80 Fun Facts About Alexander the Great

In which city, capital of Macedon, was Alexander born in 356 BC?

Legend says the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus burned down the same day because the goddess was away attending the birth.

Who was Alexander's father?

He had seven or eight wives; Alexander's mother was his principal wife largely because she had produced the heir.

Who was Alexander's mother, a princess of Epirus?

Plutarch says she dreamed her womb was struck by a thunderbolt on the eve of her wedding, and she always insisted Alexander was a son of Zeus.

Which philosopher tutored Alexander from the age of 13 until he was 16?

He gave his pupil an annotated copy of the Iliad, which Alexander carried on campaign.

In return for the tutoring, Alexander's father agreed to rebuild the tutor's razed hometown, which was?

He also promised to repopulate it by buying back and freeing citizens who had been enslaved.

Alexander's schooling with the philosopher took place at the Temple of the Nymphs in which town?

It functioned like a boarding school for the sons of Macedonian nobles, the future Companions.

What was the name of Alexander's horse, which he tamed at the age of ten?

The horse carried him as far as India, and he founded a city named after it when it died.

What does the name of Alexander's famous horse mean?

Plutarch says the horse died of old age at 30, on the campaign in India.

How much did the Thessalian trader ask for the horse that the young Alexander tamed?

His father, overjoyed, told him Macedon was too small for his ambitions and bought it for him.

Alexander tamed the horse after noticing it was afraid of what?

He turned it towards the sun so it could no longer see the shadow.

At the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, the 18-year-old Alexander commanded which part of the line?

He was the first to break the Theban lines while his father feigned retreat on the other flank.

How old was Alexander when he became king in 336 BC?

He was proclaimed king on the spot by the nobles and army after his father's assassination.

Alexander's father was assassinated at a wedding by which captain of his bodyguard?

The killer tripped over a vine while fleeing and was cut down by his pursuers.

Which Greek city did Alexander raze to the ground in 335 BC after it rebelled?

Its destruction so cowed Athens that Greece stayed quiet for the whole Asian campaign.

When Alexander asked Diogenes the Cynic what he could do for him, what did the philosopher request?

Alexander was delighted and said that were he not Alexander he would like to be Diogenes.

Roughly how many soldiers did Alexander lead across the Hellespont in 334 BC?

They were backed by 6,100 cavalry and 120 ships crewed by 38,000 men.

On landing in Asia, what did Alexander throw into the soil to claim the continent from the gods?

The gesture advertised an appetite for battle that contrasted with his father's preference for diplomacy.

What was Alexander's first battle against the Persians in Asia, fought in 334 BC?

He used perhaps 13,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry against a Persian force of about 40,000.

According to the story, how did Alexander 'undo' the Gordian Knot?

He declared it did not matter how the knot was undone; the feat was said to await the future king of Asia.

The Gordian Knot was kept at Gordium, the ancient capital of which kingdom?

Alexander was marching inland from the coast, denying the Persian fleet its bases.

At which battle in 333 BC did Alexander defeat Darius III in person for the first time?

Darius fled and abandoned his wife, two daughters, mother and a fabulous treasure.

After Issus, Darius offered what ransom for his captured family?

Alexander replied that as king of Asia he alone decided territorial divisions.

Which Phoenician city did Alexander capture in 332 BC after a long and difficult siege?

Men of military age were massacred and the women and children sold into slavery.

During the siege of Gaza, Alexander received a serious wound to which part of his body?

His engineers had told him the mound was too high to assault, which only encouraged him.

At the Siwa Oasis, the oracle pronounced Alexander the son of which god?

He thereafter often referred to Zeus-Ammon as his true father.

After his death, coins depicted Alexander adorned with what as a symbol of divinity?

The Horns of Ammon became one of his most recognisable attributes.

Alexander was crowned pharaoh in the temple of Ptah in which Egyptian city?

The Egyptians seem not to have minded that he was a foreigner absent for virtually his whole reign.

Which city, later the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, did Alexander found during his months in Egypt?

It became the first and greatest of the many cities that bore his name.

At which 331 BC battle did Alexander decisively defeat Darius for the last time?

Darius fielded scythed chariots; Alexander answered with a double phalanx that parted and reformed around them.

Darius III was finally taken prisoner and killed by which of his own satraps?

The killer proclaimed himself Artaxerxes V; Alexander gave Darius a royal burial and hunted the usurper down.

Plutarch and Diodorus blame which courtesan for instigating the burning of Persepolis?

Alexander is said to have regretted the fire even as he watched the city burn.

The burning of the Persian palace was possibly revenge for Xerxes' burning of what?

Plutarch has Alexander pausing to address a fallen statue of Xerxes as if it were alive.

Which officer, who had once saved his life, did Alexander kill in a drunken quarrel at Samarkand?

Cleitus had accused him of abandoning Macedonian ways for a corrupt oriental lifestyle.

Which officer's execution for failing to report a plot led Alexander to have his father Parmenion assassinated?

Parmenion was guarding the treasury at Ecbatana and was killed to forestall any revenge.

Which Persian court custom, which Greeks thought fit only for gods, did Alexander try to introduce?

It cost him the sympathy of many Macedonians and he eventually abandoned it.

Which official campaign historian was implicated in the pages' plot and, per Arrian, tortured on the rack?

He had already fallen from favour by leading opposition to proskynesis.

Which veteran general did Alexander leave in charge of Macedon when he set out for Asia?

He crushed a Spartan revolt at Megalopolis in 331 BC and feuded endlessly with Alexander's mother.

Which of his wives did Alexander marry for love rather than politics?

His two Persian princess brides were daughters of Darius III and Artaxerxes III.

How many times did Alexander marry?

He also held a mass wedding of his officers to Persian noblewomen, though few of those marriages lasted a year.

Which Indian king did Alexander defeat at the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC?

Impressed by his bravery, Alexander made him a satrap and enlarged his territory.

The Hydaspes, site of that battle, is which modern river?

He founded two cities on its banks, one named after his horse and one called Nicaea, Victory.

At which river did Alexander's exhausted army mutiny and refuse to march farther east?

The Hyphasis, as the Greeks called it, marks the easternmost limit of his conquests.

Which general pleaded with Alexander to turn back, saying the men longed for their families?

Alexander eventually agreed and turned south along the Indus.

Besieging the Mallians, Alexander nearly died when an arrow pierced his armour and entered what?

It was the most serious of a long list of wounds, including one at Massaga in the ankle.

Which admiral did Alexander commission to explore the Persian Gulf shore with a fleet?

Alexander himself took the harder southern route home through the desert.

On the return march from India, Alexander lost many men crossing which arid region?

He reached Susa in 324 BC and executed several satraps who had misbehaved in his absence.

In 324 BC Alexander held a mass wedding of his senior officers to Persian noblewomen in which city?

Few of the marriages seem to have lasted much beyond a year.

His troops mutinied in 324 BC, resenting Persian officers in Macedonian units, at which town?

After three days he gave Persians the command posts, and the Macedonians begged forgiveness.

Alexander executed the guards of whose desecrated tomb at Pasargadae?

He had admired the tomb's occupant since boyhood readings of Xenophon's Cyropaedia.

Which closest friend of Alexander died at Ecbatana, prompting a decree of public mourning?

The huge tomb found at Amphipolis in 2014 turned out to be dedicated to him.

In which city did Alexander die in June 323 BC?

He died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, in the city he had planned to make his capital.

How old was Alexander when he died?

By then his empire stretched from Greece to northwestern India.

A 2014 Clinical Toxicology paper proposed Alexander's wine had been spiked with which poison?

Its slow course would fit the twelve days between his falling ill and his death.

According to tradition, Alexander's gold sarcophagus was filled with what?

A seer foretold that the land where he was buried would be happy and unvanquishable forever.

Which of his generals hijacked Alexander's funeral cortege on its way to Macedon?

He took the body to Egypt; his successor moved it to Alexandria, where it stayed into late antiquity.

A late Ptolemaic king replaced Alexander's gold sarcophagus with one of what, melting the original into coins?

Ptolemy IX Lathyros was the culprit.

Which Roman ruler allegedly knocked the nose off Alexander's mummified body while visiting the tomb?

Septimius Severus later closed the tomb to the public around AD 200.

Caligula reportedly took what from Alexander's tomb for his own use?

He wore it to ride across his pontoon bridge over the Bay of Baiae.

Asked on his deathbed to whom he left his kingdom, Alexander supposedly answered what?

One theory holds his companions misheard 'to Craterus'; Arrian and Plutarch say he was already speechless.

To which bodyguard and cavalry commander did the dying Alexander reportedly hand his signet ring?

He was assassinated in 321 BC, after which Macedonian unity collapsed into forty years of war.

Arrhidaeus, the king's half-brother, was proclaimed joint king after 323 BC alongside whom?

Both kings were eventually murdered as the Successors fought over the empire.

At his death, Alexander's empire covered roughly how much territory?

It was the largest state of its time and stayed largely in Macedonian hands for two to three centuries.

Which modern Afghan city began as one of the cities Alexander founded and named after himself?

Most of his Alexandrias lay east of the Tigris, sited on trade routes and defensive positions.

The city Alexander named 'The Furthest' lies in which modern country?

He founded it on the Jaxartes after defeating the Scythians there.

The sarissa carried by the Macedonian phalanx was a spear about how long?

In India the phalanx used them to strike upwards and dislodge the handlers of Porus's elephants.

Which sculptor was said to be the only artist Alexander allowed to model his likeness?

He captured the slight leftward tilt of the neck and the melting glance that successors tried to imitate.

Pompey the Great searched the East for which 260-year-old relic of Alexander to wear?

Pompey also adopted the epithet Magnus and Alexander's swept-back anastole haircut.

Which Qur'anic figure, 'the Two-Horned One', is widely identified with Alexander?

In that tradition he built a wall against Gog and Magog and searched for the Water of Life.

In a Greek sailors' legend, a mermaid asks whether King Alexander still lives. What answer calms the sea?

Any other reply turns her into a raging Gorgon who drags the ship to the bottom.

Which Indian empire-founder, who filled Alexander's vacuum in the Punjab, do Greek sources call 'Sandrokottos'?

From that power base he went on to conquer the Nanda Empire.

A British Museum inscription records Alexander dedicating a temple to Athena Polias where?

It is one of the few independent archaeological finds confirming an episode from his life.

Whose drunken prayer for a 'lawful successor' at Philip II's 338 BC wedding made Alexander hurl a cup at him?

Attalus was uncle of Philip's new bride Cleopatra Eurydice; Philip lunged at his son but slipped and fell, drawing Alexander's mockery.

After fleeing Macedon in 337 BC, Alexander took refuge with kings of which people?

He had defeated them in battle a few years earlier; family friend Demaratus mediated his return after six months.

Which god, wearing a lionskin headdress, appears on the obverse of Alexander's silver tetradrachms?

Zeus enthroned with an eagle is on the reverse; the gold staters instead show Athena and a winged Nike.

According to Diodorus, Alexander's 'last plans' included building 1,000 ships for an invasion of which city?

They also called for a tomb for Philip 'to match the greatest of the pyramids'; the successors voted the plans down as extravagant.

When Darius III's mother Sisygambis first met Alexander, whom did she mistake for the king because he was taller?

Curtius also records that Darius's throne was so high for Alexander that a page had to put a table under his feet.

According to Plutarch, what unusual quality of Alexander's skin did the writer Aristoxenus record?

Ancient Greeks believed pleasant scents were characteristic of gods and heroes.

Which court painter, per Plutarch, made Alexander's complexion 'too dark and swarthy'?

Alexander also commissioned gem engravings from Pyrgoteles; painted traces on the Alexander Sarcophagus suggest chestnut hair and brown eyes.

Which Roman emperor persecuted Aristotelians over a legend that Aristotle had poisoned Alexander?

He openly mimicked Alexander's style; Julius Caesar wept before an Alexander statue in Hispania at having achieved so little by the same age.

Which Carian satrap offered his daughter to Alexander's half-brother Arrhidaeus in 337 BC?

Philip was furious and exiled four of Alexander's friends: Harpalus, Nearchus, Ptolemy and Erigyius.