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Alexander I (Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μακεδών) was ruler of Macedon from 498 BC to 454 BC. He was the son of Amyntas I king of Macedon and Eurydice.
According to Herodotus he was unfriendly to Persia, and had the envoys of Darius I killed when they arrived at the court of his father during the Ionian Revolt. However, he was forced to submit to Persia during the invasion of Greece by Darius' son Xerxes I, and he acted as a representative of the Persian governor Mardonius during peace negotiations after the Persian defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. Despite his cooperation with Persia, he frequently gave supplies and advice to the rest of the Greek city states, and warned them of Mardonius' plans before the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. After the defeat in Plataea the Persian army, under the command of Artabazus tried to retreat all the way back to Asia Minor. Most of the 43,000 survivors were attacked and killed by the forces of Alexander at the estuary of the Strymon river. Alexander eventually regained Macedonian independence after the end of the Persian Wars.
Alexander claimed descent from Argive Greeks and Heracles, although Macedon was considered a "barbaric" state by a minority of Greek tribesmen, whose territories were threatened by its expansion. After a court of Elean hellanodikai determined his claim to be true, he was permitted to participate in the Olympic Games12 possibly in 504 BC3 an honor reserved only for Greeks. He modeled his court after Athens and was a patron of the poets Pindar and Bacchylides , who both of them dedicated poems to Alexander4. The earliest reference to an Athenian proxenos, who lived during the time of the Persian wars (c. 490 BC), is that of Alexander I of Macedon5.
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