Alexander III’s Empire:
Alexander III’s Empire:

Macedonian, Achaemenid or Oecumenic Greek?

Summary/Abstract: In less than twelve years (334–323 BC) Alexander the Great built a vast empire stretching from Macedon in the West to Ancient India in the East. Alexander united the then known world and its different populations under a single political institution, but he did not create deep intercultural connections among the Macedonians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the many populations of the Achaemenid Empire, nor did he establish a long-lasting universal administrative system for all provinces. Scholarship has often excused Alexander’s lack of interest in renovating the political fabric of the Persian Empire as the inevitable consequence of the shortness of his rule; it has interpreted his actions as those of a brutish conqueror when he rejected or took down Achaemenid institutions, or as those of the ‘last of the Achaemenids’ – after Pierre Briant’s expression – when he adopted Oriental etiquette. The aim of this paper is to assess the nature of Alexander’s statesmanship, specifically with regard to his impact on the local populations of the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia. Undeniably, Alexander was more a conqueror and a general rather than a political leader; however, his politico-administrative choices, which combined conservation and transformation, show acute political awareness and a strong instinct for adaptation in line with the different ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the empire. This is especially noteworthy if we consider his fourth-century BC context. In fact, from the ancient Greek sources it appears that Alexander fostered some intercultural exchanges, but also wanted to keep ethnic identities and their role in the empire distinct. The paper also seeks to challenge ancient and modern scholarship’s ‘Hellenocentric’ view and to investigate how local societies in Iranian Plateau and Central Asia actually responded to Alexander’s leadership.

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