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Alexander the great was a general so was goerge patton. Can anyone help my compare the two?

I find that an interesting comparison. Both had love of their career as noted in the movie. Omar did his job out of a sense of duty, but Patton did his for love. Winning is everything to both men.

Interestingly, Patton was obssessed by Hannibal, the Carthaginian (you know - elephants over the Alps + the appalling battle of Cannae). More than a few of Patton's staffers thought he carried his passion a tad too far. If you want to draw comparissons between patton and a general of Antiquity, I think you'd be better off looking at Hannibal. Our original sources for him are Livy and Polybius; modern commentators include Dodge, Cottrel not to mention a series of fiction novels by Ross Leckie. Patton was not the only one to find Hannibal intriguing. More recently General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War mentioned Hannibal as the inspiration for some of his strategic and tactical decisions

Aengus,That is very interesting about Patton and Hannibal, I never knew. I can howvever understand it. Hannibal was a gret General and leader, I would consider him the best strategists of antiquity, his use of tricks and ambushes are simply breath taking.

Indeed, Hannibal was a great general of antiquity, easily one of the finest, but was he the best? Let's refer to his reported words on the subject, via one of those fabulously romantic Roman anecdotes. The story goes that late in life, effectively in hiding at the court of Antiochus in Seleucia, Hannibal's old nemesis, Scipio, turned up and requested a meeting. Hannibal agreed. It's easy to imagine the two old campaigners staring at each other after a gap of decades. All those memories of Zama and Cannae swirling around behind their silent brows. One thing led to another, and a conversation started, and unsurprisingly it turned to generalship. The relevant passage is taken from Acilius.Scipio asked: "Who, Hannibal, would you suppose to be the greatest captain of all?"
"Alexander, the great," replied Hannibal, "because with a small force he defeated armies whose numbers were beyond reckoning, and because he overran the remotest regions merely to visit them, which is a thing beyond normal human ambition."
"Yes, but after him, to whom would you award second place?"
After reflecting Hannibal said: "Pyrrhus, for he first taught the method of encamping; nor did anyone ever show such fine judgement in choosing his ground and disposing his posts; moreover, he could so well conciliate himself to men that, in spite of his foreigness, the people of Italy wished for him to be their sovereign rather than the Romans."
"Very well, but after him?" asked Scipio.
'Myself, without doubt," replied Hannibal. Scipio laughed, then asked,
"And what would you have said if you had beaten me?"
"Than," came the reply, "I would have placed Hannibal not only before Alexander and Pyrrhus, but all other commanders besides."I've never figured out whether he really meant those compliments to A and P, or if he mentioned them only to jocularly nettle Scipio. Still . . . it's a nice vignette.

If this is a correct anecodote (rather doubtful for #2) and he picked Pyrrus, I wonder which one actually got hit on the head with a tile