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was a student of Aristotle and an avid admirer of Greek culture. But Alexander was hardly an uncritical follower of Greek practices. Having seen the failures of the Greek cities, Alexander fostered an imperial vision closer to that of the Persian Cyrus. In a way irritating to both Macedonians and Greeks, Alexander sought to create not an empire of conquered peoples, but a commonwealth of races. Once he decisively defeated the Persians, he quickly co-opted their officials and integrated a large part of their infantry into his expanding army.
    Alexander’s vision of a cosmopolitan world empire posed a lethal threat to the independence of the city-states. When the ancient city of Thebes rebelled against the Macedonians, this normally enlightened conqueror burned it to the ground and sold the inhabitants into slavery. 24 The remaining Greek city-states, including Athens, never again emerged as powerful independent entities. 25

     

ALEXANDRIA: THE FIRST GREAT COSMOPOLIS
     
    Alexander exported Hellenic urban and commercial culture beyond its previous spheres of influence, even into India itself. The economic impacts were dramatic. The widespread diffusion of coinage minted by Alexander and his successors provoked an explosion in transnational trade, 26 among whose primary beneficiaries were former Greek colonies such as Rhodes and Syracuse. 27
    Alexander’s greatest urban legacy, however, lay in the new cities he and his successors founded. Antioch, Seleucia, and most notably Alexandria employed rational planning principles on a scale rarely seen in older Greek cities. Starting from scratch, each city was designed with a proper agora, temple, and government buildings. Here we see the systematic, planned development of large-scale public works. 28
    Alexandria in Egypt was the greatest of these new cities. Built around the site of the tiny fishing village of Rhacotis, Alexandria was designed as an entrepôt for trade between Africa, the Near East, and the Mediterranean world. Its construction reflected a conscious plan to replace Phoenician Tyre, which Alexander himself had destroyed after a long siege, as the trading center of the eastern Mediterranean.
    This ambitious vision required first the construction of a huge new harbor. Later, the Ptolemies, the Macedonian Greek family that took over Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., constructed a massive light-house on Pharos island to guide ships safely into the harbor. Alexandria was graced with elegant parks and contained buildings—notably the museum and library—that also made it the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world. The more practical aspects of city planning were also not ignored; the avenues were wide, the streets cleaner, and the sanitation systems more reliable. Unusual for the time, much of the city was built of stone to protect it from fire. 29
    Alexandria quickly fulfilled its founder’s purpose. Fleets based in the city traded with customers as far away as India and the horn of Africa. Ptolemaic bureaucrats supervised a complex command economy that took censuses, registered cargo holds, and restricted imports to spur domestic industry. The regime also pushed the productivity of Egypt’s famous fertile agriculture—barley, wheat, and papyrus—to unprecedented levels. 30
    These cities also represented a critical breakthrough in terms of gender. Women gained new property rights. Some even achieved political power, as evidenced by the careers of several queens, including the famous Cleopatra VII, who would also be Egypt’s last Greek ruler. In Hellenistic cities, notably Alexandria, and in Greek-dominated southern Italy, female poets, architects, and even students of philosophy rose to prominence.
    In the new urban milieu, large colonies of Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, and Babylonians coexisted, if not always cordially. Alexandria was particularly notable in this sense, becoming, in the words of the historian Michael Grant, “the first and