下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
When you are twenty years old, what do you think you will be doing?
Will you be attending college?
Will you be working, or what?
When Alexander was twenty, he was king of both Macedonia and Greece. But Macedonia and Greece were entirely too small for this wonderful young man. He wanted to rule a much bigger country; in fact, he thought he would like to rule the whole world; that was all—nothing more.
So Alexander went right ahead with his father’s plan to conquer Persia. The time had come to pay back Persia for that last invasion one hundred and fifty years before.
He got together an army and crossed the Hellespont into Asia and won battle after battle against the first Persian armies that went out to stop him.
He kept moving on, for Persia was a vast empire.
Soon he came to a town where in a temple there was kept a rope tied into a very farfamed and puzzling knot. It was called the Gordian Knot, and it was very famous because the oracle had said that whoever should undo this knot would conquer Persia. No one had ever been able to untie it.
When Alexander heard the story, he went to the temple and took a look at the knot. He saw at once that it would be impossible to untie it, so, instead of even trying, as others had done, he drew his sword and with one stroke cut the knot in two.
Now when a person settles something difficult, not by fussing with it as one untangles a snarl, but at a single stroke, cutting through all difficulties, we say he “cuts the Gordian Knot.”
From that time on, Alexander conquered one city after another and never lost any battle of importance until he had conquered the whole of Persia.
He then went into Egypt, which belonged to Persia at that time, and conquered that country, too. To celebrate this victory, he founded a town near the mouth of the Nile and named it after himself, Alexandria. He started there a great library that later grew to be so big that there were said to be five hundred thousand books in it—that is, half a million—and was the largest library of ancient times. The books were not like those in the library of Ashurbanipal nor the kind we have now, of course, because printing had not been invented. They were every one of them written by hand, and not on pages, but on long sheets which were rolled up on sticks to form a scroll.
A scroll, pens, and ink
In the harbor of Alexandria was a little island called Pharos, and on this island some years later was built a remarkable lighthouse named for the island, the Pharos. It was really a building more like a modern skyscraper with a tower. It was over thirty stories high, which seemed most remarkable at that time when most buildings were only one or two stories high, and its light could be seen for many miles. The Pharos of Alexandria was called one of the Seven Wonders of the World. You have already heard of three others, so this makes the fourth.
Alexandria grew, in the course of time, to be the largest and most important seaport of the ancient world. Now, however, the Pharos and the library and all the old buildings have long since disappeared.
Alexander did not stay very long in any one place. He was restless. He wanted to keep on the move. He wanted to see new places and to conquer new people. He almost forgot his own little country of Macedonia and Greece. Instead of being homesick, however, as almost any one would have been, he kept going farther and farther away from home all the time. We should call such a man an adventurer or an explorer, as well as a great general. Alexander kept on conquering and didn’t stop conquering until he had reached far-off India.
There in India his army, which had stayed on with him all the way, became homesick and wanted to go back. They had been away from home for more than ten years and were so far off that they were afraid they would never get back.
Alexander was now only thirty years old, but he was called Alexander the Great, for he was ruler of the whole world—at least, most of it that was then known to most Greeks, except Italy, which was still only a collection of little, unimportant towns at that time. When Alexander found there were no more countries left for him to conquer, he was so disappointed that he wept!
At last, when there was nothing more to conquer, he agreed to do what his army begged him and started slowly back toward Greece.
He got as far as Babylon, the city once so large and so magnificent. There he celebrated with a feast, but while feasting and drinking he suddenly died. He never reached Greece.
This was in 323 B.C. when he was but 33 years old. You can remember these figures easily, for they are all 3’s except the middle figure in the date, which is one less than 3.
Alexander the Great had conquered the largest country that had ever been under the rule of one man, and yet this was not the only reason we call him the Great .
He was not only a great ruler and a great general, but—this may surprise you—he was also a great teacher. Aristotle had taught him to be that.
Alexander taught the Greek language to the people he conquered so that they could read Greek books. He taught them about Greek sculpture and painting. He taught them the wise sayings of the Greek philosophers, Socrates and Plato and his own teacher, Aristotle. He trained the people in athletics as the Greeks did for their Olympic Games.
Alexander had married a beautiful Persian woman named Roxana, but their only child was still a baby, not born until after his father’s death; so when the great king died there was no one to rule after him. He had told his generals before he died that the strongest one of them should be the next ruler; they must fight it out among themselves.
His generals did fight to see who should win, and finally four of them who were victorious decided to divide up this great empire and each have a share.
One of his generals was named Ptolemy I, and he took Egypt as his share and ruled well; but the others did not amount to much, and after a while their shares became unimportant and went to pieces. Like a toy balloon which stretches and stretches as you blow it up, Alexander’s empire grew bigger and bigger until—all of a sudden— pop —nothing was left but the pieces.