Alexander the Great

At age 13, his father hires Aristotle as his private tutor. For three years, in a rural village called Mieza, the greatest philosopher of the age teaches the boy who will conquer the known world. Aristotle gives him a copy of the Iliad. Alexander will carry it with him for the rest of his life, sleeping with it under his pillow alongside a dagger.

Crosses into Asia with 37,000 troops and defeats the Persian army at the Granicus River. He is 22. Darius III rules an empire stretching from Egypt to India. Alexander has a single kingdom and a massive debt. He charges the Persian cavalry personally.

Arrives at the Oracle of Ammon in the Siwa Oasis after an 8-day march through the Libyan desert. His army nearly dies of thirst. The priests greet him as Son of Zeus. He never tells anyone what the oracle said to him in private. He believes it for the rest of his life.

Destroys the Persian army at Gaugamela, present-day Iraq. Darius has assembled perhaps 250,000 men. Alexander has 47,000. He drives a cavalry wedge straight at Darius, who panics and flees. The Persian Empire, which has lasted 220 years, falls in a single afternoon.

Burns Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire. The richest city in the world. Some sources say Thais, an Athenian courtesan, suggests it during a drunken banquet. Others say Alexander ordered it deliberately to avenge the Persian burning of Athens 150 years earlier. Either way, the fire lasts hours.

Reaches the Hydaspes River in India and defeats King Porus in a monsoon battle, using elephants against elephants. But his army refuses to go further. They've been marching for eight years. They've crossed deserts, mountains, and three empires. His soldiers weep and beg to go home. Alexander locks himself in his tent for three days. Then he turns back.

Dies in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon. He is 32. He'd been drinking and developed a fever that worsened over eleven days. When the common soldiers heard he was dying, they forced their way into the palace and filed past his bed one by one. He was too weak to speak. He waved. Asked on his deathbed to whom he left his empire, he reportedly answered: "To the strongest."

His generals immediately begin fighting over the empire. Within 40 years, it fragments into rival kingdoms: the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in Persia, the Antigonids in Macedonia. None of them can hold what he built. But the Greek language and culture he spread across Asia persist for centuries. A Greek-speaking court rules Egypt until Cleopatra.