Macedonian (northern Greece). By the age of 33 Alexander the Great had conquered Greece, the Persian empire all the way to India, and Egypt.
Gow passes on the following story about Alexander's cultural interests:
At Susa [in Persia] in B.C. 325, he himself married Statira, the daughter of Darius, and compelled 100 of his generals and 10,000 of his soldiers to marry Persian wives. At Babylon, in B.C. 323, he corporated 20,000 Persians in his army and mixed them with Macedonians in the same phalanx. To the cities which he founded he imported colonists of all nations, and after his death there were found in his written orders to Craterus, a plan for the wholesale transportation of inhabitants from Asia to Europe and vice versa. (194, n.1)
Bell observes that when Alexander arrived in Egypt as its conqueror in 332, "in striking contrast to the Persians [Egypt's former occupiers], he paid homage to the native gods, and was apparently accepted without question as king of Egypt." He says of the political intermarrying, "it typified his great conception of the wedding of Europe and Asia."
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |