The Last Part of Le Video

Today in Western Civ we finished the video on Alexander the Great and these are the notes I took:

• couldn't have conquered all he could if not for his brutality 
• obsessed with the notion he could be a god in Egypt 
• Egypt welcomes him and names him Alexander Pharaoh because he still let them practice their religion and culture 
• oracle was well known destination 
• Alexander and men were lost in the Dunes because of a sandstorm, but supposedly "two birds" saved them" allowed his publicist t make up/exaggerate his story 
• h was a "god on earth" 
• being Pharaoh wasn't enough he wanted to defeat Darius 
• Guagamela 
• 331 BC 
• most notable battle 
• Alexander was outnumbered 
• still defeated the Persians 
• his phalanx helped him repeatedly win 
• used hammer and anvil technique 
• Darius fled and one of his officers killed him 
• tired of him retreating an saving himself 
• proclaimed the Lord of Asia 
• still wasn't pleased 
• thinks world ends at India and wanted to conquer it all 
• Afghanistan was way harder to conquer because very mountainous, etc 
• the area was very cold, highly elevated, narrow in many places so they had to walk one by one which stretched across for 10 miles 
• his army did this because they had a bond in him 
• had Persians fill in the ranks 
• he drank two heavily 
• boasted and then killed his friend because he said all his glory was from his father 
• all of these things broke the bond slowly 
• Calesthenes thought Alexander was being too much of a tyrant 
• Alexander had him tortured and killed 
• his empire stretched from Greece to Afghanistan 
• got to india and the Raja tried to fight him 
• they used elephants because they could charge and trample their enemy 
• Alexander realizes he couldn't fight them 
• he used a surprise attack and attacked them and their elephants 
• one of his toughest battles 
• the raja surrendered and Alexander gave him back his land 
• India now is still very heavily influenced by Alexander 
• monsoons in India 
• could be a lot of rain or a lot of really dry weather 
• troops refused to go farther 
• Alexander was forced to go back 
• traveled back through the Maikan desert because maybe that would be punishing his men 
• less than 1/3 survived
• thought he could handle more than he could 
• made Macedonian men marry Persian women to keep them there in that place instead of going back home 
• wanted to fuse these cultures also married 3 or 4 women himself 
• wanted to make Babylon his new empire place to reign 
• fell mysteriously ill after drinking 
• dies after 12 days at age 32 
• historians debate on what killed him 
• funeral procession was broken up by an officer who wanted to take his body back to Egypt 
• Julius Caesar came to visit the tomb 
• the tomb was destroyed 
• don't know where his body now lies but there are many theories