Celena Zhao, sister, 15 years old, at home
Do you know who Alexander the Great was? Yeah.
What do you know about him? He was a king in Ancient Greek and conquered a lot of land.
Where did you learn about him? Global History class in school.
Anthony Zhang, cousin, 16 years old, text message
Do you know who Alexander the Great was? Yeah, kind of.
What do you know about him? He conquered a lot of land in Europe.
Where did you learn about him? School.
Susan Cheng, ex-coworker, 23, text message
Do you know who Alexander the Great was? Yeah.
What do you know about him? He spread Hellenistic culture through his conquests. He was educated by Plato when he was younger and died in Macedonia.
Where did you learn about him? Personal interest and college.
Between the people I asked one of the main similarities I found was that they know him as a conqueror. People usually remember Alexander the Great as a conqueror from Ancient Greece. Most of them learned about him in school, usually in a Global History class in high school or even middle school. Even though they did learn about him all they remember him for is how he took over so many territories. What was similar about their answers and what I leaned in class is that Alexander the Great conquered up to Egypt and the Indus River. For example, in “The Alexander Romance” by Pseudo Callisthenes, it discusses this, “Invincible and indomitable child. Long may you live, my lady, for you are pregnant with a boy who shall be your avenger and become world conquering king’ of the whole civilized universe” (13). However in our class we went more in-depth about the topic instead rather than just discussing his great conquests. One of the things we learned about was Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus which can be considered as one of the most famous horses. Another thing were the coins of Alexander the Great and his two horns.
