Problems in Greek history Part 16

In approaching the work and the character of Alexander, we come upon a new authority among modern historians, whom we have not yet encountered.

Droysen, who unfortunately devoted the evening of his life to Prussian history, employed his brilliant abilities for years in researches upon the history of Alexander and of his immediate successors. His latest work on this period is no doubt the fullest and best to which we can refer, and it seems a very great omission that it has not been as yet translated into our language.

[Sidenote: This period much neglected by English historians.]

[Sidenote: Nature of our authorities.]

This is more specially to be desired as we have no great English history of these times. It is but another instance of what has been so often urged in these pages. Greek history has been in the hands of people with literary and scholastic interests. So long as there are great authors to be translated, explained, panegyrized, all the most minute events are recorded and discussed with care; but as soon as we come to an epoch certainly not less important in human affairs, perhaps more decisive than any that had gone before in shaping the future history of the world, we are deserted by our modern historians, because the Greeks had lost that literary excellence which makes their earlier records the proper training for the schoolboy and the collegian[156:1]. We are now reduced to Diodorus, Plutarch, Arrian, Strabo, for our materials, and there are those who think that the moral splendour and unfailing interest of the famous _Parallel Lives_ do not atone for the want of Attic grace and strength which marks the decadence of Greek prose literature. Yet surely to the genuine historian, to whom all these records are merely sources of information on the course of affairs and the characters of men, literary perfection should only be an agreeable accident, an evidence, if you like, of that day's culture, not a gauge to test the pre-eminence of one century or one nation over another.

[Sidenote: Alexander's place in history still disputed.]

-- 64. Accordingly, the character of Alexander and his work have not yet been sufficiently weighed and studied to afford us a perfectly clear picture, which might carry conviction to the majority of readers, and finally fix his place in history. As I said above[157:1], Grote's picture of him--the only recent study of the period in England previous to my own _Alexander's Empire_ and _Greek Life and Thought_--is so manifestly unfair that no candid judge will be satisfied with it. If any other writer had used against Demosthenes or Pericles such evidence as Grote cites and believes against Alexander, the great historian would have cried shame upon him, and refuted his arguments with the high satisfaction of supporting an unanswerable case.

[Sidenote: Grote's unfairness in accepting evidence against him.]

Thus, for example, Grote finds in Q. Curtius, a late, rhetorical, and very untrustworthy Latin historian of Alexander, theatrical details of Alexander's cruelties to the heroic defender of Gaza, or the mythical descendants of the Milesian Branchidae who had settled in Inner Asia,--details unknown to Arrian, unknown apparently to the Athenians of the day, and fairly to be cla.s.sed with the king's adventures among the Amazons or in the land beyond the Sun. Yet these stories have their distinct effect upon Grote's estimate of Alexander, whom he esteems hardly a h.e.l.lene, but a semi-barbarian conqueror, of transcendent military abilities, only desirous of making for himself a great Oriental despot-monarchy, with a better and more efficient military and civil organization, but without any preparations for higher civilization.

[Sidenote: Droysen's estimate.]

The estimate of Droysen is nearer the truth, but still not strictly the truth itself[158:1]. To him the Macedonian is a political as well as a military genius of the highest order, who is educated in all the views of Aristotle, who understands thoroughly that the older forms of political life are effete, that small separate States require to be united under a strong central control. He even divines that the wealth and resources of Asia require regeneration through Greek intelligence and enterprise, and therefore the 'marriage of Europe and Asia,' of which the manifest symbol was the wholesale matrimony of his officers with Persian ladies, was the real aim and goal of all his achievements.

As such Alexander is more than the worthy pupil of Aristotle, and the legitimate originator of a new and striking form of civilization.

[Sidenote: Tendency to attribute calculation to genius.]

[Sidenote: Its spontaneity.]

-- 65. There is, I think, a great tendency, whenever we come to estimate a great and exceptional genius, to regard him as manifesting merely a higher degree of that conscious ability called talent, or cleverness.

It is much easier to understand this view of genius than to give any rational account of its spontaneity, its unconscious and unreflective inspirations, which seem to antic.i.p.ate, and solve without effort, questions laboriously answered by the patient research or experiment of ordinary minds[159:1]. We talk of 'flashes of genius.' When these flashes come often enough, and affect large political questions, we have results which baffle ordinary mortals, and are easily mistaken either for random luck or acute calculation.

[Sidenote: Alexander's military antecedents.]

If I am right, Alexander started with few definite ideas beyond the desire of great military conquests. On this point his views were probably quite clear, and no doubt often reasoned out with his early companions. He had seen the later campaigns of Philip, and had discovered at Chaeronea what the shock of heavy cavalry would do against the best infantry the Greek world could produce. In his very first operations to put down revolt and secure his crown, he had made trial of his field artillery, and of the marching powers of his army through the difficult Thracian country. He therefore required no Aristotle to tell him that with the combined arms of Greece and Macedonia he could conquer the Persian Empire. His reckless exposure of his life at the Granicus and at Issus may indeed be interpreted as the divine confidence of a genius in his star, but seems to me nothing more than a manifest defect in his generalship, counterbalanced to some extent by the enthusiasm it aroused in his household troops.

[Sidenote: He learns to respect Persian valour and loyalty.]

But it also taught him a very important lesson. He had probably quite underrated the high qualities of the Persian n.o.bles. Their splendid bravery and unshaken loyalty to their king in all the battles of the campaign, their evident dignity and liberty under a legitimate sovran, must have shown him that these were indeed subjects worth having, and destined to be some day of great importance in checking Greek discontent or Macedonian insubordination. The fierce and stubborn resistance of the great Aryan barons of Sogdiana, which cost him more time and loss than all his previous conquests, must have confirmed this opinion, and led to that recognition of the Persians in his empire which was so deeply resented by his Western subjects.

[Sidenote: He discovers how to fuse the nations in Alexandria.]

-- 66. His campaigns, on the other hand, must have at the same time forced this upon his mind, that the deep separation which had hitherto existed between East and West would make a h.o.m.ogeneous empire impossible, if pains were not taken to fuse the races by some large and peaceful process[160:1]. This problem was the first great political difficulty he solved; and he solved it very early in his career by the successful experiment of founding a city on the confines of the Greek seas and the Asiatic continent, into which Jews and Egyptians crowded along with Greeks, and produced the first specimen of that composite h.e.l.lenistic life which soon spread over all his empire.

[Sidenote: His development of commerce.]

[Sidenote: Diffusion of gold.]

This happy experiment, no doubt intended as an experiment, and perhaps the easiest and most obvious under the circ.u.mstances, must have set Alexander's mind into the right groove. Further advances into Asia showed him the immense field open to conquest by his arms, and also by the higher culture and enterprise of Greeks and Jews. He must have felt that in the foundation of chains of cities peopled by veterans and traders he would secure not only a military frontier and military communications, but _entrepots_ for the rising trade which brought new luxuries from the East, and new inventions from the West. Two distinct causes tended largely to promote this commerce, the vigorous maintenance of peace and security on roads and frontiers, and still more the dissemination of a vast h.o.a.rd of gold captured in the Persian treasuries. This h.o.a.rd, amounting to several millions of our money, not only stimulated trade by its mere circulation, but afforded the merchant a medium of exchange as superior in convenience to baser metals as bank-notes are to gold. The new merchant could pay out of his girdle in gold as much as his father had paid out of a camel's load in silver or copper. I have no doubt the Jews were the first people to profit by these altered circ.u.mstances, and thus to attain that importance from Rhodes to Rhagae which comes to light so suddenly and silently in the history of the Diadochi.

[Sidenote: Development of Alexander's views.]

[Sidenote: His romantic imagination.]

[Sidenote: No pupil of Aristotle.]

These changes seem to me to have dawned gradually, though quickly, upon the powerful mind of the conqueror, and to have transformed him from a young knight-errant in search of fame into a statesman facing an enormous responsibility. His intense and indefatigable spirit knew no repose except the distraction of physical excitement; and unfortunately, with the growth of larger views, his love of glory and of adventure was not stilled. No cares of State or legislative labours were able to quench the romance of his imagination and the longing to make new explorations and new conquests. This is the feature which legends of the East and West have caught with poetic truth; they have transformed the visions of his fancy into the chronicle of his life. But all that he did in the way of real government, of practical advancement in civilization, of respecting and adjusting conflicting rights among his various subjects, seems to me the result of a rapid practical insight, a large comprehension of pressing wants and useful reforms, not the working out of any mature theory. Hence I regard it as nonsense to call the politician and the king in any important sense the pupil of Aristotle.

There is hardly a point in the _Politics_ which can be regarded as having been adopted in the Macedonian settlement of the world. The whole conditions of this problem and its solution were non-h.e.l.lenic, non-speculative, new.

[Sidenote: His portentous activity.]

-- 67. It is quite possible that some of Alexander's most successful ordinances were not fully understood by himself, if what I have said above of the spontaneous action of genius be true. But certainly many of them were clearly seen and really planned. What astonishes us most is the supernatural quickness and vigour of the man. He died at an early age, but we may well question whether he died young. His body was hacked with wounds, worn with hard exercise and still harder drinking. His mind had undergone a perpetual strain. We feel that he lived at such a rate that to him thirty years were like a century of ordinary life.

[Sidenote: Compare with Napoleon,]

[Sidenote: and Cromwell.]

[Sidenote: Use of artillery.]

It is a favourite amus.e.m.e.nt to compare the great men of different epochs, who are never very similar, for a great genius is an individual belonging to no cla.s.s, and can neither be copied nor replaced.

Nevertheless it may be said that Napoleon shows more points of resemblance than most other conquerors to the Macedonian king. Had he died of fever on his way to Russia, while his Grand Army was unbroken, he would have left a military reputation hardly inferior to Alexander's.

He won his campaigns by the same rapidity in movement, the same resource in sudden emergencies. But if Alexander's strategy was similar to that of Napoleon, his tactics on the battlefield bear the most curious resemblance to those which Cromwell devised for himself under a.n.a.logous circ.u.mstances. Both generals saw that by organizing a heavy cavalry under perfect control, and not intended for mere pursuit, they could break up any infantry formation then possible. Both accordingly won all their battles by charges of this cavalry, while the enemy's cavalry, often equally victorious in attack, went in wild pursuit, and had no further effect in deciding the contest. It is even the case that both chose their right wing for their own attack, and used their infantry as the defensive arm of the action. This curious a.n.a.logy, which seems never to have been noticed, only shows how great minds will find out the same solution of a difficulty, whenever like circ.u.mstances arise. It is in the use of field artillery, which Alexander brought to bear in quite a novel way upon the northern barbarians in his first campaign, that we should probably find, were our evidence more complete, a resemblance to the tactics which Napoleon employed at Waterloo, attacking with cavalry and artillery together, in a manner which appeared strange even to Wellington.

But the a.n.a.logy to Napoleon holds good beyond the battlefield. Although both conquerors commenced their career as soldiers, both showed themselves indefatigable in office-work of a peaceful kind, and exceedingly able in the construction of laws. Napoleon imposed, if he did not originate, the best code in modern Europe, and he is known to have worked diligently and with great power at its details.

[Sidenote: Vain but not envious.]

Both showed the same disagreeable insistence upon their own superiority to other men, whose rivalry they could not brook. But Alexander sought to maintain it by exalting himself to a superhuman position, Napoleon by degrading his rivals with the poisoned weapons of calumny and lies. The falsehoods of Napoleon's official doc.u.ments have never been surpa.s.sed.

Alexander did not sink so low; but the a.s.sertion of divinity seems to most of us moderns a more monstrous violation of modesty, and a flaw which affects the whole character of the claimant.

[Sidenote: His a.s.sumption of divinity questioned.]

-- 68. So strongly is this felt that an acute writer, Mr. D. C. Hogarth, has endeavoured to show[165:1] that this too was one of the later fables invented about Alexander, and that the king himself never personally laid claim to a divine origin. The criticism of the evidence in this essay is excellent, and to most people will seem convincing.

Nevertheless, after due examination of the matter, I am satisfied that the conclusion is wrong, and there is good reason to think that the visit to the temple of Ammon was connected with the policy of deriving Alexander's origin from that G.o.d. The very name Alexandria, given at that moment to his new foundation, was a formation only hitherto known in connection with a G.o.d's name. The taunt of his soldiers at Babylon, that he should apply to his father Ammon, is perfectly well attested, and implies that his claim to divinity was well known in the army.

[Sidenote: An ordinary matter in those days.]

But to my mind a greater flaw in this able essay is the a.s.sumption that for a Greek or Macedonian to claim divine origin was as odious and ridiculous as for a modern man to do so. It is only yesterday that men held in Europe the theory that monarchy was of divine origin. In Egypt and the East it was quite the common creed that the monarchs themselves were such.[166:1] The new subjects of the Macedonian king would have thought it more extraordinary that he should not have claimed this descent than that he should; and in Egypt especially the belief that the king was the son of a G.o.d and a G.o.d himself did not conflict with the a.s.sertion of his ordinary human parentage. This is a condition of thought which we cannot grasp, and cannot therefore realize; but nevertheless the fact is as certain as any in ancient history.

[Sidenote: Perhaps not a.s.serted among the Greeks.]

The a.s.sertion, therefore, of divinity in the East was an ordinary piece of policy which Alexander could hardly avoid; the writer I have quoted has, however, shown strong reasons to doubt that he ever claimed it in Greece, though individual Greeks who visited his Eastern court at once perceived it in the ceremonial of his household, and though his soldiers taunted him with it during their revolt at Babylon. But this after all is a small matter. He probably knew better than any of his critics how to impress his authority upon his subjects; and whether it was from vanity or from policy or from a contempt of other men that he insisted upon his own divinity, is now of little consequence.

FOOTNOTES:

[156:1] Hence Fynes Clinton's third volume of _Fasti_, now fifty years old, is still by far the most complete collection of materials for studying later h.e.l.lenism. He not only gives all manner of out-of-the-way texts in full, but also a very excellent sketch of each of the h.e.l.lenistic monarchies, with dates and other credentials. Considering the time of its appearance (1845), it may be regarded as one of the finest monuments of English scholarship.