Why Alexander was not so 'great': The horrific reality of history's most famous conqueror

Alexander III inherited the throne of Macedon in 336 BCE following the assassination of his father, Philip II.

He was only twenty years old, but to secure his position, he ordered the execution of several possible rivals, including Amyntas IV, who had a claim to the throne, and various noblemen who had connections to Philip’s previous wives.

Once the court had been purged of threats, he launched a campaign to fulfil his father’s plan to invade Persia.

As leader of the League of Corinth, Alexander could present the war as an all-Greek campaign against a traditional enemy, which presented his personal aims as patriotic duty. 

Within two years, Alexander had marched his forces into Asia Minor, where he defeated a coalition of Persian satraps at the Battle of the Granicus in 334 BCE.

Many Greek mercenaries who had fought for Persia were either slaughtered or sold into slavery.

After this victory, he continued deeper into Persian territory, where he clashed with King Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE.

The victory allowed him to seize control of parts of Syria and Phoenicia. During the siege of Tyre in 332 BCE, his forces constructed a massive causeway using rubble and timber from a destroyed mainland settlement to breach the island city's defences, which showed engineering skill that surprised later writers.

Once the walls fell, he ordered a mass slaughter and, according to some sources, crucified 2,000 defenders along the shoreline and sold 30,000 survivors into slavery. 

Soon after, he entered Egypt and declared himself pharaoh. He founded Alexandria as a new Greek capital on the Nile Delta, which he then used as a base before pressing east once more.

In 331 BCE, he won a final confrontation with Darius at Gaugamela and claimed the Persian throne.

From Babylon, he pushed into the eastern satrapies and crossed into India. There, in 326 BCE, he defeated King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes.

Following the battle, he allowed Porus to remain as a subordinate ruler for a time.

His army, exhausted and homesick, refused to advance beyond the Hyphasis River. 

However, stories of his education under Aristotle, his claimed descent from Achilles, and his supposed respect for local customs had formed the legend that surrounded him.

Writers presented him as a cultural bridge between East and West. Today, many still see him as a brilliant commander with noble intentions.

However, this version of history had left out what actually occurred across the territories he conquered. 

Alexander’s victories came at an enormous human cost. When he crushed the Theban revolt in 335 BCE, he ordered the destruction of the entire city.

An estimated 6,000 residents were killed during the assault, and an estimated 30,000 were enslaved.

Only temples and the house of the poet Pindar were spared. His brutality stunned the Greek world, but it also sent a clear message that defiance would be met with total destruction. 

Soon after, his siege of Tyre revealed how far he would go to force submission. The defenders held out for seven months but an estimated 8,000 were killed in the aftermath and an estimated 30,000 were enslaved.

His use of terror was deliberate. He wanted to set an example for other cities that might resist his rule. 

At Persepolis, he reportedly showed the same lack of concern for people and cultural sites.

After he entered the Persian ceremonial capital in 330 BCE, he allowed his men to loot it and seized the royal treasury to finance future campaigns and reward his troops.

Soon after, the city burned. Some ancient sources blamed an Athenian courtesan named Thaïs, while others claimed Alexander gave the order himself.

According to Plutarch, he later regretted the destruction, which erased centuries of Persian cultural achievement during a drunken celebration. 

During his campaigns in Central Asia, he grew more violent. Many villages that resisted faced complete destruction and public executions were often carried out.

Many thousands of captives were forced to build military colonies in harsh conditions.

Meanwhile, his soldiers were battle-hardened and cruel and looted their way through Sogdiana and Bactria.

He founded cities such as Alexandria Eschate, which displaced local populations and became largely military outposts rather than centres of cultural exchange. 

In India, his cruelty reached its peak, as he laid siege to cities that had no strategic value.

For example, at Aornos, a fortified mountain stronghold associated with Heracles in legend, his army massacred defenders after his troops scaled the cliffs to take the fortress.

He pushed into Punjab, where the Aspasioi and Assakenoi tribes resisted fiercely.

As punishment, Alexander destroyed their settlements, killed men of fighting age, and enslaved women and children.

Alexander’s ruthlessness did not stop with enemies and it reached into his own inner circle.

In 330 BCE, he had Philotas, commander of the Companion Cavalry, executed for failing to report a conspiracy.

After extracting a confession under torture, he ordered his guards to kill Philotas’s father, Parmenion, in Ecbatana without trial.

Parmenion had been one of Philip II’s most trusted generals and had played a key role in Alexander’s early campaigns. His murder shocked the army. 

Later, Alexander turned on Cleitus the Black. During a banquet in 328 BCE, Cleitus criticised the king’s adoption of Persian customs and his arrogance.

Drunk and enraged, Alexander seized a spear and drove it through Cleitus’s chest.

Cleitus had saved his life at the Battle of Granicus but his death showed how unstable Alexander had become.

Some sources claimed the banquet honoured Dionysus, adding to the atmosphere of intoxication and reckless violence. 

Shortly after, he targeted Callisthenes, a court historian who had opposed the introduction of Persian court rituals.

Callisthenes was Aristotle’s nephew and had refused to bow to Alexander during ceremonies, so soon became implicated in a failed plot among the royal pages and died in custody.

His only crime was speaking out against Alexander’s demand for divine honours. 

Over time, trust within Alexander’s circle vanished. Officers whispered their fears in private because they knew that disagreement risked death.

The king had begun his reign with a loyal team of advisers. By the end, many had either died violently or distanced themselves from his unpredictable rule. 

As he gained power, Alexander showed increasing signs of instability. After he visited the oracle of Zeus-Ammon at Siwa in 331 BCE, he began referring to himself as the son of a god.

As a result, he demanded ritual prostration from his subjects, including Macedonian generals who saw such acts as humiliation and resisted what they saw as a foreign practice associated with divine kingship. 

He adopted Persian dress and ceremonies, which alienated those who had fought beside him since his youth.

He filled his court with foreign advisers and flatterers. Traditional Macedonian officers found themselves isolated.

Any resistance to his new image as divine monarch brought swift retaliation. 

After the death of Hephaestion in 324 BCE, Alexander’s mental state got worse.

He ordered a state-wide mourning period and crucified the doctor who had failed to save his companion.

He shaved his head, refused food, and had a large funeral pyre built in Babylon at a reported cost of 10,000 talents.

His grief crossed into obsession because he treated Hephaestion not as a man, but as a god who had died unjustly. 

Soon after, he forced thousands of Macedonian soldiers to marry Persian women at a mass ceremony in Susa.

He claimed this would unite the empire. In truth, most of the marriages ended once Alexander died. His plan had no real foundation.

Heavy drinking and paranoia became common and led to sudden acts of violence.

His behaviour changed from idealism to outright delusion. His soldiers followed him across thousands of kilometres, a campaign that had begun as conquest and had turned into madness. 

Alexander’s invasions devastated many regions that had maintained centuries of political and cultural independence.

He imposed Greek authority through violence. In Egypt, although priests retained religious status, the Greek ruling class controlled the administration.

Meanwhile, local leaders lost power and Alexandria became the seat of Greek control, not Egyptian revival. 

In Persia, the Achaemenid nobility was swept aside. Alexander handed lands and titles to Macedonian commanders.

Native elites were pushed out as Persian customs were tolerated only when they helped control the population.

Across Central Asia, forced colonisation disrupted life in every direction.

Settlements for Greek soldiers displaced entire communities. Also, locals were taxed, conscripted, or enslaved, while those who resisted faced massacres or exile.

The new cities, named after Alexander himself, functioned as military outposts, not symbols of shared culture. 

In India, his campaigns left only chaos. After he withdrew, power struggles erupted among regional rulers and no stable administration followed.

His successors abandoned most of the territory and, eventually, Chandragupta Maurya rose to power in the vacuum, forming the Maurya Empire and removing remaining Macedonian influence.

The idea of peaceful fusion between civilisations did not fully match the reality. His wars erased governments, wrecked economies, and scattered populations. 

The myth of Alexander came from writers who lived long after his death. Arrian, writing under Roman rule, praised conquest and treated Alexander as a model of bravery.

Roman leaders, who expanded their empire by force, found inspiration in his story and they had little interest in exposing his cruelty.

Much of Arrian’s account had relied on Ptolemy and Aristobulus, two of Alexander’s companions, whose positions depended on their loyalty to him. 

Later traditions had repeated those views as Christian writers turned him into a moral example.

What is more, enlightenment historians had portrayed him as an early example of contact between distant regions.

Textbooks focused on his campaigns, not their consequences. 

Today, popular media still presents him as a visionary commander and his massacres and betrayals receive little attention.

His adoption of foreign customs appears enlightened, yet the force used to impose them is ignored. 

The true story is far darker because his victories came, for many, at the price of great suffering.

Far from being a civiliser or reformer, he left ruin wherever he marched. For some observers, the name “Alexander the Great” hides a man who conquered the world by destroying it.