Battle of Gaugamela

On this day--or perhaps tomorrow--Alexander the Great and his Greeks and Macedonians shattered the army of the King of Kings and sent Darius III running, thus delivering the knockout blow to the Persian Empire.

This sounds odd from a Greek, but if you were going to be taken over, Persians were pretty good overlords.  Other than a prohibition on human sacrifice, they let you keep your religion and your language, though you had to speak some Persian to communicate.  Other than be there when they needed you for the army, it was a pretty good set up.

Ironically, Alexander was using Persia as his model for a world empire.  He wanted to be on the top instead of having any non-Alexander there.  Alexander was trying to create a world empire for everyone, even encouraging his officers and men to take Persian wives. 

He had said on many occasions, once to Carthage itself, that after reaching the eastern edge of the world in India, he was going west along the North African coast and along northern side of the Med back home after unifying everything.

Confidence or trash talk?  I am still impressed.

Alexander vs the Romans.

That would have been something!