THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Egypt and even parts of India, defeating any army that stood in their way. Alexander, now known as ‘the Great’, expanded the Macedonian Empire until it was almost as big as the Persian Empire had been. And wherever he went, he brought Greeks with him. Thousands of them moved abroad, taking with them Greek ideas about drama, philosophy, politics and science.

Greek ideas mingled with Egyptian ideas and Persian ideas and Babylonian ideas and Indian ideas. As a result, a great wave of creativity broke over the empire. Euclid, who lived in Egypt, developed a new type of maths called geometry. Archimedes, who lived in Sicily, invented a water pump and a pulley system. And there was Eratosthenes from Egypt. He calculated the distance

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 Continued from previous page around planet Earth using nothing more than a stick, a well and a shadow.

Alexander died in Babylon at the age of 32. Some think he died of disease, others think he was poisoned. But it didn’t take long after his death for those he had left behind to start fighting for power. By 320 BCE, the Macedonian Empire was in pieces.

The next big empire to come along was like a gigantic hurricane, one that lasted around 1,000 years. The Romans, who came from what is now Italy, had a lot in common with ancient Greece. They had very similar gods, but with different names. The Greek god Zeus was the Roman Jupiter, Hera was Juno, Poseidon was Neptune, and Athena was Minerva. They picked up the Greek alphabet and changed it to work for Latin, their language. Then they spread the alphabet all around Europe, where it was used to write almost all of the European languages.

Adopting ideas from other cultures was a Roman speciality. That’s how they captured Carthage, a powerful city in northern Africa. Carthage was a colony of Phoenicia, a seafaring civilisation based in Canaan.

Most gladiator contests were between two gladiators, but sometimes gladiators were forced to fight hungry wild animals. These contests were called venationes, which means ‘wild beast hunts’ in Latin.

They were hard to beat at sea because they had such advanced ships. So the Romans simply captured a Phoenician ship and studied it. Within about two months, they had built themselves an entire fleet.

Alexander the Great was a role model and hero to the Romans, and by 200 BCE, the Roman war machine was expanding all around the Mediterranean. With each conquest they brought home huge piles of treasure and prisoners of war to become slaves. By 120 CE the Roman Empire was vast. It covered a large part of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

It’s one thing to conquer a huge empire but another to keep it under control. The Romans managed it for hundreds of years, though. One of the secrets of their success was sheer brutality.

In 73 BCE, enslaved people probably accounted for nearly half the population of the capital city, Rome.

That year, Spartacus, an escaped gladiator, led thousands of enslaved people in a rebellion. They fought hard, but were no match for the Roman army. When they were finally rebelling is to keep them very busy. Ruins of huge building projects such as the Colosseum and Circus Maximus in Rome still stand today as a reminder of the enslaved people who built them. captured, the Romans decided to make an example of them. More than 6,000 rebels were nailed to wooden crosses and left to die. This form of execution is called crucifixion. The corpses of the rebels were left hanging on their crosses for years. It was a gruesome reminder of what could happen to those who rebelled against Roman rule.

The design of Roman ships was copied from the Phoenicians.

Another way to keep people from

These enormous buildings were designed to increase the power of the emperor, and make him seem like a god. When the giant Colosseum was opened in 80 CE, the new emperor, Titus, celebrated by giving the people of Rome 100 days of spectacular drama in the form of mock battles, gladiator fights, animal hunts and executions in the new stadium. The emperor came to the games so his people could admire him in all his glory. He was only too happy to see the most violent, bloodthirsty people of Rome all safely surrounded in one location under the watchful eye of his imperial troops. People enslaved by the Romans also built Europe’s first road network, which by about 100 CE criss-crossed more than 7 million square kilometres of the empire. Most of the roads ran in straight lines.

Everything that got in the way, from forests to farms, was destroyed.

By now, the Roman Empire was already falling apart. In 285 CE, Emperor Diocletian had split his vast territory into two parts. The eastern half was ruled from Constantinople, now Istanbul in Turkey. The western half was ruled from Rome. Then, in the late 300s, Rome’s northern enemies started to chip away at the western part of the empire. The most powerful of these was the Hunnite Empire, led by a brilliant warrior called Attila. In 452 CE, his troops approached Rome but couldn’t take it. The harvest had been so poor that there was no food to feed his soldiers.

But Rome’s collapse was only a matter of time. In 476 CE, an army of rebel soldiers led by a soldier named Odoacer defeated the last western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus. Odoacer took over as ruler of a brand-new kingdom he called Italy, and the western Roman Empire was no more. The eastern empire – now called the Byzantine Empire – lasted for about another 1,000 years. But eventually it, too, was swept away by forces beyond its control. :

The Colosseum (left) could seat more than 5O,OOO spectators when it was open for public entertainment. It has survived more than 2,OOO years, although earthquakes and natural erosion have caused parts of the building to collapse. This picture shows it as it stands now, in modern-day Rome, Italy.

1926

The American physicist Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fuelled rocket on March 16th. The rocket, which is pictured above alongside Goddard, who is considered a pioneer of modern rocketry, flew for two seconds and reached an altitude of 12 metres.

1872

When US President Ulysses S. Grant made Yellowstone National Park a protected natural area on March 1st, it became what is now widely considered to be the world’s first national park. Yellowstone is famous for its dramatic waterfalls, hot springs and geysers.