History UsefulNotes / AlexanderTheGreat

In his lifetime he came to acquire the following titles: Basileus (King) of Macedon, [[ElectiveMonarchy Hegemon of the Hellenic League]], [[TheEmperor Shahanshah of Persia]], [[TheConqueror Pharaoh of Egypt]], Lord of Asia. He is generally considered one of four great conquerors (alongside UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar, UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan and UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte) whose military and political activities literally changed the world. He was taught by Creator/{{Aristotle}} until he was about 16; it's said he was particularly interested in his teacher's lessons in geography and on Homer (he was known for carrying his copy of ''Literature/TheIliad'' with him wherever he went). As a young man he served in his father's army as a commander in his campaigns, and came to power after the assassination of his father by the captain of his bodyguard. He benefited greatly from the military reforms of Philip, who developed the Macedonian phalanx formation and introduced the ''sarissa'' (a pike roughly twice the length of a typical Greek spear), which gave his army an edge over the rest of Greece and a force that could potentially expand the power of Greece outside the Peloponnese peninsula. Alexander promptly put down a series of rebellions around the Balkans and attracted other allies and fence-sitters to support an invasion of Persia. He was elected Hegemon of the Hellenic League (composed of Macedonian allies, subjects and other city-states and kingdoms, except of course for the Spartans[[note]]This was a famous mockery of the Spartans for turning down this offer of invasion, more or less intended by Alexander to note that they missed out on their chance of participating in the greatest glory of Greece and that they couldn't claim any part of Alexander's glory[[/note]]).

* In ''Anime/YuGiOhCapsuleMonsters'', Alexander is the antagonist, possessing his descendant Alex Brisbane, and [[spoiler:wielded the Millennium Ring, which aided his historical conquests]].

Alexander's conquests led to Greek culture being spread to the East, and ideas from the East going back to the West, marking the start of the Hellenistic period, which led to Greek becoming the lingua franca or common tongue of the Ancient Middle East, influencing Persia (Greek remained the language of administration well into the Sassanid Empire in the 6th century A.D.), India, Ancient Arabia, and Judea. In a 2009 poll conducted on Greek television, Alexander the Great was voted the greatest Greek of all time. Still, it cannot be denied that even if his conquests led to the Hellenistic empires and spread Greek culture across the Middle East and North-West India, it more or less marked the end of Greece's Classical era. His poor handling of his succession and addiction to war led to the UsefulNotes/MacedonianSuccessionWars, where his generals (the Diadochi, or "Successors") ended up fighting each other. Eventually Greece would be swallowed by the Romans, who crushed the successor kingdoms of Pyrrhus, Mithridates and other Macedonian holdouts, and thereafter Greece would become part of the Roman Empire, and be DemotedToExtra. Likewise, modern historians note that Alexander set a bad example for the likes of Pompey Magnus, Julius Caesar, and later Napoleon Bonaparte, who all sought to invade, expand, and conquer in imitation of their hero, and much of this came at the expense of land, life and dignity of people on the ground, and it led many of them to a sticky end.

* Implied to be one of the lives of Winters in ''WesternAnimation/{{TMNT}}''.

* The French {{edutainment|Show}} parody web-series ''WebVideo/ConfessionsDHistoire'' has a planned four parter about Alexander, the first part of which was uploaded in December 2022.

* One of the most popular legends in Greece about Alexander the Great has his sister as the main character. It was said that Alexander asked the oracle for a way to live forever who told him how to find 'the immortal water' which would grant immortality to any who drank it. After many hardships, Alexander finds the water but before he had a chance to drink it, his sister Thessalonike, who was a real person, out of ignorance bathes and drinks the water. When she learns what she had done, she tried to commit suicide by jumping into the sea, only for Poseidon to take pity on her and turn her into a mermaid. Since that day she is forever roaming the seas and when she find finds ship she asks the same question "Does King Alexander still live?" if the answer is negative then her rage and grief are so great they make up a storm that sinks the ship, but if the answer is "He lives and reigns and conquers the world" then the mermaid would smile and give the ship calm seas for a safe voyage.

All the surviving sources we have about Alexander's conquests and reign come several centuries after his death [[RashomonStyle and as such there's a lot of internal contradictions and diverging accounts]]. One thing that comes through clearly and which is borne out by archaeological evidence is that the man was a bunch of contradictions piled on top of each other. He was intelligent, rational, loved the arts, philosophy and poetry, but he was also an alcoholic with TestosteronePoisoning and prone to bouts of brutal violence and sadism. He was capable of acts of generosity and kindness to conquered peoples and his subjects (notably, when he asked King Porus how he wished to be treated, Porus said, "like a King", and Alexander rewarded him by restoring him as a monarch, beneath only Alexander himself). However, he was also capable of sadistically tying Batis, the commander of Gaza, to a chariot [[CruelAndUnusualDeath while the man was still alive]] and [[WhatADrag dragging his body around]] apparently - if we can believe the chronicles - [[ComedicSociopathy to cosplay]] as Achilles in ''Literature/TheIliad''. He and his allies claimed to be liberating Persian cities from the tyranny of Darius, only to more or less sack the cities and sell people and inhabitants into slavery. As for patronage of arts and philosophy, he famously destroyed Persepolis, the center of Persian government and learning, and burnt many of its libraries - though it has to be said, the stories go that he did it while drunk out of his mind and was was very remorseful/embarrassed about it later. In Iranian chronicles under the Parthian and Sassanian empires, Alexander is remembered and vilified as the man who destroyed their culture and heritage.