The Murder of Cleopatra by Pat Brown Page B

diplomacy, and he had been trained since childhood for the battlefield. He was just sixteen when he led troops into battle, and within a couple of years, he was the best general in Macedonia. He would develop a devastating Macedonian war strategy: a phalanx equipped with huge wooden spikes that the infantry used to mow down their opponents, which led to many a success on the battlefield.
    Philip II also made sure that the son who someday might assume power (Alexander’s brothers all died, except for one who was mentally challenged) received the finest education from the best tutors, including the great Aristotle. Alexander’s superior intelligence and years of exceptional tutelage led to a grandiosity similar to his father’s: he saw himself ruling in the image of Heracles and Achilles, great warriors whom he regarded as his ancestors; in his own mind, they were real—more than mythological half-human, half-Grecian gods. And he made sure many others viewed him the same way, by erecting statutes of himself and visually extolling himself as a handsome warrior descended from the gods. His mother, Olympias, told him from early childhood that she was impregnated by the gods via a thunderbolt on her wedding night (well, it was a dream that her husband hardly found pleasing), and she told Alexander that he was of the lineage of Achilles, which certainly would have made the young Alexander feel quite special. It is, therefore, not too hard to see why it was perfectly comfortable for the Ptolemies to carry on the concept of the earlier pharaohs of ancient Egypt who claimed themselves to be not merely human rulers, but divine ones to be worshipped along with the other gods in the pantheon.
    The upside of such narcissistic idealism of one’s own character and status is that one has to take on the role of a beneficent god and lift up humankind by devoting oneself to the greater glory of the people, both as a warrior and as a patron of high culture. To this end, Alexander brought along with him in his travels those of the intellectual elite—historians and poets—and encouraged the development and dispersion of knowledge.
    The other example Alexander set for future Egyptian Macedonian rulers was that to maintain his image as a supernatural godlike being, he bowed to local traditions and religious practices and deities in the same manner that his father had done during his rule. This practice led to a tolerance in the Hellenistic world to come that the conquerors would allow the conquered to retain some sense of their past and culture, easing the transition to the new rulers and lessening the backlash from the new subjects. Along with a level of peace and unity within conquered territories, Alexander also used the spoils of war to improve the lands he took over, providing them with roads, waterways, and new cities, and expanding trade and bolstering economies. When the Ptolemies took over the governance of Egypt, they followed this concept, which allowed for the citizens to be more accepting of their Macedonian overlords than the ones who had come before or who would come after the Ptolemaic Dynasty.
    Alexander fulfilled his father’s dream of conquering Persia. He united the ruling classes of Macedonia and Persia, effectively controlling an enormous empire. The very popular Macedonian general was certainly on his way to his next goal of conquering India and Arabia since he had already conquered western Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Babylonia, and since cutting a swath through Persia secured a huge fortune (especially from the royal coffers of Babylonia) along the way. He marched his way into India, whereupon his troops finally told him they had had enough and it was time to go home. After a grueling trek back to his new capital, Babylon, he enjoyed only two more years of life. His death at the age of thirty-three is reported to have been due to either malaria, typhoid, WestNile fever, or cirrhosis