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*Includes pictures *Includes excerpts of ancient accounts *Includes a bibliography for further reading Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity's first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon's accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. But Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30. It took less than 15 years for Alexander to conquer much of the known world. After he had finished off the Persian Empire, Alexander must have been glad to leave Persia and its adjoining provinces at his back. Alexander was planning to march onwards, into India, and had made overtures to the wild tribesmen that inhabited the region that is now Pakistan, but he had been abruptly refused. The chieftains of the hill clans who guarded the passes of the mighty Hindu Kush mountains were determined to make a fight of it, secure in the knowledge that the high passes of their domains were virtually unconquerable. Alexander, never one to accept defiance, made his preparations and, in midwinter, a season traditionally reserved for rearmament and regrouping, he began his campaign. The Aspasioi, the Guraeans and the Assakenoi, inhabitants of the rocky valleys of north-western Pakistan, all opposed him, so Alexander destroyed their fortresses one by one, determined to extinguish them. The hill clans were fierce fighters, and each fortress, small though they generally were, was only carried by storm after days of vicious fighting which resulted in grievous losses among the Macedonian ranks. To give an idea of the brutality of this conflict, Alexander himself was seriously wounded twice during two separate