Alexander the Great

The Greeks did not consider Macedonians fully Greek. They spoke a rough dialect that Athenians found barely intelligible, drank their wine undiluted (a habit associated with barbarians), and their kings ruled through personal charisma and military loyalty rather than constitutions or assemblies. To the refined citizens of Athens and Corinth, An ancient kingdom in the northern Greek peninsula, considered semi-barbaric by southern Greeks. Under Philip II and Alexander III, Macedonia transformed from a regional frontier power into the dominant military force of the ancient world, conquering the Persian Empire and spreading Greek culture from Egypt to Central Asia. was a rough frontier kingdom of hard-drinking warriors who happened to speak something resembling Greek.

Within two generations, those warriors would conquer the largest empire the world had yet seen.

Alexander was born in 356 BCE, on the same night — according to legend — that the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus burned down, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The coincidence was later spun into a sign of destiny: one wonder destroyed, another born.