In the second prophetic vision, a male goat was seen “coming from the sunset [the west] upon the surface of the whole earth,” moving with such speed that “it was not touching the earth.” It came all the way to the two-horned ram that the angel said “stands for the kings of Media and Persia.” The male goat “proceeded to strike down the ram and to break its two horns.” Daniel was told: “The hairy he-goat stands for the king of Greece.”​—Daniel 8:5-8, 20, 21.

The Prophecies Fulfilled

In the spring of the year 334 B.C.E., Alexander entered Asia at the Dardanelles (the ancient Hellespont) with some 30,000 foot soldiers and 5,000 cavalrymen. With the speed of a symbolic four-winged leopard or of a goat that seemed not to touch the ground, he swept through the domains of the Persian empire​—50 times the size of his own kingdom! Would he “rule with extensive dominion and do according to his will”? History answers.

At the Granicus River in the northwest corner of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) Alexander won his first battle against the Persians. That winter he conquered western Asia Minor. The following autumn at Issus in the southeastern corner of Asia Minor, he utterly defeated a Persian army estimated at half a million men, and the great king, Darius III of Persia, fled, abandoning his family to Alexander’s hands.

Rather than pursuing the fleeing Persians, Alexander marched southward along the Mediterranean coast, conquering the bases used by the powerful Persian fleet. The island city of Tyre resisted for seven months. Finally, using the rubble of the old mainland city that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed, Alexander built a causeway out to the island city. Remains of that causeway are visible today, bearing out the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy that the dust of Tyre would be pitched into the sea.​—Ezekiel 26:4, 12.

Sparing Jerusalem, which surrendered to him, Alexander pushed south, conquering Gaza and enlarging his “extensive dominion” and doing “according to his will” in Egypt, where he was greeted as a deliverer. At Memphis he sacrificed to the Apis bull, thus pleasing the Egyptian priests. He also founded the city of Alexandria, which later rivaled Athens as a center of learning and which still bears his name.

All the objectives of Philip’s plan had been met and exceeded, but Alexander was far from through. Like a fast-moving he-goat, he turned back northeast, through Palestine and on up toward the Tigris River. There, in the year 331 B.C.E., he engaged the Persians at Gaugamela, not far from the crumbling ruins of the former Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Alexander’s 47,000 men overpowered a reorganized Persian army of 1,000,000. Darius III fled and was later murdered by his own people.

Flushed with victory, Alexander turned south and took the Persian winter capital, Babylon. He also occupied the capitals at Susa and Persepolis, seizing the immense Persian treasury and burning the great palace of Xerxes. Finally, the capital at Ecbatana fell to him. This speedy conqueror then subdued the rest of the Persian domain, going as far to the east as the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan. Unquestionably, Greece had become the fifth of the great world powers in Bible history.