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A
The same man who wept because there were no more worlds to conquer died in a stranger's bed at 32 years old. And the same man who built one of the largest empires in human history, stretching from Greece to India, never lost a single battle. In 13 years of constant warfare across deserts, mountains, and rivers that no Greek had ever crossed, he stayed undefeated. He tutored under Aristotle. He tamed a horse no one else could ride. When he was just 10 years old, he declared himself a God. And half the known world believed him. He founded over 20 cities and named most of them after himself. He held the largest empire the world had ever seen in the palm of his hand. And then one day, he died. Suddenly, mysteriously, and in the ancient city of Babylon. After 12 days of agony, and no one has ever been able to fully explain it, his body was stolen. His empire collapsed. Within a generation, his tomb, once the most visited monument in the ancient world, vanished completely. No one knows where it is. This is the story of Alexander the Great, conqueror, king, self proclaimed son of Zeus and one of the most contradictory figures in all of history. A man who spread civilization around the world, but yet drowned cities in blood. So if you are a fan of ancient history, specifically looking at the lives of one of the most impactful and powerful men ever to walk this earth, well, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent, where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, and controversial stories from around the world. From all time, forever. Yes, that's what we do here in this tent. We try to figure out everything that's ever happened, ever. I mean, I was born in the 90s. That's when I got here. And so my job is try to figure out everything that's ever happened on this planet right before that date, and then even some of it after that date as well. But this episode is not possible without you. I want to say thank you so much to every person that has clicked this video, liked, comment, subscribed, and just contributes to the show in any way. Truly, you are the reason that the lights stay on in the tent and you keep the fire burning. It's also not possible without the Greek freak himself. The young Alexander. That's what they call him. Okay? He is a. Just. Is truly a stallion of a man. His name is Christos Kapadopoulos. How are you? Very excited. All right, Christos, we don't have time to Jump in because I need you to save your voice to help me with pronunciation. We're talking about one of the most famous Greeks that wasn't even Greek.
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B
We claim him.
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A
Yeah, I know you claim him, okay? But this is a pretty liberal claim. I mean, the guy's quite literally Macedonian.
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B
Alexander's not Greek.
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A
I mean, to me you guys are all Greek. All right? I mean, you could go all the way to like Albanian. I'm like, yeah, they're Greek. I mean, come on, dude, Anything over there is Greek. Tunisia, That's Greece. I don't know, it's all, come on, it's all the same thing. Jokes. Anyway, let's dive in. Okay. And I'm seriously, I do need help with pronunciation.
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B
I got you.
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A
Appreciate that. All right, so where do we start? With old Alexander the Great. Okay, I'm glad you asked. We're going to go all the way back to 356 BC. Alexander the Great was born in a town called Pella. This is the capital of the kingdom of ancient Macedonia. This was a rough, semi barbaric state on the northern fringe of the Greek world. Now, the Greeks considered Macedonians to be barely civilized. I mean, they're not quite barbarians, you know what I mean? They're not like those crazy people over the mountains. But they're not really Greek either. You know, and especially in that time, even still to this day, correct me if I'm wrong, the Greeks have a very consistent and shall we say, pure sense of what it means to be Greek. And the Macedonians definitely were not it. Right. You can think of it as like, know the opposite side of the tracks kind of vibe. So Alexander's father was a man named Philip ii. And he was a brilliant military strategist. And he literally transformed Macedonia from a backwater, kind of like small kingdom getting beaten up by all the big guys all around him to a dominant power in Greece. I mean, Philip basically invented the Macedonian phalanx. This, you know, devastating formation built around the sarissa. This is an 18 foot like spear thing. And he would basically organize his men in such a way that it was impenetrable. He basically created a man made ancient tank that would just go around and destroy their enemies. I mean he was truly a military genius. I mean he wasn't a perfect guy. You know, some, some reports say that he would hit the ball a little too hard. A bit of a drinker, some said he liked to fight. You know, he would, he loved women all around him. He lost an eye in a battle one time, but none of that matters. Okay. He was a military genius, and he unified Greece. I mean, by force. But he did it with an army that would have made any empire in the world nervous. He truly created just a force of nature and brought Macedonia to new heights. And Alexander was perfectly primed to take over. Now, Alexander's mother was Olympias, a princess from Epirus who was, by all accounts, pretty intimidating. Ancient sources described her sleeping with snakes as a part of religious rituals. Now, whether that's true or, you know, a metaphor, regardless, you can imagine how that would affect the people that heard that. They're like, yo, this girl sleeps with snakes. She was extremely ambitious. She was very mystical. And she convinced herself that Alexander wasn't really Philip's son at all. No, Philip was just the dad that stepped up. Alexander's real father, according to Olympias, is Zeus himself. Yeah, this is just boy moms. Like, boy moms can't fathom the idea that their son is not literally God. Like, Olympia is, like. Sounds crazy, but, like, ask any of your friends. Like, women that have boys, like, they just create this thing where they're like, my son is literally Jesus. And that's what she did. She said, my Philip is not the daddy. No, no, no, no. Zeus is the dad. Maripovich, put them on there. Dude. You are not the father. And all of a sudden, Zeus comes out crazy. Regardless, we're off track. So whether she literally thought this or she was kind of laying the political groundwork for Alexander's later claims to divinity. It's one of those questions that historians argue about to this day. I mean, you can imagine any type of secession. It is at the advantage of a king or a monarch or a great military leader to have a divine lineage. And this happens in basically every culture and every kingdom around the world. That if the leader is able to say, like, hey, I come from a divine bloodline. It gives them so much more credibility and a better grasp on power. So maybe she was setting up her kid for that. Maybe she believed it. Maybe a little bit of both, but who knows? What we do know is that Alexander wasn't just some prince coasting on his father's name. You know what I mean? I mean, Philip ii. This is how smart his dad was. He hired Aristotle. Yes, like the actual Aristotle. One of the greatest philosophers that ever lived. One of the big three, as we call him. You know, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. And he literally, personally tutors Alexander the Great from the age of 13. And for three years, Alexander was studying philosophy and science and medicine and literature with one of the most brilliant minds in human history, basically, while on campaign with his dad. So he's learning military stuff, he's learning philosophy. I mean, he carried a copy of Homer's Iliad with him for the rest of his life, annotated by Aristotle himself. And some. Some reports say that he literally slept with it under his pillow, that his pillow would be a dagger. And then an annotated version of the Iliad by Homer and. And annotated by Aristotle. I mean, crazy. So think about that, right? This is a kid who was raised by, like, a warlord, military genius, general dad, a mystical mom who was sleeping with snakes, who tells him that his real dad is a God. And then the greatest philosopher in Western tradition, maybe one of. One of the greatest, we'll say is now like his personal tutor. And that is what it takes to create Alexander, soon to be the Great. And then there's the horse. When Alexander was 10 years old, a horse trader brought a magnificent black stallion into Philip's court. And the horse was crazy. I mean, it was like, wild and aggressive. And Philip's best horseman tried and failed repeatedly to try to tame the stallion. Now, Philip was about to send the animal away, back to the horse trader, when Alexander, just a kid, 10 years old, notices something. The horse is afraid of its own shadow. So Alexander turned the horse to face the sun so it couldn't see the shadow behind him, and then he mounted it. The horse, who went by the name of Bucephalus, became his legendary war companion for the next 20 years. I mean, it sounds like Hercules, does it not? Like, I wonder if that's inspired by Alexander the Great.
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B
It's got to be.
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A
Got to be, right? Like, literally, Hercules is like the strong young child that sees like, this crazy winged horse and then tames it, and then it's like his homie forever.
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B
You got to think Olympus was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. This Hercules guy is. Same story.
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A
Yeah, it's the same story, right? I mean, of course, the son of Zeus tames a horse. Now, whether that really happened or if that is kind of Plutarch's retelling of Alexander, we don't really know, but it's in the record, and historians debate it to this day. Now, Philip reportedly watched this happen and said, my son, seek out a kingdom worthy of yourself. Macedon is too small for you. I mean, understatement of the year, right? I mean, he's not wrong. Like, literally, Macedonia is way too small. You got to take over the whole world. So in 336bc, Philip was assassinated at his own daughter's wedding, stabbed by one of his own guards. And the motives, I mean, we did a whole episode on Philip ii. You guys should check that out. There's a lot of debate to this day. Some historians say that his own wife Olympias, arranged it and got him killed. Others point to the Persians and say that, you know, the Persians, because obviously the Persians, the Macedonians, there were. There was tension. They got him killed. Others think that it was just a personal grudge, that the guards maybe were underpaid or they had some other reason that they would hate Philip ii. No one really knows, whatever the reason. What we do know is that Alexander became the King of Macedon at just 20 years old. And within two years, he would invade the largest empire on earth. So in 334 BC, Alexander crossed the Hellespont. This is a narrow strait basically separating Europe from Asia with roughly like 40,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, basically guys on horseback. His target was the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the superpower of the ancient world, which controlled territory from Egypt to modern day Pakistan. The Persian empire had roughly 50 million subjects. Alexander had, you know, pretty good sized army, but, I mean, it was unlike anything that the Persians had. I mean, he was much smaller and a near suicidal level of confidence. So his first major battle was at the Granicus river, where he personally led a cavalry charge across the water and nearly got himself killed, basically off Rip. A Persian commander swung an axe at his head and it would have split his skull if one of Alexander's companions hadn't cut the man's arm off mid swing. I mean, again, this exists in, you know, sort of retellings of the event. It seems almost impossible to believe that that happened, that as he's winding up to swing, all of a sudden his arm gets chopped off.
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B
I'll play along.
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A
I mean, sure you will, because you love Alexander. You're. You're glazing. You're. You're glazing Alexander, dude. You're glazing. Glazing. Xander the Great. All right, I'm sorry. Anyway, I don't know if he got his arm fully cut off mid swing, but this is what story is, and this is, again, I think it's important to look at the mythos around these great people because that also contributes to how people remember them. Was it true that he got his arm cut off right before he died? Who knows? But it did exist in the minds of the people in the generations that came after that then contributed to the reputation that Alexander still has to this day. Now, Alexander fought on the front lines. He, like, you know, was out there. He was commanding his people out in the open. He would take wounds and he would bleed alongside his men. And he was in some ways reckless and in other ways inspiring, but he ultimately built so much trust within his army that they would do anything for him. And then came the Battle of Issus in 333bc. This is Alexander's first face off against Darius III. This is the Persian king of kings himself. This is the big boss. All right, Darius brought an army that outnumbered Alexander's by at least 2 to 1. I mean, basically twice the size, but it didn't matter. Alexander smashed the Persian center with a cavalry wedge aimed directly at Darius. The Persian king started to panic and fled the battlefield, basically abandoning his army and all of his money and his mother, his wife, his kids, basically everything that he cared about. And Alexander captured them all. But here's the thing. Alexander treated Darius's family with respect. He didn't execute them or kill them or cast them away. He didn't ransom them. He reportedly told Darius mother that she should consider him her son. This wasn't just mercy. It was a calculated political statement. Alexander wasn't just trying to defeat Persia, he was trying to become Persia. He was trying to absorb them into his empire. And it was a really different approach to conquest that the world really hadn't seen up until this time. Now, after Issus, Alexander marched south along the Mediterranean coast. Now, most cities surrendered without a fight. I mean, they saw what happened to the Persians and how big their numbers were. So they just said, hey, it's easier if we just go along. But the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre refused. And this is where Alexander the Great starts to look a little bit darker. All right? Now, Ty was an island fortress separated from the mainland by like, half a mile of open water. And it had never been conquered throughout its whole history. Alexander's response was to build a, like, a bridge basically across the sea. And it took seven months. When his army finally breached the walls, Alexander unleashed. And a massacre. I mean, 8,000 Tyrians were killed, 30,000 were sold into slavery. He crucified 2,000 prisoners of war along the beach. And he did this on purpose. The brutality had a reason. I mean, it made a very clear message. Resist. And this is what happens. And then just a few months later, Alexander did it again in Gaza. And he would do far worse later. I mean, the contradiction was already embedded in Alexander's character. He had this astonishing generosity one day and showed so much mercy to women and children and then was apocalyptic in his violence the very next. And it really all seemed to hinge on whether or not he felt someone was being respectful and bending the knee to him. And that if you showed any type of fight or if you were going against his character, he took it as disrespect and vowed to destroy you and everyone around you. But if you were willing to broker a deal or you just, you know, pledged some type of fealty to Alexander, then he'd say, all right, you guys are good people. And he was ruthless. And then in 332 BC, Alexander marched into Egypt and something shifted. Egypt surrendered immediately. The Egyptians had been suffering under Persian occupation for years and they basically saw Alexander as a liberator, right? If they're going to be occupied by someone, Alexander seemed a little bit better, right? Might as well change it up. The priests crowned him as pharaoh. And then Alexander did something that changed everything. He made a detour hundreds of miles through the Libyan desert to the Oracle of Amun at Siwa, one of the most sacred sites in the ancient world. And no one knows exactly what the Oracle told him. Alexander went in alone, as was the custom. And when he came out, he reportedly told his closest companions that the oracle had confirmed what his mother had always told him, that he was not actually the son of Philip, but but the son of Zeus Ammon. He was the son of a God. Now, did Alexander actually believe this? Once again, no one knows. Historians have been literally debating this for thousands of years. Some think that this was just political propaganda, right? Some say that the oracle never even told him that, that he just came out and started telling people, yeah, I'm actually the son of Zeus. As a way to legitimize his rule over Egypt and eventually the entire Persian Empire. Now keep in mind, this is Zeus Ammon. This is a way for him to basically combine the Greek Macedonian tradition as well as the Egyptian tradition and say, I have the divine bloodline from the one God, the God that basically you guys care about, whatever it is, that's who I am. Now, others think that he genuinely came out believing in his own divinity, especially as victory after victory seemed to basically confirm to him that, hey, maybe I am more than human. What's up, people? We're going to take a break really quick because I want to tell you about a sponsor we have that I'm so stoked about. Yes, it's Chubby's. If you never heard of Chubby's, I've been wearing these since legit, like late high school. 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Let's get back to the show. Now here's what we know for certain. From Siwa onward, Alexander increasingly demanded divine honors. He wanted people to prostrate themselves before him. He literally wanted complete submission, just to lay down. And some say that he kind of inherited this from a Persian custom called proskinesis that was deeply offensive to Greeks and Macedonians who historically only bowed before gods. So as a result, several of his Macedonian generals refused to bow down. One of them, Callisthenes, Aristotle's own nephew, mocked this practice. And what happened to old Kallisthenes? He was later arrested on charges of conspiracy and died in in custody of the state. Coincidence? I mean, probably not. Now, after Egypt, Alexander founded the city of Alexandria, the first and most famous of his many namesake cities. It would become the intellectual capital of the ancient world, home to, of course, the great library and a beacon of learning for centuries to come. Even today, it's still a major Egyptian city and very important to trade and tourism and, you know, a cultural hotspot. Needless to say, say Alexander spent about six months planning its layout personally and he would never actually return to see it finished. In 331 BC, Alexander met Darius for the last time in the Battle of Gaugamela. And this was the big one. I mean, Darius had assembled everything that the Persian Empire literally had. Estimates range from 100,000 to some even say 250,000 troops at the top. Some suggest that it's possible they even had war elephants and chariots with scythes on them and, you know, cavalry from every corner of the empire, anything that they could throw at it. Alexander, on the other hand, had roughly like 47,000 men. I mean, some say, like might have been four to one. I mean, he was so outnumbered. But yet Alexander won again, decisively. He used just this brilliant tactical feint. He drew in the Persian left wing out of position and then driving his companion calvary deep into the gap, like basically a spear directly at Darius. And once again, Darius fled. This time he would never recover. The king of kings, this great leader Darius, was murdered by his own generals a few months later while fleeing east. Alexander reportedly wept when he found Darius body. He gave him a royal funeral. And then he declared himself the legitimate king of Persia, not just a conqueror or someone that came in and took over the kingdom. He was the successor of the king of kings, of Darius himself. And this is where Alexander's story shifts from military campaign to something more ambitious and in a way, almost the most tragic ending possible. He didn't go home. I mean, he had conquered so much. He had gone through Egypt and Tyre and I mean, he took over the Persian Empire, one of the greatest empires in history. But he kept going east. He went into Afghanistan where he fought a brutal guerrilla war that lasted three years. I mean, there is something interesting that no one can fight in Afghanistan. I mean, the Russians Tried it, didn't work. The Americans tried it. Didn't work. Alexander the Great tried it. Even he had a hard time. And then after Afghanistan, he went into Central Asia, where he crossed mountains that no Western army would ever cross again until the British did it in the 19th century. I mean, unprecedented levels of fear and maybe, you know, not fear, levels of bravery and insanity and fearlessness. And then he goes to India. At the Hydaspes river in 326 BC, Alexander fought King Porus, his most difficult battle to date. The Indian king fielded war elephants that terrified the Macedonian horses. And Alexander won, but at a cost. And Porus impressed him so much that Alexander actually asked him how he wished to be treated. And Porus replied, as a king, Alexander restored his kingdom and actually made him an ally. But at this point, Alexander's men had had enough. They had been marching and fighting and marching and fighting for eight years. I mean, they were thousands of miles from home. Many of them hadn't seen their families or their children for decades. And when Alexander announced that he wanted to push even farther east toward the Ganges, towards the end of basically what they even had on their map, his army freaked out. I mean, they panicked. Like, they basically mutinied. And for the first time in his life, Alexander was defeated. Not by an outside army or some force he couldn't control, it was by his own men. So as a result, he turned back. But the retreat was almost worse than the advance. Alexander chose a route through the Gedrosian Desert, and this is in modern day Pakistan. And this retreat killed more of his soldiers than any battle he ever fought. Ancient sources claim that he lost up to three quarters of his force due to heat and dehydration and starvation and exposure to the elements. Some historians believe that he chose this route deliberately as punishment for the mutiny against him. Others think that he was trying to outdo the legendary Queen Semiramis and Cyrus the Great, who had both failed to cross this exact same desert. Either way, it was a catastrophe. But yet Alexander marched on. In June of 323 BC, Alexander was in Babylon planning his next campaigns. He had plans to invade Arabia, and he was building a fleet of a thousand ships. And at this point, he was 32 years old and still pretty young, had a lot of energy and one of the most powerful men in the world. And he was still apparently insatiable. And then he went to a banquet. He drank heavily, which wasn't unusual for Alexander. He had been drinking heavily for years at this point. Ancient sources describe nights where he consumed staggering quantities of wine. But after this particular banquet, Alexander developed a fever. And over the next 12 days, the fever continually got worse. He tried to conduct business as usual, meeting with generals and planning naval operations and trying to build out this fleet and performing religious sacrifices, all that. But his condition deteriorated rapidly. At one point, he lost the ability to speak. His officers filed past his bed one by one as he laid there dying. And all that he could do was lift his head slightly and just move his eyes in recognition. And on June 10, or perhaps the 11th, 323 BC the date on this actually varies by source, but on this day in 323, Alexander the Great died. He was 32 years old. And here's where it gets really interesting. Nobody knows really how he died. The ancient sources suggest poison. Specifically, that Antipater, his regent in Macedon, arranged for his son Cassander to bring a toxin substance to Babylon. Some accounts claim that it was delivered in the hoof of a mule because no other container could hold it without it being so corroded. And the poison theory was widespread in the ancient world, and Alexander's own mother, Olympias, reportedly believed it. But modern historians and medical researchers have proposed dozens of alternative explanations. Typhoid fever, complicated by a perforated bowel. Malaria. West Nile virus. Acute pancreatitis from his alcoholism. Guillain Barre syndrome, a neurological condition that could explain the. The ascending paralysis described in the sources. One 2019 study suggested that he wasn't even dead when they started preparing his body for burial. How crazy is that? That the paralysis was just so complete in his body that it just mimics death? And he laid completely unconscious, but still fully aware what was going on as he was laid into a coffin and then buried. Think about that for a second. We'll probably never know for certain, but what we do know is this. When his generals gathered around his deathbed and asked who should inherit the empire, Alexander allegedly whispered a single word, Kratisto the strongest. Some historians think that he was actually trying to say Crateri or Craterus, one of his generals. But the damage was already done. One single ambiguous word said by a frail, dying man ignited 40 years of war. Alexander's empire didn't survive him. It couldn't. He had built something that could only function with him at the center. A personal empire, basically held together by one man's will and charisma and, you know, fearlessness and, of course, his military genius. Within hours of his death, his generals were already carving up the empire. These were the Dyadocus, the Successors and their wars were as brutal and complex as anything Alexander himself had waged. Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Antigonus, Lysimachus, Cassander names that most people have never heard before, fighting wars that shaped the ancient world for the next three centuries. As the story goes, Ptolemy stole Alexander's body, literally hijacking his funeral procession as it was heading back to Macedon, and diverted it to Egypt, where he installed it, a magnificent tomb in Alexandria. The body became a political trophy, so to speak, and possessing it basically legitimized Ptolemy's claim to rule. Julius Caesar visited the tomb, Augustus visited it. The Roman emperor Caligula reportedly stole Alexander's breastplate from the sarcophagus. And then Sometime around the 4th century AD, the tomb simply just disappeared. One of the most visited monuments in the ancient world, a tomb that literal Roman emperors and kings from around the world had pilgrimaged to for decades, just vanished. Nobody actually recorded its destruction. Nobody even recorded it being moved. It was just gone. And over 140 official search attempts have been made, but yet none have succeeded. Alexander's lost tomb remains one of the most interesting and puzzling unsolved mysteries in all of archaeology. Some believe that it lies beneath modern Alexandria, buried over centuries of urban development and rising water tables. Others think that it was destroyed during religious riots in the late Roman period. A few fringe theories place it in locations as far flung as Venice and the Siwa Oasis. The body of arguably the most famous conqueror in history is just gone, and it has been for over 1600 years. So what do we make of Alexander today? What is this legacy? I mean, he conquered more territory by the age of 32 than any human being before him and maybe any human being since. He spread Greek language and culture and philosophy across enormous swaths of the world from Egypt to the borders of China. The Hellenistic period he kicked off, lasted 300 years, and created a common culture that connected civilizations that had never spoken to each other ever before. Greek became the lingua franca of the ancient world. The New Testament was literally written in Greek because of Alexander the Great Buddhist art, those like serene statues of the Buddha with the flowing robes and all that stuff. Some say that it was influenced by Greek sculptural traditions carried east by Alexander's army. I mean, the ripple effect of this conquest literally touched every known civilization on earth. But here's the thing. The same men who built libraries burned Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, one of the most magnificent buildings in the ancient world, completely to the ground. And whether it was a drunken impulse or deliberate revenge for the Persian army of, you know, burning Athens 150 years earlier. It was an act of cultural destruction that still stings. I mean, so much history was lost in one day. He massacred entire cities, at Tyre, at Gaza, at the Sogdian rock. He destroyed Thebes, one of the oldest cities in Greece, and sold its entire population into slavery in order to make an example. Early on in his Reign, an estimated 250,000, some say up to 400,000 people, died in his wars. Many of them were just regular civilians like you and me. He killed his own friends in a drunken rage. He ran a spear through Cletus the Black, one of his oldest companions and literally the man who had saved his life at the Uganicus River. He regretted it immediately and was so ashamed and reportedly tried to kill himself afterward. But the damage was done. And then there was Hephaestion, Alexander's closest companion, literally his childhood friend and some might say possibly the love of his life. When Hephaestion died of fever in 324 BC, Alexander's grief was so extreme that it shocked even the ancient world. I mean, he laid on the body for a full day and night and ordered the sacred flame at the temple to be extinguished. This is an honor that is reserved only for the death of the king. He crucified the doctor who had failed to save him. He ordered a funeral that cost the equivalent, if you put it in today's money, of a billion dollars. Some ancient sources describe Alexander's reaction as that of a lover, as, you know, a wife, as like the mother of his kids, but, you know, not just a friend. In the ancient world, that distinction was less scandalous than it sounds, but it does reveal the depth of this emotional attachment that he had with this man. And it also complicates this image of the cold blooded conqueror. Alexander the Great wasn't one thing. He was a philosopher king who would murder his friends and he was a visionary that committed atrocities. And he was a man who wanted to unite the world, but ultimately just left it shattered. Here's what I find really interesting about Alexander. At the height of his power, Alexander reportedly encountered a group of Indian philosophers. They're called the gymnosophists or the naked wise men. And he asked them a series of questions. He asked one, how can a man become a God? And the philosopher answered, by doing something that man cannot do. Alexander spent his entire life trying to do what man could not do. I mean, he crossed every boundary, geographic, military, political, Even metaphysical, you could say he tried to reach the literal end of the world. He tried to become divine. And in a way, I mean, I guess he succeeded, right? 23 centuries later, we're still talking about this guy. I mean, he might be the person that exists, the oldest in the casual consciousness of people you talk to Alexander the Great, Napoleon, he's always up there, and he's arguably the one farthest back in the timeline. And maybe it worked. I mean, to this day, his name is still the city that 5 million people call home in Egypt. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because you know what time it is. It's time to level up. And Bluechew just dropped something wild. Okay? Bluechew's been rocking with us from the beginning, so of course, we have to rock. Pun intended. With them, all right? And what they've just done is change the game. All right, this is next level Gold Medal Energy. This is Bluechew Gold. If you've never heard of it, this is the newest innovation from the number one chewable Ed brand. All right? This isn't the little blue pill that your grandpa used. This is the four in one beast that is setting the gold standard for performance. We're talking two ingredients to keep the good times rolling, okay? Mixed with apomorphine and oxytocin that are going to turn up the arousal and the connections in your brain, as well as the ingredients to keep the blood flow to keep everything pumping, okay? 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To this day, he still shows up in the legends of cultures from Iceland to Indonesia. But he died at 32, alone in a random city, maybe poisoned, possibly by the people closest to him. I mean, his empire lasted less than a generation. His body lost, in his final words, just the strongest. And it's ironic because it became less of a command and more just a curse that basically condemned the world that he was leaving to decades of war. And maybe the lesson in all this is that, sure, you can conquer the whole world and still lose everything. I mean, you can build an empire that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas, and it can all just crumble because you never actually figured out a way to make it last without you. Alexander proved that one person can change the world, absolutely. But he also proved that one person can't hold it together. And the greatest conqueror in history, undefeated in battle, dead at 32 and to this day, still missing. And that is a story of Alexander the Great. I mean, it's just. I think there's a so much that you can learn from Alexander the Great. There's actually more that I wish I could learn, but it's one of those things where it's like, all right, you did it. You conquered the whole world. You succeeded. For what? Alexander's legacy is interesting, because it even was affecting people in that time. Now, a story that was told to me by Dr. Manning, a professor at Yale, historian that studies specifically, like, the Hellenistic period is a brilliant guy. You should check out that episode. But he says something that's so funny to me, and basically, I think it was like 50, 100 years later, something like that. There's a guy named Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus is a Greek dude from Epirus, the same town that Alexander's mother is from, and also Christos. And he's chilling there. And then all of a sudden, there's a Greek town at the southern part of Italy that's having trouble with Rome. And basically, Rome is, like, threatening to con. And so they call our boy Pyrrhus, and they're like, hey, can you defend us and fight against Rome? And he's like, all right, sure. So he starts doing these battles on his way up to Rome and is losing, but he's winning the battles, but losing so many men in the process that he's just getting, like, destroyed, but technically winning. And he does, like, three of these in a row because he thought that he could become the next Alexander the Great. He was obsessed with Alexander, he copied, like, his whole vibe, copied all of his, like, battle tactics, and literally was like. Like, Alexander's mom is from Epirus. I'm from Epirus. My mom's from Epirus. Like, I'm basically Alexander. Like, he literally wanted to be him. He thought he was him, but he's not that guy. Turns out, you're not that guy, buddy. Sorry, Pierce, but that's literally where we get the term Pyrrhic victory. Like, winning, but it cost you a lot to get there. Literally comes from this guy trying to bite Alexander's whole swag. Just fascinating. Truly a fascinating guy. I look at Alexander and I'm like, dude, you had it all. And I don't know if he could have done anything different. He was literally raised on campaign with his father. He was trained to be this philosopher king from day one. His mom literally told him, hey, you're a God. There's no chance he's going to be anything other than that. And there's no way he's going to go back to just living a normal life. And, you know, Greek Macedon, it's just not going to happen. Like, the story that is probably not true, but I think really captures who Alexander is, is he looked at the moon and wept, for he couldn't conquer it. I've heard it said that Alexander wept after conquering these last towns in India because there was no more world left to conquer. There's a couple different versions of the story. Almost certainly all of them are apocryphal. But it does capture something about who this guy was and ultimately how he was remembered as just, like, this consummate conqueror, that he just existed for conquest. And I think it's an interesting story because ultimately, the attributes that make people great are often the things that destroy them. I think about Steve Jobs. He was such a great visionary, a brilliant guy, truly always thought for himself, rejected the words of other people, rejected authority, and was like, I am the source. And as a result, invented amazing things. Literally built some of the first personal computers that had the best UI, developed the iPhone, founded Pixar. Like, truly a visionary, and didn't take anyone's word for it. But then he gets sick, and doctors are telling him, like, hey, you should do these treatments. And he goes, I'm gonna do my own treatments. I know what's best for me. And ultimately dies. And it's like, there's so many people I can think of that the things that make them great also are their curse. And I always say what it takes to get on is different than what it takes to stay on. And if you burn fast on the way up, you're probably going to burn bright on the way down. Just how it is. So if you're building something in your own life, if you've got a career, if you're doing anything, that competitive edge that you have, the thing that makes you great, this is how I think about myself. Like if there's something that I have that gives me a competitive advantage, I always keep that in the back of my mind because there's a flip side to it that ultimately will bring you down. Oh, you're a workaholic and you just grind all day non stop. That's amazing. Well, you're going to get to the top, but then one day you're going to have family and kids and then you're just going to keep on grinding and then forget about them and then your kids hate you and then you don't really have a relationship with them and then you've just succeeded in business but then you have this family that you're disconnected with. Like, is that really success? Like, there's a well roundedness that requires so many different facets and attributes of what truly makes someone great. And Alexander is such a good example of a dude that was so good at conquest but wasn't good at state building or empire cohesion or, you know, literally creating a thing that's going to exist after he's gone. To Philip's credit, Alexander's father, he did develop a sustainable world. I mean, he basically put Macedon on the map and conquered a bunch of surrounding states and built like a really functional empire that even when he was gone, it continued to grow. Alexander. No such luck. Now tell me something, Christos, can you remind me Alexander's children's names?
- [41:59]
B
Got one confirmed legitimate son, Alexander IV with Roxanna, and one reputed illegitimate son, Heracles, with his mistress Barcine.
- [42:10]
A
Now basically both of them were killed as like babies, right?
- [42:13]
B
Correct.
- [42:13]
A
Like he has these kids and like the wives or mistresses, whatever, they're also killed by the. Basically the successors that are in this power struggle.
- [42:22]
B
Yep.
- [42:24]
A
So it's like, yeah, dude, you had these kids, you did everything right, but like you didn't create a system where things would flourish without. But in his mind he's like, why would I need to do that? I'm 32, I'm literally God, I can do whatever I want. Now what is interesting is people always say, oh, was Alexander's father, Philip II killed by Olympias? Some say that he Was poisoned or, you know, maybe set up or whatever. The fact that Olympias believed in her lifetime, allegedly that Alexander was assassinated, poisoned makes me think, like, oh, she's. She killed Philip ii. The fact that her own son gets killed and she's like, yeah, I totally buy it because that's what I did to my husband. It's just kind of like a fringe theory. I know I'm working off conspiracy, you know, historical conspiracy here, but I think she killed him. What do you say?
- [43:15]
B
I have no comment.
- [43:16]
A
Oh. Just in case the. The state of Olympias comes to sue.
- [43:20]
B
You or the country of Greece. Yeah.
- [43:22]
A
All right. All right. Come on. I mean, look. Olympias was Macedonian, right? Sure. Oh, no. I guess she was from Emperors.
- [43:30]
B
That's right. My hometown.
- [43:32]
A
Have you been there? All the time. Do they have shrines for Alexander?
- [43:36]
B
No.
- [43:37]
A
Really?
- [43:37]
B
Not that I know of.
- [43:38]
A
I think I have something. Olympias? Nothing.
- [43:41]
B
I don't think so.
- [43:42]
A
Wow.
- [43:43]
B
There's gotta be statues somewhere, but just not prominently displayed.
- [43:46]
A
What about Mount Olympias?
- [43:49]
B
That's in a different part of Greece. It's not nipiro, but.
- [43:51]
A
It is funny, that. But Mount Olympias, it's exactly what Zeus did.
- [43:56]
B
That's right.
- [43:56]
A
You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? Come on, dab me up, people at home. All right. I think we wrap this thing up. But you know what? I've learned a lot about Alexander. He got me a little bit fired up. I think the biggest lesson is don't let your best attributes and the qualities that make you different and that give you the ability to get ahead be the thing that ultimately take you down. Hedge. Learn. Look inside yourself. Hey, I have a great talent for this thing. Is it possible that my obsession with that talent and fixating on that could also be my downfall? That's my only thing that I think about for myself. That's how I try to do my life. I just try to. Everything has a flip side that could be evil. You know what I mean? A yin and a yang. I think it's yin and a yang. Regardless, don't let yourself be Alexander the Great. Learn from all the great things that he did. The, you know, the courage, the fearlessness, the innovation, the confidence. But also learn from his downfall. The fact that, you know, he didn't create a successful, you know, prosperous empire at the time of his death. That he pushed his men too hard. That he didn't listen and have empathy for the people around him. Just, you know, there's two things you can learn from every great man what to do and what not to do. Anyway, if you are fans of History Camp, great news, we're right here. If you also like religious content, if you like deep dives on what everyone believes, that's what I like to do. I like to figure out why everyone believes what and who is the God that they worship and how do they orient themselves, either directly or indirectly, to this belief system. That's why I got Religion Camp. So we got episodes on Islam, Mormonism, lds, sorry, Christianity, Judaism, I mean, Hinduism, Sikhism, everything you can imagine. We do it all there. We also have Camp Gagnon. That's where I do deep dives on all sorts of crazy conspiracy stuff, random theories I find on the Internet, interviews and deep dives with people way smarter than me. You can check that out there. But if you rock with the history vibe, that's totally fine because we drop these episodes every single week here at History Camp. Anyway, you can buy the merch at Camp R D. Get yourself tripped out in the threads. Also, I'm on the road. Mark Agnon Live. I would love to see you guys at a stand up comedy show sometime soon. But anyway, this has been another episode of History Camp. Thank you guys so much for being a part of it and I will see you in the future to talk about the past. Peace.