frumiousb

For me, in the last resort, Alexander's true genius was as a field-commander: perhaps, taken all in all, the most incomparable general the world has ever seen. His gift for speed, improvisation, variety of strategy; his cool-headedness in a crisis, his ability to extract himself from the most impossible situations; his mastery of terrain, his psychological ability to penetrate the enemy's intentions-- all these qualities place him at the very head of the Great Captains of history. The myth of the Great Captains is wearing rather than these days, and admiration for their achievements has waned: this is where we too become the victims of our own age and our own morality. Viewed in political rather than military terms, Alexander's career strikes a grimly familiar note. We have no right to soften it on that account.

Philip's son was bred as a king and a warrior. His business, his all-absorbing obsession through a short but crowded life, was war an conquest. It is idle to palliate this central truth, to pretend that he dreamed, in some mysterious fashion, of wading through rivers of blood and violence to achieve the Brotherhood of Man by raping an entire continent. He spent his life, with legendary success, in the pursuit of personal glory, Achillean kleos; and until very recent times this was regarded as a wholly laudable aim. The empire he built collapsed the moment he was gone; he came as a conqueror and the work he wrought was destruction. Yet his legend still lives; the proof of his immortality is the belief he inspired in others. That is why he remained greater than the measurable sum of his works; that is why, in the last resort, he will continue an insoluble enigma, to this and all future generations. His greatness defies a final judgment.
Pgs. 487-488

I've been reading a reasonable amount of history lately, and I was starting to get worried how much of it has left me rather cold. Either I find that I can't engage with the writing, or else I find the thesis of the writer poorly supported. I had started to get the bad bad feeling that my problem with historians was more about me than about the history itself.

Luckily, just about that point I picked up a Really Good History Book. Excellent and apparently well-respected as history and delicious to read as a book. It doesn't talk down to the readers; it doesn't pretend to know more than it possibly can do. The prose is very good. The logic and structure of the book are clear and well-ordered. I really enjoyed reading it and felt that I learned a lot.

I'm talking about Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C. by Peter Green. I'll say a little bit more about the book after the cut.

But first before I talk about this book in specific, I'd like to get some recommendations from you all in general. What are your favorite history books? Which are the tomes that you felt made history come alive for you without engaging in unforgivable narrative indulgences? To give you an idea, I like Simon Schama, Barbara Tuchman, Braudel, and Amin Maalouf.



When I sat down to write this, I read some reviews and letters that were written by Green in the New York Review of Books. His tone was much as this book would lead me to expect-- acerbic, smart and witty. He is a very good writer. In fact, that seems to be one of the arguments most commonly used against his books. He writes too well.

A brief dip into the online world highlights two basic types of criticism for Alexander of Macedon. There are the Alexander fans who hate Green for not being flattering enough about their hero. (The fact that the book's title says nothing about "Alexander the Great" is kind of a giveaway that Green was not embarking on a course of further myth-making around the king. Shame, many seem to want him to be idolized and not studied.) The other criticism seems to come from Very Serious Academics who admit Green's enthusiasm for the subject matter, while making snide remarks about how he is more a novelist than a historian. The implication seems to be that this makes Green more suitable for armchair historians like myself than Very Serious Academics.

And that may well be true. Since I'm not a VSA myself, I can only report that it seemed just right for me. I'll also note, mildly, that he does seem to be widely respected and that the people who don't respect his work appear in the minority.

Alexander is a fascinating character. I have been thinking about him a lot since finishing the biography. His career raises a huge number of questions about the nature of greatness, and those questions obviously also matter to Green. I'm not sure if he ever settles for himself how "Great" Alexander really is-- but there is a firm argument made for his importance-- a hard argument to counter, in my opinion.

Recommended. Best history book that I have read in a long time.

*****

After he was finished reading, Philip is said to have begged Fortune to do him some small disservice, to offset such overwhelming favours. Perhaps he recalled the cautionary tale of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, who received a letter from the Egyptian Pharoah Amasis expressing anxiety at his excessive good fortune. 'I have never yet heard of a man,'Amasis declared, 'who after an unbroken run of luck was not finally brought to complete ruin.' He advised Polycrates to throw away the objects he valued most; Polycrates tossed an emerald ring into the sea, but got it back a week later in the belly of a fish. Amasis promptly broke off their alliance, and Polycrates ended up impaled by a Persian satrap
pg. 3

They had no intention of being reduced to the status of provincial vassal barons if they could help it; and most of them viewed the late king's Hellenization policy with fierce distaste. Warriors who wore cords round their waists until they had killed a man in battle, who could not even sit at meat with their fellows until they had speared a wild boar single-handed, who drank from cattle-horns like Vikings-- such men were not the stuff of which a cultural renaissance is made.
Pgs. 10-11

"the quickest and most economical way of winning a military decision is to defeat an enemy not at his weakest but at his strongest point."pg. 16

At the same time, Sparta's shocking record as an imperial power (404-371) had taught Philip one extremely important lesson. Naked Machtpolitik created, in the long run, more problems than it solved. Conciliation always paid off better, even if it conceded no advantage except the semblance of self-respect. The pill of aggression must be gilded with appeals to principle and professions of honest dealing. Here we have yet another of Philip's policies which was afterwards taken over and carried to its logical extreme by his more famous son. The shifty Athenian demagogues who lied and shuffled would find that they had met a more charmingly persuasive liar than themselves. The hotheads who prated of patriotism and liberty would see both cut down to size by troops trained on deeds rather than rhetoric. It was the triumph, ultimately, of authoritarian efficiency over incompetent and corrupt idealism, of a ruthless professional over brilliant but disorganised amateurs who could never agree amongst themselves.

It was also the end of real freedom for Greece; because freedom, in the last resort, means the right to determine one's own future, for good or ill, the right to be stupid, vindictive, dishonest or faction-ridden if that is the will of the majority. Free men would always rather make a hash of affairs on a public vote than be dragooned into efficiency and success by any dictator, however far-sighted or benevolent. This was the ultimate truth which always escaped Philip, just as it escaped Alexander after him. For them achievement always came first; success was its own justification. An ideological opposition they could neither understand nor deal with: Philip regarded such an attitude with jovial cynicism, while Alexander simply rode roughshod over it. The polis, the city-state, had run its course: a new era was dawning.
Pgs. 33-34

Legends such as these always tended to accumulate round the birth and childhood of any famous character in antiquity. It was a sine qua non that the first should be accompanied by portents, and the second about in episodes suggestive of future greatness.
pg. 36

When the congress was over, 'many statesmen and philosophers came to [Alexander] with their congratulations'; we can imagine the scene all too clearly. But one famous character was conspicuous by his absence: Diogenes the Cynic. Piqued and curious, Alexander eventually went out to the suburb where Diogenes lived, in his large clay tub, and approached him personally. He found the philosopher sunning himself, naked except for a loin-cloth. Diogenes, his meditations disturbed by the noise and laughter of the numerous courtiers who came flocking at the captain-general's heels, looked up at Alexander with a direct, uncomfortable gaze, but said nothing.

For once in his life, Alexander was somewhat embarrassed. He greeted Diogenes with elaborate formality, and waited. Diogenes remained silent. At last, in desperation, Alexander asked if there was anything the philosopher wanted, anything he, Alexander, could do for him? 'Yes,' came the famous answer, 'stand aside; you're keeping the sun off me.' That was the end of the interview. As they trooped back into Corinth, Alexander's followers tried to turn the episode into a joke, jeering at Diogenes and belittling his pretensions. But the captain-general silenced them with one enigmatic remark. 'If I were not Alexander,' he said, 'I would be Diogenes.'
pgs. 122-123

Yet it was now, despite their presence, that Alexander found himself seized by an 'irresistible urge' to cross the river. If baulked by the difficult, try the impossible. The Greek word for this urge is pothos; it recurs throughout Alexander's life as a 'longing for things not yet within reach, for the unknown, far distant, unattained', and it is so used of no other person in the ancient world. Pothos in this sense, is an individual characteristic peculiar to Alexander.
pg. 128

"In other words, to solve his economic crisis, Alexander must either sink back into obscurity, or wage a successful war of aggression. There was never much doubt which course he would choose."
pg. 155

For me, in the last resort, Alexander's true genius was as a field-commander: perhaps, taken all in all, the most incomparable general the world has ever seen. His gift for speed, improvisation, variety of strategy; his cool-headedness in a crisis, his ability to extract himself from the most impossible situations; his mastery of terrain, his psychological ability to penetrate the enemy's intentions-- all these qualities place him at the very head of the Great Captains of history. The myth of the Great Captains is wearing rather than these days, and admiration for their achievements has waned: this is where we too become the victims of our own age and our own morality. Viewed in political rather than military terms, Alexander's career strikes a grimly familiar note. We have no right to soften it on that account.

Philip's son was bred as a king and a warrior. His business, his all-absorbing obsession through a short but crowded life, was war an conquest. It is idle to palliate this central truth, to pretend that he dreamed, in some mysterious fashion, of wading through rivers of blood and violence to achieve the Brotherhood of Man by raping an entire continent. He spent his life, with legendary success, in the pursuit of personal glory, Achillean kleos; and until very recent times this was regarded as a wholly laudable aim. The empire he built collapsed the moment he was gone; he came as a conqueror and the work he wrought was destruction. Yet his legend still lives; the proof of his immortality is the belief he inspired in others. That is why he remained greater than the measurable sum of his works; that is why, in the last resort, he will continue an insoluble enigma, to this and all future generations. His greatness defies a final judgment.
Pgs. 487-488

*****

Added to my wish list:

Complete Poems, Bacchylides and Robert Fagles
The Greco-Persian Wars, Peter Green
The Complete Odes, Pindar, Stephen Instone, and Anthony Verity