Alexander the Great | Essay & Project Ideas

Alexander the Great Ideas for Reports and Papers

1. Compare Alexander with some other great conqueror, such as Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. How were their motives alike or different? Were their methods similar? How did their ultimate fates differ?

2. Alexandria, the city Alexander founded in Egypt, became an important center of culture and learning. Write a report about the great libraries and important thinkers who flourished there after the time of Alexander. Was he directly responsible for any of these developments?

3. Charles Mercer explains that we owe our knowledge of Alexander to five historians who wrote in the first three centuries A.D.: Plutarch, Arrian, Diodorus, Curtius, and Justin. Read an account of Alexander by one of these historians.

Does the report seem reliable? Does the historian acknowledge his sources?

How do the account's judgments differ from those of Mercer's work?

4. Olympias, the mother of...
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