Person
Alexander the Great
King of Macedon who led the war against Persia. The night before Gaugamela he refused a surprise attack with the words "I will not steal a victory."
Life
Alexander III of Macedon was born in 356 BCE at Pella, the son of Philip II and Olympias. He became king in 336 BCE after Philip was killed, and he carried a Macedonian and Greek army into the Persian empire. He defeated Darius at Issus in 333 and at Gaugamela in 331. Plutarch is careful about the second name: the great battle, he says, was at Gaugamela, not at Arbela, which is what most writers called it.
He died in Babylon in 323 BCE. The sentence “I will not steal a victory” belongs to the night before Gaugamela, when his older commanders wanted a night attack and he refused. The picture on this page is Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Alexander at Issus (1529), in the Alte Pinakothek. It is the earlier battle, painted as a world seen from the air. It is not a portrait, and it is not that night.
Albrecht Altdorfer, The Battle of Alexander at Issus, 1529. Alte Pinakothek, Munich. A Renaissance painting of Issus, not of the Gaugamela night, and not a portrait from life. Public-domain reproduction via Wikimedia Commons. Image file. Public domain. See the Commons file for the reproduction status outside the United States.
