Just how "Great" was Alexander the Great?

          When discussing the Alexander the Great, many people will see the glorious mass conqueror of Europe, who brought together the culture of the Eastern world, and who's influence spans even today. However, very few times will people bring up what I will refer to as the "real" Alexander. The real Alexander was not exactly what most people would call great, by today's standards at least. While yes, it is true that Alexander conquered much of Europe, Asia, and even parts of Africa. And also that he united the Greek, Persian, and Indian culture together to create his own Hellenistic culture. The so called real Alexander that not everyone sees is actually a ruthless, self-absorbed, alcoholic, paranoid, power-crazed, homicidal general, who left his commanders in charge of his cities, didn't care about his citizens, and caused the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own troops, family members, and friends. These adjectives like alcoholic, paranoid, etc., I will be referring to many times through this blog post, and will explain who exactly the real Alexander the Great was. There are 3 main points behind this.

Point 1 : Does Alexander deserve to be called "Great"?
       
          I'll go ahead and spoil this one and say no, Alexander the "Great" does not deserve his epitaph at all really. His terrible misdeeds and irrational follies that are present across his entire life definitely outweigh his "good qualities". But it can't be all bad can it? I mean you have to have done something "Great" to have so many people recognize it as your title. Let's start with the good things. As many people are surely aware, Alexander the "Great" was responsible for conquering the majority of the Eastern world, and at the time had the largest kingdom in history, spanning his reign across 3 continents. While in this aspect, Alexander may have been considered "Great" however it wasn't exactly Alexander that was the great one, it was more so his kingdom, which honestly wasn't all that much to brag about other than the sheer size of it. I found that when comparing Napoleon Bonaparte to Alexander The Great, Napoleon was much more deserving of the epitaph "Great". Because while Napoleon had his own problems, his empire, while definitely not as huge as Alexander's, was much more stable. I would even go as far to say that someone like Adolf Hitler was more deserving of the title, but more on him later. For now, lets focus back on Alexander's good qualities. Probably, less-known but still just as important, Alexander was responsible for the spread of Greek culture across Europe and Asia, and for the creation of the Hellenistic culture, which essentially mushed all of Persian, Greek, and Indian culture into one big melting pot. In my opinion, this was probably the greatest thing Alexander actually did. It was a good way to mix different cultures together, who were practically polar opposites, and try to make them get along with each other. However, trying to incorporate two cultures who already didn't exactly get along, was surely going to cause some problems. And boy, this was most definitely the most controversial thing Alexander did during his reign, to his own people at least. Not only did Alexander try and unite these cultures, but he essentially tried to turn himself into a pharaoh. He started to wear Persian clothes, adopt Persian traditions, and even started to wear the upright tiara, which is the sign of Persian Kingship. However eventually Alexander did incorporate the different cultures together, which was overall a good thing. Those were the only things I could find that would describe Alexander as being "Great", and even those things caused problems for not only Alexander but for the people who lived in his kingdom. Now onto all of Alexander's bad things, and this is going to be long. There are so many terrible things I found about Alexander the "Great", that it was hard to narrow down the essentials for this post, but I've found the things that I think are Alexander's worst offences. Most of the following information was gathered from the Encyclopedia Of The Ancient World, from Salem Press. (See citations) As described by Professor Ian Worthington,
"Does a man deserve to be called ‘The Great’ who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of his own men and for the unnecessary wholesale slaughter of native peoples? How ‘great’ is a king who prefers constant warfare over consolidating conquered territories and long-term administration? Or who, through his own recklessness, often endangered his own life and the lives of his men? Or whose violent temper on occasion led him to murder his friends and who towards the end of his life was an alcoholic, paranoid, megalomaniac, who believed in his own divinity?" (Worthington, 1)
To start off, while this isn't really bad it's still worth mentioning, Alexander didn't actually do anything to earn his kingdom. His father had already conquered Greece, and when he was assassinated, Alexander inherited the entirety of his kingdom. So right off the bat, Alexander was thrown into the fray with no experience. While it's true Alexander was taught by Archimedes, it's relatively safe to say that these teaching only fueled Alexander's interest in culture and arts, and didn't really contribute to his battlefield strategies. An article about Alexander the Great by Professor Ian Worthington at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the same article as the quote, described Alexander as a "package". This package consisted of Alexander the King, the commander, and the statesman. Before I get into the details, Alexander as a "package" was terrible. The only area he excelled in was in being a commander. He led his troops valiantly and never surrendered a battle. He even pioneered in the military field with his phalanx formation, which was a mobile formation of long lances which could charge with the speed and power of a cavalry. He also pioneered lighter versions of catapults and ballistae that could be carried by pack trains and be set up very quickly. His soldiers even averaged a distance of 10 to 15 miles per day, each of them carrying at least 80 pounds of gear. Quoted from the Encyclopedia Of The Ancient World, "War was in Alexander's blood, and without it, he was lost in depression and alcohol." (Salem Press, 154) And lost in depression and alcohol he definitely was. Ever since the beginning of his reign, Alexander was a raging, irresponsible alcoholic. His combination of alcohol with his incredible paranoia resulted in him having many of his close friends, family, generals, leaders, and so on, killed partly because he was massively paranoid, and partly because he was almost always intoxicated. So overall, Alexander was an admirable commander, but caused many a mishap among his own troops, even causing 3 recorded mutinies from his refusal to be rational with his troops, and refusing to stop marching even in treacherous weather and environmental conditions. Let's get this next one out of the way. Alexander was a pretty non-existent statesman. If we want to consider some of the political decisions he made, such as him trying to force the aforementioned proskynesis upon his people, it's definitely nothing to admire. Even if we are considering when he used scare tactics by telling his soldiers that the wounded and veteran officers would be replaced with Persians, that's still a very bad example of a statesman, who clearly did not care for the loyalty of his people or even his soldiers. He mainly just appointed other trusted officials to govern his conquered cities for him, and was much more focused on gaining more land than governing the land he already had. Now onto the worst of them all, the so called "Great King" Alexander. There are many examples of why Alexander was a bogus king, but I've found one that shows just how uncaring he was of his kingdom. This was the revolt of Agis III. When Alexander left for Persia, he left Antipater, one of his best generals, in charge of Macedonia. Agis III led a revolt amongst the Greeks to try and overthrow the government of Macedonia. Antipater was in a bad situation and needed as many troops as he could muster up, however Alexander was out on his own personal conquest of Asia. Whilst Alexander led his troops into many foolish battles with incredible amounts of casualties, he would periodically tell Antipater to send him more troops so he could continue this conquest. This meant that Antipater was very short on troops, whilst he was fighting this so called “war” against the Greeks. Alexander kept asking for more troops and did not act until Antipater was nearly overpowered. And even then he just ended up paying off the Greek revolters in order to make them stop. At no point did he ever try and actively help Antipater until Macedon was nearly conquered. Alexander was so focused on his own selfish goal to conquer the whole Eastern world that he completely ignored his own commander and birth city until the very last moment. Not to mention how he was a pretentious, power-crazed emperor, who actually thought he was some sort of god, and tried to make his own people believe such. He was also responsible for hundreds of thousands of his own troops unnecessary deaths because of his foolish quest for conquest, battles that were won on pure luck, and his inability to forget about his own stupid, selfish goals for one second, and think about the effect that this was having on not only his very own soldiers, but also on his own people. This all proves that no, Alexander did not deserve his epithet of "Great".

Point 2 : What can one learn about the value of society by their views of greatness.

          With Alexander the Not So Great, it has been shown how terrible Alexander really is. If society considers Alexander to be Great then society must think that murdering countless of your own soldiers is a terrible thing, yet many people are pro-war. If society thinks that Alexander was great then being a paranoid alcoholic must be great. Yet many people attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and many organizations are against alcohol. If society thinks that Alexander is great, then murdering your friends and family and trying to force your beliefs that you are some sort of grand deity on someone must be great. Yet Nazism is very much frowned upon, and people like Adolf Hitler are practically universally hated across the world. So what's the deal? Clearly society doesn't think that all these things are very admirable. How can someone like Alexander be thought of as "Great", whilst the majority of things he did in his lifetime would be considered worthy of assassination now? Alexander was debatably on the same level of awfulness of people like Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler, men who are in contest for being some of the most notorious evil human beings to ever walk the earth. Yet you are most likely not going to hear people saying things like "Stalin the Great" or "Bin Laden the Paragon". These people are thought of as the worst of the worst, yet most people would not even considering placing Alexander in this same category. There has to be some reason for this. Well from what I have gathered, in a personal experiment, and also from the evidence of the times, many people do not know the full story behind Alexander, and I can almost guarantee that if the majority of society knew the full scoop on Alexander, we would not be singing his praises. However what are the real values of our society, at least in the aspect of how great one is? If we are to believe the people who are looked at as "Great" are what our society actually perceives as greatness, then we can concur that our society measures greatness on a scale of someones large amount of achievements. While many people may personally believe that great people aren't defined by their accomplishments but by their morals, such as a really good friend who was there when you needed them, or a firefighter who saved a child from a fire, that doesn't change how society thinks of greatness as a whole. While you may see a report of a policeman who saved a person from being assaulted on the news one morning, you most likely will never know his name. However if you see a twerking pop-star on the news, you are never going to hear the end of them. While you may see someone like Micheal Vick on ESPN every Sunday, the next day you could see him being taken to jail for dog-fighting. One day you might hear about the good samaritan who pulled someone out of a flaming car accident, but you'll most likely never hear their name again. What all these people have in common is that on one side, they have accomplished many things, yet on the other side, these people have been morally just in their cause. There are many examples of this type of situation, but essentially, the person who is famous or infamous is going to be paid attention to more often than the person who has done the good deed. Therefore society doesn't value everyday good deeds as much as they do accomplishments. Going back to Alexander, he was, as previously mentioned, a ruthless conqueror who was responsible for the deaths of native people and his own troops, yet he still conquered much of the Eastern world, therefore we label him as "Great". Alexander also pushed his soldiers to the brink of death many times with not only his battles but with his brutal traveling methods. Alexander forced his soldiers to walk 10 to 15 miles of land every day, only stopping to eat and make camp. This may not seem like a very far distance today, but these soldiers were often times traversing very dangerous weather and environmental  conditions, not to mention the blistering heat in many places he conquered. They were all carrying at least 80 pounds of weight on top of that. Compare that to Modern Day military, gathered from (Berkley, 7) where the limit for marching soldiers is 72 pounds and only goes over that when conditions are impassible by vehicles, something that Alexander didn’t care about, as he clearly didn’t care about the lives of his army, whilst he forced them to go through conditions that most armies at the time would have stayed away from. And while Alexander’s recklessness may have been a key reason why he did conquer many empires, and I agree that Alexander did definitely conquer a lot of land, much more than any king or commander before his time. But if our view of “greatness” is how much land one guy can conquer whilst causing the unneeded deaths of his troops and having friends and family killed because of his paranoia, then maybe our society needs to rethink their view of greatness. However society, I don't think so at least, actually thinks that these sort of actions are acceptable. As said, once more in the Encyclopedia Of The Ancient World, “Alexander has been portrayed as a philosopher in arms, an apostle of Hellenistic culture, and a cosmopolitan visionary. He has also been depicted as a ruthless despot, a brutish despoiler, and a narcissistic drunkard.” I think this shows that the majority of our society has not seen the bad side of Alexander. Before I started researching this topic, all I really knew was that he conquered much of Europe and Asia and that he was apparently worthy of the title “Great”. However after doing just the tiniest bit of research into Alexander the “Great”, I began to realize that he was a alcoholic, power-crazed, paranoid “king” who did nothing to earn his original empire, and abused his power and wealth to get whatever he wanted. I’m not considering my own opinion to be the entirety of society, but many other people in my class and on the internet have had the same situation. It’s not that society thinks highly of Alexander morally, but that it’s much easier to accept his accomplishments than to do research into his personal life and rule. And Alexander wanted it to be this way, as he very likely told his court historians what to say about his battles and conquest. If Alexander’s court historians did indeed stretch the truth about him, they may be responsible for the way that most look at Alexander today. Instead of seeing the ruthless, inconsiderate, completely self-absorbed, paranoid, alcoholic murderer of his troops, his friends, his family, and many other empires, they instead see Alexander the Great, who conquered almost all of the eastern world, and was unrivaled in his times as one of the greatest commander’s to ever live.

Point 3 : Does time and distance effect someone's popular perception?

When Alexander was ruling his empire, many Greeks thought him to be an abusive ruler, who didn’t truly care about their culture and cities. This led to the only attempt to overthrow Alexander’s empire in Greece, which was led by Agis III. I talked about Agis III previously, so I won’t explain all the details of him here. However Agis III and many of the Greeks that joined him thought that Alexander was trying to destroy the Greek culture, as he was introducing many other cultures into his land, and creating his own Hellenistic culture. He was also changing the type of clothing he wore to resemble that of a pharaoh, and even started to wear the Upright Tiara, which is the sign of Persian kingship. The Greeks also thought him to be sacrilegious, as he adopted the Persian tradition of proskynesis. This was a sort of ritual where one would essentially claim their submittance to Alexander. However this ritual was essentially worshipping a living man, which the Greeks rightfully found sacrilegious. However whilst Alexander was doing all this, and the Greeks were attempting to overthrow his empire, he did the act of essentially throwing money at them so they would leave him alone. Although the Greeks still did not approve of him, they thought more highly of him than before. For a long while the Greeks were relatively content with Alexander. That is until he tried to make the people in his kingdom think that he was some sort of grand deity, at which point they thought even worse of him than before. If time and distance from the Greeks after the revolt of Agis III helped the Greek people's perception of Alexander, then if he had just stayed away and not tried to make them believe he was a god, the Greeks would have most likely been more content with Alexander. In 1938, Adolf Hitler was named Man of The Year for Times magazine. As you can probably guess, he was not nominated again. After Hitler began the second world war, the entirety of America was up in arms about him. He was slaughtered millions of jews and other countries were getting involved. Within the span of 6 years, Hitler was the most hated man across the world, and his title still continues to this day. He is one of the most infamous dictators in history, and is still a very relevant topic now, in 2014. However, can we really look back and see Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi party, being named Times Man of The Year, even if it was before the war? Maybe it's not so crazy. Adolf Hitler was trying to bring Germany back to it's former glory, and nobody knew what plans he had for not only his own conquest, but in terms of the holocaust. Once the war started however, everyone knew what Hitler was doing, and he was no longer worthy of Man of The Year status. Going back to Alexander, once the revolt of Agis III occurred, many people were very neutral about Alexander. Sure he had disrespected the Greek culture, but he gave the revolters money to make up for his mistake. Between the revolt and Alexander trying to implement proskynesis, many Greeks were indifferent to Alexander. However once he did introduce it, the Greek people were furious once more. So yes, it's clear that time and distance impact someone's popular perception, but it's not always in the same way. To use a more relevant example, think about Robert Downey Jr. Robert struggled with drugs through the 80's and in the 90's he lost everything. His life after his addiction to drugs can be best shown in the movie Less Than Zero, which Robert stars in. He struggles with a drug addiction, and is willing to do whatever it takes to get more drugs. Even his best friends are affected by him, as he causes their homes to be destroyed in his fits of rage. This was essentially how Robert was from around 1995 to the mid 2000's. Yet in 2008 he starred in his (sort of) debut role as Tony Stark in the Iron Man movie. Around 4 Marvel movies later, and Robert is just about 150 million dollars richer than he was when he started over. Definitely an accomplishment, as he essentially made a 180 with his life. It took some 15 years for us to forget about Robert's drug use and indecency and give him another chance. This same sort of situation occurred with Alexander, except flipped around. Instead, Alexander was looked at as terrible, then redeemed himself somewhat, then went right back to the Greeks thinking he was awful. With all the different examples of this, not only with Alexander or Hitler but throughout history, time and distance definitely will change someone's popular perception.

Works Cited

Manual, Field, and No. 21-18. "Foot Marches." (n.d.): n. pag. 1 June 1990. Web. 26 Sept. 2014.

Sienkewicz, Thomas J. Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Pasadena, CA: Salem, 2002. Print.

U.s. Army Center For Army Lessons Learned. "The Modern Warrior's Combat Load." (n.d.): n. pag. 2003. Web. sep. 26.

Worthington, Ian. "How "Great" Was Alexander? [P.1]." How "Great" Was Alexander? [P.1]. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014. <http://www.utexas.edu/courses/citylife/readings/great1.html>.