CHAPTER LVII. VARIOUS ESTIMATES OF ALEXANDER

Now that we have compassed the so great deeds of a life so short, it is inevitable that the sum total of the man’s varied activity should be reckoned up into a brief statement of the value of his career to civilisation. The sums arrived at in Alexander’s case have been as various as the minds that have made them up. A brief collection of them is full of contrast and illumination.[a]

HIS VICES AND VIRTUES (ARRIAN)

His body was beautiful, and well proportion’d; his Mind brisk and Active; his Courage wonderful. He was strong enough to undergo Hardships, and willing to meet Dangers; ever ambitious of Glory, and a strict observer of Religious Duties. As to those Pleasures which regarded the Body, he shewed himself indifferent; as to the Desires of the Mind, insatiable. In his Counsels he was sharp-sighted, and cunning; and pierc’d deep into doubtful Matters, by the Force of his natural Sagacity. In marshalling, arming, and governing an Army, he was thoroughly skill’d; and famous for exciting his Soldiers with Courage, and animating them with Hopes of Success, as also in dispelling their private Fears, by his own Example of Magnanimity. He always enter’d upon desperate Attempts with the utmost Resolution and Vigour, and was ever diligent in taking any Advantage of his Enemies’ Delay, and falling upon him unawares. He was a most strict observer of his Treaties; notwithstanding which he was never taken at a Disadvantage, by any Craft or Perfidy of his Enemies. He was sparing in his Expenses, for his own Private Pleasures, but in the distribution of his Bounty to his Friends, Liberal and Magnificent.

If anything can be laid to Alexander’s Charge, as committed in the heat and violence of Wrath, or if he may be said to have imitated the Barbarian Pride a little too much, and bore himself too haughtily, I cannot think them such vast Crimes; and especially when one calmly considers his green Years, and uninterrupted Series of Success, it will appear no great Wonder if Court Sycophants, who always flatter Princes to their Detriment, sometimes led him away. But this must be said, in his behalf, that all Antiquity has not produced an Example of such sincere Repentance, in a King, as he has shewed us. I cannot condemn Alexander for endeavouring to draw his Subjects into the Belief of his Divine Original, because ’tis reasonable to imagine he intended no more by it, than to procure the greater Authority among his Soldiers. Neither was he less famous than Minos, or Æacus, or Rhadamanthus, who, all of them challeng’d Kindred with Jove; and none of the ancients condemn’d them for it; nor were his glorious Actions any way inferior to those of Theseus, or Ion, tho’ the former claim’d Neptune, and the latter Apollo, for his Father. His assuming and wearing the Persian Habit, seems to have been done with a political View, that he might appear not altogether to despise the Barbarians, and that he might also have some Curb to the Arrogance and Insolence of his Macedonians. And for this Cause, I am of Opinion, he plac’d the Persian Melophori among his Macedonian Troops, and Squadrons of Horse, and allow’d them the same share of Honour. Long Banquets, and deep Drinking, Aristobulus assures us, were none of his Delights; neither did he prepare Entertainments for the sake of the Wine (which he did not greatly love, and seldom drank much of) but to Rub up a mutual Amity among his Friends.

Whoever therefore attempts to condemn, or calumniate Alexander, does not so much ground his Accusation upon those Acts of his, which really deserve Reproof, but gathers all his Actions as into one huge Mass, and forms his Judgment thereupon: But let any Man consider seriously who he was, what Success he always had, and to what a pitch of Glory he arrived; who, without Controversy, reigned King of both Continents, and whose Name has spread through all Parts of the habitable World; and he will easily conclude, that in comparison of his great and laudable Acts, his Vices and Failings are few and trifling, and which, in so prodigious a Run of Prosperity, if they could be avoided, (considering his Repentance and Abhorrence of them afterwards) may easily be overlooked, and are not of Weight sufficient to cast a Shade upon his Reign.

I am persuaded there was no Nation, City, nor People then in being whither his Name did not reach, for which Reason, whatever Origin he might boast of or claim to himself, there seems to me to have been some Divine Hand presiding both over his Birth and Actions, insomuch, that no mortal upon Earth either excel’d or equal’d him.[b]

HIS FAVOUR WITH FORTUNE (ÆLIANUS)

Commendable and renowned be the actes of Alexander which he dyd at Granicus and Issus. His foughten field at Arbeles, the taking of Darius, the subduing of the Persians to the Macedonians, the conquering of al Asia, the bringyng of the Indians under his owne dominion, etc. Lawdible be his feats of armes donne at Tyrus, and Oxydacris: But what meane we to comprehend in a skantlyng of lynes the puisaunce of so incomparable a Prince? let it be as some envyous varlets and backbiting tonges woulde have it, that the prosperous successe of his adventures is to be attributed to Fortune, what of that? yet is he notable and praiseworthy notwithstanding, insomuch as his fortune never fainted nor fayled, and in that hee was lulled in the lappe of so loving a Lady that she never withdrew her favour from him.[c]

IF ALEXANDER HAD ATTEMPTED ROME (LIVY)

[When the historian of Rome, old Livy, was writing of the comparatively obscure general, Papirius Cursor, the fact that he was contemporary with Alexander and would have had to meet him had he come against Italy, led Livy to breathe so Roman a defiance to the world-conqueror that we must needs quote it here, preferably in the old-fashioned garb of the anonymous translation of 1686.]

Without doubt in that Age, which yielded as great plenty of gallant Captains as any, there was not a Person on whom the State of Rome did more rely and depend, insomuch, as some Writers have concluded, that he [Papirius Cursor] would have been an equal match to the Great Alexander, if after the Conquest of Asia, he had bent his Arms against Europe.

Now although from the beginning of this Work it may sufficiently appear, that I have sought nothing less than Digressions from the just order and series of the Story; nor have at all endeavored, by extravagant Varieties, to garnish it, or with pleasant Sallies to divert the Reader and refresh myself; yet happening upon the mention of so great a King, and so renowned a Captain, I could not but be moved to disclose and set down those thoughts which have oft occur’d to my mind, and inquire a little, What event would probably have succeeded to the Roman Affairs, had they happened to have been engaged with this Illustrious Conqueror. As the Roman State bore up against other Kings and Nations, so it might have prov’d to him also Invincible. To begin with ballancing the Commanders one against another, I do not deny but Alexander was an excellent Leader, but that which enhanc’d his Fame, was, That he was a sole and Soveraign Commander; a young Man, his Sails always full blown with prosperous Gales, and one who dyed before ever he had labored under any of the frowns of Fortune. For to omit other glorious Princes and renowned Captains, illustrious Examples of the uncertainty of Humane Grandeur: What was it that exposed Cyrus (whom the Greeks so highly magnifie) or our great Pompey of late, to the turning Wheel of Fortune, but only this, That they lived long? On the other side, Let us take a review of the Roman Commanders, I mean not through all Ages, but such as being Consuls or Dictators about those times, Alexander must have engaged with, if he had spread his Ensigns this way; there were M. Valerius Corvinus, C. Marcius Rutilus, C. Sulpicius, T. Manlius Torquatus, Q. Publilius Philo, L. Papirius Cursor, Q. Fabius Maximus, the two Decii, L. Volumnius, Manlius Curius, besides abundance of prodigious Warriors that succeeded afterwards; if he had first set upon the Carthaginians, (as he was resolv’d to have done, if he had not been prevented by Death) and so had arriv’d in Italy when well stricken in years. Each one of these was master of as good Parts and natural Abilities, as Alexander, and had the advantage of being train’d up in an incomparable Military Discipline, which having been delivered from hand to hand ever since the foundation of their City, was now by continual Precepts arriv’d to the perfection of an Art. And whereas, Alexander often hazarded his Person, and underwent all Military toils and dangers (which was one thing that not a little added to his Glory:) can it be thought, that if Manlius Torquatus, or Valerius Corvinus, had chanc’d to meet him at the head of his Troops, either of them would not have prov’d a Match for him, who were both of them famous for stout Soldiers before ever they had Commands? Would the Decii, that rush’d with devoted Bodies into the midst of the Enemy, have been afraid of him? Would Papirius Cursor, that mighty Man both for strength of Body and gallantry of Mind, have declined to cope with him? Was it likely that a single young Gentleman should out-wit or manage his Affairs with greater prudence than that Senate which he only, whoever he was, had a right Idea of, that said, “It consisted altogether of Kings”?

Here, forsooth, was the danger, lest he should more advantagiously choose his Ground to Encamp on, provide Victuals more carefully, prevent Surprizes and Stratagems more warily, know better when to venture a Battel, range his Army more Soldier-like, or strengthen it with Reserves and Recruits, better than any of those whom I have named knew how to do: Alas! in all these matters, he would have confess’d he had not to deal with a Darius, over whom, being attended with a vast Train of Women and Eunuchs, softened with wearing gold and Purple, and clogg’d with the superfluous Furniture of his luxurious Fortune, he did indeed obtain an unbloody Victory, meeting rather with a Booty than an Enemy, and had only this to boast of, That he durst handsomely contemn such an abundance of Vanity.

He would have had another kind of prospect in Italy than in India, through which he march’d at his ease with a drunken Army, Feasting and Revelling all the way: But here he must have met with the thick woody Forrest, and almost unpassable Streights of Apulia; the lofty Mountains of Lucania, and fresh Tokens of a late Defeat that happen’d to his own Name and Family, where his Uncle Alexander, King of the Epirotes, was hewn to pieces.

We speak hitherto of Alexander, not yet debauch’d with excess of good Fortune, wherein never any Man had less command of himself than he: But if we consider him in his new Habit, and that new Nature, (if I may call it so) which he took up after he had a while been flush’d with Victories, we may avow he would have come into Italy, more like a Darius than an Alexander, and brought with him a bastard Army, altogether degenerated from the Macedonian courage and manners, into the debauches and effeminacies of the Persians. I am asham’d, in so great a Monarch as he was, to relate his proud humors of changing so oft his Garb; his excessive vain-glory, in expecting that Men should adore him by casting themselves prostrate at his feet, when-ever they approached him; his barbarous Cruelties and Butcheries of his nearest Friends amongst his Cups and Banquets, and that ridiculous Vanity of forging a Divine Pedigree, and boasting himself the Son of Jupiter. Nay more, since his Drunkenness and Greediness of wine, his savage Passions and cholerick Phrensies did every day increase (I report nothing but what all Authors agree in), shall we not think that his Abilities, as a General, must quickly have decayed and been wonderfully impaired?

But here perhaps was the danger (which some little trifling Greeks who would cry up the glory even of the Parthians, to depress the Roman name, are often wont to alledge) That the People of Rome would never have been able to endure the very Majesty and dread of Alexanders Name (whom indeed I am apt to think they then scarce ever heard of:) Let us conceit as magnificently as may be of this Prince, yet still it will be but the Grandeur of one Man, acquir’d in little more than twelve Years continued Felicity; and whereas some extol it highly on his Account, That the Romans, though never worsted in any War, have yet been defeated in divers Battels, whereas Fortune was never wanting to Alexander in any one encounter, they do not consider that they are comparing the Exploits of one particular Man, and he too but a Youth, with the atchievements of a People that have now been involv’d in Wars eight hundred years.

You ought rather to compare Man with Man, Captain with Captain, than the Fortune of one with the other. How many Roman Generals may I name, that never suffer’d a Repulse in their days? We can run over whole Pages in the Annals of our Magistrates, full of Consuls and Dictators, whose Success as well as Virtue, was such, as they never gave the Common-wealth so much as one days grief or discontentment. And that which makes them yet to be more admired than Alexander, or any other King in the World; some of them held their Office of Dictator not above ten or twenty days, and none the Consulship beyond a year: Their Levies were often obstructed by the Tribunes of the Commons, so that they set forth too late; and sometimes for holding the Court for Elections, they were sent for home too soon: In the hurry of Affairs the Year was apt to be wheel’d about, and then they must leave all to new Instruments; now the rashness, another time the dishonesty of a Colleague, was either a great hindrance to their Success, or perhaps occasion’d a mischief. Many times they succeeded after the defeat of their Predecessors, or receiv’d a raw and undisciplin’d Army: From all which inconveniences Kings are not only free, but absolute Masters both of their Enterprizes, and the times and means they will take to accomplish them, leading all things by their Councils, and not following them. Had therefore this unconquered Alexander been engaged against these unconquered Captains, he would have hazarded all those past pleasures of Fortunes favor; nay, in this the danger would have been greater, that the Macedonians had but one Alexander, and he not only obnoxious to many Casualties, but voluntarily exposing himself to frequent Dangers. But the Romans had many that were Alexanders equals, both for Glory and the grandeur of their Atchievements, each of whom, might according to his peculiar Fate, either live or dye, without at all endangering the Publick.

It remains now to ballance the Forces on each side, and that neither in respect of numbers, quality of the Soldiers, or the multitude of their Allies and Auxiliaries. There were numbered of Romans in the Surveys taken by the Censors of that Age, two hundred and fifty thousand Polls; and therefore in all the revolts of the Latines, they were able to levy Ten Legions, and that too almost wholly in the City; and frequently in those times, four or five distinct Armies were kept on foot at once, which maintained Wars in Etruria, in Umbria, with the Gauls (Confederates with the Enemy) in Samnium and in Lucania: On the other side, he must have cross’d the Sea, having of old Macedonian Bands not above Thirty thousand Foot, and four thousand Horse, and those most of them Thessalians; for this was the total of his Force when he appeared most formidable. If he should have added to these, Persians, Indians, or others out of his new Conquests, they would but more encumber rather than assist him. Then the Romans had Supplies at hand to reinforce them presently from home upon any accident; whereas Alexander (as it happened afterwards to Annibal), Warring in a remote foreign Country, his Army would have mouldered away apace, and could not readily have Recruits. The Macedonians had for their Arms, a Shield and a Spear like a Pike; the Romans, a large Target that skreen’d almost the whole Body, and a Javelin, a Weapon not a little more serviceable than the Spear, both to strike and push with, near hand, and also to be lanced at a distance. The Soldiers of each side were wont to stand firm, and keep their Ranks; the Macedonian Phalanx was immovable and uniform; but the Roman Battalions more distinct, and consisting of several Divisions, more ready to separate and close again upon any occasion.

_A Patriotic Estimate of Rome’s Greatness_

To speak now of labour and travel, What Soldier is comparable to the Roman? Who better able to hold out and endure all the fatigues of War? Alexander, worsted in one Battel, had been utterly undone: But what Power could have broken the Roman courage, whom neither the shameful disgrace at Caudium nor the fatal defeat at Cannæ, could in the least daunt or dispirit? Undoubtedly Alexander, although his first attempt should have prov’d prosperous, would often here have missed his Persians and his Indians; he would have wish’d to have been dealing again with the soft and cowardly Nations of Asia and confest, That before he only fought with Women, as King Alexander of Epirus is reported to have said, when he had here received his Death wound, reflecting upon those easie Occurents of War, which this young Prince (his Nephew) met with in Asia, in respect to those difficulties he himself had to struggle with in Italy.

And truly, when I consider that the Engagements at Sea between the Romans and Carthaginians in the first Punick War, took up no less than four and twenty years’ space, I am inclinable to conjecture, that the whole age of Alexander would not have been enough to have finish’d a War with either a one of those States. And since by antient Leagues they were then at Amity and in Alliance with each other, ’tis probable an equal apprehension of danger might have united them against the common Enemy: And what less could he then expect but to have been utterly overwhelm’d and crush’d by the joint Arms of two the most potent Republicks in the World? The Romans, though not indeed in the days of Alexander, or when the Macedonian Power was at heighth, have yet since try’d the courage of the Macedonians, under the conduct of Antiochus, Philip, and Perses, and came off not only without loss, but even without any danger or hazard.

It may seem a proud word, but without arrogance it is spoken, Let there be no Civil Wars amongst us; never can we be distressed by any Enemy, Horse or Foot; never in set Battel, never in plain equal ground, or places disadvantagious, outdone in Courage or Resolution. The Soldier I confess in heavy Armour, may be apprehensive of the Enemies Cavalry in a Champion Country, or be incommoded with Arrows shot from a distance, or embarrass’d in unpassable Woods, or Quarters, where provisions cannot be brought to them; but still let there be a thousand Armies greater and stronger than that of Alexander and his Macedonians, so long as we hold together, and continue that love of Peace, and prudent care of civil Concord, wherein we live at this day, we are able, and ever shall be, to rout and put them all to flight.[d]

HIS INVINCIBILITY (GROTE)

[Against Livy’s confidence in the Roman bulwark must be placed Grote’s trust in Alexander’s genius.]

Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old--the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at which Timur first acquired the crown, and began his foreign conquests. His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military experience; and what was still more important, his appetite for further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger, as complete, as it had been when he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future achievements, with such increased means and experience, were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known; and if his life had been prolonged, he would probably have accomplished it. Nowhere (so far as our knowledge reaches) did there reside any military power capable of making head against him; nor were his soldiers, when he commanded them, daunted or baffled by any extremity of cold, heat, or fatigue.

The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander, had he invaded Italy would have failed and perished like his relative, Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army, the same cannot be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the Macedonian companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have been found a match for Alexander in military genius and combinations; nor, even if personally equal, would he have possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose; nor the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort. I do not think that even the Romans could have successfully resisted Alexander the Great; though it is certain that he never throughout all his long marches encountered such enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and Lucanians--combining courage, patriotism, discipline, with effective arms both for defence and for close combat.

Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous courage--sometimes indeed both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him--we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. Amidst constant success, these precautionary combinations were never discontinued. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organisation on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity, by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force--as an individual warrior, and as organiser and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodised, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in Athene. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies; in which category indeed were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns, amidst tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defence, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains, are alike pursued and slaughtered.

Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a soldier and a general, some authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government, and for intentions highly favourable to the improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever-repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded until he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal dominion--conceived not metaphorically, but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time--was the master passion of his soul.

The Persian empire was a miscellaneous aggregate, with no strong feeling of nationality. The Macedonian conqueror who seized its throne was still more indifferent to national sentiment. He was neither Macedonian nor Greek. Though the absence of this prejudice has sometimes been counted to him as a virtue, it only made room, in my opinion, for prejudices yet worse. The substitute for it was an exorbitant personality and self-estimation, manifested even in his earliest years, and inflamed by extraordinary success into the belief in divine parentage; which, while setting him above the idea of communion with any special nationality, made him conceive all mankind as subjects under one common sceptre to be wielded by himself. To this universal empire the Persian king made the nearest approach, according to the opinions then prevalent. Accordingly Alexander, when victorious, accepted the position and pretensions of the overthrown Persian court as approaching most nearly to his full due. He became more Persian than either Macedonian or Greek. While himself adopting, as far as he could safely venture, the personal habits of the Persian court, he took studied pains to transform his Macedonian officers into Persian grandees, encouraging and even forcing intermarriages with Persian women according to Persian rites. At the time of Alexander’s death, there was comprised, in his written orders given to Craterus, a plan for the wholesale transportation of inhabitants both out of Europe into Asia, and out of Asia into Europe, in order to fuse these populations into one by multiplying intermarriages and intercourse. Such reciprocal translation of peoples would have been felt as eminently odious, and could not have been accomplished without coercive authority. It is rash to speculate upon unexecuted purposes; but, as far as we can judge, such compulsory mingling of the different races promises nothing favourable to the happiness of any of them, though it might serve as an imposing novelty and memento of imperial omnipotence.

In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less Hellenic. Instead of hellenizing Asia, he was tending to asiatise Macedonia and Hellas. His temper and character, as modified by a few years of conquest, rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle towards the Greeks--quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise, and smart from free criticism, which is inseparable from the position of a limited chief.[e]

Cox[f] in his _General History of Greece_ sees a degeneration already set in foreshadowing his future, had he lived, and agrees with Grote[e] as to his asiatising tendency. “It may almost be said that the results which he had achieved were precisely those which would have followed if Xerxes had been the conqueror at Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale.”

HIS MEANNESS (MÉNARD AND ROLLIN)

“So ended he,” says Ménard, “whom they call Alexander the Great. Let the name stand; but he owed his greatness not to his personal qualities, to his own efforts, or to his genius, but, as Plutarch admitted, to Fortune. Never was there an example of a prosperity so infallible and so little deserved. But Fame is feminine; she measures merit by success. Alexander created a school; his personality encumbers history and usurps an enormous space. The decadence of Greece and the Roman decadence are filled up with pastiches and caricatures of him; even in modern times he has remained the type and the ideal of all warrior tyrants down to Louis XIV and Napoleon.

“The literature that makes his fame is for the most part of poor stuff. The Greeks of the imperial epoch, in order to console themselves for the grandeur of Rome, did their best to inflate the glory of Alexander. This theatrical hero is worth more to the rhetorician than a legislator like Solon or a statesman like Pericles. Men of letters of all countries and times have been overwhelmed by him and found in him the god of monarchic idolatry. Thanks are due to Rollin for having made some reservations. He who lived in the sunlight of royalty was not afraid to say that it was a poor compliment for a king to be compared to Alexander, ‘the least estimable of Plutarch’s great men.’ We hardly read Rollin nowadays and his judgments have little authority; they say that he lacked the power of historic criticism. Perhaps he did, but he had a right conscience, which is worth still more. He made history a school of moral instruction, and it is thus that later generations are formed strong and sane. Our grandfathers, who learned their history from Rollin, achieved the French Revolution.”[g]

It is interesting to refer directly to the pages of Rollin alluded to by Ménard. Rollin divides Alexander’s life into two distinct halves, the former all beautiful and brilliant; the latter in hideous contrast. We quote from his resumé of the latter and uglier half.[a]

His uninterrupted felicity, that never experienced adverse fortune, intoxicated and changed him to such a degree, that he no longer appeared the same man; and I do not remember that ever the poison of prosperity had a more sudden or more forcible effect than upon him.

Was ever enterprise more wild and extravagant, than that of crossing the sandy deserts of Libya; of exposing his army to the danger of perishing with thirst and fatigue; of interrupting the course of his victories, and giving his enemy time to raise a new army, merely for the sake of marching so far, in order to get himself named the son of Jupiter Ammon; and purchase, at so dear a rate, a title which could only render him contemptible?

It appears to me that to the battle of Issus and the siege of Tyre inclusive, it cannot be denied, but that Alexander was a great warrior and an illustrious general. But I much doubt, whether, during these his first exploits, he ought to be set above his father; whose actions, though not so dazzling, are however as much applauded by good judges, and those of the military profession. Philip, at his accession to the throne, found all things unsettled. He himself was obliged to lay the foundations of his own fortune, and was not supported by the least foreign assistance. He alone raised himself to the power and grandeur to which he afterwards attained. He was obliged to train up, not only his soldiers, but his officers; to instruct them in all the military exercises; to inure them to the fatigues of war; and to his care and abilities alone, Macedonia owed the rise of the celebrated phalanx, that is, of the best troops the world had then ever seen, and to which Alexander owed all his conquests. How many obstacles stood in Philip’s way before he could possess himself of the power which Athens, Sparta, and Thebes had successively exercised over Greece! The Greeks, who were the bravest people in the universe, would not acknowledge him for their chief, till he acquired that title by wading through seas of blood, and by gaining numberless conquests over them. Thus we see, that the way was prepared for Alexander’s executing his great design; the plan whereof, and most excellent instructions relative to it, had been laid down for him by his father. Now, will it not appear a much easier task to subdue Asia with Grecian armies, than to subject the Greeks who had so often triumphed over Asia?

It must be confessed, that the actions of this prince diffuse a splendour that dazzles and astonishes the imagination, which is ever fond of the great and marvellous. His enthusiastic courage raises and transports all who read his history, as it transported himself. But ought we to give the name of bravery and valour to a boldness that is equally blind, rash, and impetuous; a boldness void of all rule, that will never listen to the voice of reason, and has no other guide than a senseless ardour for false glory, and a wild desire of distinguishing itself at any price? This character suits only a military robber, who has no attendants; whose own life is alone exposed; and who, for that reason, may be employed in some desperate action; but the case is far otherwise with regard to a king, who owes his life to all his army and his whole kingdom. True valour is not desirous of displaying itself, is no ways anxious about its own reputation, but is solely intent on preserving the army.

Do any of these characteristics suit Alexander? When we peruse his history and follow him to sieges and battles, we are perpetually alarmed for his safety, and that of his army; and conclude every moment that they are upon the point of being destroyed. Here we see a rapid flood, which is going to draw in and swallow up this conqueror: there we behold a craggy rock, which he climbs, and perceives round him soldiers, either transfixed by the enemy’s darts, or thrown headlong by huge stones from precipices. We tremble when we perceive in a battle the axe just ready to cleave his head; and much more when we behold him alone in a fortress, whither his rashness had drawn him, exposed to all the javelins of the enemy. Alexander was ever persuaded, that miracles would be wrought in his favour, than which nothing could be more unreasonable, as Plutarch observes; miracles do not always happen; and the gods at last are weary of guiding and preserving rash mortals, who abuse the assistance they afford them.

Alexander seems possessed of such qualities only as are of the second rank, I mean those of war, and these are all extravagant; are carried to the rashest and most odious excess, and to the extremes of folly and fury; whilst his kingdom is left a prey to the rapine and exactions of Antipater; and all the conquered provinces abandoned to the insatiable avarice of the governors, who carried their oppressions so far, that Alexander was forced to put them to death.

Nor do his soldiers appear to be better regulated; for these, having plundered the wealth of the East, after the prince had given them the highest marks of his beneficence, grew so licentious, so disorderly, so debauched and abandoned to vices of every kind, that he was forced to pay their debts by a largess of £1,500,000.

What strange men were these! how depraved their school! how pernicious the fruit of their victories![h]

HIS EVIL INFLUENCE (NIEBUHR)

Alexander is for the East, what Charlemagne is for the West; and, next to Rustam, he is the chief hero of the Persian fairy tales and romances. To us also he is a man of extraordinary importance, inasmuch as he gave a new appearance to the whole world. He began what will now be completed, in spite of all obstacles--the dominion of Europe over Asia; he was the first that led the victorious Europeans to the East. Asia had played its part in history, and was destined to become the slave of Europe. He has also become the national hero of the Greeks, although he was as foreign to them as Napoleon was to the French, notwithstanding that he traced his family to the mythical heroes of Greece.

But his personal character will appear to us in a different light. Many a rhetorician, even in antiquity, formed a correct judgment of him. Who does not know the story of the pirate, who was condemned to death by Alexander, and, on being brought before him, said, that there was no difference between them! The Orientals still call him, “Alexander the robber.” I will not judge of him from this point of view, for the whole history of the world turns upon war and conquest; I speak only of his personal character. But, without agreeing with the declamations which have so often been made about him, I unhesitatingly declare, that I have formed a very unfavourable opinion of him. When I behold a young man, who, in his twentieth year, ascends the throne, after having conspired against his father--who then displays in his policy a cruelty like that of the house of the Medici in the sixteenth century, like Cosmo de Medici and his two sons--who not only sacrifices his step-mother to Olympias, but causes the innocent infant of the unhappy Cleopatra, as well as several other near relatives, to be murdered (we do not know their names, as Arrian skilfully evades mentioning them)--who despatched all that knew anything of his complicity, as well as those who had previously offended him--such a young man is condemned for all time to come.

Plutarch shows a foolish and unfounded partiality towards him, and such was universally the case among the Greeks. His drunkenness cannot be denied, and with it they excuse his murders, as, for example, that of Clitus; and, in order poetically to complete the indescribable folly committed by later Greeks, they compare him with Dionysus. But his drunkenness does not account for all he did. He caused the most innocent and most faithful servant, the best general of his father, to be maliciously assassinated in a truly oriental manner; the man had been frank and open, and knew that Alexander was what he was through him. The murder of his friend Clitus, who told him the truth, was a fearful act. I do not comprehend how persons can excuse Alexander by saying, that he was an unusually great man; if he was so, was he not then responsible for his unusually great powers? All his actions, which are praised as generous, are of a theatrical nature and mere ostentation. His friendship for Aristotle did not save Callisthenes. His attachment to Hephæstion was not friendship, but a disgrace. His generosity towards the captive Persian princesses is nothing extraordinary; if it be not ostentation, it is something quite natural, and of everyday occurrence; but it is mere ostentation.

It must, indeed, be acknowledged that Alexander is a most remarkable phenomenon; but the praise bestowed on him can apply only to his great intelligence and his talents. He was altogether an extraordinary man, with the vision of a prophet, a power for which Napoleon also was greatly distinguished; when he came to a place, he immediately perceived its capability and its destination; he had the eye which makes the practical man. If we had no other example of the keenness of his judgment, the fact that he built Alexandria would alone furnish sufficient evidence; he discovered the point which was destined, for fifteen hundred years, to form the link between Egypt, Europe, and Asia. It is impossible not to concede to him the praise of a great general. Nay, a most competent judge, Hannibal, declared him to be the greatest general. It must not, however, be forgotten, that he had most excellent instruments--distinguished generals, and a splendid army. If he had had to create his army, his undertaking would not have succeeded so well. Parmenion, Philotas, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigonus were all distinguished captains, all proceeded from the school of his father, and had acquired great reputation even under him; and, if we except the single Eumenes, we may assert, that no great commander was trained under Alexander. In like manner, King Frederick II inherited an army already trained by his father; and most of his generals had served in the army before his time.

Alexander undertook the Asiatic expedition as a true adventurer. He himself adopted the most contemptible pomp of eastern despotism, and took pleasure in the vanities and follies of the Persians; the Orientals, who were accustomed to prostrate themselves before him, were his darlings. He forgot the respect due to his old soldiers, and demanded of them, who were free men, the prostration of the Persians.

His worthless friend Hephæstion died; and Alexander celebrated his burial in a manner which showed utter senselessness and absurdity, in his prodigality and in his perpetration of oriental horrors. In order to offer to the deceased a worthy sacrifice, he undertook an expedition against a free people of mountaineers, and extirpated the whole nation; and according to a truly eastern fashion, he slaughtered all the prisoners in honour of his deceased friend. All that is related of this period is disgraceful; insensible to all that is good, and dissatisfied with himself, he abandoned himself more and more to frightful drunkenness. He offered prizes for the best drinkers, and an ἀγὼν πολυποσίας ended with some thirty persons drinking themselves to death: a proceeding which we can contemplate only with the most complete disgust.

Perhaps no man has personally exercised a greater historical influence than Alexander; this cannot be questioned. But what influence he exercised, and whether it was beneficial, is a question on which opinions are divided. In regard to Greece, his conquests were altogether injurious. Through him the Greek nation was, as it were, seized with consumption, for he reduced its numbers immensely. A vast number of recruits must have gone from Greece and Macedonia to India and Upper Asia, whom he forever withdrew from their country by assigning to them settlements in those countries. It lay in the nature of things, that Greece should be lost, and should fall into a state of complete weakness, when a new wealthy and military state arose by the side of it. Even the good which arose from the establishment of this Macedonio-Asiatic empire, was injurious to Greece. Commerce was transferred to Alexandria; and Athens ceased to be spoken of as a commercial city. Alexander’s influence upon the nearer and remoter parts of conquered Asia was different in different countries. Upon Egypt it was beneficial, for that country was evidently better off under the Ptolemies than it had been under the Persians. The first three Macedonian kings of Egypt were excellent princes, and raised the country to a degree of prosperity, which it never enjoyed either before or after: and that period was sufficient for such a country to heal its ancient wounds.

Alexander’s contemporaries among the Greeks were not mistaken as to the influence which he exercised. He died detested and cursed by Greece and Macedonia. If he had lived longer, he would perhaps himself have seen the downfall of the structure he had reared. He could not be otherwise than active and stirring, and he could not have gone on without bringing ruin upon himself. His intention was not to hellenise Asia, but to make Greece Persian; hence if he had longer remained in Asia, we should have seen the formation of a Græco-Persico-Macedonian empire. As he wanted to arm the Greeks and Macedonians in the Persian fashion, those nations would afterwards probably have revolted and put him to death. The only means by which Greece might have been saved, and have recovered its liberty, would have been, if Alexander had passed through the natural course of his life, and had fallen with the glory of his exploits.[i]

HIS MOTIVES (DROYSEN)

[Bishop Thirlwall[k] sees great benefits from Alexander’s conquests, but doubts if they were all intentional with him, or largely the accidents of his success. Droysen feels no doubt as to the presence of sharply definite motives and large policies in Alexander’s mind.]

“That the soul of this king was built on a scale that surpassed human measure,” Polybius says, “is an opinion in which all agree.” His strength of will, his wide vision, his intellectual pre-eminence are proved by his deeds and the strict, the rigid, logic of their consistency. What his desire was, and what his conception of his work (a fair judge will wish no other measure), this is something one can approximately learn only from such parts of his work as he was allowed to realise. Alexander was versed in the highest culture and knowledge of his time; he would have cherished no meaner opinion of a king’s calling than the “master of those who know.” But for him, unlike his great teacher, the thought of what monarchy was and the “monarch’s duty as watchman” did not logically lead to the necessity of treating barbarians like animals and plants. Nor would it have been his opinion that his Macedonians had been trained to arms from his father’s time in order that they might be, in the philosopher’s language, “masters over those who were fitly slaves”; still less that first his father, and then he himself, had forced the Greeks into the Corinthian federation, that they might plunder defenceless Asia, squeeze it dry with their exquisite selfishness and their shameless intrigues.

He had dealt Asia a terrible blow. He would remember the spear of his ancestor Achilles. He would recognise that the grace of the true spear of royalty lay in its power to heal the wounds it made. With the annihilation of the old kingdom, with the death of Darius, he became heir to the empire over unnumbered peoples who had been governed till then as slaves. A labour it was, worthy of a king indeed, to free them so far as they could understand or learn of freedom, to preserve and further them in whatever they enjoyed of laudable and sound, to respect and spare them in whatever was sacred in their eyes and whatever was their very own. He must know how to propitiate, how to win them, that they too may be made to share the burden of the empire which is gradually to unite them with the Greek world. Such a monarchy could permit no mention of conquerors and conquered when once the victory was won; it must wipe out from men’s memory the distinction between Greek and barbarian.

There lay on this road difficulties immeasurable--much that was arbitrary, much that was violent, unnatural--they seemed to make the undertaking impossible. But him they did not stop nor perplex; they only heightened the vehemence of his will, and stiffened the rigid and conscious assurance of his dealings. The work which he had undertaken in the exaltation of youth possessed him; gathering like an avalanche it swept him on; ruin, devastation, fields of dead, marked his progress; with the world that he conquered, there came a change over his army, over his surroundings, over the man himself. He passed on like a tempest, he saw only his aim, and in that his justification.

The majority misunderstood and disapproved of what the king did or left undone. While Alexander tried all means to win the conquered and make them forget their conquerors in the Macedonians, many of his followers in their insolence and their selfishness calmly claimed the conquerors’ ruthless right of violence. While Alexander received with the same graciousness the genuflexions of Persian magnates and the congratulatory missions with which Greece honoured him, accepting alike the worship which the orientals considered they owed him, and the military acclamations of his phalanxes, they would have liked to see themselves as the equal of their king, and everything else far below them in the dust of humility. And while they themselves yielded to all the luxuriousness and licentiousness of Asiatic life, so far as the camp and the vicinity of their openly disapproving king permitted--yielded with no other object besides the gratification of appetites run mad--they took it ill of their king that he wore the Median dress and affected the Persian court functions, wherein the millions of Asia recognised and worshipped him as their god and king.[l]

HIS EFFECT ON FEDERALISATION (PÖHLMANN)

[Every one admits that the lack of unity among the Greek towns was the cause of evils innumerable, and that some form of federation was vitally needed. Many have felt that Alexander furnished the needed unifaction by his centralised empire; but Pöhlmann is of contrary mind.]

Droysen’s peculiar way of seeing history has led him greatly to overrate the blessings of the new federal régime. It is true that in Hellas, under the old party names of aristocrat and democrat, the hostile interests of rich and poor were engaged in a pitiless and passionate struggle, and, if we consider the decomposition that was killing the life of communities, a monarchy would appear to be exactly what was needed to exercise a levelling and reconciliatory influence. But a kingdom of this national character, whose first aim would be to satisfy the most vital interests of the nation and create a true internal peace--such a kingdom was not at all the ideal of the Macedonian monarchy. So far from standing superior to party warfare, the monarchy supported itself by favouring the particular interests of that party which came over to the Macedonian camp. The immense emigration produced by the consequent oppression of those who belonged to the opposition, is proof enough that the new order did not produce a citizenship of inner peace, but, on the contrary, gave new food to the differences from which the communities suffered. So far as the policy of Philip was concerned, the object of the bond was attained when it brought the power of the Greek people into its own service; and even if the war against Persia had its national and Hellenic side, yet so early an authority as Polybius rightly and soberly judged that the Macedonian king was chiefly acting in the matter to satisfy a personal end. It is an illusion of Droysen’s to imagine that this subjection of Greece to a policy which was, by its nature, bound to serve dynastic and personal interests, at the same time secured to the Greeks a common national policy.

The consolidation of the new world power was a consequence of Alexander’s irresistible and victorious progress through the heart of the Persian kingdom. His policy was to bring about a new “Hellenistic” régime which should lead to a peaceful blending of Greek and barbarian, and the object was to be gained by putting the oriental and the Græco-Macedonian elements on an equality in army and administration--setting Asiatics, for example, as satraps beside European military governors and treasury officers. He triumphed over opposition, which he encountered chiefly in the army.

This policy was certainly an inevitable consequence of his undertaking and of the conditions which were necessary to its success; but need he have so exaggerated it as to make a complete return to the traditions of oriental despotism? This is a question we do not find so easy to answer in the affirmative, as Droysen does, for he sees nothing but “prejudice” in the resistance which Alexander’s claims to apotheosis and genuflexion encountered in the old Macedonian spirit and the Greek love of freedom.

As Ranke rightly declared, it meant a complete break with their entire national history that the Greeks as well should be subjected to the sway of an authority which was no other than that against which they had warred for centuries. Certainly the “city” had outlived its time as the final political unit. The needs of the day called for “an ascent from the city constitution to state constitutions,” in which the cities themselves would enjoy only a communal independence. But then they must, to use Droysen’s own words, “find in the universal bond their right and their safeguard.” And this safeguard could be offered by no orientalising despotism.[n]

HIS HERITAGE (HEGEL)

Alexander had the good fortune to die at the proper time--_i.e._, it may be called good fortune, but it is rather a necessity. That he may stand before the eyes of posterity as a youth, an early death must hurry him away. Achilles begins the Greek world, and his antitype Alexander concludes it: and these youths not only supply a picture of the fairest kind in their own persons, but at the same time afford a complete and perfect type of Hellenic existence. Alexander finished his work and completed his ideal; and thus bequeathed to the world one of the noblest and most brilliant of visions, which our poor reflections only serve to obscure. For the great world-historical form of Alexander, the modern standard applied by recent historical “Philistines”--that of virtue or morality--will by no means suffice. And if it be alleged in depreciation of his merit, that he had no successor, and left behind no dynasty, we may remark that the Greek kingdoms that arose in Asia after him are his dynasty. The Græco-Bactrian kingdom lasted for two centuries. Thence the Greeks came into connection with India, and even with China. The Greek dominion spread itself over northern India. Other Greek kingdoms arose in Asia Minor, in Armenia, in Syria, and Babylonia. But Egypt especially, among the kingdoms of the successors of Alexander, became a great centre of science and art; for a great number of its architectural works belong to the time of the Ptolemies, as has been made out from the deciphered inscriptions. Alexandria became the chief centre of commerce--the point of union for Eastern manners and tradition with Western civilisation. Besides these, the Macedonian kingdom, that of Thrace, stretching beyond the Danube, that of Illyria, and that of Epirus, flourished under the sway of Greek princes.[m]

ALEXANDER’S TRUE GLORY (WHEELER)

If a man’s life-work is to be judged only by what he erects into formal organisation, then we must pronounce the career of Alexander a failure, and more than a failure. He had dismantled what he found, and built nothing sure in its place. His dream of fusing the East and the West had been fulfilled and embodied in no visible institution, no form of government or law, of state or church. Greece, Egypt, and the Orient were still in government asunder.

No wonder that historians have written the story of Greece--among them great names like Niebuhr and Grote--and seen nothing more in the career of Alexander than a brilliant disturbance of the world’s order, an enthronement of militarism, an annihilation of Greek liberty, and an undoing of Greece in all that makes her life of interest to the world. It is another thing that their blindness could see in Alexander himself only a mad opportunist and greedy conqueror, whose life, had it been spared, could have wrought no more than further conquest; for Alexander was of all things an idealist, and they who have not read that in the story of his life, may as well not have read it at all. Grote and Demosthenes are, each in his way, types of historians and statesmen who have spent their strength in deploring the waste of goodly seed-corn scattered on the fields, their eyes turned towards the former harvest, not the next. The old maxims, the old creeds, and the good old times are reasserted, defended, and bewailed long after they have passed to their larger fruitage in the unfolding of a larger life.

When Alexander’s career began, the culture of the world, fixed in two main types, the feminine and the masculine, if we may broadly characterise them so, was still centralised and located, on the one hand in the wealth and settled industrial life of the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian river valleys, on the other in the free energy of the old Greek city communities. When his career ended, the barrier separating these domains had been broken down, never to be raised again.

Man as a base line for measuring the universe, man as a source of governing power, arose in Greece; it was Greece that shaped the law of beauty from which came the arts of form, the law of speculative truth from which by ordered observations came the sciences, and the law of liberty from which came the democratic state. This was what the old Greece held in keeping for the world. Alexander was the strong wind that scattered the seed; again, he was the willing hand of the sower.

The story of Alexander has become a story of death. He died, himself, before his time. With his life he brought the old Greece to its end; with his death, the state he had founded. But they all three, Alexander, Greece, the Grand Empire, each after its sort, set forth, as history judges men and things, the inner value of the saying, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone.”[o]