ALEXANDER (̓Αλέξανδρος, G235, defender of men). A name common from Hel. times.
1. Alexander (“the Great”),born 356 b.c., son of Philip II of Macedon and Olympias of Epirus, king of Macedon from his father’s death in 336 to his own in 323 b.c.
a. Background. For 200 years prior to Alexander the Gr. republics had fallen within the sphere of influence of the Persians whose Achaemenid kings held sway from the Aegean to the Indus and from Afghanistan to Egypt. Although victories such as Marathon and Salamis secured some independence in the 5th cent., in the 4th cent. Pers. finance and diplomacy often prevailed. Many Greeks of Asia Minor remained under Pers. rule throughout. Macedonia controlled the rich hinterland to the N of the Aegean, but was hitherto undeveloped and in the Gr. view uncivilized, being ruled by local cavalry barons. Their king was elected by the army from among them. During Alexander’s childhood, however, Philip II subjugated the Gr. peninsula. The pleas of Demosthenes were heeded too late to save (or, in the view of some, precipitated) the defeat at Chaeronea in 338 b.c., which left Philip leader of a confederacy of Gr. states, ostensibly directed against Persia. Two years later, at the age of twenty, Alexander inherited this cause.
b. The conquest of the Persian empire. By 334 b.c. he had firmly established his home base, overawed the Greeks to the S, and the northern peoples as far as the Danube. Crossing the Hellespont with some 40,000 men he won his first victory over the Persians at the Granicus, which cleared the way to the Gr. states of western Asia Minor, the object of his expedition. There is unfolded in subsequent events an ambition far more extensive. Having cut the Gordian knot, he could claim the promised lordship of Asia. Through the Cilician Gates he pressed down into the plains, on the road to Syria. Here the news reached him that Darius, the great king, concerned at the failure of his satraps to stop the invader, was on his way from Babylon. Greek nationalists in the homeland hoped that he had at last over-reached himself, and Alexander himself must have been stunned when Darius actually appeared behind him, cutting off the retreat. His “Companion” cavalry, however, gave Alexander the day at Issus (333 b.c.). The royal women of Persia fell into his hands and the heart of the empire lay open. Darius had escaped to recruit his strength in the E, but Alexander, instead of pursuing him, turned to the occupation of Phoenicia and Egypt, the bases of the Pers. seapower that had long disrupted the Gr. Aegean. The island of Tyre was taken in a remarkable siege; Alexander’s mole now joins it to the mainland. In Egypt Alexander founded the most famous of the many cities that took his name. In the Libyan desert he received divine honors as the new Pharaoh at the oracle of Ammon.
It was only now that he committed his men to the course that was to change the world. In 331 he marched around the Fertile Crescent to face the full might of Darius. At Gaugamela, across the Tigris, the great king was again defeated. The splendid capitals of the empire were the prize: Babylon, the metropolis; Susa, the seat of power; Persepolis, the treasury and mausoleum of the Achaemenids, its ruins still marking the drunken feast that burned it in a night; and Ecbatana, the summer seat of the Medes. Such a triumph and such spoils far exceeded any vengeance for old wrongs the Greeks on their distant frontier could have envisaged. For Alexander it was only a new beginning. He discharged his Gr. mercenaries, and turned to the other half of the empire.
Darius retreated N and E, until he was murdered by his Bactrian satrap, whereupon Alexander claimed the succession for himself. In two hard years’ campaigning he subdued Bactria (modern Afghanistan and Kazakhstan) before passing down into the Indus valley (327). Here he found that before he reached the eastern Ocean, which Greeks believed was the end of the world, he must traverse another great river-system, the Ganges. For once he was defeated: his men refused to go further. In retaliation Alexander marched them home to Babylon through the horrors of the Gedrosian desert of Iran, while his fleet opened up the neighboring coast. This inspired fresh ambitions of naval exploration: did the Caspian Sea lead out to the ocean to the N, and did Arabia represent another India to the S? It was in the midst of plans for such expeditions that Alexander died of fever (or poison?) after a more than usually protracted round of drinking orgies.
c. Alexander and the gods. Throughout his career Alexander showed an intense interest in his connection with the gods. Doubts as to his paternity may have sharpened this; local political requirements may have encouraged his link with particular cults; and the range of his conquests stimulated comparison with Dionysus and Hercules. In the last year of his life he appears to have asked the Gr. states to treat him as divine. While much of this may stem simply from his own or his admirers’ attempts to distract attention from his personal defects and atrocities, it paved the way for the cult of the ruler which time was to make fully acceptable to Gr. thought. To Heb. monotheism it was to become an increasingly unbearable provocation.
d. The unity of mankind. Alexander shocked his Macedonian “Companions” by adopting the style of the Pers. court, including the harem. He married a Bactrian princess, Roxane, and encouraged such unions amongst his officers and men. Persian nobles often were retained as satraps, and some integration of Pers. and Macedonian forces was attempted, including the training of Pers. youths in the Macedonian style of warfare. Alexander’s motives may have included political necessity, a genuine admiration for the Pers. nobility and his own desire to rule as heir to Darius. To the Macedonians it was highly distasteful, and the source of much of the disaffection which dogged him. If Alexander worked for the unity of mankind (which many now doubt altogether), he did not carry the day. His flamboyant style sufficed for gestures, but hardly for serious reform. Universalist ideas did grow up in the next cent.
e. Alexander and Hellenism. Greek influence was already widespread in the E (Darius had a strong force of Gr. mercenaries on his side throughout), but Alexander’s triumphs insured it a thousand-year ascendancy, esp. in Syria and Egypt. The heirs of Seleucus and Ptolemy, two of his generals, firmly established the new way of life, and passed it on to the Romans. Even in Bactria and India, the Gr. veterans, left behind in garrison-settlements, provided the basis for an empire which prevailed for two centuries. In Pal. the Hel. civilization met the determined reaction of those who preferred to follow another law: the conflicts of the Maccabean era and of the time of Christ belong also to the legacy of Alexander.
f. Alexander and the Jews. The ancient commentators saw the leopard of Daniel 7:6 as Alexander; he is also the goat of Daniel 8:5, 21, the ram being Darius, and the “mighty king” of Daniel 11:3. Alexander is named in 1 Maccabees 1:1 as the conqueror who set up the division of power which led to the outrages of Antiochus Epiphanes. Josephus, writing in the late 1st cent. a.d. (Antiq. xi. 314ff.), tells the story of a visit by Alexander to Jerusalem, in which he pays respect to the high priest, having been warned to do so by God, who had assured him of victory in a dream. This visit is not now accepted as historical. In the Middle Ages a number of other stories from Jewish sources were popular, including Alexander’s walling up of the tribes of Gog and Magog, who waited to break out into the civilized world in the last days, and his discovery of the ten lost tribes of Israel beyond the Caspian.
Bibliography Ancient Sources: Arrian, Anabasis and Indica; Plutarch, Life of Alexander, ed. J. R. Hamilton; Diodorus Siculus xvii; Curtius Rufus; Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus xi, xii; fragments of the important lost historians in F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker IIB, nos. 117-153, translated in C. A. Robinson, History of Alexander the Great, Vol. I, part 2; L. Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (1960); A. R. Bellinger, Essays on the Coinage of Alexander the Great (1963); M. Bieber, Alexander the Great in Greek and Roman Art (1964); G. Cary, The Medieval Alexander (1967).
Modern Discussions: A. R. Burn, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Empire (1947); W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great (1948); J. F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (1958); a series of articles in Greece and Rome, Vol. XII, No. 2 (1965); G. T. Griffith (ed.), Alexander the Great: the Main Problems (1966); U. Wilcken, Alexander the Great, tr. G. C. Richards (1967); R. D. Milns, Alexander the Great (1968).
2. Alexander Balas,pretended son of the Seleucid King Antiochus IV, overthrew Demetrius I in 150 b.c. and was in turn supplanted by the latter’s son Demetrius II in 145 b.c. These civil wars hastened the decline of Seleucid powers, and provided Jonathan, the brother and successor of Judas Maccabaeus, with the opportunity of securing the high priesthood in Jerusalem (1 Macc 10:1-11:19).
3. Alexander the son of Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21) is presumably picked out, with his brother Rufus, because they were known to the intended readers of the gospel (in Rome?).
4. Alexander the member of the highpriestly family (Acts 4:6) at the inquiry into Peter’s preaching is otherwise unknown.
5. Alexander the Jewish spokesman at Ephesus (Acts 19:33).
6. Alexander “delivered to Satan” (1 Tim 1:20) with Hymenaeus.
7. Alexander the coppersmith (2 Tim 4:14) who did Paul great harm and opposed his message, could be the same person as 5, or alternatively as 6, though 5 and 6 could not be identified unless it is assumed that 5 had been subsequently converted.