But Alexander was not just a general – he was a king. It’s very easy to see why Alexander would be called ‘great’ – because of his military expertise and his military genius. He was always faced by a larger army than his own wherever he went, and he waged some really tough battles and sieges, but he was always victorious. There’s no question that Alexander was a genius when it comes to military strategy and battle tactics. Historian Valerie Hansen on cultural exchange, the history of the Silk Road, and the historical documents that are used to study itThe ‘greatness’ of Alexander doesn’t come from the fact that he was a king, or that he was worshipped as a God by some of his subjects, or that he died young at the height of his power – he was 33 – but because of his military career. But his great military victories, his strategic genius, and the high enemy death count were the sorts of thing that would appeal to the Romans. Alexander coldly massacred hundreds of thousands of native peoples during his campaign, and at times in Afghanistan and India he and his army were wiping out entire tribes – at times it was genocide! Today if Alexander was alive, he would be put on trial for war crimes. A victorious Roman general had to have killed 5,000 of the enemy before he was allowed a triumph through the streets of Rome to cheering crowds. Most likely the Romans called him ‘great’ because they were people who measured greatness by the number of ‘body bags’. Thus at some point between his death in 323 BC and the first century BC he’s come to be seen as ‘great’. The very first time he’s referred to as ‘Great’ is in a Roman comedy of the 1 century BC where he is called ‘Magnum’ (the Latin word for ‘great’). Probably this was not during his lifetime. We don’t know when and by whom he was first called ‘great’. We can learn a lot of lessons from his campaign that can be applicable to makes of modern strategy in different multicultural regions of the world today. We can study how Alexander tried to bridge the gap between West and East and especially not so much for his success or failure, but for how he went about it. Very often he would fail simply because he did not understand or try to appreciate their local customs, especially if they went across Greek beliefs or customs. He had to try to rule them and to relate to them. He came across people from totally different cultures, and from very different sociocultural backgrounds. His significance is that, for example, his campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have a lot of similarities to Western involvement in those regions today. There are very few figures from the ancient world who can play a role in the modern world, and Alexander the Great is one of them.
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