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He was coming from a country that from a century tried to look like Greece, the greece of Athens, of Thebai, Sparta, Asia Minor...the Greece of Polis.He began to conquer all the Persian empire, and almost the known world a whole...and slowly involved in a anti-greek state of mind...he saw that Macedonia was only a province on the west of the rising kingdom, the ecumene, and it was senseless to feel like THE GREEK who had naturally ruled on the barbarians! He forgot to be greek and melted his cultural identity to the ones that had grown up on the territories he connquered!that's the greatest face of Alexander...he forgot the greek haughtiness, his victorious role, and dreamed an ecumenic empire, where the winners and the losers were melted toghether as one culture, without differences of status!is it great?also in our globalization times?

Hello, This theme has come up several times already on the forum.
Several members of the forum seemed to opt for the idea that unity was the last thing on Alexander's mind. Would Aristotle have taught him to value unity? In Susa 10000 soldiers of Alexander married 10000 Persians- this single event is what sways me to think that Alexander was looking to bond nations together- east meets west- the occident and the orient. However I think that Alexander seemed to value his own Greek routes. Phillip II was enamored with Greek culture and I am sure that he would have passed on this awe. Also there was the case of the Successors- the Persians soldiers trained to fight for Alexander. Seemingly Pecuestas was asked to raise this force as a threat yet I still can't help but thinking that Alexander was still aiming at some kind of integration or fusion of the two armies.
All the best, Dean.

I also think that you cannot/could not run such a vast empire by establishing a class of masters and another one of slaves. The Macedonians/Greeks alone could not undertake this task and keep the local population out of the power game. So an intermediate class of locals who would have had Greek education (the Greeks used to say - and not many people know that - "Greeks are not those who are born Greeks but those who share our education/values") could take part in administration and rise in hierarchy at time went by. Same thing with the army.
Generally speaking this empire would have to utilize all it's recourses, local or Greek, in order to survive and as we all know, it didn't.
Breacking it up in parts (as it happened with the Diadochi) was not such a bad idea as it seems now because that made each kingdom more flexible and easily "administrasable"! (excuse the word). The problem is that personal ambition got in the way and this resulted to all those endless wars who made them easy pray for the Romans.Regards,
Yiannis