Gregory Aldrete: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, and I mean, that is then he one of the greatest heroes or one of the greatest villains in humanity, too. It’s like Julius Caesar. He’s famous for conquering Gaul. Well, about a million people were killed and a million enslaved in that. So does it make him a horrible person or one of our heroes? But Alexander is a combination of two things, one is he really just was a skilled individual, and he was one of those guys who had it all. He was smart, he was athletic, and he was supremely charismatic. I mean, it’s obviously one of these people that would walk into a room and everyone just kind of gravitates to him. He had that magic that made him an effective leader. And secondly, he was lucky because it wasn’t all him. He inherited a system created by his father, Philip II. So he was in the right time at the right place and had this instrument placed in his hands, and then he had the intelligence and the charisma to go use it. So it’s one of these coming together of different things, but often his father’s contribution, I think, is not recognized as much as it is. It’s his father who reformed the Macedonian army, who came up with that system of equipping them with the sarissa, this extra long spear that made them really effective, created the mixed army. So one of the keys to Alexander’s successes, in a tactical sense, is that his army was composed of different elements: heavy cavalry, light cavalry, heavy infantry, light infantry, missile troops, and he understand that he can use these in different and flexible ways on the battlefield; whereas a lot of warfare before then had just been, you line up, two sides smashed together. So he did clever things with this army that was a better tool than others did. And then, he was just supremely ambitious. I mean, he cared about his fame, which I guess his ego, but he clearly cared about that more than he did about things like money. He was indifferent to that, and he did have a grand vision. So he did have this vision of trying to unite the world, both politically under his control, but also culturally, and this is an interesting thing. indifferent to that, and he did have a grand vision. So he did have this vision of trying to unite the world, both politically under his control, but also culturally, and this is an interesting thing. So he was very open, in fact, insistent of trying to meld together the best elements of all the different cultures. So he, himself, was a Macedonian, but he admired Greek culture. So he pretty much adopted Greek culture as his own. When he conquers Persia, he starts adapting elements of Persian culture. He dresses in Persian clothing. He marries a Persian woman. He sort of forces thousands of his troops to marry local women. He appoints Persians to positions of power. He integrates Persian units into his military. He really wanted to fuse all these things together. And some people see this as a very enlightened vision that, “Oh, he’s not just, I want to conquer people and now they’re my slaves,” that he was really trying to create this one culture that was sort of the best of everything. Others see it, of course, as a form of cultural imperialism. You’re destroying other cultures and trying to warp or twist them into something, but what I think is interesting is that this vision he had of uniting cultures creates very problematic tensions among his own followers because the- Tensions among his own followers, because the Macedonians, his original troops, did not like this on the whole. They wanted the old model where we conquer you, you’re our slaves. We don’t want to share stuff with you. We don’t want you joining us in the army. We don’t want you appointed to positions of power. We are your conquerors and that’s it. And so, Alexander had to deal with a lot of friction from his own oldest, most loyal elements at the way he was being in their eyes, too generous to the conquered. So Alexander is one of these interesting personalities because every generation sees him in a new light and focuses on different things. So for some, he’s this enlightened visionary who was taught by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, and they say, “Well, this influenced him.” Others see him as an egomaniacal warmonger, just I’m out to kill and gain glory. There was a book a couple of decades ago, it says, “Oh, he’s just an alcoholic,” which he probably was. Yeah. So you get all these competing images, and the great thing is, we don’t really know what the true Alexander was or what his motivations were. It’s a mixed message. Why do you think the Roman Empire lasted while the Greek Empire as the Alexander expanded, did not?…

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