Hellenism.
Alexander died in a comparatively short time after the battle of Arbela and his world empire fell to pieces. What, then, was the permanent good or decisive effect of his conquests? To this question historians reply that the Hellenization of the Orient with subsequent spread of Greek culture among the Arabian Saracens, thence as vital principle re-animating the Renaissance—was the result of Alexander’s conquest of Asia.
More than seventy Greek colonies were established along the route of the Conqueror. These continued to flourish long after the far seeing mind that planned them had ceased to foresee and plan. Vigorous Hellenism was easily dominant over sleepy Orientalism. And thus was bloodlessly won thro’ the slow centuries, the great victory of freedom, civilization, culture, art, science, philosophy—Hellenism. From Arbela (B. C. 331) to the sixteenth century Renaissance is a conquering span that might well delight the gaze of the young warrior who once wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer. As Napoleon’s crucial defeat was not at Waterloo but in Moscow; as the British Revolutionary forces lost the colonies not at Yorktown but at Saratoga; as Carthage of old went down under world-conquering Rome not at Zama, but at the Metaurus; so the incipient death blow to Alexander was inflicted not in Babylon but at the banks of the Ganges. When his army refused to follow him any farther; when his brave Macedonians wept for their far away homes and begged to be taken back to their wives and children; when his best friends and admirers saw in the wide rolling Ganges and the enemy bristling the opposite bank, obstacles insuperable even to Alexander; when at last the Conqueror turned away unconquering, turned back, yielded—then came the fierce chagrin-humiliation, the mad beginning of the end. The world marks only the collapse-crash, but deeper insight sees sympathetically the fatal bend or twist or crack or break having in it inevitably the tragic collapse-crash.
The death of Alexander has been variously described. Some say he died of poison; others, of the exceeding coldness of the waters of the river in which he bathed; others, that his death is directly attributable to the excesses, the mad orgies of sensual indulgence into which he plunged himself as result of his chagrin at turning back from the Ganges, and of his wild grief at the untimely death of Hephaeston his favorite and friend. Doubtless the subjectivities of the various biographers have obtruded themselves over the objective reality and the simple truth will never be known. Alexander died at Babylon, 323 B. C., aged thirty-two.
[Chapter III.]
ZAMA
Had the battle of Zama been won by the Carthaginians and lost by the Romans, then Semitic influence rather than Aryan, would have moulded the civilization of Europe. These two mutually antagonistic races have grappled together in mortal combat at Zama, Tours, Jerusalem and, influentially, at Belgrade, Lepanto, Constantinople, Adrianople—and the end is not yet. Will there ever be full amity between these races?
But Rome won at Zama. And as Roman historians gravely assure us that it was better for all subsequent civilization that Rome should win, why we gratefully acquiesce; feeling, indeed, dully content that fate should, at all past times and crises, have shown herself as wisely beneficent to the winning cause as she is today. But however superior Rome may have been to Carthage, and however Roman valor, Roman dogged endurance, Roman integrity, (Romana Fides) may have surpassed Carthaginian—yet Hannibal, favorite of Baal, towered mountain-high over all Romans of his day, and for a time, even over all Rome.
Hannibal’s personality thrills thro’ the centuries. The school-boy with the good wonder-flush of admiration at the revealing vistas of the past, understands Hannibal. That eternal enmity to Rome in the son of Hamilcar; that youthful vow at the altar of Baal and its life and death fulfilment; that Herculean crossing of the Alps; Ticino, Trebia, Thrasymenus, Cannæ—Capua; Metaurus, Zama: exile, suicide—why the school-boy understands it all: and Hannibal, hunted victim of the past, is victor of the passing hour. Glamour of the historic page, generous youth, poets in prose, dreamers of dreams—and the Smoky City classroom is all aglow with white-light from the Alps as Hannibal crosses; with red light from the bloody waters of Lake Thrasymenus; with gold-glow from the rings severed from the cold dead hands of Roman knights at dread Cannæ; with mocking death-light as Hannibal defiantly dies!