“The Greatest General Alexander the Great: A First Person Perspective”
By: C.K. M.

My name is Alexander the Great, the greatest general. I will be telling you about some inventions from ancient Greece. I will also be telling you about my glorious life, about how I became one of the greatest generals, and how I got a city named after me.

I was born in Pella, the capital of Macedonia. One of my greatest teachers, Aristotle, taught me the way of life. He helped teach me to speak Greek. He taught me Greek history. He also taught me to believe in Greek gods like Zeus, Poseidon and Hades (they were brothers). Because of him, I wanted to teach everyone.

I was also trained to be a warrior, a ruler, and a leader of men, like a general. I was training because I would have to become king after my father died, and I would have to rule the Macedonian empire with a firm hand. Before my father died, he took over most of the Greek territories, including the famous Spartan empire. The Greeks hated my father because of how badly he treated them.

When I became king, they hated me too, even though I let them manage their own cities and states. They fought me at every turn. They always lost, but they put up a good fight in battle.

I died in 323 B.C.E. I was only 32 years of age. I died one month away from my birthday.

One of the inventions from my time came from one of my cities, Alexandria, and it was the thermometer. The only difference is that we did not have a scale to measure the temperature. It was invented by Philo, who lived nearly 2000 years ago. 1600 years later, Galileo added a scale to it.

The next invention was maps. They were invented by Anaximander. Before him, they were just vague drawings that were drawn by sailors. Anaximander lived between 610 to 546 B.C.E. It was he who invented latitude and longitude. Later in Greek history, Eratosthenes and Strabo invented a map of the known world at that time. The reason it ties in with me is that I concorded most of the known world.

The next invention was the umbrella. Our umbrella was designed to shad e a person from the sun. It was not until the ancient Chinese, who invented the umbrella that reflected water, that it was water proof.

The second from last invention is the lever. The lever is a simple design. An example of how simple it is is when you you put a strong board over a rock. You put something on one end of the board and then you push down the other end. When you push down on the other end it hoists the thing on the other end up. The levers had a huge impact on industries in ancient Greece. The lever was invented by the Greek mathematician Archimedes.

The final invenetion that I’m going to share with you is the steam engine. It was invented by Heron, an ancient Greek astronomer. Again, he was from Alexandria. He lived in the first century A.D. He is also sometimes called Hero. Heron made the steam engine as a toy. It was called ‘aeolipile’ which means wind ball. The steam was from a boiling pot with water in it.

That was the story of my life and some inventions from my time peiod. Some of the inventions are from one of the cities I concoured. To sum up my life, I was born in Pella, the capitol of Macedonia. I came in to power when my father was assassinated and I died in 323 B.C.E. The four inventions from my time are: the thermometer, the map, the steam engine, and the umbrella. The thermometer and the steam engine are from Alexandria.

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