Alexander, known as ‘the Great’ or ‘the Macedonian’, advanced his armies into Central Asia in the fourth century BC. Although originally at war with the Achaemenid monarch, Darius III Codomannus, his campaign soon expanded to become a wide-scale invasion of Asia, which was enormously successful until his retreat and death in 323. Yet his legacy was to initiate the first points of cultural contact between European and Asian cultures, as demonstrated in the establishment of Hellenistic colonies in India that were still producing eloquent Greek inscriptions in the early third century BC.