All About History - All About Ancient Greeks.pdf

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GREEKS
ANCIENT
DISCOVER THE TRUTH
BEHIND THE MYTHS
CONTENTS
Few civilisations have had such an impact on the
modern world as Ancient Greece. It’s the birthplace
of democracy, medicine, philosophy, and of course
the Olympics, but it was also home to some of the
fiercest warriors known to man. In this edition, we
explore boths sides of this incredible nation.
ANCIENT GREEKS
Alicea Francis
Deputy Editor
04
Alexander the Great
14
Sparta: Warrior state
Inside the cutthroat world of
the elite military force
How Ancient Greece’s greatest
leader built his mighty empire
30
The legacy of
Ancient Greece
Find out how one civilisation
shaped the modern world
38
Top 5 facts about
Hippocrates
39
Anatomy of an
ancient sculptor
20
Secrets of the oracle
Could the priestess at Delphi
really predict the future?
Things you never knew about
the father of medicine
20
26
26
Battle of Marathon
A blow-by-blow account of
Athens’ battle against the
Persians
See how these famed artists
created their masterpieces
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Be part of history
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www.historyanswers.co.uk
/AllAboutHistory
@AboutHistoryMag
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38
30
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Alexander
the
Great
At the head of the world’s most feared fighting force, Alexander
the Great took for himself a vast empire through the sword,
and has been called a hero, tyrant and a god
Written by James Hoare
T
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he king died quickly, his white robes
soaked red. The laughter and rejoicing
of a royal marriage – the wedding of
his daughter – had quickly turned
to screams and wails of lament as
Pausanias, a member of the king’s personal guard,
turned on his master, driving a dagger between his
ribs. Tripping on a vine as he fled the scene for his
getaway horse, the assassin was brutally stabbed
to death by the furious spears of pursuing guards.
Philip II died as he had lived: awash with blood
and surrounded by intrigue. His legacy would
leave bloody footprints across the whole of Central
Asia and the Middle East.
Over a 23-year reign from 359 to 336 BCE,
the king of Macedon – a mountainous land
overlapping modern northern Greece, Albania,
Bulgaria and Macedonia – had gone from ruler
of a barbarous backwater of tribal highlanders
to the overlord of the fractious Greek kingdoms
and city-states. Bringing his rival monarchs in
line through war, military alliance and marriage,
Philip II had reformed the Macedonian army
into one of the most feared fighting forces in the
ancient world, with a view to bloodying their most
hated foes, the Achaemenid Empire of Persia,
which had humbled and humiliated the Greeks
in the Greco-Persian Wars a century earlier. Aged
just 20, Alexander III of Macedon – soon to be
remembered as Alexander the Great – took the
throne as the head of a military machine on the
brink of war and legendary status, and gleefully
drove it full throttle over the edge.
Alexander had been groomed for greatness from
birth, but he was no pampered prince. Tutored
by the austere Leonidas, who forbade all luxury,
the general Lysimachus and the philosopher
Aristotle, Alexander was proficient with weapons,
horse riding and playing the lyre, and an expert
in ethics, philosophy and the skills of debate. He
trained daily in pankration, an Ancient Greek
martial art, which focused on savage grapples,
punches, kicks and choke holds. A Renaissance
man before the Renaissance, he was schooled in
the skills to conquer and the knowledge to rule.
At 16 he had governed Macedon as regent while
his father warred far from home, the young heir
putting down rebellious tribes in Thrace and
founding a whole new city, Alexandropolis – the
first of many that would bear his name.
Like so many civilisations before and after
them, the Ancient Greeks loved to gossip. Philip’s
death, they said, was an act of revenge from his
scorned lover Pausanias, but two other people
immediately benefited: Olympias, mother of
Alexander and once-favoured wife of Philip, had
been in danger of losing her status to a younger
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Greek, 356 323 BCE
Brief
Bio
Becoming king of
Macedon after his
father’s murder,
Alexander led the
Greeks into war
against the powerful Persian
Empire. With charisma and
cunning, he led from the
frontline to create an empire
that stretched from Libya to
India, creating a new golden age
for Hellenic culture.
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