Thursday, September 26, 2013

Alexander the Great Neelesh

Question 1


Alexander's Empire at its Greatest 
Today Alexander has become great. Although we had not heard of his many deeds before, rumor has it that he never attended the royal academy. We did not hesitate and with Alexander's great strategy we gracefully won. He has proven himself Great because of his strategy that was able to bring Persia to her knees  in two battles, both Issus and Granicus. His great strategy was shown in the battle of Granicus when he surprised the army by breaking the lines with our finest men, myself included, and then the other men charged making the troops disintegrate and the foul King Darius fled, effectively defeating an army that held 5,000 more trained men than his. Even when he was at his worst drinking, killing fellow generals he was still very charismatic and cunning when he successfully stopped the Opis revolution that was caused by the rift between us Macedonians and the Persians, by quickly creating a concord where the men of all nationalities sipped from the same cup and, being very charismatic, convinced us to put aside our differences and become a real army. In this way he has shown himself to be cunning by breaching the rift between different nationalities, and shown to be charismatic, which are both qualities of a good leader. One of his many conquests was his triumph at Hydaspes in India, against the savage king Porus, we managed to defeat his army and his elephants with our brilliant army and his unwavering courage, and then he showed what a generous king he was by sparing his life and even granting him land. In this way he has shown multiple qualities of his greatness, he is both a great leader, a brilliant strategist, and has a compassionate heart.      


Question 2

Lighthouse of Pharos
These new cultures that I have interacted and met over my time with Alexander has aided this empire by bringing new ideas and the blending of cultures has made a new culture now being penned, Hellenistic. Because of Alexander's conquest of most if not all of the known world, a new culture having aspects of Egyptian, Greek, Indian, and lastly Persian has created this new, rich culture that had Alexander not been there would never have flourished. A prime example of this would be the great city of Alexandria, I have heard stories but they say that the city is breathtaking, they say that there is a huge lighthouse named the Pharos that guides ships to the bay and illuminates the entire night! The movement of new ideas can be clearly seen with the Lighthouse because it was Alexander himself that conquered and named the city Alexandria, but also, he was the one who commissioned his general Ptolemy to create it. Through this we can see how a man from Macedonia took an idea and created it in Egypt, miles away from Macedonia, because of Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt. Besides architecture, Hellenism allowed many scholastic achievements to be made in science and technology such as the great scholar Eratosthenes who some say has proven the size of the earth using numbers! Another mathematician Euclid has written a book about shapes and numbers that is translated into three languages. This last statement shows that without any doubt Hellenistic culture has allowed thoughts and ideas to spread in multiple languages, as in Euclidean's case, to help us understand the world around us, and help us better our life, as in Ptolemy's case when he created the Lighthouse. Not to forget our great leader Alexander has created this Hellenistic culture with his conquest of the known world and subsequently spread ideas all over his empire.

Question 3

I think that Alexander the Great can be compared to Paul Revere, which was the man who alerted all the townspeople on the eve of the Revolutionary War to gather up their armory for the British were coming. I think that Alexander the Great can be compared to him because history has seemingly glorified both their images as being very heroic and skipping out any other details of their life. For example many people know that Alexander the Great conquered all these places and did good things, but many people seem to overlook the fact that he was bipolar, drank excessively, ordered hundreds and thousands of civilians killed and on top of that killed his best friend and main general over a trivial matter when he was drinking. Likewise, while Paul Revere did not do things that were as bad as Alexander, many people forget that there was two other people besides him that went on the midnight ride through the countryside, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott which he did not give credit to. Also another point of comparison between these two important is that they both did their own separate deeds on a sort of blind, dumb, luck. For example when Alexander conquered parts of Asia he was only interested in achieving more land and exploring Asia, the Hellenistic period and the blending of cultures was only blind luck that happened after he died and his empire was split up between his generals. Likewise Paul Revere was one of the many that alerted the townspeople and actually did not make the full ride, many believe the reason we only remember Paul Revere is because of his reputation of him being in the Boston Tea Party that made Henry Longfellow make a poem about him. Others speculate that he was the only one in the poem because his name was easier to rhyme than Dawes and Prescott, which is obviously dumb luck, so Revere was therefore lionized and made to have a bigger role than he actually had in the Revolution, which is exactly how Alexander the Great was lionized and made to have a much bigger role in Hellenistic culture than he really had. In both these ways these two historical men have been lionized and become greater than what they truly were.




Burke Justin, . N.p.. Web. 25 Sep 2013. <http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/j/r/jrb5453/ART 002/assignment7.htm>.

 . N.p.. Web. 25 Sep 2013. <http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/arc/ugaritlight/ugarit/Pages/The Investigation/AncientLighthouses.htm>.

 Knox, Skip. N.p.. Web. 25 Sep 2013. <http://europeanhistory.boisestate.edu/westciv/alexander/06.shtml>.

 Brown, Bryan. "Alexander the great: in the fourth century b.c, this 20-something military genius conquered half the known world." Junior Scholastic 9 May 2011: 20+. General OneFile. Web. 26 Sept. 2013.

 Gabriel, Richard. "Alexander the monster: historians say the battlefield atrocities of the Macedonian king were part of his brilliant military strategy. But were they really born of his personality?" MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military HistorySummer 2013: 38+. General OneFile. Web. 26 Sept. 2013.

 Untereker, J., J. Kossuth, and B. Kelsey. N.p.. Web. 25 Sep 2013. <http://wso.williams.edu/~junterek/india.htm>.

 Jed Untereker, J. K.. N.p.. Web. 25 Sep 2013. <http://wso.williams.edu/~junterek/>.
Edmonds, Molly.  "What happened to the two other men on Paul Revere\u0027s ride?"  12 

 March 2008.  HowStuffWorks.com. <http://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/paul-

 revere-ride.htm>  25 September 2013.

Beck, Roger B., Linda Black, Larry S. Krieger, Phillip C. Naylor, and Dahia Ibo Shabaka. Holt McDougal World History. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2012. 143-144. eBook. 

 N.d. Photograph. n.p.  
http://callisto.ggsrv.com/imgsrv/FastFetch/UBER1/ZI-0HVC-2011-MAY09-LASON-22-1


Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 3 Ju. Web. 26 Sep 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:J_S_Copley_-_Paul_Revere.jpg>.  

 Dune Jimmy, . N.d. Photograph. n.p.
http://www.touregypt.net/images/touregypt/pharos2.jpg





Posted by at 4 comments:

Blake Thurman

Question 1
After the victory against Persia, our morale soared. But, Alexander The Great dropped the news that we're not going home, like we all expected. Instead he said that we'll be embarking on a nine year journey to build up his empire, even more than it already is. Right now, we're all wondering what makes Alexander so "Great" some say it's because of all of the land that he owns. I believe that the way he rules, is what makes him so great. He always knows what's best for the empire, even though most of us might disagree. What he has planned, is for the best. I know this because he has never lost a battle, against anyone. Anyone includes: Greece, Thrace, Persia, Sogdiana, and others. Nobody else in this entire area has done this in a long time, this is how I know that he knows what's best.

Question 2
After conquering all of that land I feel that all of those countries could hurt and aid his empire. If he controls them correctly than he could rule all of his land for a long time. That's one way that all of the different cultures could aid him. One obstacle that all of the different cultures could provide him with is the language barrier. If we wanted to control them, we would have to learn all of their different languages. But, that could also help us by not allowing them to rally up and rebel against us. Although the peasants probably couldn't beat us if they tried, they still are a force to be reckoned with, purely because there are so many of them. I'm not sure if Alexander the Great has a plan for if this happens, but if it does, I hope he does.

Question 3
Alexander the Great could be compared to Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France. Napoleon and Alexander were both "great", but the word "great" could be defined a couple different ways. They both could have been considered great or not so great, depending on who was saying it. Alexander the Great would have been put in the not so great category by the people that he enslaved. Some of his troops might have even said that he wasn't so great for making them march on and on with no stopping in mind. The same goes for Napoleon. The people that he conquered would not have considered him great, but his followers, troops, and citizens would have considered him pretty great.
Emperor of France, Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte
Works sited:
"Britannica School." Britannica School. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2013.
BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2013.
"Alexander the Great [Alexander III],." Alexander the Great : The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture Oxford Reference. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2013.

Posted by at 10 comments:
Holland Meier
September 26, 2013
History

Question 1:
Alexander the Great is referred to as The Great because he led a very good army, which I was in. Also he created of one of the largest empires in ancient history. And I’m proud that I was apart of that. In the time of his leadership he conquered Persia, Asia, India, Egypt, the Mediterranean region, and Asia Minor, and I enjoyed conquering all of them. He was very well known and for a while could not be stopped by anyone until his death at the age of 33. When he died, I was very upset. Even though he died young he did conquer a lot of land in a very small time period, and I look up to him for that. Alexander the Great was great because he built one of the largest empires in a very short time span.

Question 2:
When I was a soldier for Alexander the Great, he conquered many countries. Also while he was there, he shared his culture with everyone. I learned a lot abut the cultures from the countries we conquered and from the cultures that were spread across the lands due to Alexander’s massive army and military aggression. Alexander had a settlement in Greece and with the mix of the cultures, it resulted a new Hellenistic Culture. He also peacefully integrated Greek culture in his newly conquered land. Alexander the Great spread Greek culture all the way from the Mediterranean Sea to the borders of India. And it was really cool as I saw that happening. So you see that Alexander spread a lot of culture around the world, and what’s great is that I got to see all of the cultures evolve.

Question 3:

A person to compare to Alexander the Great is Martin Luther King Jr. The reason I chose Marin Luther King Jr. is because everyone knows him because he did great things; such as he tried to bring the world together. He did a very good job at trying to bring hope to Africans American and was a great leader just like Alexander the great. Alexander the Great and Martin Luther King Jr. are a lot alike by how they both took great strides in the life. They were also both great leaders for people.  Even thought a lot of time has pasted since Martin Luther King Jr. was alive people still think he is great and people will probably always think he is great because he lead so many people for a great cause.
Works Cited:
  • Gabriel, Richard. "Alexander the monster: historians say the battlefield atrocities of the Macedonian king were part of his brilliant military strategy. But were they really born of his personality?" MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History Summer 2013: 38+. General OneFile. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.




"Map of the Empire of Alexander the Great, 323 BC." Florida Center for Instructional Technology, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2013. <http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/800/849/849.htm>.
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