Conquests of Alexander the Great
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Alexander III of Macedon conquered the Persian Empire and led his army to the Indus valley in eleven years without ever losing a battle. He crossed into Asia in 334 BCE with a Greek allied force and beat the Persian king Darius III at the Granicus, at Issus in 333 BCE and at Gaugamela in 331 BCE, after which Babylon, Susa and Persepolis opened to him. Tyre fell after a seven-month siege in 332 BCE and Egypt received him as pharaoh, where he founded Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile. Pushing east, he crossed the Oxus and Jaxartes, defeated the last Persian king in Bactria, and in 326 BCE fought King Porus on the Hydaspes, whose elephants frightened his troops. The army mutinied at the Hyphasis and refused to go further; the long retreat down the Indus and through the Gedrosian desert cost many lives. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BCE, probably of fever, aged thirty-two. His generals, the Diadochi, then split the realm into the Ptolemaic, Seleucid and Antigonid kingdoms. The conquests carried the Greek language, city plans and gymnasia from the Adriatic to the Punjab, opening the Hellenistic age and a long exchange between Mediterranean and Asian cultures.