The Campaign of Alexander the Great

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His political ideologies around civic organisation was to allow a city to continue their normal system of government but to appoint a Macedonian as the government leader to ensure he could trust them. He tried his best to minimize problems. For example, according to Hamilton, “Alexander accepted the plea of the appointed satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, the town was apparently treated no differently from the non-Greek towns which had to pay to Alexander the tribute they had previously paid to Persia.” Another example was when he decided to swap all the cities in his empire to democracy. Alexander sent a small squadron to assist the adjustment. “These large forces suggest that resistance was expected or provided for.” Due to Egyptians and Persians religious ideals around their King, that for the Egyptians their Pharaoh was Son of Ammon, and Persians treated their King as a God, Alexander started to demand that all his subjects treat him as a God. He now started to believe that he had saved the Persians and that his new Empire was going to unite all under one ruler. Many did believe he was a God and their “bringer to light” as he was able to win and victory and he could survive wounds that would’ve killed someone else. Alexander did not himself believe this, as Plutarch says “Alexander in himself was not foolishly affected, or had the vanity to think himself really a god, but merely used his claims to divinity as a means of manifesting among other people the sense of his superiority.” This was evident in the way he carried himself differently in front of the Persians and Macedonians. Alexander exaggerated his ‘divinity’ in front of ‘barbarians’ and ‘orientals’ but down played it in front of Greeks and Macedonians as they might be of...

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Arrian. The Campaigns of Alexander. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1971. Print.
Hamilton, J. R. Alexander the Great. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh, 1974. Print.

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