We had a couple of good Classical Rome threads a while back. I'm always up for a good discussion of the Classical era. So...

Is anyone else here a big Alexander the Great fan?

Hmmm. Alexander. You know, for all that he accomplished, I have never been a big researcher of him or his life, though I should be as he really was a great and powerful man.

You gotta love a brilliant military mind who loves his horse enough to name a city after him(Bucephalia). As long as they aren't as crazy as Caligula.

I studied his campaigns as a teenager and my end conclusion is that he was criminally undercautious and repeatedly lucky. At Gaugamela in particular he put his entire campaign on a single throw of the dice and was fortunate enough to panic his enemy counterpart. If Darius hadn't lost his head and fled then stirrupless, lanceless cavalry would have hit heavily armoured infantry. There's a very good reason cavalry didn't really become that useful against ranked infantry until about a milennium later.

"While Alexander was still occupied with the siege, he was visited by envoys from Daruis, who in the King's name offered a sum of 10,000 talents in exchange for his mother, wife, and children; they further proposed that all the territory west of the Euphrates right to the Aegean Sea should belong to Alexander, who should seal his bond of friendship and alliance with Persia by marrying Darius' daughter. These proposals were made known at a meeting of Alexander's personal advisers, and Parmenio, according to all reports, declared that were he Alexander he would be happy to end the war on such terms and be done with any further adventures. 'That,' replied Alexander, 'is what I should do were I Parmenio; but since I am Alexander, I shall send Darius a different answer.' And send it he did." -Arrian, Campaigns of Alexander.

Calling for caution and leveling accusations of negligence ring hollow when the one accused has delivered victory at every turn.



As to the "Stirrup and lance" thing, you're buying into the theories of Lynn White Jr; they were great back in the early 60's when he proposed them, but they've long since been pushed aside by historians as too strident and ill-researched. I wouldn't put too much stock in Lynn White these days.

If cavalry without stirrups and lances (but I'd be tempted to call a Macedonian Xyston a lance) can not deal with heavy infantry, how did less than 10,000 Parthian cavalry utterly destroy nearly 40,000 Roman heavy infantry at Carrhae?

-- Sun May 16, 2010 4:39 pm --



I'd be happy to make recommendations if you like...?

Yeah... that's loving a horse a little too much

If you want to say that just because someone was repeatedly lucky enough to face a cowardly enemy commander means he wasn't incautious then sure. However bear in mind that at that point Darius had been beaten rather soundly and it was a sign of weakness to attempt to ransom his family back and make peace. Furthermore, examine Alexander's later injuries in combat and how he got them. For a general he was extremely imprudent about his own safety and when he did go down in India it had a marked effect on his army's ability to continue the battle.

Even so, we can see a continuous tendancy to charge into the middle of combat at the head of the Companion wedge formation. At Granicus his skirmishers outnumbered the entire enemy army and could have won the day if used cleverly but instead he threw away thousands of troops. At Issus he charged through to Darius who fled and routed his entire army through sheer cowardice. At Gaugamela, pretty much the same thing happened (although panic is attributed in some sources to Darius' charioteer being killed and mistaken for the king).

In two cases he carried the day through sheer luck alone and one he wasted lives. Not the best outcome possible in my view. The inability to name a successor was rather shortsighted too. Perhaps he was a master of "winging it" but his most famous successes would have been more easily achieved in more measured ways.

Yes, I think it is fair to say that Alexander understood his enemies' limitations and exploited them. Is this somehow a fault of his?



Well, sure - that's exactly what Alexander replied. In essence, "I already own your land, thanks."



What do you mean "later?" He was wounded before and after.



Oh, dear. "Did go down in India?" Are you basing your assessment on that Oliver Stone movie? Wherein Alexander is wounded in India and never regains his confidence?

Because that's crap. Alexander was wounded over and over and over.

A quick list shows a head wound at Granicus, a thigh wound at Issus, he was shot by an arrow in the shoulder at Gaza, shot in the leg by a Scythian arrow at Jaxartes river, smashed in the head with a stone at the siege of Cyropolis, shot in the ankle with an arrow in Afghanistan, and, yes, shot with an arrow in India.

After each and every wound he returned, more determined than ever. Even days before his unexpected death in Babylon he was planning further campaigns - this time against the West, to attack Carthage and perhaps Rome.



Which won the battle.

If he'd died or lost, you'd have a point - that he should have been more cautious. But he delivered.



You're following in Parmenion's footsteps again...



How foolish of him to not expect to die unexpectedly at the age of 32. ')



I seriously doubt this. Had he been more cautions or "measured" there is no way he would never have won as much as he did. Sometimes decisiveness and daring is necessary - Alexander understood this, and profited from it in a way that one who was more cautious - Darius, for example - never could.


I think we're going to have to disagree at this point.

No, I'm basing it on his troop's reaction to that injury, since it was comparatively severe. He regained confidence but not in time to win the battle, he needed to come back and have another go.

Again, pure luck that it won the first time against Darius and luck combined with stupidity that carried it on day two. It seemed to be his whole schtick in some ways.

I know, it's mad to think he didn't get around to naming a successor two years past the average life expectancy of the age....



I seriously doubt this. Had he been more cautions or "measured" there is no way he would never have won as much as he did. Sometimes decisiveness and daring is necessary - Alexander understood this, and profited from it in a way that one who was more cautious - Darius, for example - never could.[/quote]And what benefit was it in the long run? Naught but a collection of infighting provinces after his death.

Sure, no problem. Combat command (as an extension of politics) is largely a matter of personal taste anyway I suppose.

And still he won.



And yet he won, every time.



Find me a source that says "30" EXACTLY was the average life expectancy of a Macedonian in the 300s BC.

As it is, while "30" may be the AVERAGE, that is a result of factoring in infant mortality. As a result, if you made it out of childhood you could expect to live far beyond 30.



What nihilism. If that's the case, what is the result of any achievement?



Probably so. As it is, I think your conclusions as a result of your teen studies - that Alexander should have been more cautions - are - well, I can't recall anything I've disagreed with more in a long time, to the point that I can't even see a way to reasonably discuss them. Criticizing failure is completely understandable. But harsh criticism of unparalleled, unequalled success? I'm missing something here...

Well I was a teenager when I studied his battles (nineteen actually, but it still counts) but I later learned about technological developements (as well as continually studying military history, albeit modern history, until today) which made the charges comparatively more risky with the cavalry having comparatively negligable reach to that of contemporary infantry (mostly spear- and pike-armed to the cavalry's sword and javelins). Stirrups really made cavalry capable of being reliable shock troops and they didn't exist (other than for mounting aids) for another six hundred years after Alexander's death.

I suppose another thing that got me is that Alexander always gets the credit for merely employing the deployment and combined-arms tactics that his father developed and prooved years earlier while Phillp gets relegated to the role of absentee asshole dad.

I give Alexander the Great props for being able to stir up some controversy in both academic and political worlds, even though he's long dead and gone.

Last year Alexander inspired 364 classical scholars from around the world to petition President Obama to "intervene to clean up some of the historical debris left in southeast Europe by the previous U.S. administration."

Whoa. As if Obama hasn't already got enough on his plate. And as if we didn't already have enough to blame on G.W. Bush...



You can read the entire petition here.

-- Nephele

Aren't Alexander's military strategies still being studied these days? I think that although he may have seemed blood thirsty, if he had lived longer there would've been peace uniting the lands that he conquered since he encouraged inter-marriage between the Greeks and the newer lands.

If he hadn't ODed on hellebore he could've realized his dream.

Very little. You either have to read up on the martial aspects of his life on your own or get far into a Classics program. Military History is a very, very neglected subject these days at the University level. Even the service academies barely scratch the surface of "ancient"/Classical military history. A friend and erstwhile colleague of mine teaches at the USAF Academy; according to him, they spend one day covering Cannae - and beyond that, Classical military history is forgotten.



To be fair, he was. A stone-cold killer in every regard, he was never afraid to order massacres or mass killings.



And that's the other side of the coin. As much as he was a brutal killer, he was also amazingly progressive and modern in his actions.

There's a theory that his actions can be explained in terms of his being a raging alcoholic. It makes a strange sort of sense - One day he goes on a bender and starts demanding that his friends bow to him, Persian-style - then he sobers up, feels all conciliatory, and implements some progressive, forward-thinking policy. Then he gets drunk again and stabs his friend Black Cleitus...

It depends where you are as to how widely studied it is. Here if you study Latin or Greek you can do it at High-school level and it lasts for between two and six years depending when you start. There is a mandatory history module attached to both examinations and, like most history, it's about art, architecture, daily life but mostly killing people. There is also a secondary subject known as "Classical studies" which sadly you cannot take if you take either Latin or Greek which focuses solely on the cultural aspects of the relevant societies, adding literature examined on it's own merits rather than as something to practice translation on. In retrospect I should have taken that rather than Latin since I'm better at the waffle than the crunch of language, but I had fun reading my brother's textbooks and notes after I had finished school either way.

I don't really know much about the University-level studies but I can ask a friend of mine who's doing a masters in Military History right now and see if she had the option of a module on him.