Alexander the Great

Alexander started his expedition after he had secured Macedonia against the neighbouring barbarians and completed the reduction of Greece.

He:

• rendered the jealousy of the Spartans of no effect
• attacked the maritime provinces
• caused his land forces to keep close to the sea coast, that they might not be separated from his fleet
• made an admirable use of discipline against numbers
• never lacked provisions because victory gave him everything

In the beginning, he trusted very little to chance. But when his reputation was established by a series of prosperous events, he sometimes had recourse to temerity.

Before his departure for Asia, he went to war against the Triballians and Illyrians in the very same way as Caesar did against the Gauls.

When he invested the city, he wanted the inhabitants to come into terms of peace; but they hastened their own ruin. When it was debated whether he should attack the Persian fleet, it is Parmenio that shews his presumption, Alexander his wisdom.

His aim was to:

• draw the Persians from the sea-coast
• lay them under a necessity of abandoning their marine, in which they had a manifest superiority.

Tyre was attached to the Persians from principle.

Alexander destroyed Tyre because the Persians could not subsist without its commerce and navigation.

• He subdued Egypt, which Darius had left bare of troops, while he was assembling immense armies elsewhere.

The passage of the Granicus Alexander led to the conquest of the Greek colonies.

• The battle of Issus led to the reduction of Tyre and Egypt
• The battle of Arbela led to the empire of the world.

After the battle of Issus, he allowed Darius to escape.

He used his time to secure and regulate his conquests.

After the battle of Arbela, he pursued Darius so close as to leave him no place of shelter in his empire.

Darius enters his towns, his provinces, to quit them the next moment.

Alexander marches with such rapidity, that his empire seems to be rather the prize of an Olympian race than the fruit of a great victory.

How did Alexander preserve his conquests?

He wanted to:

• unite the 2 nations
• abolish the distinctions of a conquering and a conquered people.

After completing his victories, he relinquished all those prejudices that had helped him to obtain them.

He assumed the manners of the Persians, that he might not chagrine them too much by obliging them to conform to those of the Greeks.

It was this humanity which made him shew so great a respect for the wife and mother of Darius. This that made him so continent.

Nothing consolidates a conquest more than the union formed between the 2 nations by marriages.

Alexander chose his wives from the nation he had subdued.

He insisted on his courtiers doing the same. The rest of the Macedonians followed the example.

The Franks and Burgundians permitted those marriages. The Visigoths forbad them in Spain, and afterwards allowed them*.

By the Lombards they were encouraged.

When the Romans wanted to weaken Macedonia, they ordered that there should be no inter-marriages between the people of different provinces.

Alexander also wanted to establish many Greek colonies in Persia.

He built many towns. These were so strongly part of this new empire that after he died, not a single province of Persia revolted.

To prevent Greece and Macedon from being too exhausted, he sent a colony of Jews to Alexandria. As long as the Jews were loyal to him, then they could keep their culture.

He allowed the conquered nations to retain their own customs, manners, and their civil laws.

He placed:

• the Macedonians at the head of the troops
• the natives of the country at the head of the government

This prevented revolts.

He paid a great respect to:

• the ancient traditions
• all the public monuments of the glory of nations.

The Persian monarchs destroyed the temples of the Greeks, Babylonians, and Egyptians. But Alexander rebuilt them.

Few nations submitted to his yoke to whose religion he did not conform.

His conquest seemed to aim to make him the particular monarch of each nation, and the first inhabitant of each city.

The Roman conquests aimed to destroy.

Alexander’s conquests aimed to preserve.

Wherever he directed his victorious arms, his chief view was to achieve something, from whence that country might derive an increase of prosperity and power.

He was helped by:

• his genius
• his frugality
• his profusion in important matters

He was close and reserved in his private expences, but generous to the highest degree in those of a public nature.

In regulating his household, he was the private Macedonian; but, in paying the troops, in sharing his conquests with the Greeks, and inhis largesses to every soldier in his army, he was Alexander.

He committed two very bad actions:

1. Setting Persepolis on fire
2. slaying Clitus

He later rendered them famous by his repentance. Hence it is that his crimes are forgot, while his regard for virtue was recorded: they were considered rather as unlucky accidents, than as his own deliberate acts.

Posterity, struck with the beauty of his mind, even in the midst of his irregular passion, can view him only with pity, but never with an eye of hatred.

Caesare tried to imitate Alexander. He flung his fellow Romans into despair for his own ostentation. Alexander’s ostentation, however, was agreeable.