Alexander the Great

Early life and education

Alexander was born in Pella, the capital of the Kingdom of Macedon, in late July 356 BC, the son of King Philip II and Queen Olympias of Epirus, who claimed descent from Achilles. Plutarch records that on the night of his birth the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus burned down — an omen the priests interpreted as the birth of a destroyer. From age thirteen to sixteen he was tutored by Aristotle at the Temple of the Nymphs at Mieza, where he studied philosophy, medicine, and scientific inquiry, and developed the lifelong love of Homer that led him to carry an annotated copy of the Iliad on every campaign. At twelve he tamed the wild stallion Bucephalus by realizing the horse was afraid of his own shadow; the horse carried him through every major battle for the next twenty years. At eighteen, commanding the Macedonian cavalry at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), he shattered the elite Theban Sacred Band.

Career

When Philip II was assassinated in 336 BC, Alexander seized the throne at age twenty and consolidated control of Greece. In 334 BC he crossed the Hellespont into Asia with roughly 48,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, beginning the campaign that would destroy the Persian Empire. He defeated Darius III at the Battle of the Granicus (334 BC), the Battle of Issus (333 BC), and finally at Gaugamela (331 BC), where outnumbered roughly four to one he led the Companion Cavalry directly at the Persian king. He took Tyre after a seven-month siege by building a causeway across the strait — the mole still stands today as a peninsula. He founded Alexandria in Egypt in 331 BC, was crowned Pharaoh, then pushed across the Hindu Kush, defeated King Porus on the banks of the Hydaspes despite war elephants, and reached the Beas River in modern Punjab. There, after eight years and 11,000 miles, his troops refused to march further. He turned back through the Gedrosian Desert in one of the most catastrophic marches in military history.

Legacy and death

Alexander died in Babylon on the evening of 10 or 11 June 323 BC at age 32, after a fever following heavy drinking — possibly typhoid, possibly malaria, possibly poisoning, the question is still debated. When asked to whom he left his empire, he reportedly replied: “To the strongest.” His generals immediately fought a series of wars (the Wars of the Diadochi) that broke the empire into the Hellenistic kingdoms — Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, Antigonid Macedon — which spread Greek language, philosophy, and civic institutions from the Mediterranean to the borders of India for the next three centuries. Twenty cities he founded survive in some form, including Alexandria, Egypt — still the second-largest city in Egypt today.

Claude Code skills

Frameworks distilled from Alexander’s life, packaged as Claude Code skills. Each skill is invoked with a slash command and grounded in the primary biographies listed under References.

/plugin marketplace add adamtpang/summon.guide
/plugin install alexander

Books

Each Claude Code skill above is grounded in a specific passage of a specific book. These are the primary sources we drew from for Alexander.

Notable quotes

References

Their voice on summon.guide is grounded in:

• Life of Alexander by Plutarch (c. 100 AD)
• The Campaigns of Alexander (Anabasis Alexandri) by Arrian (c. 145 AD)
• Alexander the Great by Robin Lane Fox (1973)

Further reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great