Wrapping the Dead in Inflammable Sheets
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.