Alexander the great ?
The entry below is a synopsis of our speakers talk on 19th November 2025.
A very interesting presentation this week was given by Dr Peter Jones.
Peter started off by saying "Macedon. was the home of Philip II" who was the king of Macedon, and he is a crucial figure in this time. He became the king of Macedon in 359 BC. Now Macedon is technically a part of Greece, but Greeks regard the Macedonians as improper. He was determined to show the Greeks who the king was, who the boss was, and also to show that Macedonians weren't real Greeks after all. The way he developed in the ancient world was to promote fighting, this is a sort of good idea. what Philip II did was actually to develop, a brand new army, full-time occupations, full-time drilling.
He made a scourge of infantry, archers, light cavalry, heavy cavalry, and got all these different units working together. No one had ever done that before. Even more important than that, he had to win over the local warlords. Now Greeks were fighting among each other all the time, because where there's wealth to buy it is in the land.
That's the only wealth you have in Asia and that was also true of all the local warlords in Africa. So what Philip II did, was to invite the young sons of all the local warlords to join his court.
In 325 BC, After the Indian campaign the retreat was marked by extreme suffering, with significant loss of life due to the harsh environment, marking a difficult end to his eastern conquests, and at that point, the army said, we've had enough.
There's a wonderful speech, which was well-known, at least. He had his scribes with him, historians, addressing Alexander. I shall not speak for those gathered here, because there's no question of it. But I shall speak for the army at large. Some have been settled in the cities you have founded, to stay there. Alexander died in Babylon, in 323 B.C. Some thought he was dead. We don't actually know what killed him. It looks like some sort of fever, in fact, all that drinking, killed him. Alexander died his mission of course had fallen apart within a couple of years. Because all the local warlords had all started hustling the system.
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