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Alexander the Great, King of Macedon 336-323 BC, was arguably the most successful military commander of ancient history, conquering most of the known world before his death. Born in 356 BC in Pella, Macedonia. Alexander is also known in Zoroastrian Middle Persian works such as the Arda Wiraz as "the accursed Alexander" due to his destruction of the Persian Empire and its capital Persepolis. He is also known in Eastern traditions as Dhul-Qarnayn (the two-horned one), apparently due to an image on coins minted during his rule that seemingly depicted him with the two ram's horns of the Egyptian god Ammon. In Iran, north-west India and modern-day Pakistan, he is known as Sikandar-e-Azam (Alexander the Great) and many male children are named Sikandar (or Iskander) after him.

Following the unification of the multiple city-states of ancient Greece under the rule of his father, Philip II of Macedon, (a labor Alexander had to repeat - twice - because the southern Greeks rebelled after Philip's death), Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, including Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Gaza, Egypt, Bactria and Mesopotamia, and extended the boundaries of his own empire as far as the Punjab. Alexander integrated non-Greeks into his army and administration, leading some scholars to credit him with a "policy of fusion." He encouraged marriage between Greeks and non-Greeks, and practiced it himself. After twelve years of constant military campaigning, Alexander died, possibly of malaria, typhoid or a viral encephalitis. His conquests ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and rule over non-Greek areas, a period known as the Hellenistic Age. Alexander himself lived on in the history and myth of both Greek and non-Greek peoples. Already during his lifetime, and especially after his death, his exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appears as a towering legendary hero in the tradition of Achilles.

The figure of Alexander raises with exceptional clearness that fascinating and even practically important question: How far do the greatest and most successful men of action change the history of their time and after?

To discuss this question involves a certain amount of speculation on the might-have-been, which the most austere type of historian might condemn as unprofitable. With this austerity I cannot agree, for the reason that history should be studied not only for our entertainment or even our moral edification, but also, in Thucydides' words, as a guide to "that future which, in accordance with the workings of human nature, is likely to resemble" the past. Since the experiences of history are not laboratory experiments which can be repeated with variations at will, it is genuinely important to consider what might have happened at the great crises of history--as soberly as may be, and relying always The figure of Alexander raises with exceptional clearness that fascinating and even practically important question: How far do the greatest and most successful men of action change the history of their time and after?

To discuss this question involves a certain amount of speculation on the might-have-been, which the most austere type of historian might condemn as unprofitable. With this austerity I cannot agree, for the reason that history should be studied not only for our entertainment or even our moral edification, but also, in Thucydides' words, as a guide to "that future which, in accordance with the workings of human nature, is likely to resemble" the past. Since the experiences of history are not laboratory experiments which can be repeated with variations at will, it is genuinely important to consider what might have happened at the great crises of history--as soberly as may be, and relying always

It has long been a commonplace that Alexander owed to his father a better "start" than any other conqueror in history, inheriting as he did the best army ever yet seen. We have emphasised, too, what has not been so often repeated--that the conquest of Persia had been dreamed of before him, not only by theorists, but by men of action like Jason of Pherai, who hoped to accomplish it; and also that foreign conquest formed an obvious exit from an economic impasse in Greece.

Our first question has another facet: What might a man of Alexander's gifts have done under other circumstances?-- the answer to which is more purely speculative; but to the present writer's mind it is clear that in any society a man of his physical (including cerebral)  make-up would have excelled in whatever road to acknowledged excellence was laid before him in youth. In a peaceful age he could have been a famous man of peace; a politician or capitalist-and probably also a notable athlete. He had also the "insatiable curiosity" and the untiring persistence of a scientist or an explorer. And with the restraint and moderation, the touch even of puritanism shown in him, in an environment that gave him every temptation to excess and sensuality, it is clear that, born a few centuries later, he could have been a famous and dominating saint.

We see Alexander faced with a personal choice in Syria after Issos, when Darius's offered to cede the western provinces. Parmenion was for accepting and, especially in view of the feeling in the army, surely many an invader ( Philip, for instance?) would have accepted the Euphrates line, or (perhaps best) have granted a beaten Persia a frontier at the mountains east of the Tigris, after temporarily occupying her capitals. That would have been quite enough for the Greek world to digest.

Another personality played its part, too, in the weakness of Darius. Gaugamela seems to have been won by minutes, before Mazaios' flank attack brought the phalanx to a standstill. As it was, its centre split open and was ridden through. Suppose that Darius had had the courage of a Poros, or the genius for cavalry raiding of a Spitamenes . . .

Apart from Alexander's tremendous drive and ambition, his death at the outset (Kleitos saved him by half a second at the Granikos!) might, of course, have been followed by disturbances in Macedonia that would--like the assassination of Jason--have suspended the campaign indefinitely. It remains nevertheless probable that someone (Alexander of Lynkestis?) would have led Philip's army to the assault sooner or later--but would he have gone so far as the son of Philip?

Lastly, would it have altered the "shape of things" out of recognition if Alexander had lived thirty years longer and left a son of the calibre that might have been expected of him?

But, if he had lived longer, and conquered Carthage (at this time a less formidable proposition than Iran, to judge by Agathokles the Syracusan's campaigns) and perhaps even Italy (where Rome was still no more than strong enough to beat the Samnites) and pressed on with his plans to amalgamate Macedonians and Iranians, and used suitable Italians as officers, as he used Thracians or Greeks - is it likely that he could have anticipated Rome and unified the Middle East and Mediterranean world in a lasting commonwealth?

This is, of course, an immense question, involving far too many unknown quantities to admit of dogmatism. But personally, I do not think so. I do not think so, for the reasons, first, that regional feeling, in the Greek cities, in Macedonia, in Iran, in Italy and elsewhere was everywhere strong; there would in any case, surely, have been an overwhelming reaction, as soon as the strong hand was removed, against Alexander's "godlike" internationalism; and secondly, that there were not enough Macedonians and Greeks to crush local particularism with ruthless brutality, as Rome was able to do. The causes that led to the crumbling of the Seleukid Empire would surely have operated as remorselessly in a larger one. In a later age the Caliphate, an Empire as swiftly won, fell apart as swiftly--in spite of having one God, one Book, one Prophet, to hold it together.

Moreover, even the Greek world was not united. For all Alexander's blandishment of Athens, for all his severity to Thebes, still Athens, Sparta, Aitolia, remained surly. Plenty of the landless and the uprooted were prepared to follow Alexander's fortunes; but the governments and dominant classes of the chief Greek states still held freedom--at the city level--to be more precious than Empire.

Rome had two advantages. First, the city-states and federations of villages in Italy, just because they were less brilliant than those of Greece, inspired a less fanatical eros (Perikles' word for patriotism) and amalgamated more easily; while Rome herself extended her citizenship liberally to other communities. Athens had done as much for Samos and Plataia, but there are few similar cases. And second, when Rome had unified central and southern Italy--just in time for the raid of Hannibal's 26,000 men, which nearly brought her to her knees--she had unified the man-power of a larger, deeper-soiled, more populous peninsula. Her census gave her confederacy 770,000 fighting men. Macedonia's native home-levy was never as much as 50,000, and there were limits to the extent to which one could dilute with foreigners. There were probably not so many adult male Greeks in all the world; and they were scattered from the Punjab to Spain.

What difference, then, did Alexander's personality make to world history?

Clearly, he brought Greek culture--which was already penetrating the East, with its trade, its doctors, its mercenaries--into the East in a flood, and with the prestige of conquest. The Iranian and later the Arabic East reacted at last; but they had learned, at least in Syria, that the Greeks "had something," and here, too, under Islam, captive Greece led her captivity captive.

But, whereas it seems almost certain that the west of the Persian Empire, as it was in the fourth century, must have fallen away into the Mediterranean orbit--it was Alexander and no one else who insisted on leading Greek arms to Bactria and India. Few other men would have tried, let alone succeeded.

Was this in its effect for the good of the world?

By marching into Iran, Alexander overstepped the bounds of the Mediterranean world; and it was his personal achievement, by conquering so much, to lay a greater strain than could be borne upon the strength of the Seleukid Empire--his residuary legatee.

Moreover, by drawing off so much Greek man-power so far into the East, Alexander weakened Greek colonisation nearer home, and ultimately even Greek resistance at home to Roman aggression.

To urge that Alexander "ought to" have turned west earlier is idle; as idle as to condemn him on moral grounds under the Actonian aphorism "Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Every great man is a bad man"; as idle as to condemn, with the brilliant French historian, M. Leon Homo, the "error" of the Roman Republic in turning east after him. The East offered "glittering prizes" and, because it consciously tried to defend itself, looked threatening. The West, really more dangerous, offered no attraction; it was still mostly primeval forest. To blame Alexander for his appalling record of butchery, his career of piracy on the grand scale (as a captured pirate is said once to have pointed out to him), is to blame him for not being brought up a Christian or a Greek republican.

But there were conscious Greek efforts, especially under Alexander of Epeiros and under Pyrrhos, to check the Western danger, already threatening the Greeks of Italy; and if the Greek drive to the East had not happened to find a leader of such transcendent brilliance, and therefore to penetrate so far, the Greek offensive and defensive in the West would have had more weight behind it. What a blessing to humanity if the Greeks could have checked Rome, at least long enough to civilise her, before Italy became the centre of a unified Mediterranean world. The Romans took kindly enough to Greek art and thought in the end; but they (far more than any other barbarians) first broke the back of Greek civilisation, in the appalling last two centuries B.C. before, with Vergil and Augustus, they learned to spare as well as conquer.

With all allowance for the tendencies of his age, the powerful personality of Alexander did make a difference; but the difference he made consisted in carrying much farther the Greek push into nearer Asia, which would almost certainly have taken place even without him; and the effect of this was to overstrain the strength of Hellenism (very much as Napoleon overstrained the strength of France) with results that were not ultimately for the good of humanity...

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