Alexander

Alexander, the army will divide.

Satrapies will revolt.

Without your orders, there'll be war.

We beg you. Tell us who.

Our world is gone now.

I'm the last left alive.

Whether that's a blessing or a curse...

...who by Hades would know.

But I've paid my price...

...in blood.

And in broken dreams.

They say we were the greatest

fighting force ever known to man.

Greater even than the expedition to Troy.

But how can I say it?

How can I tell you what it is like

to be young...

...and to dream big dreams?

To believe when Alexander looked you

in the eye, you could do anything.

Anything.

In his presence, by the light of Apollo,

we were better than ourselves.

Truly, I've known many great men

in my life...

...but only one colossus.

And only now, when old...

...do I understand

who this force of nature really was.

Or do I?

Did such a man as Alexander exist?

Of course not.

We idolize him,

make him better than he was.

Men, all men, reach and fall...

...reach and fall.

In the East, the vast Persian Empire

ruled almost all the known world.

In the West,

the once great Greek city-states...

...Thebes, Athens, Sparta,

had fallen from pride.

For 100 years now, the Persian kings

had bribed the Greeks...

...with their gold

to fight as mercenaries.

It was Philip, the one-eyed,

who changed all this...

...uniting tribes of illiterate sheepherders

from the high and lowlands.

With his blood and guts,

he built a professional army...

...that brought the devious Greeks

to their knees.

He then turned his eye on Persia...

...where it was said the

Great King Darius himself...

...on his throne in Babylon,

feared Philip.

Philip was murdered...

...much to Persia's delight and

perhaps sponsored by their gold.

And Alexander, at 20

became the new ruler of Macedonia.

Announcing revenge

for the death of Philip...

...Alexander liberated

all of the cities of western Asia...

...south to Egypt...

...where he was declared

Pharaoh of Egypt...

...and worshipped as a god.

And finally, he provoked

the rise to battle...

...in the heart of the Persian Empire,

near Babylon.

it was mad.

Forty thousand of us against

hundreds of thousands...

...of barbarian races unknown to us...

...gathered under Darius himself.

East and west had now come together...

...to decide the fate of the known world.

it was the day Alexander

had waited for all his life.

Son of a god.

it was a myth, of course.

At least it started as a myth.

i know.

i was there.

In the crack of the Persian line,

we'll go for the head.

Kill Darius?

The gods have brought him

to us at last.

If I die, it's one Macedonian.

But the Persians, they cannot move

without Darius' command.

Here. Right here, we cut the throat

of the Persian army.

This is madness. You'll never get

within 100 paces of him.

Have you seen the sheer size

of his force?

Not if you hold them on the left,

my brave Parmenion...

...with your son Philotas

for just one, two hours tomorrow.

And you, unbreakable Antigonus,

the center phalanx.

Perdiccas, Leonnatus...

...Nearchus, Polyperchon.

If you pin them on the walls

of your sarissas, here in the center...

...their cavalry will follow me

out to the right.

And when bold Cassander breaks,

stretching their left...

...a hole will open.

Then I and my cavalry-

Our revered Cleitus...

...Ptolemy and Hephaistion.

-will strike through that gap...

...and deal the deathblow

to Darius' head.

Since when, by the light of Apollo, has

cavalry been used to break an infantry line?

What was it we did to

Chaeronea, Parmenion?

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