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throughout history, Alexander the Great has been seen as a hero, or even more than a hero

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as a Platonic philosopher king (Willian Tarn)

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or even a Messianic figure like Jesus, sent on a mission to be the reconciler of the world

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since the mid 20th century, however, a far less flattering portrait of Alexander has been drawn

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an unstable alcoholic given to wine-fueled rages and violence

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some say that he had no lasting effects on the ancient world or that if he had any, they can be compared to that of Cortes and the Conquistadors had on the Aztecs from 1519 to 1522

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while the popular view of Alexander remains a favorable one, a new scholarly orthodoxy about him has emerged

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some think he should be rechristened Alexander the Terrible or Alexander the Insignificant

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two reasons for this new orthodoxy

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consciously reconstructing a more accurate and less mythological picture of who he was

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these scholars are writing in the long, dark shadows cast by ruthless 20th century rulers such as Hitler and Stalin

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why have wars played so much of a role in history?

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our evidence of recorded human activity goes back to 3,000 BCE and we find accounts of warfare in all kinds of different forms through history

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you could ignore it but then you really wouldn't be doing your job as an historian

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why it's the case could be a philosophical or scientific question

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the fact that every single society that we know about since written history has practiced some form of warfare would suggest that this is more than just a cultural phenomenon, that it has to do with our species, actually

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more study could be devoted to this

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Alexander was very good at the practice of war, if also morally condemned

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Alexander believed that the gods play favorites

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he clearly thought that the gods favored him to win victories

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before every battle he would give sacrifices to a group of deities

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afterwards he would make sacrifices thanking them for giving him victory

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Greeks believed that certain gods were helpful in warfare

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Athena

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Artemis

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Zeus

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believed the gods were helpful to some people and not so helpful to others

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*** they didn't believe that there was a god or gods that loved and favored us equally, they strongly believed that individuals were favored by individual gods or groups of them

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*** Alexander thought that he had been chosen by specific gods, particularly by Zeus, for successes that were unprecedented

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Hoplite warfare

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one of the most striking things about it was its ritualistic element

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it usually didn't start out chaotically the way much combat in world history does

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a typical Hoplite battle started out with two different sides making sacrifices and then marching out in order into an open field to the sound of music being played, then stopping, and then rushing across the field and clashing, someone winning, and someone losing

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then after the battle, the winning side going out onto the battlefield and literally setting up a trophy that said, we won here today

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this shows a motivation for a lot of warfare in ancient Greece, which was to take ahold of land that was so essential to their economies

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Alexander's parents

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brought to Pella in Macedon great teachers to educate th 13 year old Alexander, including Aristotle

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politics

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eristics

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disputation

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what does Alexander have to teach us?

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he's such a large, complex figure, but one aspect that he can help us understand is that there aren't easy answers to interpretations of complex characters or complex events

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one of the great fascinations of Alexander is that he can't be easily resolved, he can't be simplified,

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he will be on the list of anyone's top two or three warriors in history

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as long as human beings are going to be involved in warfare, then they will come back to Alexander to try to learn about someone who probably was, overall, the most successful warrior in history

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pronunciation

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Achaemenid

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ah-KEE-mah-nid, empire