Alexander the Great conquered a vast amount of territory.  By the time he died, his kingdom stretched from Macedonia and Egypt in the west all the way to India and Afghanistan in the east.  This made Alexander one of the greatest conquerors of all time.  Moreover, he conquered all of these places in a very short period of time and then died soon after, before he even reached the age of 33.

Alexander started out as the king of Macedonia, in the northern part of Greece or the Southern Balkans.  When he was young, his father was in the process of conquering the Greeks.  Alexander finished this conquest.  He then went on to conquer Egypt and the Persian Empire, which was one of the largest ancient empires.  By conquering the Persians, Alexander opened the way to the east, which allowed him to conquer and to spread Greek culture all the way to the borders of India.

If we express the size of Alexander’s empire in square miles, we can say that he conquered an empire that was over 2 million square miles.  This is about 2/3 the size of the United States and 1/3 the size of Russia.  This was a tremendous amount of land to conquer in a short period of time using the technology that was available in Alexander’s time.

Alexander, then, is seen as one of the greatest conquerors of all time because, in only 13 years as king, he was able to conquer an empire of over 2 million square miles that stretched from Greece, through the Middle East, to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.