Alexander the Great is most famous for his conquests and also naming cities after himself but a common question surrounding his Empire Building is why did he go east and never consider going west and say conquering Rome so to begin we have to look at Greece in the 4th Century BC which at this point was a mess of city states Petty kingdoms and shifting alliances to the North Sat the kingdom of Macedon which was ruled by Philipe II Philipe had expanded his kingdom to the South which was seen as a threat by Athens the Athenians built
an alliance to check Philip's Growing Power and before long War long story short Macedonia won and subjugated the rest of Greece except for Sparta that is which was just there being difficult Philip's next move was to get revenge on Persia for its previous Expedition into Greece and so he and his new allies started to prepare unfortunately for phelipe before this could happen it was time to get stabbed to death Alexander III succeeded him and like his father wanted to expand his kingdom but going west to Rome wasn't really an option at this point the first
reason was that his father had promised to attack Persia which was a unifying force in Greece and if Alexander wanted to keep them on board it was important to keep this promise furthermore Alexander likely knew very little if anything about Rome at this point it wasn't a regional power and only held this much territory and neither it nor its neighbors were really worth an expedition and with that Alexander was off to attack Persia which he did in 334 BC the macedonians did well and Alexander defeated the Persian sha Darius and took all of this land
thereby becoming Alexander the okay he then moved South into Egypt which he soon conquered and this allowed him to found the city of Alexandria and also Proclaim himself Pharaoh Alexander the pretty good then Advanced towards the Persian capital and defeated Darius again before taking it Darius fled but was soon murdered by his own men and Alexander took the title of King of Persia as well thereby becoming Alexander the notable so with Persia defeated surely Alexander was free to return to Macedon and turn his attention elsewhere well no even with DAR yhon Alexander still had to
pacify the rest of Persia now he'd previously written of his intent to conquer places like Carthage and it's likely that he wouldn't have shied away from taking whatever else was in way but again there's no evidence he knew anything of Rome in fact the Greeks had minimal contact with Rome and wouldn't have cared much until Rome's conquest of these Greek cities in the south of Italy which happened about 50 years after Alexander died so anyway Alexander wasn't able to return to Macedon because one of darius's generals had declared himself King and Alexander couldn't tolerate arrival
Alexander spent the next six years putting down revolts across Persia and after his realm was mostly secure he went Westward to Babylon it was here that he decided he was going to conquer the afterlife which meant going Westward was impossible and Rome was safe in its cradle I hope you enjoyed this episode with a special thanks to my patrons James Bizet Kelly Money Maker Sky Chappelle kitka Anthony Beckett rod D Martin Udan Wang Marcus arner YN hockey Alex Schwin AF Firefly Captain pyg Spencer liot Gustav Swan the mcer shenin Marvin CAU Winston kwood spinning three
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