Did Alexander rule the whole known world?

[LightSpectra]

It is said that he ruled the "entirety of the known world." Is that an exaggeration? From what I understand, he didn't rule over southern Greece (namely, Sparta), nor did he rule Rome (which was becoming a significant power), and he only ruled half of India.

Perhaps I'm mistaken. Is this map accurate?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/MacedonEmpire.jpg

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Who said he ruled the whole known world ?

IIRC he had plans to conquer Arabia at some point. He didn't do that.
Same with India. Where he might have found out about traders from civs further east.
He failed to conquer Dacia.
He knew about civs being in Italy but he thought the east was much richer.

There's probably lots more besides those lands that they knew about, but he didn't conquer.

 

[Mirc]

Who said he ruled the whole known world ?

IIRC he had plans to conquer Arabia at some point. He didn't do that.
Same with India. Where he might have found out about traders from civs further east.
He failed to conquer Dacia.
He knew about civs being in Italy but he thought the east was much richer.

There's probably lots more besides those lands that they knew about, but he didn't conquer.

True! (he did actually conquer a part of Dacia, the southern part - between the Danube and the Balkan mountains but anyway, this doesn't matter; he still failed to conquer the great majority the area of Dacia)

 

[Elrohir]

It is said that he ruled the "entirety of the known world." Is that an exaggeration? From what I understand, he didn't rule over southern Greece (namely, Sparta), nor did he rule Rome (which was becoming a significant power), and he only ruled half of India.

Perhaps I'm mistaken. Is this map accurate?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/MacedonEmpire.jpg

Not unless you're suggesting that India and China were somehow "unknown". He conquered most of the territory owned by the ancient civilizations of the world in the Middle East. He didn't conquer the whole world.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

It is said that he ruled the "entirety of the known world." Is that an exaggeration? From what I understand, he didn't rule over southern Greece (namely, Sparta), nor did he rule Rome (which was becoming a significant power), and he only ruled half of India.

Perhaps I'm mistaken. Is this map accurate?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/MacedonEmpire.jpg

It's just an expression.

Alexander conquered one of the world powers, Persia, which had itself come to be aggregate of many other empires, and then added to it considerably.

I wouldn't call Rome a "rising power" in 323BC, it was little more than a city state that could barely beat the Samnites, much less convince other Italian states to help them.

 

[germanicus12]

Perhaps if he had beaten Rome and the Italian penisula along with Sparta he could possibly get away with being known as the person who ruled the world.

 

[warpus]

Any thoughts on what he would have done next, had he managed to return to Greece?

Gone after the various Greek colonies around the mediterranean maybe? I'm assuming those were independent?

Heretic_cata: why go after Arabia? Isn't it mostly desert?

 

[Tee Kay]

Alexander conquered Persia, that's just about it. (Bactria, Sogdia, Egypt, Phoenicia, etc are vassals of the Persians and doesn't count while Thebes was just a provincial revolt). Hardly the entire known world. Italy, North Africa, Celts, Germania, Dacia, India, Scythia and Greeks in the Western Med remained unconquered.

By the way, the map is accurate, but that's not the entire known world.

 

[Tee Kay]

Any thoughts on what he would have done next, had he managed to return to Greece?

Gone after the various Greek colonies around the mediterranean maybe? I'm assuming those were independent?

Heretic_cata: why go after Arabia? Isn't it mostly desert?

He began constructing a fleet in Cilicia to attack Carthage IIRC. Later the fleet was used by one of his generals (Ptolemy?) to kill off his rivals.

Alexander planned to make Babylon his new capital, not Greece (which is too far away from the bulk of his empire which is in the Middle East). He tried to merge Persian customs with Greek ones and that didn't made his generals very happy. I think it's possible he would've been assassinated by either 1) disgruntled Persians or 2) disgruntled Macedonians, and his empire would probably broke up anyway.

Trade in Arabia esp. in incense is very active at the time IIRC. Alexander would probably want to secure these trade routes.

 

[Bast]

Not unless you're suggesting that India and China were somehow "unknown". He conquered most of the territory owned by the ancient civilizations of the world in the Middle East. He didn't conquer the whole world.

Known but not relevant.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Heretic_cata: why go after Arabia? Isn't it mostly desert?

Yea - like tailedkangaroo said, there were imp trade routes.
I think the kingdom of Saba was very rich at that time.
By looking through wiki it seems there were some other larger ones besides that.

 

[pawpaw]

He began constructing a fleet in Cilicia to attack Carthage IIRC. Later the fleet was used by one of his generals (Ptolemy?) to kill off his rivals.

The fleet was gathered and used by Craterus ( one of Alexanders generals ) to help put down the revolts breaking out in Greece after Alexanders death. And you recall correctly, its was being built for a future campaign against Carthage.

 

[sydhe]

His empire was about the size of Persia under Darius I and Xerxes I. He conquered more of the Indus Valley than they did and may have gone a little further into Turkestan, and of course he dominated Greece and Dacia. (On the other hand, Persia had a foothold in Europe for a while.) Alexander actually had less of Anatolia than Persia since he passed through it so quickly he didn't have time to consolidate his conquests.

As far as the "conquering the whole world" bit, he was stopped at the edge of India when his army mutinied. He was quite prepared to keep going and he knew there was a whole lot of India ahead of him.

I'd think his next conquests would have been southern Arabia and the rest of Asia Minor and Armenia, then Carthage and the Greek settlements in Sicily and Italy.

 

[Mirc]

and of course he dominated Greece and Dacia.

He didn't conquer Dacia... Only the southern part which was anyway not in Dacia until Burebista (86 BC).
I don't know what you mean by domination though.

 

[PersianBoy]

I`m thinking traveling from Greece to India in the way that Alexander gone, how much takes time. I mean walking from Macdonia to greece then Turkey Syria, Egypt, again Syria, mestophenia, Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and then coming back to Babylon by route in above map tales ten years or much or less.
any openion

 

[PersianBoy]

Oh I see that routes go to current Tajikstan also

 

[PersianBoy]

here in Persia we had a King that travel from midle of Iran to Dehli for 3 years about 200 years ago to conqure India

 

[sydhe]

Tamerlane went from the conquest of Delhi to the battle of Ankara in three and a half years. Of course, he'd already beaten up on every other nation in between.

 

[Tee Kay]

Known but not relevant.

India and China are very very far from "not relevant" as far as world history is concerned. Please explain.

 

[aronnax]

Known but not relevant.

I feel insulted