Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
TARIH INCELEMELERI DERGISI, cilt.34, sa.2, ss.609-628, 2019 (ESCI)
Alexander the Great, as the new king of Macedonian state, began his reign by strengthening his dominance over the geography of Greek poleis, which always held their own independence above all and then with his advancing expeditions he dominated the nations under the rule of the eastern monarchs. From Macedonia to Indos, he came into contact with completely different geographies, societies and traditions and he used his knowledge of traditional Greek mythology and mythical genealogies as a diplomatic tool of propaganda in the process of assimilating to Greek thoughts, customs and interests, those of the different nations he had taken under his own sovereignty in order to achieve social reconciliation and thus to unite the peoples under his own ideology. So, he began to pave the way to Hellenization and the Hellenistic period. The purpose of this study, which employs the document analysis method, is to examine the ancient sources related to the subject in order to find out how Alexander the Great used Greek beliefs and particularly myths in his sovereignty diplomacy and to determine the effects and achievements of his policy. Since Alexander the Great's method of using mythology which he followed especially in the early years of his rule parallels with the methods applied by Archaic and Classical Greek societies, the introduction of this article will briefly deal with the traditional use of mythology in Greek interstate politics.