https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alexander-the-great-part-1/id1537788786?i=1000541059456 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alexander-the-great-part-2/id1537788786?i=1000541182050
Because so much of what we know about Alexander is from speculation and sources that were written centuries later, it’s hard to be able to tell the story of Alexander without first having some kind of vague model of who he is. There’s several interesting version:
- Burning ambition + great general + great political leader
- Driven by emotion/addiction to war + great general + great political leader
- Relatively (to the stories) low ambition that turns into grand ambition + great general + great political leader
#3 fascinates me the most because you can construct a coherent story about him as a leader who didn’t really have the ambition many people think he did. A lot of the story of Alexander and the mythologization of him was done by Rome, which obviously had a vested interest in tales of massively successful empires and grand ambition. You can easily argue that it didn’t take much ambition to begin his conquest; it was common practice for new leaders to bring an army into the Persian empire and try stealing a bit of land. He just kept winning, and so he just kept going. The first point that he could really stop was when Darius offered him a truce and would have let him keep half of the Persian Empire. Even here, though, Alexander has been basically able to do what he’s wanted until now, and there’s no reason to believe that Darius will be able to defeat him if Alexander doesn’t agree. As Alexander takes more and more of the Persian empire, he becomes more Persian, and begins to see himself as a new Persian king. Tom Holland postulates that the stories of the mutiny are fake, and that he actually just stops at the end of the Persian empire. The Romans need some kind of story that can continue to show his ambition while giving him some reason to turn back.
Interesting questions:
- Did he actually believe he was a god?