The Macedonian kings, who maintained that their Greek ancestry traced back to Zeus, had long given homes and patronage to Greece's most distinguished artists.
Robin Lane Fox
War, Philip had announced, was being declared against the Persians on behalf of the Greeks, to punish the barbarians for their lawless treatment of the old Greek temples.
war
When his Macedonians mutinied at the end of their marching, they were said to have ridiculed him and told him to 'go fight alone with his father', meaning Zeus, not Philip.
theend
home
No man, and only one hero, had been called invincible before him, and then only by a poet, but the hero was Heracles, ancestor of the Macedonian kings.
man
The occasion was not lost on Alexander: at Susa, he sacrificed to Greek gods and held Greek gymnastic games..
game games
He was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek language, though the natives might speak Greek with a northern accent which hardened 'ch' into 'g','th' into 'd' and pronounced King Philip as Bilip.
language
In return he left behind Darius's mother, daughters and the son whom he had captured at Issus, and appointed teachers to teach them the Greek language.
As for the hired Greeks in Persian service, thousands of the dead were to be buried, but the prisoners were bound in fetters and sent to hard labour in Macedonia, 'because they had fought as Greeks against Greeks, on behalf of barbarians, contrary to the common decrees of the Greek allies.
Supported the belief that he was the Greek gos Zeus's son.
belief
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