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.”