When Alexander became King of Macedonia at the age of nineteen, he inherited his father's mission to conquer the Persians in revenge for their invasion of Greece nearly 150 years earlier. Alexander set out on this venture in 334 BC with a force of about 35,000 men. Following three major battles with the Persian armies, the victorious young man occupied the palace complex at Persepolis in 330 BC as the new lord of Asia.

This marble mosaic illustrates the second battle between the Greeks and Persians, at Issus in 333 BC. At the far left Alexander, on his horse Bucephalus, leads a charge against the Persian king Darius, who looks back with a despairing gesture as he prepares to flee. Dating from the second or third century BC, the mosaic was recovered from the floor of a house in the doomed city of Pompeii.

Reproduced by courtesy of Museo Nazionale, Naples