was always a threat to the Greek mainland. The third reason is there are lots of people who suspect it was the Persians who killed Philadelphia.

killed Philip, okay? So there are lots of good reasons to invade Persia. There's actually no reason to invade India, okay? They've never been to India, they have actually no idea what they will find in India. It's a different geography, okay? But Alexander forces, his forces, his army, to invade India, and basically Martin de Pakistan.

And there, they win these victories, but the soldiers are really pissed off because they're far away from home, they have absolutely no idea when this war will end, and the weather in India really sucks, okay? So they basically mutiny, they refuse to fight. And Alexander at this point has no choice but to give in to retreat, okay,

to return back to Babylon. But he does two things to show his anger. The first thing he does is he kills all the leaders of the mutiny, okay? Those who spoke up on, half of their fellow soldiers were all killed one by one. So the thing that happens is, rather than taking soldiers back the original way, Alexander made them march through a desert, which killed many of them.

Many died because of dehydration and starvation. It was a brutal march across the desert. So Alexander takes his army back to Babylon. And at this point, Alexander decides, he can't even be able to be. He can't invade India, so he'll go invade Arabia. Okay? He'll go invade Arabia, which is desert. There's a reason why no one invented Arabia, and the reason why it's all desert.

There's no reason to invade Arabia. But Alexander wants to be the first to conquer Arabia, because his ambition is boundless, okay? He has to prove he's the greatest conqueror in the world. Only way we can do that is by conquering the entire world. He's very suspicious. He's very suspicious of his own soldiers because they mutiny against him in India, right?

So he's starting to replace his army with Persians who are much more obedient. He wants obedience. Then something else happens. Back in Macedonia, the general in charge and interpreter, who again is one of Phillips' most loyal generals, he gets an argument with Olympias. Olympias, as just mother and interpreter,

Aungsi Aidae. And Olympias tells Alexander, and Alexander invites Antepriter to Babylon, where they will settle matters, okay? And Intemperator knows what happened to Parmanian. He knows what happened to Clydes of Black. And at this point, most of Alexander's generals are unhappy the fact that the army is being personized, right?

They're being replaced by Persian officers who are more loyal to Alexander. So in 323, Absenter dies. And again, no one will ever know what actually happened. But the theory is, is this, okay? I think the theory that makes the most sense is basically the top echelon of the Massan army and Temperator and the other generals basically decided Axander has to go

because he's a tyrant. And eventually, he's gonna kill everyone. So what happened? was there was a banquet and at the temperature's son, his son, he's a cup bearer to Alexander, the person who pours the drinks to Alexander during meals. The son puts poison in the cup. Alexander drinks from it and he starts to vomit, okay? So Alexander leaves the room to vomit. And then the sun, at temperature of sun, brings a feather laced with more poison to help Alexander vomit some more. Alexander vomits more, okay?

But, and so Ex-Zer should have died on the spot. But Alexander is so tough, he's such a strong man, that he lasts for a few more weeks, okay? And he dies in bed. So Alexander now is dead, okay? Okay, this is important because even though he's dead, in the 10 years that he's been around, he's been able to conquer most of the world,

which includes Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, okay? He's able to conquer most of the known world. And this case a problem for the generals who succeed him, right? Because once you conquer most of this world, and remember, the plan was not to conquer most of the world. It was just Alexander's balanced ambition that made them do so, okay? Another question is, how do you govern?

And so because of this pressure, they have no choice but to develop something called Greek culture and spread it in order to create legitimacy for themselves. Okay, and this is something that we will talk about next class, which will conclude our section on the Greeks, okay? The legacy of Alexander. He's conquered the world, and now his generals must govern it. To govern it, they must use something called Greek culture. So they must invent Greek culture and then spread it around the world. And when they do so, what will happen is the Greek culture will merge

with local cultures to create new ideas. One of these cultures that Greek culture will merge with is called Judaism. And when these two cultures merge, a new idea will emerge from this mixture called Christianity, that changes the world forever. That's why Christians love Exempton of the Great because they feel that without its conquest, Christianity could not have been born, okay? So there are many Christians who feel like Exxon the Great, yeah, he was a tyrant, but he was part of God's plan.

It was all part of a plan. He did what he did, because he truly is the son of Zeus Amon, and Zeus Amon commended him to conquer the world. Okay? All right, but again, that is a Christian perspective. All right, so that is it, okay? So let's review what we did today.

We basically looked at this analytical model. We made three predictions about Alexander based on this analytical model, right? The first is that he would focus on expansion. Second is he would become a tyrant. The third is that he would never stop expanding. It turns out he was exactly like this, okay? But this explains, this predicts his life in times. All right.

So, any questions? Okay, so next class, what we will do is we will look at the spreading of Greek culture and the building of the Hellenistic world. Okay? And that will end our section on the Greeks.