The Reign of Alexander III of Macedon
acoup.blog
acoup.blog
I suppose my question is: How do you know this? Alexander was surrounded by hand-picked men his father had groomed for decades in some cases. Offering council on every part of war fighting, from tactics to strategy to logistics. Isn't it entirely possible Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced men telling him what to do?
Earlier in the article the author mentions alexander's perfect track record of logistical balancing. Surely that, if nothing else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him? They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do was not upset the apple cart.
Or another example - one man cannot organize a cavalry detachment mid-battle and send it to aid a failing flank. That takes the work of many dozens of officers, and well trained soldiers drilled to follow orders even under intense stress.
Of course this is all speculation on my part, as we simply can't know due to the mythologizing of the man and his life. But it's a question I find interesting to ponder.
Let's keep in mind though that having great resources at your disposal, and a large circle of experienced and capable advisors at hand, does not necessarily create a lasting form of "action alignment" between those.
It is interesting in this context that none of his advisors or "immediate staff" ever strongly challenged Alexander in his lifetime.
They deferred to him till the last moment, only to basically be snubbed off by his famous "whoever's strongest" last words. Only then did they go for each others' throats.
It is of course possible, given historical records and "history is written by the victors", that his portrayal as integrative figure is flawed and more incorrect than not. The behaviour of the diadochs, the "infighting of the inner circle" which he apparently had contained in his lifetime, yet broke out immediately after, that make it likely that he brought some forms of "interpersonal skills" to the table which neither his father, nor his "successors" possessed in equal measure.
(my opinion)
Very little luck is involved in winning battle after battle and expanding a city-state kingdom 1000x, with strategic decisions which are still studied and marvelled upon by millitary experts.
Visualization
At Granicus, Alexander was hit in the head by scimitar-wielding cavalry, causing his helmet to fly off his head. The Persians later struck the king with a missile, which went through his shield and lodged in his shoulder.
The real point is that such an accomplishment will never be due to pure luck. Skill also had to be there.
[0]: https://www.military.com/history/alexander-great-caught-luck...
Please check your sense of scale.
The total area of the globe is about 510.1 million km2; the total landmass of earth is about 148 million km2. The Internet tells me that Alexander's empire stretched about 5.2 million km2 at its greatest extent. Which is about 1% of the globe, or 3.5% of the total dry landmass.
For comparison, the Soviet Union had about 22.4 million km2. And the British Empire had about 35.5 million km2 at its largest.
The Internet also tells me that Phillip II controlled about 0.3 million km2 at the end of his reign. Which makes for about 5% of Alexander's territory at the end of his reign. A 20x expansion for Alexander is nothing to sneeze at, but it's a far cry from 1000 or even 100.
For Alexander the numbers I find are about "two million square miles".
2M / 25K gives 1/80. Round it up to 1/100 and let's call it a day.
1000x was an off the cuff number, with the point being the huge increase in the size of the kingdom Alexander inherited - not the specific multiplier.
We have had records about rulers and events from that wider area (from Greece to India) for centuries before Alexander.
>As was stated in the article, all the original sources are gone.
Just the primary sources from contemporaries who directly worked with him. We still have histiographical sources about him referrencing and quoting those, and from very close chronologically times, epigraphs, whole cities established by him, coins, and so on.
It's not something that would "slip by".
During battle he led his own element and consistently made the right calls when doing so. The wiser men where hundreds to thousands of meters away leading the rest of his army, with effectively no way to communicate with him.
> Surely that, if nothing else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him? They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do was not upset the apple cart.
The scale of the operations during these 20 years were nothing like the campaign he led. They operated entirely in Greece, the furthest they operated from their homes was in the hundreds of kilometers, in pretty much known terrain. Alexander led them all the way to India.
> Or another example - one man cannot organize a cavalry detachment mid-battle and send it to aid a failing flank.
One man cannot organize and send it but can definitely lead it to do that. He made the decision to aid the failing flank, not his officers. His officers just followed him. If he chose to chase down the fleeing enemy they would just do that.
There are countless examples through out history of leaders chasing down fleeing enemies only to find their flank collapsed and the battle lost. Similarly there are countless examples of leaders overextending in their campaign running out of supplies.
The gist is that you can't really argue with his track record. He won all the battles he fought and took down an empire several times larger than his kingdom with an army of about 50000 men. He was handed with a very effective military system, but he wielded it perfectly, that takes great skill.
Do you think, if it were true, that he was an entitled brat who just did what his commanders told him to do, that they would have written that?
We have a mythical commander who did everything right. And it's likely just that: a myth.
I think if it were true, he would not have been king for long.
Indeed, in the event it worked out quite well for them. First conquer the world with the united Macedonian army, then partition the world between them when Alexander dies.
Again while I absolutely agree with your point, he was in fact, not a king for very long.
History is written by the literate. (i.e. the rich for most of human history)
In this case, most information about Alexander the Great comes from four distinct sources, the most famous being Arrian of Nicomedia who famously used Ptolemy I Soter as their primary source.
Ptolemy at the time he wrote his testimony was already a king and only had benefit of grandizing his own contributions not his old King. His account was famed for how straightforward it was and seemed only to confirm Alexander's exceptional leadership in battle.
But he had to do much more than copy his father. He had to deal with logistics in a way that his father never had to. Alexander's war was as much about the logistics of supplying his army as about the battles it fought. He had to deal with large geopolitical aspects of the war, such as the need to win (or defend successfully) at sea, not just land, and he couldn't be both at sea and on land. Founding lots of cities to anchor his authority was a geopolitical technique that his father had not had to employ.
Sure, Alexander was his father's son, but Alexander's accomplishments are his own.
Listening to "wiser, more experienced" men is part of being "unnaturally composed".
Especially if you're not just some unsure youngling who suddenly inherited a throne you can't handle, but a decisive king who expanded your father's kingdom 1000x.
In different examples, even the sons of the most wise and temperate emperors could turn into depraved bloodthirsty tyrants.
Not to mention Alexander as a kid studied with one of the most wise and educated men of his time (and the previous/next millenium or so).
Have a look at the article. See the map with the legend:
> Via Wikipedia, a map of the expansion of Macedonian controlled territory during the reign of Philip II. Philip controlled only the darkest orange area (and not all of it) at the start of his reign; by the end he controlled Macedon, Thrace, Thessaly and the Greek states of the League of Corinth.
Macedon, Thrace, Thessaly and the Greek states of the League of Corinth together are more than 1% of Alexander's empire.
Alexander did inherit a superb army. However, while he was present the army enjoyed spectacular operational and battlefield success. Once Alexander was gone, the successes also stopped.
While true, this doesn't necessarily preclude the hypothesis that Alexander's generals were the real power behind the throne. The successes stopped around the time that the Macedonian armies started fighting each other and trying to actually rule the areas that they conquered. This could easily be explained by the generals being all roughly equally competent at commanding soldiers and also simultaneously being distracted by affairs of state and so drawn away from expansion into non-Macedonian territory.
At those levels, loyalty and respect are very much something you _must earn_. It is not given.
What I got from that is that moving an army of more than 10000 men was a monumental effort in and off itself. The real genius commanders were the ones who had more than 5% of their attentions and talent to actually do any sort of tactics on the battlefield.
Just showing up in proper order would more often than not lead to winning, since it was so damn hard.
So managing to move such an army across asia was an incredible achievement that warrants praise, regardless if he himself was responsible or just recognizing the talent and keeping it in the right position.
Alexander's officers had experience campaigning in Greece. It's logistically incomparable to conquering even Asia Minor, forget the whole of Persia.
https://acoup.blog/2022/03/03/collections-how-the-weak-can-w...
Part of this is speculation, obviously. We can’t know for sure because the Industrial Revolution only happened once. But he makes such a compelling case that I can’t think of any counter arguments.
I guess the biggest thing is, if Philip II was so smart, why was it Alexander who became Lord of Asia and not him? Oh right, because as even Machiavelli (otherwise a fan of Philip II) notes in the Discourses, he got killed because he didn't avenge Pausanias after he was raped despite multiple complaints. So much for the pragmatic genius. And it's not like Philip invented the idea of the phalanx, though yeah he was a pretty incredible military organizer.
Did Philip even have the ambition or desire needed to conquer Persia? Would he have had the tolerance needed to actually rule these areas that Alexander demonstrated (i.e. marrying Roxane despite it upsetting "old guard" generals, keeping in place a lot of the local government structures/making deals with people like Porus) or would he have insisted on violent rule that would have created conditions ripe for rebellion?
Alexander had to fight in insane conditions against armies with elephants in India. And he won. Yes he inherited a lot, but I think he's more versatile than implied here.
Phillip II went from captive in Thebes to overlord of Greece. In Ancient Greece where there were many small city-states this involved a lot of gaining control 1 by 1, via diplomacy and war. This takes a long, long time. About 23 years, as it turns out.
> Did Philip even have the ambition or desire needed to conquer Persia?
Of course he did. He founded a pan-Hellenic league and installed himself as its leader. The League of Corinth’s first act was to declare war against Persia. He had a large Macedonian force already in Asia Minor when he died. The invasion of Persia was already underway when Phillip died.
> Would he have had the tolerance needed to actually rule these areas that Alexander demonstrated (i.e. marrying Roxane despite it upsetting "old guard" generals, keeping in place a lot of the local government structures/making deals with people like Porus) or would he have insisted on violent rule that would have created conditions ripe for rebellion?
Marrying someone to establish an alliance was a day one strategy for Phillip II. Macedonian royalty were expected to have multiple wives. Phillip never insisted on brutality when he could have his way peacefully. Considering Alexander was the one who leveled Thebes I don’t really think setting up a wise, peaceful son vs violent, foolish father archetype is accurate.
And upon rereading, the article says this as well which is more along the lines of what I have read previously and what I meant about ambition. Would Philip have actually conquered the whole thing?
Should the generals have been the secret to Alexander's success, he died young enough that they had plenty of chances to show their own mettle. But they got pushed back everywhere instead, not only by the rising powers of Rome and Carthage but also by Alexander's partially defeated enemies: the Indians, Scythians and, most humiliatingly, even by the Thracians. The significance of the "Great" nickname was not that they regarded him as a great moral teacher, or an example to be followed by the average person; rather, when looking at Macedonian kings before and after Alexander III, he stood out by far due to his accomplishments. Had he done nothing but founded the wonder-laden city of Alexandria, which dominated the Eastern Mediterranean for centuries, they would have still considered him "Great".
Anyway we only have the very first part of the argument here and it might be best to hold off judgement on some of these points until we have the rest.
> Alexander invents no new tactics and employs only one clever ruse in this whole set of battles.
And ascribing a lot to Philip's people like Antipater. Which I dispute.
> > Alexander invents no new tactics and employs only one clever ruse in this whole set of battles.
Yes? That doesn't mean Alexander ain't a great general. And our author very much says so.
[*] Well, "subjugate" -- he let the city states have a great deal of autonomy. And either because the Thebans destroyed Sparta, or because Alexander destroyed Thebes, or both, the wars in Greece stopped.
'the first two stages being “Paradigm Invocation,” where the student ‘knows’ something they’ve been told, but not why it is or why it is significant (“Alexander was a military genius!”), and then “Paradigm Rejection, where the student, having learned that some paradigms are incomplete or even wrong, turns on them rather too completely'
It seems to me that many discussion, even the comments on this page, have to do with paradigms. We all have such intense opinions and reactions and the discussions are often not productive. I suspect that it is because the paradigms of the participants are completely different.
And as a corollary, perhaps we use paradigms because doing detailed analysis is overwhelming. I had friends who had been in Nepal for a couple of years and could not cope with the overwhelming number of choices they faced in a US grocery store. Seventeen kinds of laundry detergent?
I had a paradigm, aka a brand of laundry detergent.
And to make things worse, perhaps paradigms are dependent on your own circumstances? Biden vs Trump? Two paradigms caused by two very different set of circumstances?
[edit: add 'for me' in the first sentence]
- He was set up to succeed.
- He executed well because of his nature.
- He had at least some very heavy moral failings.
There's a common style of thought now that can be summarized as 'the environment made the person so why praise/revere/punish them?'. In history terms, that means Great Man theory is dead.
My view is that environment should be acknowledged but we, ultimately, must place blame or praise on the person somewhere as, at least, a myth of society. With a value system that does not see individuals to blame or praise, we lack in ourselves the will to try to be better.
The myth seems to be key to the orderly continuation of civilization.
> must place blame or praise on the person somewhere as, at least, a myth of society
I think there is value to that kind of myth, but I find that the Great Man theory has a lot of power (more than just as mythology) when put in terms of the but-for key figure; as in, would the environment of the times have resulted in the actions that historically took place if it wasn't for the "great man" involved?
Had Churchill not existed, would the environment of the times have supplied another great wartime leader to follow Chamberlain? Did the shame of the Weimar Republic necessarily produce a figure like Hitler and all that unfolded thereafter, or was he a unique personality without whom things would have been very different?
Of course you should read the article as well, but the interview is invaluable. His blog is shared on HN a lot, but this was the first time I ever saw the man himself asked to actually account for why he believes the evidence supports his conclusions.
Also the article in question, from the interview, was this one https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/22/sparta-popular-culture-... but they edited the title after he did that podcast. It used to be “Spartans Were Losers: The US Military’s Admiration of a Proto-Fascist City-State is Based on Bad History.”
Not an expert, but my understanding is that Soviet education & propaganda idealized Sparta.
Edit: I was unaware of the US military admiring Sparta...but developing an admiration for the ideals of your previous #1 Enemy, whose nation collapsed from within...yeahhh. Perhaps a few service academy instructors need to further explain "Do Not Copy Losing Strategies" to their Military Thinking 101 classes?
Not really, the Spartakiad was named after Spartacus, not Sparta.
From a few quick searches, I'm not getting anything about Soviet views on Sparta - just crap about the US-based "Sparta vs. Athens" Cold War analogy, or Soviet takes on (modern) Greek communism, or Eastern Orthodox ties between Greece and Russia, or Imperial Russian views on the Greek War of Independence, or ...
This being HN - there is probably someone who either knows, or is fluent in Russian to be able to effectively search on the topic.
(I had wondered why there was a "Star City" filmstrip included in the search results; it appears to be because of a cosmonaut using a Spartacus-named fitness machine: https://diafilmy.su/uploads/posts/2015-04/1429074979_08.jpg )
Someone with better cultural knowledge will do better than I, but I'm getting the feel that the closest approach to Sparta was that the Soviets didn't gender-separate their scouting programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrS6z4tUtI
The Soviet economic system is a sufficient explanation for their collapse. I don't think their admiration for (a made up, idealised) Sparta made a difference one way or another. And even if it did, we can't tell; no one ran a controlled experiment, and it's at most a very small factor.
Compare: the Soviets also ate potatoes. But you'd be hard pressed to say that we should avoid eating potatoes.
IMHO that's really not how you should approach an interview with a highly educated/knowledgably professional as a lay person. Also focusing way too much on semantics and getting stuck in relatively minor details while mostly ignoring the bigger picture. Must have been pretty annoying for the interviewee to sit through...
Interviewer: "We have no data point supporting this view"
Brad: "We have this one [name and number]"
Interviewer: "But do we have any one but this one?"
Brad gives two more
Interviewer: "Ok, but that's just three data points."So I'm a bit confused, because, well, _is_ that the traditional image of them? Like, maybe if your only context on them is that one film, but even the traditional/old-fashioned _historical_ view of them wasn't _particularly_ complementary.
For example: After 19:40, not finding it enough to say that Thermopylae was maybe a one-off and that there are multiple examples of Sparta surrendering instead of fighting to the last man, he has to exaggerate:
> Spartans surrender all the time.
Still an informative interview, though.
> "Real artists ship." —SPJ
I once heard a coach claim that given a student with the heart of a champion, they'd podium after having been taught but two actions.
(note the importance of two actions: pure strategies don't dominate)
I sometimes wish we had our winning athletes stand on herms, not a podium. At least the herms are decorated (usually, now chiselled off)
I do realize english is a fluid language and adapts to suit it's needs. I do not believe in appeals to dictionary authorities, I just don't LIKE "to podium" as a verb
(j/k)
Personally I'd probably interpret "to medal" as "to meddle" and misunderstand completely.
(I remember someone —Lambert Meertens?— trying very hard to come up with non-applicable "pure" mathematics word problem involving how to best arrange an ameboid tournament, but of course it was all just a thin disguise —mathematical Groucho Marx glasses!— on top of a very lucrative applied problem: optimal reduction of an operator tree into an accumulator)
Tactics; ways to attack.
(probably an unspoken assumption is that the two actions taught would both start in the same way, so one launches the attack, sees which* line gets closed, and continues in the line which has been opened. Even if you don't have the speed to properly determine the open line for the continuation, it's still possible to successfully run the pair as a mixed strategy and expect to find an opening stochastically)
* the same coach believes the most beautiful action is "feint direct, direct": at first you pretend to straightforwardly touch, but should your opponent fail to defend (because they're expecting a more complex action and are waiting to see where you're really going to attack), you go ahead and turn the "feint" into a real score.
Many of the most prolific artists of all time are now forgotten by the masses. The choice of "artist" is particularly perplexing here because the implied sentiment seems to apply primarily to industry and not to artists.
Tolkien being an example.
Measuring the "influence" of an artist my "number of artworks created and sold" is a bit like measuring academics by "number of papers published". It's at best a very coarse approximation of "the real thing". At worst, total bull.
That anything came down from him was the executors of his will ignoring his stated intent.
And yet he's considered a literary Great of the 20st century.
Sometimes, legacy is that what others did.
Out of curiosity, for which sport?
It’s inevitable one learns, but I long to read a scholar with a little style and rather more respect for his audience’s basic knowledge. Informed and informative, yes; erudite or pithy, he is most certainly not. Given a Gordian Knot this author would spend four years quite precisely untying it, never once noticing the sword he daily affixes to his hip.
I have no idea how you can read this and think that Bret doesn't a) have style (more than a little, even!) and b) a respect for his audience's basic knowledge.
"Devoid of incisive insight"? Are we reading the same thing? "Poorly edited" - okay, yeah occasionally I've caught a grammatical or spelling error but everyone makes these - even big newspapers - when you put out enough words. It's well edited, but short of perfect. Not the same as poorly though, not even in the same league.
By poorly edited I mean there is much heedless verbosity, rather than many grammatical errors. An under-appreciated job of the editor is trimming and tightening, chasing out the dry chaff.
If you don't like his style, fine, you're allowed to dislike it, _de gustibus non est disputandum_. But I'm genuinely curious if you have a point of more substance behind this claim.
As to basic knowledge - I think the Fremen Mirage series in particular is getting at an important point that should be basic knowledge, but is not; popular culture gets this backwards in so many ways.
I think you are making a valid point with your Gordian Knot analogy, but I personally think that's a much better failure mode than pulling out the sword as your default answer to any problem. Bret has this thing about needing to prove even outright fascist claims factually wrong before denouncing them for any other reasons, but I still prefer that many times over to the "if an argument supports our side, who cares if it's true?" approach.
You aren't gonna believe what ACOUP in acoup.blog stands for