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Part 5—Greece—The Fifth Great World PowerThe Watchtower—1988 | April 15
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Daniel was told: “The hairy he-goat stands for the king of Greece.”—Daniel 8:5-8, 20, 21.
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Part 5—Greece—The Fifth Great World PowerThe Watchtower—1988 | April 15
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The Prophecies Fulfilled
In the spring of the year 334 B.C.E., Alexander entered Asia at the Dardanelles (the ancient Hellespont) with some 30,000 foot soldiers and 5,000 cavalrymen. With the speed of a symbolic four-winged leopard or of a goat that seemed not to touch the ground, he swept through the domains of the Persian empire—50 times the size of his own kingdom! Would he “rule with extensive dominion and do according to his will”? History answers.
At the Granicus River in the northwest corner of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) Alexander won his first battle against the Persians. That winter he conquered western Asia Minor. The following autumn at Issus in the southeastern corner of Asia Minor, he utterly defeated a Persian army estimated at half a million men, and the great king, Darius III of Persia, fled, abandoning his family to Alexander’s hands.
Rather than pursuing the fleeing Persians, Alexander marched southward along the Mediterranean coast, conquering the bases used by the powerful Persian fleet. The island city of Tyre resisted for seven months. Finally, using the rubble of the old mainland city that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed, Alexander built a causeway out to the island city. Remains of that causeway are visible today, bearing out the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy that the dust of Tyre would be pitched into the sea.—Ezekiel 26:4, 12.
Sparing Jerusalem, which surrendered to him, Alexander pushed south, conquering Gaza and enlarging his “extensive dominion” and doing “according to his will” in Egypt, where he was greeted as a deliverer. At Memphis he sacrificed to the Apis bull, thus pleasing the Egyptian priests. He also founded the city of Alexandria, which later rivaled Athens as a center of learning and which still bears his name.
All the objectives of Philip’s plan had been met and exceeded, but Alexander was far from through. Like a fast-moving he-goat, he turned back northeast, through Palestine and on up toward the Tigris River. There, in the year 331 B.C.E., he engaged the Persians at Gaugamela, not far from the crumbling ruins of the former Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Alexander’s 47,000 men overpowered a reorganized Persian army of 1,000,000. Darius III fled and was later murdered by his own people.
Flushed with victory, Alexander turned south and took the Persian winter capital, Babylon. He also occupied the capitals at Susa and Persepolis, seizing the immense Persian treasury and burning the great palace of Xerxes. Finally, the capital at Ecbatana fell to him. This speedy conqueror then subdued the rest of the Persian domain, going as far to the east as the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan. Unquestionably, Greece had become the fifth of the great world powers in Bible history.
Alexander’s conquest also spread the Greek language and culture throughout this vast realm. With Greek colonies established in conquered lands, the common Koine Greek became the international language of that day. It was the language later used to record the Christian Greek Scriptures of the Bible.
Alexander’s Kingdom Divided
Alexander wanted to rebuild Babylon as the capital of his empire. But this was not to happen. The prophecies had described the hairy he-goat as having a large single horn, concerning which Daniel was told:
“The male of the goats, for its part, put on great airs to an extreme; but as soon as it became mighty, the great horn was broken, and there proceeded to come up conspicuously four instead of it, toward the four winds of the heavens. . . . The hairy he-goat stands for the king of Greece; and as for the great horn that was between its eyes, it stands for the first king. And that one having been broken, so that there were four that finally stood up instead of it, there are four kingdoms from his nation that will stand up, but not with his power.”—Daniel 8:8, 21, 22.
“When he will have stood up, his kingdom will be broken and be divided toward the four winds of the heavens, but not to his posterity and not according to his dominion with which he had ruled; because his kingdom will be uprooted, even for others than these.”—Daniel 11:4.
As the Bible predicted, Alexander’s enjoyment of world rulership was short-lived. At the very height of his victorious career, at the age of only 32, Alexander’s ruthless conquests came to an end. Stricken with malarial fever, he continued feasting to drunkenness and suddenly died in Babylon in 323 B.C.E. His body was taken to Egypt and entombed in Alexandria. “The great horn” that “stands for the first king” had been broken.
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