Alexander the Great

Part of Alexandria: A Hellenistic World Podcast · Phillip Register on the Hellenistic world, year by year

Michael Wood writes and presents this BBC documentary series from 1998, retracing Alexander the Great's travels from Macedonia to the borders of India and back to Mesopotamia.

Oliver Stone directed this 2004 epic on Alexander the Great, starring Colin Farrell; American critics were mixed to negative on the casting and runtime, and its $167.3 million gross against a $155 million budget made it a box-office bomb.

Robert Rossen wrote, produced and directed this 1956 CinemaScope film on Alexander the Great, filmed in Spain and released by United Artists, starring Richard Burton as Alexander with a score by Mario Nascimbene.

Part of Greeced Lightning

Sara, Luke, and Sam explore the life of the Macedonian king and general Alexander the Great, weighing four film versions, Irish accents, and a slip mixing Persian Wars with Peloponnesian.

This 2014 documentary miniseries about Alexander the Great is a co-production of ZDF, Arte and ORF for ZDF's brand Terra X; it premiered on Arte as a 90-minute film before airing on ZDF as a two-part series.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Adrian Goldsworthy

Part of The Ancients

In October 331 BC, on the plain of Gaugamela, a 25-year-old Alexander faced a large army gathered by the Persian king Darius III; Tristan gives a detailed run-down of the battle that would decide the fate of the Persian Empire.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Steele Brand

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

With Meg Finlayson

Liv speaks with Meg Finlayson about Alexander the Great and Macedon, weighing history and mythology against the 2004 film adaptation.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Adrian Goldsworthy

Part of The Ancients

With Adrian Goldsworthy

Tristan Hughes and Dr Adrian Goldsworthy cover the sieges of Tyre and Gaza in 332 BC, Alexander's Egypt campaign, the Battle of Gaugamela, Persepolis's fall, and Darius III's demise as Alexander's army pushes further east into Bactria and Afghanistan.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Edmund Richardson

Part of History Unplugged Podcast

With Nic Fields

After his victory at Gaugamela in 331 BC, Alexander's Macedonian and Greek army fought its last major battle in 326 BC against King Poros on the Hydaspes River, moving a select force across it by feints and deception.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Adrian Goldsworthy

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Military historian Adrian Goldsworthy asks how much of Alexander's success he owed to the work of his father Philip II of Macedonia.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Tristan Hughes, Adrian Goldsworthy

Adrian Goldsworthy joins Tristan to discuss how Philip transformed Macedon into the dominant power in the Central Mediterranean, and how Alexander then conquered the Persian Empire and marched as far as the Indus.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Pat Wheatley

Professor Pat Wheatley of the University of Otago discusses Alexander III of Macedon, known as Alexander the Great, who conquered vast territory in a short time and defeated the formidable Achaemenid Empire.

Part of Alexandria: A Hellenistic World Podcast

A companion episode presents what Alexander may have been taught at Mieza in his tutors' own words, with excerpts from Aristotle's Politics and Anaximenes's Rhetoric to Alexander.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Adrian Goldsworthy

Part of The Rest Is History

Tom and Dominic trace the dazzling career of Alexander the Great, from Macedonia to his mysterious journey to the oracle at Siwa, asking whether he was man or god, visionary or blood-stained tyrant.

Part of The Rest Is History

In the second part of the Alexander the Great special, Tom and Dominic ask whether Alexander might have kept his empire together had he lived, what killed him, and why he appears in the Qur'an.

Part of Tides of History

With Fred Naiden

The episode presents Professor Fred Naiden's view of Alexander the Great as a deeply religious figure, arguing that his beliefs about religion were at the core of understanding his actions, unlike the warrior king so often seen in modern treatments.

Part of New Books in Ancient History · Scholars on their new books, interviewed by a peer; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Richard Billows

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Dan Snow

Part of HistoryExtra podcast

With Edmund Richardson

Historian Edmund Richardson traces how Alexander the Great, king of a small Greek kingdom, built an empire stretching from Greece to India and defeated the Persian empire, all by the age of thirty, exploring his life and mysterious death.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit · Dan Snow on history's defining moments; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Tristan Hughes

Part of History of Persia

After the Battle of Issus, Alexander the Great and his Macedonian force move down the Persian Empire's western coast while Parmenion races through Syria; cities surrender easily until the difficult Siege of Tyre.

Part of The Ancients

With Adrian Goldsworthy

Taking place in 334 BC, the Battle of Granicus was Alexander the Great's first major victory against the Persian Empire; Tristan and Adrian Goldsworthy discuss his tactics at the beginning of the campaign, before he had built his formidable reputation.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas · Johanna Hanink talks with fellow Hellenists about their latest work

With Rachel Kousser

Part of Ancient History Fangirl · Two Millennial women on emperors, assassins and mythological mayhem; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Rachel Kousser

Rachel Kousser's Alexander at the End of the World (Mariner Books, 2024) follows Alexander after he took Persepolis in 330 BC and his troops burned it, chasing rebellious ex-Persians into India.

Part of In Our Time

Born into the Macedonian royal family in 356 BC, Alexander the Great gained control of Greece and conquered the Persian Empire by defeating its king Darius III, spreading Greek culture and language into regions it had not reached before.

Part of New Books in Ancient History · Scholars on their new books, interviewed by a peer; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Frank L. Holt

Part of The Ancients

With Simon Elliott

Both described as the greatest military commander in the ancient world, Alexander the undefeated conqueror and Caesar, critical in creating what later became the Roman Empire, are compared by Tristan and Dr Simon Elliott, analysing leadership styles and victories.

Part of Alexandria: A Hellenistic World Podcast · Phillip Register on the Hellenistic world, year by year

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

The team discusses magazine issue XVI.6, Alexander versus Darius, on how the king of Macedon, at just 20, spent two years securing his northern borders and Greece before crossing the Hellespont in 334 to invade Achaemenid Persia.

Part of The Ancients

Alexander the Great and the Queen of the Amazons reportedly had sex for 13 days solid, and the record on his male lovers stays an open question; Kate Lister interviews Tristan Hughes about it on Betwixt the Sheets.

Part of The Ancients

With Anthony Delaney, Madeline Pelling

After ascending the throne aged 20 in 336 BCE, Alexander the Great's rule started with mass executions and political assassinations; in this crossover with After Dark, Tristan chats to Dr Anthony Delaney and Dr Madeline Pelling about his bloodthirsty reign.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast · Panel discussions from Ancient Warfare Magazine; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Tides of History

The episode follows Alexander the Great's campaigns beyond his defeat of the Persian king Darius III, into the Iranian Plateau, Central Asia, and finally south into India.

Part of The Ancients

In this second part Alexander begins a full-blooded assault on the Persian Gates, and Tristan finds out how this battle for the Persian heartlands, dubbed the Persian Thermopylae, ended.

Part of The Ancients

In January 330 BC a small Persian force blockaded Alexander's route through the Zagros Mountains at the Persian, or Susian, Gates; Tristan covers the events following Alexander's victory at Gaugamela that led to this clash, dubbed the Persian Thermopylae.

Part of Tides of History

The episode describes the troubled final years of Alexander's reign, when his soldiers were spent from campaigning even as the king wanted to keep fighting, until his sudden death left the generals to decide the empire's fate.

Part of Tides of History · Patrick Wyman's survey of the deep past; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Tides of History · Patrick Wyman's survey of the deep past; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Tides of History

The episode credits Philip of Macedonia as a towering figure, assassinated in 336 BC at the peak of his powers, leaving Alexander a kingdom he expanded beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

Part of History of Persia

Alexander the Great had many relationships, romantic and familial, from his parents Olympias and Philip to a vast array of step-mothers, siblings, and at least four romantic partners in a Macedonian royal family as vast as it was controversial.

Part of History of Persia · Persia from Cyrus onward; only the episodes where the Greek world is the subject are indexed

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Ali Ansari

Part of HistoryExtra podcast

With Alex Rowson

Historian Alex Rowson tells Spencer Mizen that Alexander the Great's talents as a warrior and empire-builder grew from an upbringing marked by political assassinations, a dysfunctional relationship with his father and the finest martial training money could buy.

Part of History Unplugged Podcast

With Anthony Everitt

Alexander the Great died in 323 BC at Babylon, leaving an empire stretching from Greece to India; guest Anthony Everitt asks whether, had he lived, he might have conquered Europe and circumnavigated Africa.

Part of Tides of History

The episode imagines a Macedonian soldier called Red Cleitus and asks how he spent the vast amounts of coin he plundered and earned fighting across Asia under Alexander the Great.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The episode asks who is better at holding a grudge, Greeks or Persians, whether Alexander was running away from something or someone, what the connection with Thundercats is, why some Romans criticised him, and why his campaign ended.

Part of Tides of History

The episode asks how history would look different if Alexander the Great had died at the Granicus River in 334 BC, and whether Macedonia would still have conquered most of Asia.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

The conclusion to the saga of Alexander the Great: the crossing of the Gedrosian Desert, management of the empire, and a case study on the king's cause of death, among other topics.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The episode asks where Alexander was buried, what Julius Caesar said on visiting his tomb, whether that tomb has since been found and covered up, and how Judaism and Christianity were influenced by Alexander.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The opening episode of Famous Macedonians covers Philip and Olympias, Alexander's parents, asking how many wives Philip had, what Olympias's real name was, and why the battle of Chaeronea took place.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The episode covers Alexander, his tutor Aristotle, and his closest friend Hephaestion, asking whether Hephaestion was Alexander's lover, which continent Aristotle named, how Alexander humiliated the Spartans, and how Alexander influenced Asia.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Sarah Saey, Hazem Balousha

Fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip found coins from the reign of Alexander the Great, and a strangely similar hoard later surfaced at a London auction house.

Part of Kings and Generals · Military history in campaigns and battles; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The episode links Hanukkah to Greece, asks why Alexander attacked the Persians, whether running naked in cemeteries really happened, how Alexander defeated the Persian king, how long his longest siege lasted, and why the Egyptians saw him as a liberator.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

Alexander's travels and tribulations in Egypt and the nature of godhood, closing with the final confrontation with Darius at Gaugamela.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The final episode of the Alexander the Great series asks who his unknown brother was, how Macedonia influenced Pompeii, who the men were that built and destroyed Alexander's empire, and why Alexander is still such a big deal.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The opening episode asks whether Alexander was Greek or Macedonian, names the philosopher who ghosted young Alexander, and asks where the Greek gods supposedly lived and whether Alexander believed he belonged among them.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The episode asks why other Europeans called Greece nationalistic and insane, what the 'Macedonian language' is, whether Greece has invaded Macedonia, who wanted a 'Macedonian' state, and how Alexander expresses Greece more than anyone.

Part of Garner's Greek Mythology

Patrick Garner follows Alexander's ten-year military career, the campaign that earned him the moniker Alexander the Great, under the banner that nothing ensures success like divine intervention, and that matters can go badly once it ends.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Katherine Pangonis

Historian Katherine Pangonis joins Dan to tell how Alexander the Great, known as 'the two-horned one' by his enemies, besieged the defiant city of Tyre from bloody beginnings to the bitter end.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

The early life of Alexander the Great, with omens of greatness and some jilted lovers, and a look at the historiography around it, in a remastered version with higher quality audio.

Part of Not another Greek History podcast!

The episode asks which countries mislead tourists, what movies and shows have been made about Alexander, who his unknown brother was, and what the historical sources are.

Part of Kings and Generals

Alongside the formidable Companions and the Macedonian phalanx, Alexander the Great fielded many further units drawn from beyond his Macedonians, many of which specialized in roles critical to some of his greatest military triumphs.

Part of Kings and Generals

Continuing the series on the armies and tactics of the Ancient Greeks, this covers the logistics of the Macedonian Armies and how the armies of Alexander the Great and Philip traveled and were supplied.

Part of Kings and Generals

After Philip II of Macedon reformed the infantry, cavalry and siege weapons, his son Alexander the Great built on that work, creating an army that conquered the Achaemenid Empire with elite units like the Silver Shields and Royal Agema.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

With Philip gone, can Alexander take the reins of the kingdom and keep it together through the Balkan campaigns, before even stepping foot into Asia?

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

A listener named tadejtomic1943 asks what army Alexander Molossus commanded in his Italian campaigns, how many men it held, whether the Macedonian Phalanx first fought there, and his ultimate goal in Italy.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Valentine, referencing the article 'Men you can Trust,' asks why no foreign invader tried to take Macedonia while the bulk of Alexander's army was in Asia and India.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Juan asks whether the Macedonian armies of Philip and Alexander, almost invincible in their own time, were uniquely competent, or whether it was the commanders who came after Alexander who simply could not measure up.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Daniel asks about a letter Plutarch records from Anaxarchus to Alexander describing worlds innumerable, and whether it contradicts, or anticipates, the familiar story that Alexander wept for having no more worlds left to conquer.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Curt asks whether Alexander the Great's army introduced Pankration to India, and whether it could have contributed to the later spread of martial arts from India to China and other Asian countries.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Curt wonders why Alexander the Great did not look westwards, toward Rome, during his conquests, prompting Murray to work through a series of what-ifs.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Juan asks whether Philip and Alexander's pike phalanx troops were uniquely competent and trained, given that later 'Macedonian' style armies seem hit and miss, or whether their later commanders just were not as good.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Manvir asks whether Alexander could have convinced his men to press further into India, whether fear of facing war elephants was a reason his army turned back, and whether this was reflective of poor morale.

Part of History Unplugged Podcast

Alexander the Great conquered the known world and beyond without modern communications; this episode asks how he supplied tens of thousands of soldiers deep in hostile territory, far from home, for over a decade.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Angelos Chaniotis

Angelos Chaniotis's Age of Conquests (Harvard UP, 2018) traces how Alexander's successors built an empire from the eastern Mediterranean as far as present-day Afghanistan, later dismantled one by one by Rome.

Part of Ad Navseam

The tomb and body of Alexander simply vanished, and the search runs from Babylon to Memphis, Alexandria and even Venice, though some of the greatest Caesars once visited the tourist attraction.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Tristan Hughes

Tristan explains how Alexander the Great's death at Babylon in 323 BC triggered a gore-soaked showdown among his commanders and, within a fortnight, the first siege of the post-Alexander age.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Graham Wrightson

Part of The Ancients

Focussing on 323 to 320 BC, Tristan's book tells the story of Thibron, a Spartan mercenary captain who set out from Crete with around 6,000 battle-hardened mercenaries to forge his own Greco-Libyan empire in North Africa after Alexander's death.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Charlotte Dunn

Dr Charlotte Dunn of the University of Tasmania returns to discuss how the relationship Greek polities had with the Kingdom of Macedon was mixed after Alexander III's death, some congenial, some acquiescing, others outright revolting.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Tristan Hughes

Tristan reads an abridged chapter from his book on the Perdiccas Years, telling of Spartan mercenary captain Thibron, who left Crete with thousands of mercenaries to forge a Greco-Libyan empire.

Part of The Ancients

With Chris Naunton

After Alexander's death, aged 32, his corpse became a talismanic symbol of legitimacy, and his tomb in Alexandria drew pilgrims until, by the end of the 4th century, all mention of it vanished; Tristan and Dr Chris Naunton discuss theories.

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Tristan Hughes, Chris Naunton

Dr Chris Naunton joins Tristan to explore what happened to the tomb of Alexander the Great, a place of holy pilgrimage in ancient Alexandria until all mention of it disappeared in the 4th century.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Charlotte Dunn

Dr Charlotte Dunn of the University of Tasmania explains how the unexpected death of Alexander III of Macedon, known as Alexander the Great, closed the Classical period and opened the Hellenistic age.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

Tristan Hughes of The Ancients Podcast on his book about the Perdiccas years, 323 to 320 BC, framed around the regent Perdiccas and covering events across Europe and Asia as the Argead Empire struggles.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

The Jews of Judea and the Diaspora after Alexander embrace many aspects of Hellenistic culture while trying to uphold the Laws of Moses, produce the Septuagint, and face tensions that eventually culminate in the Maccabean Revolt.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast · Panel discussions from Ancient Warfare Magazine; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Michael Taylor, Michael Park, Murray Dahm

Part of Tides of History

While Alexander the Great's successors fought over control of his empire, Celtic-speaking migrants moved east along the Danube largely unnoticed by the Greeks to their south, before those Celts launched one of the largest invasions of Greece in recorded history.

Part of Tides of History · Patrick Wyman's survey of the deep past; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of History of Persia · Persia from Cyrus onward; only the episodes where the Greek world is the subject are indexed

Part of Dan Snow's History Hit

With Tristan Hughes

Tristan Hughes tells Dan the almost unbelievable tale of what happened after Alexander the Great died: a titanic struggle for control of his empire, with body snatching and soldiers eaten by crocodiles in the Nile.

Part of The Ancients

With Dan Snow

Tristan Hughes joins Dan Snow to tell what happened after Alexander died: the struggle for control of his empire involved war, body snatching, extremely slow carriage chases and a thousand soldiers eaten alive by crocodiles in the Nile.

Part of Ad Navseam

The episode wraps up Lucian's account of Alexander the False Prophet in Abonoteichus, where the shyster teams up with apprentice Cocconas to go a-bilking with fake eggs, rumors of Asclepius and puppet snakes.

Part of Ad Navseam

Lucian of Samosata, a second-century satirist born in the further reaches of Asia Minor, wrote A True Story and took on the fraudulent shyster Alexander, with Erasmus and Thomas More somehow involved.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

With Trevor Culley

Trevor Culley of the History of Persia Podcast on Oliver Stone's 2004 Alexander, a critical failure on release whose re-cuts have been praised as among the most historically accurate films of the ancient world.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast · The three centuries between Alexander and Actium

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast · Panel discussions from Ancient Warfare Magazine; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Marc de Santis, Myke Cole

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Alexander Jones

Professor Alexander Jones of New York University explains how varied and plentiful Greek calendars were in this region of the Mediterranean in the first millennium BCE.

Part of The Ancients

With Peter Toth

Legends of Alexander the Great were told almost immediately upon his death, often merging fact with fiction; Tristan interviews Dr Peter Toth, curator of the new British Library Exhibition on Alexander the Great, about the Alexander Romance culture.

Part of Kings and Generals

This traces the ancient origins of Macedonia before it became an empire under Philip and Alexander, with a focus on its relationship with the other Hellenic states.

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of Kings and Generals

The fall of the Ptolemies, how the Roman emperors treated Alexander's tomb, what happened to the tale of his corpse under Christian, Muslim, Ottoman and Napoleonic rule of Alexandria, and the theories that surround both to this day.

Part of Kings and Generals

Alexander the Great died on 11 June 323 BC and his body became a continuing source of war, intrigue and mystery; part one of two on its importance for the Diadochi, the Ptolemies, the Romans and the Christians.

Part of The Hellenistic Age Podcast

A bonus episode on the critically panned 2004 Oliver Stone film Alexander, in which the host tries to offer his thoughts on why he likes it.