Alexander III, known by the name the Great (of Macedon) (356–323 BCE), king of Macedon, was the son of Philip II and the Epirote princess Olympias. His father possessed the gift of an outstanding practitioner, leader, and organizer, while his mother was a woman of untamed temperament, strange, mysterious, prone to hallucinations, and inspiring superstitious fear; and Alexander himself stood out among people for the brilliance of his imagination, which guided his life, and among romantic dreamers for what he achieved. He conquered a vast number of Eastern countries and peoples, which merged into an empire. He created a centralized organization with tax collectors. The introduction of a new coinage with a fixed silver content, based on the Athenian standard, replacing the old bimetallic system widespread in Macedon and Persia, across all conquered territories, facilitated trade development, and this, together with the influx of large quantities of gold and silver from the Persian treasury, laid the foundation for economic prosperity. The founding of more than seventy new cities by Alexander—according to Plutarch—opened a new chapter in the history of Greek expansion.
He was born in Pella on July 29, 356 BCE, at 11:30 AM. In his childhood, he was surrounded by the atmosphere of the struggle of the Greeks (Hellenes) for unification and against the Persian Empire. His worldview and character in childhood were shaped by his tutor Lysimachus, who instilled in Alexander a love for Homer and implanted in him the idea of the identity of Alexander’s fate with that of his ancestor on his mother’s side, Achilles. The second person whom Alexander called his mentor was Leonidas, who raised the prince in the Spartan spirit and taught him various military sciences. And when Alexander was fourteen, in 343–342 BCE, we see in his horoscope the birth during a lunar eclipse. The Sun with Venus and Chiron fell on the Lunar Node (the Dragon’s Tail), and the Moon was near the Dragon’s Head. In astrology, such a fate is considered fatal, meaning such a person is rigidly programmed, with no choice. The Sun near the Midheaven—he was destined to become a ruler. The Sun in Leo—a strong, domineering character capable of inspiring the people’s admiration and being the center of attention. The Sun’s conjunction with Chiron made him quite cunning, diplomatic, and flexible. With Venus—he valued harmony, was loving and beloved. At the same time, perhaps surprisingly for a military leader, he was somewhat romantic.
In the 9th house, which governs teachers, Mercury stands in conjunction with Selena in Cancer. This is why his education was so extraordinarily successful. Having such a teacher as Aristotle meant everything. Everything bright within him was the result of reading, learning, and respect for tradition (it is known that Alexander carried throughout his life a passionate, ardent love for Homer). However, his personality was formed not at all for poetry but for the most brutal wars! He was trained in military affairs from an early age. At sixteen, he ruled Macedon without Philip and suppressed a rebellion of mountain tribes on the northern border; in the following year (338 BCE), he led the attack on the “Sacred Band” (an elite unit of heavily armed warriors from the city of Thebes) at the Battle of Chaeronea and crushed it. At nineteen, a threat arose to Alexander’s right to the throne—his father married a second time and fathered another son. But in 336 BCE, in the presence of guests who had gathered from all over Greece for the wedding of his daughter to Alexander of Epirus, Philip was assassinated unexpectedly. It is clear that the assassin’s hand was guided by someone from the royal entourage; among others, Alexander himself could not escape suspicion.
In the horoscope, we see the transit of Jupiter and the Sun–Mars conjunction in the 8th house—participation in extreme conflicts. The transit Mars was near the Ascendant (the point of the Self) and Lilith (Black Moon), activating the worst qualities of the personality. A person is inclined to be aggressive and drawn into violent actions. In such a situation, Alexander could quite well have begun his “career” with indirect involvement in his father’s murder. When the rising planet at birth is Lilith, i.e., the Black Moon is on the Ascendant in Scorpio, a person may become a sadist and pervert, a maniacal killer and alcoholic (Mars in the 8th house square Neptune), a professional leader—a “terminator” (Pluto in Aries in the 6th house). Later, feasts and celebrations in Alexander’s life often led to unexpected deaths. For example, in 329 BCE, in a drunken quarrel, he killed Cleitus, one of his most loyal commanders; but his army and close friends, seeing how deeply he suffered and feeling his guilt, passed a decree posthumously accusing Cleitus of treason. Alexander was not the only contender for the vacant throne, but with the recognition and support of the army, he soon swept aside all his rivals. The newborn son of Philip and Cleopatra, as well as Alexander’s cousin Amyntas, were put to death, and Alexander took up the unfinished works of his father. These actions stood on the threshold of opening brilliant glory—the invasion of the domains of the great Persian king. A powerful army was assembled from the united Greek forces. The elimination of Philip became a reason for the northern and western mountain peoples, as well as the Greek states, to rise up. The demonstration of force in Greece, led by the new king of Macedon, instantly sobered hotheads, and at the council in Corinth, Alexander was recognized as the commander-in-chief of the army of the Hellenistic world in the struggle against the barbarians, replacing his father Philip.
In the spring of 335 BCE, he marched from Macedon northward, crossed the Balkans, and, having crushed the mountain tribes, put an end to the war with them. His army demonstrated hitherto unseen skills and discipline. Then he advanced through the land of the Triballi (Rumelia) to the Danube and brought these tribes to submission. Seeking to satisfy his craving for the unusual and wishing to impress the imagination of the entire world, he crossed to the other bank of the Danube (from the perspective of contemporary military art, an incredibly complex technical task) and burned the fortified city of the Getae. Alexander and his army advanced directly through the mountains, crushed the Illyrians, and restored the prestige and power of Macedon in that region. At this time, news reached him that there was unrest in Greece and that Thebes had taken up arms. Within a few days, the city, which had held a prominent position in Greece just a generation earlier, was taken. Now Alexander showed no half-measures: the city was utterly destroyed, with the exception of the temples and the house where the great Greek poet Pindar had once lived. Now it could be believed and hoped that for some time the stunned Greeks would not trouble the Macedonian king.
The activity of the Panhellenic League against the barbarians resumed. In the spring of 334 BCE, Alexander crossed into Asia with an army consisting of Macedonians, Illyrians, Thracians, and contingents from the Greek states—totaling 30,000 to 40,000 men. The gathering point of the army was the city of Abydos on the Hellespont. Alexander himself, after crossing, first visited the site where ancient Troy had stood and there made sacrifices to Athena Ilion, took for himself the shield that, according to legend, had belonged to Achilles. He left offerings to the great dead of Homeric tales—this eloquently attests that in the soul of the young king, this enterprise appeared in poetic splendor, which would later be assessed differently depending on the role they assign to imagination in human affairs.The Persians were defeated, Darius fled, leaving his family in Alexander’s hands. In response to Darius’ letter—the king of the Persian Empire, who offered peace and a division of Persia—Alexander replied arrogantly, recounting all the past sufferings of Greece and demanding unconditional surrender to him as the lord of Asia. While the siege of Tyre continued, Darius sent another letter with a new proposal: he would pay a colossal ransom of thousands of talents for his family and cede to Alexander all his lands west of the Euphrates. It is said that Parmenion remarked, “I would have agreed, had I been Alexander.” “So would I,” was Alexander’s famous reply, “had I been Parmenion.”
The assault on Tyre in July 332 BCE became Alexander’s greatest achievement; it was followed by a massive massacre and the enslavement of its inhabitants, mostly women and children. Leaving Parmenion in Syria, Alexander moved north without resistance until he reached Gaza. The city stood on a high hill, and its fierce resistance delayed him there for two months. During a sortie by the enemy, he suffered a serious shoulder wound. In November 332 BCE, he arrived in Egypt, where the people welcomed him as a liberator.
In Alexander’s horoscope, Jupiter—the planet of royal charisma—was exactly on the Ascendant that year. He had the opportunity to ascend to the “higher level” of his fate—to become a teacher and enlightener of the conquered peoples. However, Jupiter in his chart is in Virgo, in a weak position—he simply began to touch the gods of the conquered lands, tribes, and nations.
In Memphis, Alexander sacrificed to the sacred Egyptian bull Apis and was crowned with the traditional double crown of the pharaohs, thereby placating the local priests and securing religious support for the rule of the Macedonian king. He spent the winter organizing the administration of Egypt, appointing provincial governors from the local nobility while keeping military garrisons in the cities under the command of loyal Macedonians. He founded the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the western branch of the Nile and sent an expedition to the river’s headwaters to investigate the causes of its annual summer flooding.
From Alexandria, he went to Paraetonium, and from there, with a small detachment, to visit the Siwa Oasis, home to the famous oracle of the god Amon. The priests of Amon greeted Alexander with the traditional salutation as the pharaoh, the son of Amon. He posed several questions to the oracle about the success of his campaign but received no answers. Nevertheless, he still used this visit to his advantage. Later, this episode became the basis for the story that he was recognized as the son of Zeus, thereby contributing to his “deification.”
In Alexander’s horoscope, we see a weak Neptune in Virgo, afflicted by Mars in the 8th house (illusionary plans and dreams driven by the need to justify his pathological cruelty). Alexander even wrote to Aristotle, demanding philosophical proof of the political necessity of declaring himself a god.
In the spring of 331 BCE, he returned to Tyre, appointed the noble Macedonian Asclepiodorus as governor of Syria, and prepared to march deep into the Persian state, into Mesopotamia. With the conquest of Egypt, his power along the entire eastern coast of the Mediterranean was unchallenged; it was absolute. In his horoscope, the transiting North Node, or the Dragon’s Head, was conjunct Jupiter, while transiting Neptune and Jupiter were moving through his 1st house, making him divinely great (and, it must be noted, in his own eyes!).
In Persepolis, he solemnly burned the palace of Xerxes to the ground as a symbol that the pan-Hellenic war, avenging the earlier desecration of Greek sanctuaries, had come to an end. This is likely the intended meaning of the act, though later tradition explains it as a drunken revelry inspired by the Athenian courtesan Thaïs. Lilith in Scorpio in quintile aspect to the Moon in Capricorn drove King Alexander the Great to reckless acts and indulgence in his bad mood.
Eager to avenge the desecrated Greek sanctuaries of Asia Minor, the mad king inflicted irreparable damage on Persian culture. During the burning of Persepolis, the oldest copies of the Avesta, written in gold letters on oxhides, were destroyed. Some knowledge was lost forever, as the living carriers of the Magi’s teachings—priests and teachers—were killed. After the skirmish near modern-day Shahroud, the usurper stabbed Darius and left him to die. Alexander sent Darius’ body for burial with full honors in the royal mausoleum in Persepolis.
With Darius’ death, Alexander faced no further obstacles to declaring himself the great king, and in the Rhodian inscription of that year (330 BCE), he is called “Lord, Master of Asia”—that is, of the Persian Empire. Soon after, coins minted in Asia bore his profile with the title of king. At this point, he began to destroy his companions with particular cruelty, moving toward Eastern absolutism. This growing tendency was reflected in the attire worn by Alexander, modeled after that of the Persian kings. Shortly afterward, in Bactria, he attempted to impose Persian court ceremonies, including prostration before the king—a custom familiar to the Persians but associated with divine worship and intolerable to free Greeks and Macedonians. Even Callisthenes, the historian whose flattery may have encouraged Alexander to see himself as a god, indignantly refused this humiliating ritual. The laughter of the Macedonians exposed the failure of the experiment, and Alexander, being wise enough, retreated. Soon afterward, Callisthenes was accused of involvement in a court conspiracy against the king’s life and executed (according to another version, he died in prison).
Jupiter in Alexander’s horoscope is in the 11th house—the house of friends. His charisma, reputation, and authority rested on the alliance of equals, on a close circle of like-minded supporters and patrons. After transiting Neptune (the planet of illusions) began its journey through his 1st house—the house of image—and the Dragon’s Head moved through his 10th house—the house of power, he decided that he was a deity. His former friends began to irritate him. A dark streak of misfortune began, and he started to reap the consequences of his actions, decisions, and deeds.
Alexander then advanced into India, but his army refused to follow him amid unrelenting tropical rains—the physical and mental strength of the warriors was at its limit. The discontent was led by Alexander’s chief commander, Coenus. The army’s steadfastness forced Alexander to turn back. He continued his policy of replacing senior officials and executing negligent governors, a practice he had already begun in India. Between 326 and 324 BCE, he removed more than a third of his satraps and executed six for treason.
In Media, three commanders were accused of extortion, summoned to Carmania, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. During this period, transiting Uranus and Jupiter were moving through his 7th house—the house of partners and marriage. The Dragon’s Head was traversing his 8th house of death. He eliminated many of his comrades. He married and arranged the marriages of eighty of his companions!
Yet his companions were not idle. In the spring of 324 BCE, Alexander returned to Susa, where he discovered that his chief treasurer, Harpalus, fearing punishment for embezzlement, had fled to Greece with six thousand mercenaries and five thousand talents of silver.
In Susa, Alexander held lavish celebrations marking the conquest of the Persian Empire and his own wedding, as well as those of his eighty officers: as part of his policy of uniting Macedonians and Persians into a single race, they took Persian wives. Alexander and Hephaestion married the daughters of Darius, Stateira and Drypetis, respectively, while ten thousand of his soldiers married local women and received generous gifts from him. However, his policy of ethnic fusion increasingly soured his relations with the Macedonians, who utterly disapproved of his new vision of empire.
His determination to include Persians in the army and the administration of provinces on equal terms with them greatly outraged them. In Alexander’s horoscope, Saturn, a conservative and unfortunate planet, is located in the 7th house of partnership. His partners tried to adhere to strict rules and restrictions; they did not like innovations. Any reforms generated hidden tension (we see a 135-degree aspect between Saturn and Uranus). The arrival of thirty thousand young men who had undergone Macedonian military training, and the inclusion of eastern warriors from Bactria, Sogdiana, Arachosia, and other lands of the empire into the Companion cavalry only fueled the fire of their discontent; on top of everything else, the Persian nobility had recently gained the right to serve in the king’s cavalry. Most Macedonians saw this policy as a threat to their privileged position. This issue reached a critical point in 324 when Alexander’s decision to send Macedonian veterans home under the leadership of Crater was interpreted as an intention to transfer the seat of power to Asia. An open mutiny flared up, in which only the royal guard participated. However, when Alexander finally disbanded the entire army of Macedonians and replaced them with Persians, the opposition was broken. After the emotional scene of reconciliation, a grand feast (nine thousand guests) was held to mark the end of the disagreements and the establishment of partnership relations in the governance of Macedonians and Persians. The conquered peoples were not included in this alliance. Ten thousand veterans departed with gifts for Macedonia, and the crisis was overcome.
In the autumn of 324, Hephaestion died in Ecbatana, and Alexander arranged an unprecedented funeral for his closest friend in Babylon. He ordered Greece to honor Hephaestion as a hero, and it seems this demand was linked to the requirement that divine honors be paid to him as well. Long before, he had nurtured thoughts of his own divinity. Greek philosophy did not draw a clear dividing line between god and man. Their myths provide more than one example of a person who, having accomplished great deeds, acquired divine status. Alexander repeatedly encouraged favorable comparisons of his deeds with those of Dionysus or Heracles. Now he seemed to become convinced of the reality of his divinity and demanded its recognition by others. There is no reason to believe this demand was driven by political goals (the status of a god did not grant its holder any special rights in a Greek city-state). Rather, it was a symptom of developing megalomania and emotional instability. Cities involuntarily yielded to his demands, but often did so with irony: the Spartan decree stated, “If Alexander wants to be a god, let him be a god.”
Suddenly, while working to improve the irrigation system of the Euphrates and populate the shores of the Persian Gulf, Alexander fell ill after a long drinking binge and died ten days later, on June 13, 323, at the age of thirty-three—most likely from malaria. He reigned for twelve years and eight months. This period corresponds to a full Jupiter return through the zodiac. Let us examine the horoscope at the time of Alexander’s death. Did he die a natural death, or was he helped? There is evidence that it was an incurable viral disease—a transit of the Dragon’s Head (karma) conjunct Pluto (death) in the 6th house of illness. However, a transit Mars (violence) was positioned on Neptune (poisons, alcohol) in the 11th house (the house of friends), and a transit Sun (vitality) conjoined natal Mars in the 8th house (violent death). Most likely, he was ill, but his friends helped him leave this world sooner. Whether he was intentionally poisoned or simply provoked into excessive drinking remains unknown. Yet his weak natal Jupiter in Virgo indicates an unhealthy liver, and hatred kills on its own.
His body, sent by Ptolemy, who later became king of Egypt, was placed in a golden coffin in Alexandria. In Egypt and Greece, he was granted divine honors.
Little reliable information about Alexander’s plans has survived. Had he lived, he would undoubtedly have completed the conquest of Asia Minor, where Paeonia, Cappadocia, and Armenia remained significantly independent. However, in his final years, Alexander’s goals seemed to shift toward exploring the surrounding world, particularly Arabia and the Caspian Sea. Undoubtedly, many colonists—hardly volunteers—left the cities, and marriages with native Asians led to the dilution of Greek customs. Yet in most cities, the influence of the Greeks (more than that of the Macedonians) remained strong. And since Alexander’s successors in Asia, the Seleucids, continued this process of assimilation, the spread of Hellenistic thought and culture across much of Asia, reaching as far as Bactria and India, became one of the most remarkable results of Alexander’s conquests.
His plans for racial fusion failed: the Macedonians unanimously rejected this idea, and in the Seleucid empire, the Macedonian and Greek element clearly dominated. The empire of Alexander was held together by his dynamic personality. He combined iron will and flexible intellect with the ability to push himself and his warriors to the highest limits of endurance. Alexander knew when to retreat and revise his policy, though he did so very reluctantly. He had a vivid imagination, not without romantic impulses: figures like Achilles, Heracles, and Dionysus often came to the Macedonian’s mind, and the greeting of the priest at the oracle of Amun clearly influenced his thoughts and ambitions for the rest of his life.
Alexander was quick to anger, and the hardships of long campaigns increasingly revealed this flaw in his character. Ruthless and capricious, he increasingly resorted to intimidation, unhesitatingly destroying those who fell out of favor, and Alexander’s judgment was not always objective. Yet despite these character flaws, Alexander was beloved by his soldiers, whose loyalty never wavered; they followed him without complaint through long marches to India and continued to believe in him, no matter what hardships befell them.
As one of the greatest military commanders known, Alexander demonstrated extraordinary flexibility both in combining different types of weapons and in adapting his tactics to the new forms of warfare his enemies presented—whether nomads, mountain tribes, or Porus with his elephants. His strategy was masterfully subordinated to a rich imagination, and he knew how to exploit even the smallest opportunities that arose in any battle, which could play a decisive role in victory or defeat. Alexander also, once victorious, never rested on his laurels and relentlessly pursued a fleeing enemy. The Macedonian most often used cavalry to deliver crushing blows, doing so with such efficiency that he rarely had to resort to the help of his infantry.
Alexander’s brief reign became a decisive moment in the history of Europe and Asia. His campaign and personal interest in scientific research greatly advanced knowledge of geography and natural history. The activities of the Macedonian led to the transfer of major centers of European civilization to the East and the beginning of a new era of Greek territorial monarchies. It contributed to the spread of Hellenism across the entire Near East through a broad wave of colonization and to the creation—if not in a political sense, then at least in economic and cultural terms—of a unified world stretching from Gibraltar to the Punjab, open to trade and social interaction. It would be fair to say that the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity as a world religion, and the centuries-long existence of Byzantium emerged to some extent as a result of the works of Alexander the Great.
