DBQ Essay: How Great Was Alexander The Great?

How Great Was Alexander the Great? Alexander the Great was the son of Phillip II who was assassinated after conquering the Greeks. Alexander became king at the age of 20 and right away began to expand. He began by crushing a Greek revolt in Thebes and gained the respect from the rest of the Greeks not to rebel. He then set off and conquered Egypt, the Persian Empire, and won a hard battle against India before his troops forced him to return home. Alexander then died at the age of 32. Most people see Alexander as Great because he conquered a lot of land, built a massive empire, and was a military genius, but Alexander was not so great. Alexander the Great did not deserve his title as Great because he gained his power by fear, killed innocent

Alexander killed an estimated of 100,000 enemy soldiers, and innocent civilians throughout his rein. (Doc. E). He killed all these people just because he wanted more land to gain more power. Most of these people did nothing to Alexander and had no affect on his life except they were an obstacle in the way of him gaining more power. Also Alexander killed a full army in East India because he saw a major opportunity to take control of land from one of the biggest empires. (Doc. B). This empire had not messed with him or affected him conquering land, but Alexander saw an opportunity and jumped at it first chance he saw. Alexander did not think about the negative affect that was created by him conquering all this land, he just saw the opportunity to become more powerful, and make his empire one of the biggest. He wanted to set a legacy for himself, and did not care about how everyone else was

It took Alexander 11 years to build his empire, and only 10 years for it to break up after his death (Doc. E). Alexander went through all this trouble killing innocent people, and conquering all this land to build his empire, taking 11 years out of his short life to do this. After his death this empire only stayed as a whole for 10 years. This included 70 cities and 2,000,000 sq. miles of land (Doc. E). All his hard work was destroyed only after 10 years; it is hard to call this an empire compared to the other empires around during the time, and before and after the time that lasted hundreds of years. His empire was nothing compared to these massive long lasting empires. Alexander the Great did not deserve his tittle as great because he gained power by fear, killed innocent people, and his empire did not stay together long. Alexander the Great started conquering land at the age of 20, and in the process killed thousands of innocent people, used a fear tactic to gain his power, and built a massive empire that did not last very long. Some may see him as great, but if you look a little closer at the details Alexander did more harm then good trying to unite everybody. In conclusion, these three factors are proof that Alexander was not as excellent as historians try to prove him to