Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/115

ALE name, son of Alexander the Great by Roxana, was born in 323 ., and declared joint king of Macedon, along with his father's half-brother, Philip Arrhidæus. He fell an early victim to the intestine dissensions which raged in the Macedonian empire after the death of Alexander, and was put to death along with his mother, by order of Cassander, in 310 .—A. M.  ALEXANDER V. was the third son of Cassander, and disputed the Macedonian throne with his brother Antipater. Both were finally crushed by Demetrius Poliorcetes, in 294.  ALEXANDER, third son of Perseus, was carried captive to Rome along with his father, by Paulus Æmilius, in the year 168 . He was kept a close prisoner till the death of his father in 165 ., when he was set at liberty, and lived the rest of his life as clerk in a public office. He distinguished himself somewhat by his skill in wood-carving.  ALEXANDER, son of Lysimachus, one of Alexander the Great's generals, and afterwards king of all the European portion of the Macedonian empire, fled from his father's court to that of Seleucus, king of Babylon, after Lysimachus had slain Agathocles, another of his sons. Alexander fought against his father in the battle in which the latter was defeated and slain by Seleucus (. 281), and he subsequently made an unsuccessful attempt to gain the Macedonian throne.—A. M.  ALEXANDER,, so surnamed from being a native of the district of Lyncestis in Macedonia, was implicated in the conspiracy against the life of Philip of Macedon, and though pardoned by Alexander, entered, during the course of the Persian expedition, into a treasonable correspondence with Darius. Being discovered, he was kept for some time in prison, and finally put to death in 330 .—A. M.  ALEXANDER, son of Polysperchon, one of the generals of Alexander the Great, aided his father in his wars with Cassander, and making himself master of the Peloponnesus, reigned some time there as an independent prince (316 .), but was assassinated by one of his officers.    ALEXANDER, tyrant of Pheræ, in Thessaly, in 369 ., was an energetic, but cruel and perfidious prince, against whom his subjects begged the aid of the Thebans. Pelopidas, the Theban general, had not much success against him, being in his first campaign taken prisoner, and in a subsequent expedition slain. In the end, however, Alexander was forced to submit to the Thebans. After this he directed his warlike activity against the islands of the Ægean, and made piratical descents on the Cyclades, in one of which he defeated an Athenian army. Alexander of Pheræ was murdered at the instigation of his wife, by her two brothers, in 367 .—A. M. <section end="115H" /> <section begin="115I" /> <section end="115I" /> <section begin="115J" />ALEXANDER JAGELLO, the son of Casimir IV., king of Poland, was born in 1461, and succeeded to the throne on the death of his elder brother, John Albert, in 1501. The earlier part of his reign was spent in repelling the invasion of the Russians under their emperor Ivan Vaziliwitch. Afterwards the Crimean Tartars invaded Poland, but were totally defeated at Kleck. Alexander died in 1506.—J. W. S. <section end="115J" /> <section begin="115K" />ALEXANDER,, son of John Sobieski, and pretender to the crown of Poland, was born at Dantzic, 1677, and died as a Capuchin friar at Rome, 1714. <section end="115K" /> <section begin="115L" />ALEXANDER WASA, son of Sigismund III., king of Poland and Sweden, was born in 1614, and died in 1635. <section end="115L" /> <section begin="115M" /> <section end="115M" /> <section begin="115N" />ALEXANDER SEVERUS, a Roman emperor, cousin and successor of Heliogabalus, and related to the Emperor Septimius Severus, through the wife of the latter, Julia Domna, whose sister Mæsa's two daughters, Soemis and Mammæa, gave birth respectively to Heliogabalus and Alexander. The father of the latter was Gessius Marcianus, a man of consular dignity; but he owed his excellent education to his mother Mammæa, a woman of unusual capacity, favourable to the Christians, and a friend of Origen. Born in Phœnicia, the country of his maternal ancestors (. 205), Alexander accompanied Heliogabalus to Rome in 219, where he became the object of the emperor's detestation and fear, the vicious excesses of that abandoned monarch appearing doubly criminal and hateful, as contrasted with the piety and moderation of his youthful and promising cousin, who had been declared heir-presumptive to the throne. The repeated attempts of Heliogabalus, however, to effect Alexander's destruction, were always unsuccessful, and at length Heliogabalus, himself assassinated in. 222, made way for a better man. The youthful prince commenced his reign auspiciously, and under the guidance of his mother, and the celebrated legist Domitius Ulpianus, who had been made prefect of the pretorians—an office at that time uniting both civil and military functions—proceeded to reform the innumerable abuses which had sprung up during the wretched reigns of his immediate predecessors. Under Alexander Severus the taxes were greatly diminished,—Lampridius, his historian, says to one-thirtieth of what they previously were,—justice was administered with purity, and corruption in the public offices generally checked by the expulsion of the unworthy creatures of Heliogabalus. What was most difficult and dangerous of all, a degree of discipline was introduced among the pretorians. This attempt, however, cost their prefect Ulpian his life; the irritated soldiers slew him in the very presence of the emperor—a fact which leads to the belief that Alexander Severus, though a well-intentioned prince, was comparatively a weak one, without sufficient energy and determination to carry through, in despite of every obstacle, the reforms he had initiated. We do not read that the pretorians were punished for this act. About. 226, Ardschir (Artaxerxes) overthrew the Parthian empire, on the eastern boundary of the Roman dominions, and founded the Persian dynasty of the Sassanidæ. Alexander found himself compelled to march against the victorious Persians in person, and he is said, though the fact is somewhat obscure, to have gained a great victory over Artaxerxes in 232. At all events he celebrated a triumph on his return to Rome; and immediately thereafter set out on an expedition against the Germans, who had invaded the Roman province of Gaul. At Mayence, his legionaries rose in mutiny against him, under the leadership of Maximin, and both the emperor and his mother Mammæa were slain,. 235. The unpopular character of Mammæa to whom Alexander was entirely subject, and whom the soldiers, accustomed to largess and license, disliked on account of her avarice, probably contributed greatly to this event.

Alexander Severus was thrice married, though only thirty years of age at his death; but he left no children. One of his wives, Memmia, to whom he was tenderly attached, had been banished to Africa by Mammæa, who could tolerate no rival in influence, or in her son's affections. Like his mother, Alexander showed some liking for Christianity; but the countenance he gave it was of an indiscriminate character, for he showed to Apollonius Tyanæus, the Pythagorean philosopher, to Abraham, and to Origen, the same amount of reverence that he awarded to Jesus Christ. Over the gate of his palace was inscribed his favourite maxim:—"Do to others as you would have others do to you."—A. M. <section end="115N" /> <section begin="115O" /> <section end="115O" /> <section begin="115P" />ALEXANDER NEWSKI, one of the "saints" of the Russian church, the son of Jaroslav II., was born about 1219, a few years after the successful inroad of the Mongols into Russia. He was surnamed Newski, from a victory gained over the united forces of Sweden, Denmark, and the Teutonic order. A second victory on the banks of lake Peipus, obliged them to sue for peace. Alexander died in 1263.—J. W. S. <section end="115P" /> <section begin="115Zcontin" />ALEXANDER I.,, Emperor of Russia, was the son of Paul Petrowitch and of Maria Theodorowna, a princess of Wurtemberg. He was born at Petersburg on the 23rd, or, according to others, on the 17th of December, 1777. His grandmother, Catherine II., the reigning czarina, took him entirely out of the hands of his parents, and confided him to the care of Count Soltikoff. His instructors were Krafft the natural philosopher, Pallas the botanist. Mason the mathematician, and above all, Cæsar la Harpe, a Swiss, of republican principles. To the influence of the latter, Alexander owed those liberal ideas which broke forth from time to time during his reign, in strange contrast with the traditional policy of his race. At the early age of fifteen, he was married to the Princess Louisa Maria of Baden. This union proved unhappy; the imperial couple resorted to a separation, and Alexander afterwards set his subjects a frequent example of conjugal infidelity. Catherine II. having terminated her career of depravity in 1796, was succeeded by Paul. The folly, or more probably insanity, of this prince excited general discontent, and on March 23rd, 1801, he was murdered by a band of conspirators. The exact share of Alexander in this transaction is very obscure, but without charging him with premeditated parricide, we may safely assert that he was fully cognizant of the plot for the deposition <section end="115Zcontin" />