welcome back to plutarch's lives on alexander the great so he's a pretty famous guy and a rather adventurous life though filled with tragedy we'll start with philip his father king of ma macedonia king of macedon and macedon and philip had a good day because three good things happened on this one day number one his men had won a battle number two his horse had won a race in the olympic games and number three his wife olympias had given birth to his son alexander pretty good day for philip alexander of course grew up to be he was a rather precocious very learned very intelligent young man young child and philip got all types of tutors for him including the most famous of which aristotle who taught him all types of special things that weren't in addition to what aristotle wrote he taught him some secret things that were never written by aristotle although later they became distant they they were close at one point so family relations were not good for philip for alexander there was a conflict between his father and his mother alexander took his mother's side and there was a wedding and alexander ended up creating all types of getting himself into all types of conflicts at the wedding it wasn't good it further strained relations between alexander and his father as well things were things were just not good so the first time alexander had military a military battle was at age 16 a rather young age when his father philip went off to on his dealings and left alexander in charge and alexander had to lead a leader charge and he did pretty well before that he had a horse they brought a horse who was extremely unruly his name was boucephalis pocephalus and alexander philip and his men there alexander's dad philip and his men they said nobody can tame this horse it's impossible to mount it it's impossible to get on it to ride the horse alexander said nonsense i can do it men are laughing saying yeah right what he did was he noticed that cephalus was standing towards was standing away from the sun so he saw his shadow and he was scared of his shadow so what alexander did he turned the horse procephalus around and that calmed him down and he was able to to mount the horse and alexander brucephilis well was a battle horse a great horse philip was assassinated eventually killed by his own bodyguard gets gives you an idea of what the situation in macedonia was like at the time alexander thrust into his new role as king of macedonia at age 20. the first thing he did was started subduing all the the heathens the barbarians the the surrounding nations because he inherited a kingdom that was beset on all sides by enemies and that's how he wanted it to be he wanted to test his courage all the time he didn't want a settled kingdom now on this battle there was a revolt in thebes and the thebans he wanted them to he just wanted to capture the men who were revolting and the thieves refused wouldn't give quarter he raised the entire city killed many of the people there sold the rest into slavery it was a very very harsh treatment and he later regretted that this was one of his more more brutal military actions in thebes when he was when he first took the kingdom so as we go on alexander is obviously as we know getting into a lot of battles conquering many lands expanding his kingdom one of the first places he goes for is the massive persian empire led by darius many battles with darius and and what's important to note about this is that darius's mother and wife and two unmarried daughters were grieving for darius for their father the daughters were grieving for their father mother and wife too alexander heard of this and he was more moved by their grief than by his success in the battle so he sent a personal messenger to them immediately and said darius is not dead so please come here please uh please don't grieve he was more moved by the grief of his enemy than his own success and he had a track record of treating his enemy extremely well he was very full of clemency towards those that he conquered later when he conquered india he would the king of india porus he would he gave him his position basically said you rule very kind to the conquered however we have a dark side to alexander very dark side there were times when he would be extremely cruel to his friends that sometimes he would even kill some of his friends in conflicts in all types of terrible things there was one instance where he was arguing with one of his friends and he stabbed him with a spear and killed him and alexander was mourning for about two days locked up in his room and this is where things started just getting so bad and dark for alexander because he had two philosophers to counsel him aft in his grief after he killed a close friend of his one philosopher came in and said typical things such as kind warm things like it's going to be okay basically saying things that he didn't want to hear truth truthful things that he didn't do the right thing but he can get over it he can repent things like that and then there was another philosopher who came in and said what are you doing alexander you don't you know that zeus created the law so that he could do whatever he wanted so you alexander stop weeping like a slave you are the law and alexander was emboldened by this and he became more supercilious the word super silly arrogant he became very arrogant and much more harsh and he became quite a terror quite a fear for all of his friends feared by all of his friends he continued conquering there was one point where he always gave the spoils of battle he always distributed all the luxuries to his men to his soldiers who fought with him sadly they became idol he never got into the whole idleness but they did they became luxurious and he always wanted to continue to conquer continue to fight military battles and they would criticize him they would say we're doing well we're living this luxurious life we don't want to conquer anymore and he just wasn't having any of it so that's the downfall of conquering so much that you get the spoils from battle and and your men become spoiled from the spoils i guess that's why they're called spoils anyways now alexander was a real powerful man in battle he was wounded so many times he was hit with a stone on the back of the neck almost lost his eyesight from that hit he was stabbed he was shot with an arrow in different places he almost died multiple times he certainly overcame death in many ways but eventually he did not eventually at around age 33 alexander got sick with a fever and we don't know if he was poisoned or not he may have been poisoned he may have just gotten drank too much wine that was a common thing his best friend hephen died when he drank too much wine he had a fever he drank too much wine and he died and alexander was grieving like no other person for his best friend and he even basically killed an entire city for his for his best after his best friend died and grief in mourning was quite bad alexander was quite a man very imperfect extremely imperfect individual and what what is sad ultimately this the story ended sadly because after he died there was civil war in macedonia his empire that he had spent his life amassing just fell apart into little factions and dissolved and that was it glory and conquering and building up the entire kingdom of macedonia and then just falling right after his death moral of the story is [Music] make contingency plans lest you die and your work comes to naught take care