Between the Testaments 2a: Alexander the Great - The Early Years

Hi, I'm John Stevenson, and we're going to be looking at Alexander the Great, the early years, as we continue our study of Between the Testaments. Our story takes us, first of all, we notice we have the Persian Empire stretching from the Aegean all the way, really, to the borders of India. And that empire had now come into around 200 years, by the time Alexander comes on the scene. But to look at Alexander, we're going to look to the west, and there in the area of Greece, let's blow that up, notice we have the city, we have actually got a number of city states, I'm just putting some of the key ones here, Athens, Thebes, and Sparta. Remember Athens and Thebes had had a period of warfare, not sure if we talked about it in this class, but they'd gone through a period where the Persians were backing, usually backing Sparta against Athens. But in a sense, almost supplying arms to both of them so they could fight each other and nullify themselves. But to the north, you had Macedonia, that's where Alexander is going to come from. Also, the kingdom of Thrace to the east of that. And then also you have Greeks, notice the Ionian Greeks spoke of sort of a funny sounding dialect of Greek. Macedonians didn't actually speak Greek, they had their own language. But by the end, by the time of Alexander, and especially by the end time, by the time he dies, we're going to have Macedonians maybe being bilingual, where Greek is going to be picked up by them. And it will be of a style that we know as Common Greek, or we say Koine Greek. Now, the story of Alexander really starts with his father, Philip of Macedon, who had not, he wasn't the oldest of, he had older brothers, so he didn't really expect to be king. But when he was a young man, he had been a hostage in the city of Thebes. His father had done so well in Thebes, and he'd been held hostage. Now he wasn't in a prison or anything like that, but he was confined to the city. And while he was there, the story goes, and there's a little bit of disagreement on how much of an influence this was, he saw Thebes take on a larger force. Now I have to explain a little bit how warfare would take place among the Greeks of that era. They would line up, notice I've got, you know, two colors representing two opposing forces, and then they would come together and do a pushing match, and whoever would push the other back would win. Eventually, the people that are being pushed back are going to start going back a little faster, and maybe they'll break and run away. And that's how you would win the battle. We believe it's in Thebes, although it's not entirely clear about this, that he saw Thebes set up their lines on, notice they're sort of curved, instead of just, and what this would do, as the enemy would come forward, wait a minute, you're not meeting us straight on, you're meeting us on sort of what we call an oblique line, sort of curved to the side. And the tendency would be that as if you're holding your shield in your right hand and your spear in, I'm sorry, your spear in your right hand, your shield in your left hand, that you'll, there'll be a slight tendency to move maybe to the left when you shouldn't. And if the entire line does that, but they don't do it uniformly, then you can have a break in the line, and eventually what you can do is break through. Instead of having to push the entire body back, you can break through at one of these weak points. And so that idea of the breakthrough, now Philip's going to see that, whether he really learns it at Thebes or not, he's going to adopt this idea and pass it on to his son Alexander. Philip eventually does become king in 359 BC, and as such he marries a number of women. Now the Greeks didn't normally do this, but remember he's Macedonian, sort of Greek, although they've got their separate language. And Epirus is the kingdom to the west of Macedonia, and he marries Olympia. Now he marries a number of women. The Greeks normally had one wife, but Philip had a bunch of wives, some of them at the same time. And so he marries Olympia of Epirus, and they're going to have a son, and their son's going to be Alexander. Now Alexander's childhood, and he wasn't the only child that they had, or only child that Philip had I should say, but it seems pretty early on that he was destined to be Philip's heir. And the story is told of how, when Alexander was just a little boy, that there was a horse that had been given to Philip, and it was a magnificent stallion, and it just seemed to be untamable. And so they were trying to break the horse. I've had a little tiny experience trying to do this. I remember trying to go for a ride on an unbroken horse. It was a very short ride. And they were having the same problem, and Alexander was watching, and he said, Father, let me try the horse. Let me try to ride the horse. And, well, you're too young for this. Even my expert riders are having problems with this horse. You know, I can't have you. Oh, but Father, let me do it. And he insisted. And finally, Philip said, well, okay, you know, I can always have another son. And Alexander goes to the horse and takes him by the halter, and instead of, you know, just jumping immediately on his back, speaks soothingly to him and then turns him so that he's facing the sun, because Alexander had noticed that the horse would see his shadow and rear up and was startled by it. And so faces him into the sun, and then speaks soothingly to him. And then after a bit, just jumps on his back, and the horse doesn't buck. He just rides away. Now, he gives the name of this horse, Bucephalus. And Bucephalus, this isn't just the stuff of legends. Bucephalus is going to go with him on his travels, really all the way to India. Horses don't live all that long, but Bucephalus is going to be an aged stallion, not necessarily going into battle for all that time, but will travel with Alexander. And the story goes that Philip's father watches his son ride this wild horse, and yet tamed by him, and says to him, my son, Macedonia will not be big enough of a kingdom for you. Well, Persian envoys come to Philip's palace. And again, a story is told, and Alexander stole a boy. And he goes out to see them all while they're waiting to see his father. And he begins to question them regarding the roads and the network and the communications that are there in the empire. Almost as though what he's doing, he is interrogating them as if they were sort of a resource for him. Already, it seems he has this plan, this idea, I want to go to Persia. And of course, that's not my country. I'm going to go there, perhaps as a future military person, as a future conqueror. Now, Alexander has a number of tutors. One of them early on is the man Leonidas, sort of started him off. But as he goes into his early teens, Aristotle, the same Aristotle who was the philosopher. Actually, Aristotle was Macedonian, so this is too far of a stretch. He had gone down to Athens, and he had been a student of Plato. And now he comes back, and he serves as a tutor to Alexander, as well as to some of his own companions. So a number of them sit under Aristotle's tutelage. And Alexander really had a love for this older philosopher. Now, by the time Alexander, he's still a teenager, when Philip is fighting a battle, the Battle of Carianoia, and Alexander actually is serving as one of the captains in this battle. Philip is commanding the right wing, and Alexander is commanding the left wing as a teenager. And it's a victory. It's at this time that we begin to see the formation of the army. Instead of the typical soldier that the Greeks would have, where they would have the helot, a Greek soldier would carry a spear, maybe six, eight, maybe even ten feet long, and a shield. In Philip's case, he is going to expand that spear all the way up to about 18 feet. It's going to be very, very long. And then deepen the ranks of his soldiers so that you'll, what you're looking at here is a Macedonian phalanx. And trying to attack a group like this, and they're very heavily disciplined, they can turn on a dime, they can go through their various maneuvers, they can get into this formation very, very quickly. And coming up against that is like going up against a porcupine. It's, you know, they are, they're very well disciplined, they're ready to fight. And this is going to be the formation that wins both Philip and then later on his son Alexander battle after battle after battle. Now, Alexander and Philip, even though father and son, there was great respect, but there was also trouble there, especially when Philip took for himself a new wife, he already had a number of wives, but a new wife. And there was a quarrel there when the new father-in-law said, may you have a legitimate son. Now, what was happening with this new wife was also Macedonian. And remember that Olympia, Alexander's mother, she was not Macedonian, she was from a neighboring kingdom. And so the idea here was, well, may you have a legitimate son that's really fully Macedonian, not just half Macedonian, half something else. And Alexander heard this, and he was furious, he was ready to fight, he was ready to kill. And Philip, you know, Alexander yelled and screamed, and Philip, taking the part of his new bride, became angry with Alexander. And they almost had it out. And remember, weddings back then was not where you would walk down the aisle, weddings were where you would arrange the wedding party, and then you'd have a great party, and there'd be a lot of drinking. And then the bride and groom would, you know, go off on their, you know, to the other room for their honeymoon, and then come back. So there'd been a lot of drinking, and they became very angry. And Philip, you know, went and got a, I don't know if it was a sword or a spear, ready to go in and take out his son, Alexander. But was so drunk, he tripped over something, fell on his face, and Alexander said, this is the man who would cross into Asia, he can't even cross a room. And there was some, just some bad blood between the two. And so Alexander was forced now to go for a time into exile. Now, eventually, he returns. Eventually, he and his father reconcile. But there was some quarrelsome things taking place. I can't help but wonder if mom, Olympia, had a part in that. I'm not sure. But eventually, they do come back, they are reconciled. And then Philip, shortly after that, is murdered, he is assassinated, by a young man that was in their entourage, you know, in the palace. It was a young man who had, there's no nice way to say this, at one of these sort of drinking parties. People had gotten drunk, and this young man had been raped by some of Philip's other guests. That's not nice. And when he had complained to Philip, Philip had just sort of, you know, brushed it off, well, boys will be boys, and hadn't really done anything about it. And so now this young man comes up and murders Philip. And then, you know, I mean, he does, it's not like in private, it's not, you know, behind closed doors. It's out in public when it happens. And he is quickly captured and killed. Before he can be questioned, people wondered, did Alexander have any part in maybe putting him up to it? I don't think that's the case. Alexander doesn't seem to have had that sort of, you know, going behind people's back. Alexander can be angry, and he can kill somebody at times, but not usually in a way like this. So I suspect not, but, you know, I wasn't there, and even the people were. They questioned it, and they wondered, you know, what's going on there? But now Alexander, who admittedly did have a lot to gain, he now becomes the new king of Macedonia, a very young king, just barely turned 20. Alexander is 20 years old. In the next 13 years, he will conquer what for him was the known world. But first, but first he has to conquer or reconquer Greece and the surrounding regions.