Mannheim
3 October 2009
bis 21 February 2010
Alexander the Great
and the Opening of the World
In 356 B.C., a son was born to the Macedonian royal couple in their residence in Pella. He would go on to fundamentally and lastingly change the world. Already called ?the great? by his contemporaries, Alexander III is described by ancient literary sources as intelligent, brave, proud, strong-willed and honorable but also as violently tempered and wantonly destructive. He was driven by an indescribable yearning that drove him forward on his legendary expedition against the Persians, from Northern Greece across Asia Minor, the Persian highlands, the Central Asian Steppes and as far as the Indus. Alexander?s contemporaries agreed, ?He is unlike any other human being.? The uniqueness of his character is reflected in some of the portraits of him. After Alexander?s early death in Babylon in 323 B.C., nothing was what it had once been for the peoples of the ancient world between the Greek Aegean and the Indus.
