11. The False Notion That Alexander the Great Conquered History’s Then-Greatest Empire to Date
One of history’s greatest generals, Alexander the Great is widely credited with conquering history’s greatest empire until then. Alexander, a sublime military genius and a fascinating character to boot, was undoubtedly great. However, the notion that his empire was the greatest that the world had seen until then is false. When Alexander died in 323 BC, history’s largest empire until then was still the Persian Empire. The map above is of Alexander’s empire at its greatest extent. The map below is of the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Darius the Great (490 BC).
The empires of Alexander and Darius mostly overlap. However, the territory that Darius did not rule in Greece and Thrace is more than made up for with territories he ruled in Arabia, Central Asia, Libya and the Caucasus, that Alexander never conquered. The difference amounts to about 300,000 square kilometers in favor of the Persian Empire at its peak: 5.5 million square kilometers, vs 5.2 million for Alexander’s realm. It took another two and a half centuries after Alexander’s death before the Achaemenid Empire’s size record was finally bested, by China under the Han Dynasty.
