Questions to ask Alexander the Great

Alexander in brief

Alexander was born in Pella, the capital of Macedon, in 356 BC, the son of King Philip II and Olympias, a princess of Epirus. From about 343 BC Aristotle taught him at Mieza. At 18 he led the cavalry charge at Chaeronea (338 BC) that made Philip master of Greece. When Philip was murdered in 336, Alexander became king at 20. In about eleven years of campaigning he crossed into Asia (334), defeated the Persian king Darius III, took Egypt, Babylon and Persepolis, crossed Central Asia and reached the Punjab. His army refused to go further in 326 BC. He died in Babylon in June 323 BC, aged 32, and his generals carved up his empire.

Why every answer comes secondhand

Several men who marched with Alexander wrote histories: his court historian Callisthenes, his general Ptolemy (later king of Egypt), the engineer Aristobulus, the admiral Nearchus. All are lost. What survives was written much later by authors who used them.

This helps a good interview. Where sources disagree, ask Alexander which version is true and show both in your notes. The anecdotes (the Gordian knot, Diogenes in the sun) are best labelled “Plutarch tells” or “Arrian reports”.

Questions about boyhood, Philip and Aristotle

What the sources say: Plutarch (chapter 6) tells how the boy tamed the horse Bucephalus by turning him to face the sun so he could not see his own shadow. Plutarch (chapter 8) says he kept the Iliad, in a copy corrected by Aristotle, under his pillow with a dagger, calling it provision for the art of war. Relations with Philip broke down after Philip's last marriage, and some ancient writers suspected Olympias, or even Alexander, of a part in Philip's murder. That remains unproven.

1. How did you tame Bucephalus?
2. What did Aristotle teach you, and what did you ignore?
3. Why the Iliad? Did you think of yourself as Achilles?
4. What did you see when you led the cavalry at Chaeronea at 18?
5. Were you afraid your father would disinherit you?

For Aristotle's side, see questions to ask Aristotle.

Questions about conquering Persia

What the sources say: he razed Thebes in 335 BC after it rebelled, sparing, Arrian says, the house of the poet Pindar. He won at the Granicus (334), at Issus (333), where Darius fled and his mother, wife and daughters were captured, and at Gaugamela (1 October 331). Arrian (2.25) says that when Darius offered land and a marriage alliance, his general Parmenion said he would accept if he were Alexander, and Alexander replied that so would he, if he were Parmenion. Tyre fell in 332 after a seven-month siege, with mass killing and enslavement afterwards.

1. Why did you think a small Macedonian army could defeat the Persian Empire?
2. What happened at Gordium? Did you cut the knot or pull out the pin? (Arrian gives both versions.)
3. Why did you treat Darius's captured family with respect?
4. Why refuse Darius's peace offer?
5. Why were Thebes and Tyre punished so harshly?

Questions about Egypt, Persepolis and becoming a Persian king

What the sources say: in Egypt in 331 BC he founded Alexandria and travelled through the desert to the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, where, Plutarch says, the priest greeted him as son of the god. In 330 the palace at Persepolis burned. Arrian says it was revenge for the Persian burning of Athens in 480; Plutarch, Diodorus and Curtius tell of a drunken party egged on by an Athenian woman, Thaïs. He then began wearing some Persian dress and in 327 tried to make Greeks and Macedonians bow to him in the Persian manner (proskynesis); his historian Callisthenes led the resistance and Alexander dropped it (Arrian 4.10 to 12). In 328, at a drinking party in Maracanda (Samarkand), he killed his friend Cleitus, who had saved his life at the Granicus.

1. What did the oracle at Siwa really tell you?
2. Who decided to burn Persepolis, and do you regret it?
3. Why ask Macedonians to bow to you like Persians?
4. What happened the night you killed Cleitus?
5. Why did you marry Roxana, and later arrange the mass weddings of your officers to Persian noblewomen at Susa in 324?

Questions about India, Hephaestion and the end

What the sources say: in 326 BC he defeated King Porus at the Hydaspes and, Arrian says, asked him how he wished to be treated; Porus answered “like a king”, and Alexander gave him back his kingdom. Soon after, at the Hyphasis (Beas) river, his exhausted army refused to go on. On the way home he was badly wounded in an attack on a town of the Malli, and his army suffered terribly crossing the Gedrosian desert. His closest friend Hephaestion died in 324; he died in Babylon in June 323 after a fever lasting about ten days. The cause is unknown: illness and poison have both been argued.

1. What did Porus say to you after the battle?
2. How did it feel when your army refused to march further east?
3. Why lead the army back through the Gedrosian desert?
4. Who was Hephaestion to you?
5. Did you ever regret anything you did on campaign?

Plutarch (chapter 62) adds that a young Indian, Androcottus, saw Alexander and later said he could easily have conquered the region. Historians identify him as Chandragupta Maurya, who went on to found the Maurya empire.

Sample answers from the sources

Question: Aristotle published lessons you thought were private. Why did that upset you? Plutarch quotes Alexander's letter of complaint:

Question: Why did you invade Persia? Arrian gives his reply to a letter from Darius:

Question: What did you think of Diogenes? A sourced answer, in paraphrase: Plutarch (chapter 14) says that when the philosopher asked him only to stand out of his sunlight, Alexander said that if he were not Alexander, he would wish to be Diogenes. It is an anecdote, not a record.

Questions he could not answer

• What happened after his death: the wars of his generals, the Successors, and the end of his family line.
• Rome as a great power, or Julius Caesar, who is said to have wept at the thought that Alexander had done so much by his age.
• Maps showing the Americas. He believed the eastern edge of the world, the encircling Ocean, lay not far beyond India.
• Modern national arguments over whether he belongs to Greece or North Macedonia. Keep them out of the interview.
• How he is remembered in Iran. Later Zoroastrian writings call him accursed for destroying Persepolis, while Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (about 1010) makes him, as Iskandar, half Persian. Worth a line in your notes.

Where to read the ancient sources

Project Gutenberg has E. J. Chinnock's translation of Arrian's Anabasis and the Dryden translation of Plutarch's Lives, which includes Alexander. The Perseus Digital Library at Tufts has Greek texts and translations of Arrian and Plutarch with section numbers. Read Arrian for the campaign and Plutarch for the man, and note the differences.

Yuga's Alexander the Great is an AI recreation built from these sources, useful for rehearsing a project interview aloud. It is not Alexander and it can be wrong; cite Arrian and Plutarch in your work. Compare him with Rome's great general in Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar compared and questions to ask Julius Caesar.