I do agree that he seems to eclipse them all. It's hard to compare the 'great' from different areas of human endeavour, and it's only monarchs who seem to attract the name of 'the Great', but still he's the outstanding one. I think one reason for that is his eternal youth. And another is his magnificence. He has the 'wow factor'!alexkhan2000 wrote: I've always been interested in the stupendous figures of history - ranging from Alexander to Einstein, Caesar to Leonardo da Vinci, Genghis Khan to Thomas Jefferson, Newton to Darwin, Rousseau to Nietzsche, Bach to Beethoven and Wagner, Napoleon to Gandhi, Roosevelt to Bill Gates, etc. They are all fascinating and inspiring in their own individual ways, but there's just something about Alexander that seems to eclipse them all. He somehow seems approachable as a down-to-earth human being as remarkable and colossal of a historical figure as he was.
I wouldn't say it was luck, exactly, it's more that I get a sense of everything 'coming together'. Not just the Macedonian army, splendid though it was, but also, to name but a few, having arguably the finest mind ever as your teacher, having a group of friends whose brilliance complemented your own (cf their later achievements), being the product of a culture with one foot, as it were, in the foothills of Olympus and the other foot in sophisticated southern Greece.alexkhan2000 wrote: Yes, some people say he was lucky, that he had it easy based on what his father Phillip had established by the time he took over, that he had a weak and cowardly enemy in Darius, and that the dominos just seemed to fall in his favor wherever he went. But there's a saying that goes, "Luck comes to those with the prepared mind."
Shouldn't think so. I like the 'Mozart-like command'! Picturing him conducting, now. I think it's often forgotten how brilliantly clever he must have been.alexkhan2000 wrote: I like to think that Alexander's greatness goes beyond his Mozart-like command of his army and the battlefield although that's what he's ultimately known for. Having been educated by one of the greatest intellectuals of history in Aristotle, Alexander also had the intellectual capacity and the love of the arts that puts him in the most refined and rarefied realm amongst the history's greatest conquerors and warriors. He developed a love for medicine and other sciences such as botany, zoology and astronomy under the tutelage of Aristotle. Obviously, philosophy and ethics were a major part of the curriculum as well. He was also an accomplished musician (lyre) and knew the plays of Euripides by heart. A bookworm during the long evenings and nights of his campaigns, he would order to have the latest books from Greece sent over so he could keep his mind sharp and entertained. He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and he sought to share and spread that knowledge wherever he went. Could that be said for Genghis Khan or Tamerlane? Apparently not...
Now there, to be honest, I think you go too far. Christianity as the pillar of Western civilisation - OK, I can buy that. But it would have spread from Rome out through Europe, with or without Alexander. The Roman Empire gave it the chance to spread, but what gave the Roman Empire its chance, what saved it from being gobbled up by Persia before it got going? It wasn't Alexander, it was Leonidas and Themistocles. If we're talking Western civilisation, the credit has to go to those who fought at Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylae and Plataea. I think Alexander - and ultimately, Hellenism, gave it the chance to spread east, though.alexkhan2000 wrote: In the macro-view of world history, Alexander certainly made it possible for Christianity to develop into what it is today - the pillar of Western civilization. Can we imagine Christianity forming under the auspices of the Persian Empire? It's simply impossible to envision a history and the world today without what Alexander achieved in his brief 32 years of existence. As I said, it all has to be viewed in a macro manner.
I do see your point, but I think it's ironic that what we think of as western civilisation, is just that - western. Alexander gave the Romans their foothold in the east, but the legacy didn't long survive the break-up of the Empire into two. And it was the west, not the east, that inherited the legacy. And so we call him, 'Alexander the Great', whereas in the lands he actually conquered, they just call him 'Iskander' - or worse.alexkhan2000 wrote: The Hellenized Middle East and western Asia was what made it possible for the emerging Roman Empire to get a foothold there. Without that Hellenized Asia, the Romans, with so many other problems on their other frontiers such as Gaul, Germania, and Carthage, would have been too distracted and their resources too scattered to mount an effective campaign against the Persian Empire. Just by defeating the weakened Macedonia, all of the Middle East and Asia Minor were essentially just turned over to Rome. And, of course, the model of imperial Rome under the likes of Caesar and Augustus was based on the empire that Alexander had established. Alexander's own empire may have crumbled with his death, but the Hellenization that he brought about and the adoption of the remains of his empire by Rome ensured that his legacy was far greater than his mere territorial conquests. Truly, over the long haul, it really was an empire of the mind, a legacy that is felt to this very day...
Fiona