"Gorgeous and beauty-loving, culturally inquisitive and ravenous with ambition, Alexander embarked on what amounts to a world tour based on military conquest. Within a few years, he exerted political control over Greece, staked claims to sovereignty in Egypt and Persia, and reached the edges of India. He spread the Hellenic spirit as he went, but he also absorbed influences from the cultures around him, and shipped those influences home in the form of gold, jewels and precious objects."
Holland Cotter in Reaching Peak Greek at the Met Museum