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- [00:00]
A
Alexander the Great, one of the most infamous and impactful generals in human history. His legend lives on, but the average person knows so little about the man. Well, not anymore, because I've invited my friend Joseph Manning. He's a professor at Yale with a specialty on Alexander the Great. And today we're breaking down the entire timeline of Alexander's life. We go through his personal diaries and his letters and figure out who he really was. How did he conquer the known world?
- [00:26]
B
To lead an army like that is one of the most extraordinary things from the ancient world. The real secret behind Alexander was what.
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A
Did he think of the ancient Egyptians and ancient Indians that he was battling against? Was he gay or just experimenting or something? You know, we all do it. And ultimately, what led to Alexander's untimely death at such a young age? That's right. Everything you've ever wanted to know about one of the greatest leaders in human history explained. So grab a seat, get close to the fire, snuggle up, and welcome to camp. Who is Alexander the Great and why do we hear so much about this guy?
- [01:08]
B
Alexander the Great was one of the great military conquerors in world history. Defeat of the Persian Empire, the longest sustained military campaign in history before the Americans got involved in Afghanistan. So a massive legacy of very long sustained military campaign all the way out to the Indus River Valley. And legends were born not only directly afterwards, but created by himself. He was, we know, really careful about his image, really careful about his hair. Hence the Doors. Who's the main singer of the Doors?
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A
I know his name. Don't tell me.
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B
Okay? It'll come to us.
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A
Jim Morrison.
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B
Jim Morrison.
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A
I didn't even Google it. I didn't Google it.
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B
Jim Morrison.
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A
I didn't Google it. I just remember. Let's go, let's go. So a real Jim Morrison type.
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B
Jim Morrison loved classics and he loved Alexander the Great. And if you look at his images with his hair, he modeled his hairstyle after Alexander the Great's images and sculpture that we have. Did he really? On purpose?
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A
Wow.
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B
Yes. Another kind of weird legacy of Alexander the Great. So he is. He must have. He died young after the greatest military conquest in history up to that period. Knocked down a lot of barriers about countries that people had no idea of. He's getting to the Hindu Kush. I'm sure he's looking at it with his army. After years of campaign, most of his army is going, dude, we gotta go back home now. We've been on campaign for 10 years. This is ridiculous. I swear to God, my image of Alexander was. He's looking at the Hindu Kush, at the limits of what's possible in terms of military conquest in 300 BC, a bit before then. And I bet you he's thinking, could we get over there a little bit? Maybe get up on Everest? A climber by hobby. So I like the idea of mountains. And I think he had the ambition. I think he would have kept going.
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A
That he would have climbed the Himalayas.
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B
He would have gone through them anyway, to see what's on the other side.
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A
I mean, it's a death mission, right?
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B
Yeah, totally. But that's what his army also thought. And he was so charismatic that he managed to keep the army going way beyond the goals of defeating the Persian Empire, which he did after four battles, basically. The Persian Empire was basically done. He kept going. He kept going. He had battles in the Innis River Valley, encounters war elephants for the first time, brings them back into the West. And the Hellenistic kings, his successors in this world, all have war elephants because it's the thing to have. It's the latest technology. They're really cool.
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A
Wow.
- [04:02]
B
So there's so many. There's so much legacy of Alexander the Great, so much legend that was created as a result of the campaigns. But in part of his own doing, he certainly had people developing his image as he went. He was really careful about how he looked and how he was perceived and so on. So he's a really interesting character. He's enigmatic because we don't have sources that are contemporary with him. All of our sources are five centuries later. So it's really intriguing to say who was this guy who conquers the known world and dies in his early 30s, really dramatically in Babylon. Maybe a fever, maybe of drinking too much. There's a lot of theories. Was he poisoned? He comes out of nowhere. He's the son of Philip ii, who is the real power behind Macedonian military power. He's the one who created this Macedonian state. He's the one who defeated the Greek city, state, world. He's murdered by taking a new wife, which irritated his first wife, Olympias, probably. And Alexander is her son. There's a theory that Alexander himself killed his father. We don't know.
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A
Oh, that'd be crazy.
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B
We don't know. Yeah. You know, Oliver Stone's movie speculates as well about all this, but it's a lot of speculation. And it's a moment in history where clearly the greatest military conquest up to that time. I mean, even Roman emperors would. Julius Caesar was freaking out that he's in Gaul weeping Because he's older than Alexander was and he's still in freaking Gaul trying to conquer Gaul. And Alexander conquered the known world, you know, so the legacy was really direct into the Roman world as well. And how people operate. Like what is an ideal king? What does a warrior king look like? He created this world for centuries afterwards about what kingship is, a military, glory, conquest, new knowledge, all sorts of things that follow on from him. And he dies young, of course, which sort of helps the legacy in a way. It creates all this mystery, all this kind of wonder about who was this guy?
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A
What's up guys? We're going to take a break really quick because as you can see, I got a lot of hair today. It's in a bun, but normally it is wild and flowing. And this is what I use to take care of it right here. MD Hair. I got my customized hair shampoo, I got my customized conditioner, my marine collagen. I'm sure you're wondering, Mark, how did you get these products? What did you do? I'll tell you. All right, you go to MD Hair, you submit a picture of your cranium. That's right. You submit a picture of your scalp and their proprietary AI system will actually analyze your head and create a customized package directly for what your head needs. That's right. You're going to take a little quiz. They'll ask, do you have dry scalp? Is it too greasy? Do you got dandruff? Do you have a receding hairline? Is it in the front, Is it in the back? What does your hair look like? What kind of curls do you have? And they will send you a customized package. I mean look, this is absolutely amazing. Wellness supplements, a hair care serum, I mean everything you need to make sure your hair looks its absolute best. That's right, MD hair. So if you're interested, they have amazing 247 tech support from a dermatologist or a registered nurse that are able to ameliorate any of your questions or concerns. So if you're interested and making your hair look its absolute best with top notch products, use the promo code CAMPG70 and you will get your first month of customized products 70% off. That's right, listeners of this show, go to mdhair. Use the promo code CAMPG70 and YOU will get 70% off your customized hair care kit. Now let's get back to the show. So he comes around 300 BC.
- [08:03]
B
Yeah, middle 4th century BC is when he's born. He launches the campaign in the 330s BC after having with his father roundly defeated Athens and its allies in this famous battle in 338 BC, which really puts pay to any Greek idea of independence or resistance to Macedonia.
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A
So his father's a great warrior king also?
- [08:31]
B
Absolutely. Yeah, he was. He would have been amazing. Again, we know very little about him, but he created basically wealthy farmland with a lot of resources, including horses, into a military power. He did the conversion of the state into this gigantic military power, the fiercest military power in the west up to that point, for sure.
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A
Did Alexander have siblings?
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B
Not directly, I think, but relatives, related siblings, yeah. Because typical of kingship. Yeah, typical of kingship. Philip would have had many wives and the last one was the last straw, as it were, because of course it threatens who's inheriting the throne always. And it looks like it was probably pretty competitive in Macedon, that it's a warrior culture. And so figure it out for yourself. And you can imagine that's what Philip told Alexander, who grew up. Alexander grew up in a military camp. He had no normal quote unquote childhood. He grew up in a military camp and saw everything firsthand. He probably grew up pretty fast, but I'm sure that's a pretty rough upbringing.
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A
Like you figured out on campaigns from day one.
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B
Pretty much.
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A
Wow.
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B
Pretty much, yeah.
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A
And what was. How old was Alexander when he takes over control from his father?
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B
Philip in his 20s.
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A
Okay. So he's not a kid, he's an adult.
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B
He's an adult by ancient standards. Yeah. Especially in a royal family, you kind of grow up really fast or you grow up dead. Right. And so somebody in your mid-20s. Okay. You're doing pretty well. Like you've survived against probably a lot of threats.
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A
How did Alexander quell any other uprisings from his half siblings that might have wanted to usurp the throne?
- [10:18]
B
I think he fought by his father's side. I mean, he clearly had some special status with respect to his father. I imagine him to have been extraordinarily charismatic, extraordinary military leader. I just imagined him to be to convince people to follow him. That must have been something he learned young. We know in some of the battles that are described to us with his father, how extraordinary he was just rushing into to the enemy on horseback. I mean, he had a style that was pretty fierce. He's almost killed in his first campaign on his own in the Persian Empire. He's almost killed in the first battle because he goes in, into the battle, downhill across this river and just about, he gets wounded, just about ends this legacy before it's created One of his best friends from childhood, Cletus the Black he's called, saves the day, saves him, literally plucks him out of death's jaw. Cletus the Black was later murdered by Alexander late in campaigns. No way. Yes, yes, I think Alexander, one of your best childhood friends who actually literally saved your life. And there's again speculation about is this something in the nature of Alexander or did he just see at some point too much blood on military campaign and just didn't care anymore? Was he drunk?
- [11:47]
A
Do we know why he killed Cletus?
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B
It was very, some slight, we're told he said something and that pissed him off. It may have been drunken rage, we don't know. We have the stories that are preserved in this one historian we have about the campaigns and again, grain of salt with all this stuff. But it is something about the nature of Alexander himself probably.
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A
Wow.
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B
Maybe a bit sensitive. You know, there are these psychological histories which are not really worth the paper they're printed on.
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A
I mean but if he's concerned about his image, it's, it's potentially he is concerned. He's a pretty insecure guy.
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B
He might be.
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A
So a little comment here and there might cut him deep.
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B
He possibly so. And of course he's quite vulnerable to all sorts of threats.
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A
Right.
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B
And you know, we have a large army behind you. How do you manage that? It isn't like a modern army, you know, with a really serious kind of hierarchy in laws and rules and so on. It's a little bit more unruly than that, I would guess. And they're interested in getting things for campaigns and I think it's probably pretty tricky to lead an army like that for the number of years he did is one of the most extraordinary things from the ancient world. And again to get onto a topic we've talked about before, the non sexy part of ancient history, the real secret behind Alexander, besides the personality that allowed him to do this, was logistics. Again, how do you sustain an army away from home, pretty far away from home for a long period of time.
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A
I mean supply lines, supply lines, water.
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B
Supply line and you're following the harvest where you're going, you're not just going to randomly going places. It's strategic, it's planned out. There is some supply chains, at least initially. The amount of food and water, fresh water required to sustain an army of that 20 or 30,000 is pretty big. And that is not a simple task in the ancient world to pull off which it wasn't done before. And that is the legacy that even Roman generals were going, oh, my God, this guy was, like, truly mythic. So how does he do it?
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A
How does he understand the logistics of the harvest and how to conquer places at certain times in order to have the right food and water available?
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B
Well, I think it was thought out. There's a story that the Greek author, this aristocratic author in the 390s from Athens, who wrote a lot of history, wrote a book on the March of the 10,000, or the March up country, the Anabasis, in Greek. And these were a large group of Greek mercenaries hired by the brother of the Persian king for a coup to take over the Persian throne. And things went south. During the coup, it was discovered bad things happened to the brother. And these Greek mercenaries were stuck in the middle of the Persian Empire on their own, and they made their way back to the Greek world. This is this adventure story called the March Up Country. And Xenophon was there. He was part of it. So it's an eyewitness account of Greeks in the middle of the Persian Empire winding their way back to the Greek world, like on their own. And it's a cool adventure story. More importantly, probably the Persian Empire was a bit of a mystery. How big was it? How did it work? This is an eyewitness account by a bunch of Greeks, including Xenophon, this Athenian aristocrat of the inside of the Persian Empire that must have gone back into the Greek world when they got back there, like the Persian road system and how big it is and et cetera, et cetera. So I think there is now there's knowledge in the 390s and the 380s of, oh, this is how the Persian Empire works, and this is what's guarded, and this is what's not guarded. The Persian Empire in the Greek mind was this vast, incomprehensibly huge, wealthy place that was impossible to defeat. But think about it for a second. Any territory that size, you can't defend it like a modern army with just men lined up against. It's too vast, it's way too big to actually defend the territory. Which is one reason Alexander, if you have the cojones to walk through it with an army, okay, you win a couple battles and things are looking pretty good. Because ancient empires were pretty fragile things. They're more about the idea and the kind of social networks.
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A
Right, the language and the culture.
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B
Exactly.
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A
That's what's going to keep those things together.
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B
Exactly. It's kind of a bargain or something like that. So I think there's probably Some intelligence that came back from that event.
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A
Wow.
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B
Which is interesting to sort of think about it helped, I think that Alexander as a young boy was tutored by none other than Aristotle, who is a native of that part of the world that's sort of Macedon technically, but part of the Greek sphere. One of the great geniuses of all time. Not a bad tutor, presumably, about the world, state of the art knowledge, just about thinking through problems and issues, thinking through culture and civilization and even climate and geography and so on. So he could have theoretically had the best education possible.
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A
Yeah. Especially for a military leader. Between on field campaign experience as a boy, plus linking up with Aristotle and talking about the great questions of the world.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Pretty solid upbringing.
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B
Pretty solid. Combined with a particular kind of personality which he must have had, that's. That goes into the unknown, you know, I mean, I don't know the. I can't think of the Macedonian equivalent of fuck it. But you think, okay, he's just something. Fuck it. We're going. Yeah, we're going.
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A
A constant desire for approval.
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B
It seems like, yeah, there's some aspect of that. I mean, he was a student of Homer. You read Homer, which a good educated Greek person would have done, and certainly heard the stories. And it looks like he actually believed a lot of the myths that are.
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A
In Homer, like the Sirens and the Cyclops and things like that.
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B
Yeah. Or just the nature of the divine world. And so he thought he was part of it. He actually literally started acting out some of the myth. He actually believed it. He was acting it out.
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A
How do we know he believed it?
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B
Oh, I mean, there's a famous story early on in modern day Turkey when he's just starting the campaign, where he's slightly cut or wounded. And the legend is that I'm not bleeding blood, I'm bleeding ichor, the fluid that are in God's bodies, not human blood. So, okay, I must be. You know, he thought he was destined for really important things. I mean, that belief is not to be underestimated.
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A
Wow.
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B
I think we shouldn't underestimate religious beliefs, whatever they are for him. And belief himself that he was destined from a young age. And of course, that's what Plutarch tells us after the fact by a few centuries.
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A
Sure.
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B
You know these stories of a boy who famously trains this untrainable wild horse, Bucephalus, who becomes his horse throughout his life on military campaign, his beloved horse. And the legend is this horse was no one could ride it. Impossible. And as a young boy, he just hops on and instantly tamed. So, ah, Alexander is the tamer of the wild world. Of course he's destined for glory.
- [19:40]
A
But the legends, I think are important, even though they may be like Plutarch's account of Alexander's life. It happened so, you know, five centuries after. They may be apocryphal, but they do inform us of what the people of the time believed him to be, which then later informs all of the great warrior leaders from that point on.
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B
Yes.
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A
So so many people like Julius Caesar you're mentioning is taking almost inspiration and competitiveness with the legend of Alexander, not necessarily Alexander himself.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So even though the stories may not be exactly correct or might have some type of mythical elements, they still tell us about how people felt about them, which I think is really important and shouldn't be understated.
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B
Yeah, I agree with you.
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A
Yeah. So I'm curious, his campaign, are you able to roughly summarize what exactly he did and what people understand the known world to be?
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B
We know where he went through coastal Turkey, south through the Levant. He makes a foray into central Turkey to a shrine. He likes to visit religious shrines and oracles. He goes down the coast of Syria and Lebanon, stops in some of these famous Phoenician trading cities along the coast.
- [21:02]
A
Get some blue dye or purple dye or something.
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B
Well, yeah, but also famously, in one case, levels the city, one of these great Phoenician cities, because they resisted. He wanted to visit the temple which was on a sacred island. And the people, the priests, I guess on the island said, well, no fucking way you're visiting this sacred precinct. Alexander, we don't care who you are. And Alexander what? And he laid siege to that place for many, many months. He built a mole out to the sacred island. It's still in existence. So if you look at where this is, that still exists, that land that connects the mainland to this island, it's no longer an island. From this mole and the accumulation of silt eventually.
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A
But they literally dredged up sand and earth to create a path.
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B
Yes.
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A
Why not just take a boat? He wanted to send a message.
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B
Yeah, I mean, he was laying siege. And not only that, I mean, there's legend to it too, by one of the historians of Alexander's campaigns. A little bit bloody, probably exaggerated, but an early use of napalm on top of people in that temple just pours this hot tar over everything and crucifies along the coast a lot of the occupants of that sacred island, as if to say, don't resist me, everyone else, because you're going to really irritate me if you do.
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A
Wow.
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B
The other kind of. It's. It's amazing that if you think he's just on a military raid. No, he has a strategy. That's the lesson from. From that, From Tyre. This is the city of Tyre. You can Google Tyre and look at this mole. That's still part of the.
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A
Part of the earth that's in modern day. Where is that today?
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B
Lebanon.
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A
That's off the coast of Lebanon. Wow. And that island where the sacred temple was, is there anything there? Remnants of ruins?
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, there's. There are ancient ruins there. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. But it's a lesson that he's not just taking a bunch of his friends on like a booty race. No, this is a military strategy.
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A
Yeah. I'm a conquistador. I will kill and fuck up anyone.
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B
That'S in my way. Do not resist.
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A
Was his conquest typically brutal and ruthless up through Turkey and Syria?
- [23:25]
B
No, no, not really. Just, you know, some battles as. As they were, I guess that's brutal enough, but not towards civilian population, not towards someone who was sensitive to local religious traditions, which he was.
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A
So even though people didn't take on the Macedonian or Greek tradition, he would still kind of preserve their shrines and he would leave them be.
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B
Yeah, we know that. We know that. Because when he gets to Egypt, I mean, of course, Egypt's famous in the Greek world for religion, among other things. And he gets to Egypt, apparently the tradition welcomes a conqueror, a savior, getting rid of the hated Persians, which the Egyptians really didn't like.
- [24:06]
A
It's convenient.
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B
So nice. But then he takes his buddies, his core, his posse, literally out to Siwa Oasis on the Libyan border, out there to see this very famous oracle, the Greek world, the Oracle of Amun, which is an Egyptian oracle, but it's part of the circuit of famous Greek oracles, too. He wanted to visit the shrine, asked him a couple of questions like, am I a God or not? He kind of wanted to know. It turns out, yeah, he was confirmed as a God by this. By this oracle, but that made no military sense. He just wanted to go out there to visit this famous oracle with his buddies for a week trip out the middle of nowhere, effectively. So he comes back, he garrisons Egypt before he goes after the Persian king. He wanted. He wanted to fortify his rear. Technically, Egypt wanted to take over Egypt, but we actually have a papyrus that was found in the 70s at Saqqara, which is the place we talked about earlier, which is still an important Place. It's a tiny papyrus with nail holes in it, still preserved. And it's a Greek text, like big printed letters, almost like it's an inscription. So it's meant to be read easily by soldiers. And in Greek it says, this is an order of Pecustis. No one is to pass by. This is a sacred precinct. Pecustas we know about from Alexander historians. He's one of the main generals. He's the guy in charge of the Macedonian garrison in Egypt for Alexander. But it's clearly Alexander's intention to go really light on sacred areas and priesthoods, because we want to not just conquer and move on, we want to keep this place as part of something bigger. So we have to be light with what matters. And what matters in Egypt are sacred precincts.
- [25:55]
A
Is that a tactic of conquest, to not destroy the religion and kind of let people operate with the freedom of religion to pacify them?
- [26:02]
B
I think so. It's smart. It's a smart move. Which puts in contrast how we treated Tyre even more so because he was absolutely. I mean, that was one of the most brutal events of ancient history, is that treatment. If we believe that story, he just sort of stopped there for eight or nine months and said, no, you're going to resist me. We're stopping until you stop resisting. But in Egypt, I think that's indicative maybe of Aristotle's teaching, but indicative of we have to be sensitive to local traditions because our intention is to rule these places.
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A
Right. If we destroy all their bearings and anything that they hold sacred, they're just going to resent you and try to have a revolution forever.
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B
Exactly.
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A
But if you can be a peaceful leader that kind of like makes some money off them, things will be a lot better for your empire.
- [26:55]
B
Yeah, interesting. It's a smart thing to do.
- [26:58]
A
So he goes through Egypt, basically creates the Ptolemaic dynasty.
- [27:01]
B
Eventually. It's not him himself, but we don't know his intentions exactly, but there's hints. For example, he founds he doesn't build yet because he dies unexpectedly and quite young, but he founds the site that what would be Alexandria, named after. Named after him, of course. And I actually think the destruction of Tyre, this is sheer speculation on my part. So if the professional historians listening. I'm speculating sometimes this is just Joe talking. It's just. We're just hanging out as a Saturday. We're having fun.
- [27:38]
A
Yeah.
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B
But the destruction of this great commercial trading center, which is like in the Old Testament, it's railed against by the Hebrew prophets just these Horrible. Phoenician corrupted, wealthy commercial centers. They're despised in the Old Testament. I think Alexander is saying these old commercial cities that were like the dominant eastern Mediterranean trading areas, they are no longer important. What's important is what I say is important. Alexandria is the new commercial center of the Eastern Mediterranean, not these old trading centers. In part, there may be some symbolism behind destroying at least this one very famous commercial center and saying, okay, this is a new world and we're going to rejigger it a little bit. And Alexandria now is going to be the main trading center which it would become.
- [28:36]
A
And it's geographically very close to Alexandria.
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B
Tire. Yeah, well, it's not, it's not far. It's not. It's not so far. But it's almost like saying, I'm re. I'm redoing history.
- [28:47]
A
Do you think he knew that Alexandria existed and that he was going to eventually set up a commerce center? Like, do you think he had some type of foresight or had heard legend of Egypt at the time? Like, oh, yeah, there's these little coastal.
- [28:59]
B
Trading areas, you know, so it's possible. That's a really smart question mark. Because what was discovered a few years ago underwater in the Mediterranean is a Greek trading center from the 7th and 6th centuries BC that we only heard about in some legends. We didn't think it was or didn't know it was real. Turns out it's real.
- [29:23]
A
Wow.
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B
And then there's another Greek colony, trading colony in the western delta found in the seventh century. So, yeah, it is possible that there were commercial trading centers in the 7th and 6th centuries BC where Greeks were operating in before Alexandria, even in the eastern Delta, Phoenicians were all over Egypt as well. So there is probably a tradition that Egypt's an important place for Mediterranean trade. There are these commercial ports that are really important. But Alexander, as he's going through, says, what about this place? The tradition, the legend is that Alexandria was a small fishing village that Alexander came across, but has this natural double port.
- [30:08]
A
Right. Deep ports too. Right.
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B
Deep. Ish. Not as deep as Athens was, but deep enough for the ship. So it's a pretty natural harbor. He says, we're going to develop this. So he might have known more than we think he did about such things. And so we're going to just kind of continue the business, but we're going to build a new commercial center here.
- [30:32]
A
And then these people from Tire Tire. Not only does he want to send a message, but they're also giving him shit. He's like, yo, you guys out of here. Bang.
- [30:40]
B
Really out of here. Yeah, like that. That old world. No longer I'm the boss. I mean, that's a really strong view of what Alexander was doing, I think. But I tend.
- [30:51]
A
It's fun to speculate.
- [30:53]
B
I do, I do. I do like to speculate occasionally. And you can see how easy it is. And without any kind of evidence, you could tell stories all day long.
- [31:02]
A
Our brains are wired to want to create the narrative.
- [31:05]
B
Yeah, you want more information.
- [31:07]
A
Exactly.
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B
But you also. We know Alexander was strategic. Sometimes he kind of flew off the handle and murdered friends. Okay, that's true. But it happens to the best of us in general. He's thinking through what he wants to do, I think.
- [31:22]
A
So after Egypt, how old is he and where does he go next?
- [31:26]
B
Yeah, well, he goes after the Persian king, eventually comes to the Persian king and someone had killed him. Some person in the inner circle of the Persian King. He was furious even though he was going after the Persian king. How dare you?
- [31:41]
A
Furious?
- [31:41]
B
Yeah. How dare someone. You're not allowed to kill a king.
- [31:47]
A
There's honor amongst Stephen.
- [31:48]
B
Well, yeah, kind of conquest. Kind of. So he was furious about that. And then he continues going, continues going through the Persian Empire all the way to the Indus River Valley, which is extraordinary.
- [32:01]
A
Now, the Persian Empire, obviously, Persia being modern day Iran, but the Persian Empire stretches much farther than we understand Iran to be. So do you know roughly what it was geographically speaking?
- [32:13]
B
Well, the height of the Persian Empire is Turkey, all the way theoretically to the Indus River Valley and even to bits of Afghanistan. Egypt. Persians, of course, come into the Greek world a little bit. They're famously defeated by Greeks. That's another ancient history story. But they're kind of coming into the Greek world, which is causing a lot of problems for the Greek world, and they're defeated. And that was the defining moment for the Greek world. A group of city states that don't get along with each other very well. They unite successfully to defeat the Persian king.
- [32:52]
A
Is that Cyrus?
- [32:54]
B
Yep, yep. I mean, at the, you know, on the periphery of the Persian Empire. So. Okay. But it was a serious defeat. It stopped the Persian Empire expansion in that part of the world, I think. But they're still interacting tremendously. And the Persian Empire is certainly in Egypt and possibly intending to go across North Africa. That's more speculative. But Egypt's a province of the Persian Empire for two centuries as well. So it's the largest empire before Rome in the west. It's a significant size empire for a couple hundred years.
- [33:28]
A
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- [36:53]
B
Yeah, I mean, that is the kind of motivation for going to conquer the Persian Empire. This was once Alexander, once Philip and Alexander had defeated the Greek world, essentially in 338, they could have stopped her and gone back to Macedon. But there was a theory that in the Greek world and there were people advocating for, well, let's keep going because we need revenge against the Persian empire because they burned the Parthenon when they invaded.
- [37:24]
A
You got to get it back in blood, bro. You got to get your. Get back there.
- [37:28]
B
There was the drumbeat after that, like, keep going. There's a practical solution or problem as well. When you have a mobilized army, it has to keep going. It's really hard to demobilize an army in the ancient world, it's not so simple as. Okay guys, go home now, we're done. There's a tendency to keep it going. So the only problem is turning the army in what direction?
- [37:53]
A
Right.
- [37:54]
B
Well, Persia now because they could have. Let's keep going.
- [37:57]
A
They could have gone farther west like once they were in Egypt, I mean across the Arab peninsula and into sort of eastern Africa.
- [38:04]
B
Well, I guess you could.
- [38:06]
A
Why was there anything there? Like into the Maghrebi region of North Africa?
- [38:12]
B
I mean maybe North Africa a little bit, but I think it would be harder sell. The Persian Empire was kind of sitting there and was to some extent the hated enemy of the Greek world.
- [38:24]
A
Makes sense.
- [38:24]
B
So let's really get revenge. Let's keep going. And they do it and he does it. Yeah. So that's kind of the original motivation maybe to defeat this hated entity once and for all because we can. And let's just keep going. We got a head of steam going. So let's keep going east.
- [38:46]
A
What are those Persian battles like?
- [38:50]
B
God in them? I wouldn't want to be anywhere close. There probably were a lot of hand to hand and a lot of horses and blood and guts and clinging of armor and probably horrible. Some of the battles are pretty well described. There's only four big ones that Alexander had against the Persian Empire. Four and done. Really they're short things. A lot of dead bodies on the battlefield for both it looks like. So we tend to forget that when we read about them. But they're probably pretty fierce street fights with animals and a lot of camp followers too that follow these armies around. So I think there's some depictions now that are pretty good. One I saw that I kind of liked was the Napoleon movie. They come out last year. I think that showed some of the Napoleonic wars with cavalry and so on. Like okay, that, that's a pre modern war right. Or battle right there.
- [39:55]
A
It's.
- [39:55]
B
They're just nasty.
- [39:57]
A
And Alexander's on the front lines. He like, he liked to bang like.
- [40:00]
B
Yeah, he did, he did. That's how you motivate the men. Yeah, they're going to on this beautiful horse, like let's go. And that's why he's famous for that. Famous for doing the dirty work, leading battles, not really caring for his own life.
- [40:16]
A
Four battles, that's it.
- [40:18]
B
Takes down four big ones. And then the Persian king is murdered by an insider. And then now he finds himself like now what? He must have asked. Okay, that was easy. Or easier than we thought or something. I Don't know what he would have thought. He gets a Persepolis, one of the four Persian capitals filled with treasury from 200 years of Persian taxation of its provinces. Burns the palace either by accident or on purpose.
- [40:48]
A
Oops.
- [40:49]
B
Yeah, either was a drunken rager one night or he did it on purpose to again sort of put pay to the Persian Empire. Symbolically. Right. There are different traditions of that. And then you think, okay, well he must have thought, let's just keep going, guys. At one point, the army revolts on campaign and his men say, we ain't going a step further. We're going back to Macedon. This is ridiculous.
- [41:19]
A
This is nine years, ten years in.
- [41:21]
B
No, but a little bit less than that. But long enough to say, like, what are we doing? Yeah. And Alexander gives a famous speech, it's recorded where he gets up and says, okay guys, if you want to go back home tomorrow morning, off you go. Thanks for your service, you've done well. Have a great life. But before you go, let me remind you of what my father has done for you and your families from 30 years ago, from 20 years ago. You guys were nothing but dirt farmers. My father created this military powerhouse and harnessed all the wealth of Macedon and defeated all of its enemies. It's in a tribal area in ancient times. There's fierce tribes all around Macedon that Philip had defeated one by one before turning his army with Alexander to the Greek world. So there are all these enemies my father defeated every single one. There are no threats. Macedon is prosperous. We've now defeated the Persian Empire. You guys have grown rich beyond your wildest imagination. But sure, go ahead if you'd like to. It's an amazing speech.
- [42:38]
A
Wow.
- [42:39]
B
Again, this kind of charismatic idea, kind of. This guy could lead men.
- [42:45]
A
And knew how to speak to them in a way that would appeal to whether it's their nationalistic sensibilities, whether it's of guilt or a debt that they felt that they owed to his father. Whatever it was that got their engine going, he would lean into it.
- [42:58]
B
It seems so now. Again, this is a reported speech in a later tradition. That's what we have.
- [43:02]
A
The facts don't matter. It was an awesome speech.
- [43:05]
B
It was an awesome speech. These speeches are the same. They are made up speeches to kind of reflect what was probably said. We have to remember that once we get into the weeds. Okay, what do we actually know versus the text that we have? And this is what ancient historians do for a living, kind of like, does that make sense? What about this little fragment of evidence are there hints that what he was like. But I think he must have been extraordinarily charismatic.
- [43:34]
A
Wow.
- [43:35]
B
To lead an army like that and to fight the way he did at the front of the army. Even as an 18 year old at Chaeronea in 338 BC. He's an 18 year old kid at the head of this wing fighting this mighty Greek army. Incredible.
- [43:53]
A
Wow. Are there other Persian factions? Did the Persians have the satraps? Was that them?
- [43:58]
B
The Satraps are the governors of the provinces of a satrapi.
- [44:03]
A
Right.
- [44:03]
B
Yeah.
- [44:04]
A
But were they all in agreeance that like, oh, Alexander, he killed, the king's dead, Alexander's here, he took over Persepolis. Like he can have it. Or is there other factions of the Persian empire that's still trying to like kill Alexander and reclaim their land?
- [44:20]
B
Doesn't seem so. It doesn't seem so. I think it was pretty thin. A pretty thinly stitched together very large land empire. Really kind of an empire of an idea.
- [44:30]
A
That's the problem with having such a broad empire. Especially if you don't have like today. Modern day Iran is obviously protected and fortified by mountains. But back then because it's so vast, you. It's difficult to have a military to defend so much land.
- [44:45]
B
Yeah. And remember, we're not in a nation state world with a United nations that might kind of defend a broad global nation state. You're on your own steady world. Yeah. It is a very different world before 1800. And there aren't natural boundaries that are defended by law. There isn't immigration policies or control of populations moving. None of it. It is mostly ideas and local by local bigwigs who had been there forever that do bargains with higher ups, that do bargains with kings. Okay. I'll be loyal to you. I'll send you some taxes and you leave me alone. But that's. It's a bargain that has to be negotiated probably constantly.
- [45:27]
A
Wow.
- [45:28]
B
Which is why there are really good kings. Like Cleopatra we were talking about before would be one. And there are many others who probably were really good, really skilled at stitching things together and keeping them together. It's not automatic that these large empires just stay as they are. It has to be negotiated I think all the time. And we tend to forget that there's this process politically that must have happened.
- [45:54]
A
So Alexander gets his boys fired up, delivers a speech for the ages. Like a real go through a wall SEC championship kind of.
- [46:04]
B
I like to think of that. Worse. I'm more of a big ten Guy. But I get the point.
- [46:08]
A
And then gets them going. Gets them. They all go out to the Indus river valley and kind of check it out.
- [46:13]
B
Yeah.
- [46:14]
A
They keep going and they blaze their way all the way through.
- [46:16]
B
They do.
- [46:17]
A
And now the Indus river. That takes you basically all the way up to modern day India.
- [46:20]
B
Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
- [46:23]
A
And that's what they would consider the known world. They're like. This is.
- [46:25]
B
They're at the limits of the known world. I mean. And his army is in Afghanistan, we know. Literally looking at the Hindu Kush range, which is, you know, the foothills of the Himalaya. And he's thinking, what's over there? Should we go over there? You gotta think. The men. No, no, dude. But they go down to the more natural kind of territory, the Indus River Valley. Encounter a fierce local king with these war elephants. Right. And apparent by the stories we have of the battle, pretty fierce. And Alexander almost loses and gains great respect. Becomes friends of this Indian king for being such a fierce warrior. Which is really a nice tradition anyway. And. Yeah. And then they wind their way back. They were going to meet up with the commander of the navies in the Persian Gulf. They get lost in the Taklimakan Desert, I think. No, sorry, the Gedrosian Desert. Sorry, I'm in the wrong geography. In the Gedrosian Desert in southern southern Iran, which is a horrible desert and a huge number of men die from thirst because. Remember we were talking about logistics earlier? Because there were no logistics. They had gotten lost and they're in a desert, no water and little food. And it was really bad. Alexander limps his way back to Babylon and ends up dying suddenly of whatever.
- [47:57]
A
What did the records say that his death was caused by?
- [48:00]
B
There are no records to say anything about how we died. There was a big drinking bout the night before. Macedonians were famous. The Greeks despised Macedonians for drinking wine undiluted. So in the Greek world, a civilized Greek world, you drink your wine diluted with water. Not Macedon. Hardcore, heavily alcoholic wine. Wow. And a lot of it. So too much drinking could have been a disease like malaria or something. Could have been poison.
- [48:36]
A
No one knows.
- [48:37]
B
No. And God knows there's articles on this until the cows come home speculating, like, what killed Alexander at such a young age?
- [48:45]
A
Is there writing about his disposition afterwards? I heard this famous quote. It might be apocryphal. I'm sure you've heard it before. That Alexander looked to the moon and wept for he could not conquer it.
- [48:56]
B
Yeah, that sounds like a legend to me. But it gets to this point of. This guy liked the conquest. He only knew the military camp. That's the only life he knew. He had an army lost a lot of it and screwed up. Certainly on the way back from inner valley through the Gedrosian Desert. It was terrible. There is a legend, a Roman legend, that Alexander, had he lived a bit longer, would have gotten on that ship and sailed around Africa, out the Persian Gulf, around Africa, coming up the western coast of Africa, into the Mediterranean, through the Straits of Gibraltar, and conquered Rome.
- [49:39]
A
The long way.
- [49:40]
B
Yeah, the real long way. Before Rome was just sort of a small village in the late 4th century BC. I exaggerate somewhat. That's a legend.
- [49:52]
A
But conquering Rome at that time.
- [49:54]
B
Yeah, before Rome became Rome, in a sense. That's how the legend of. Yeah, he's a conqueror on steroids. That's how good he was. He could sail around Africa, enter the western Mediterranean and put pay to Rome and really be this emperor of.
- [50:12]
A
Of all time, even greater.
- [50:14]
B
Of all time. Wow.
- [50:17]
A
And Babylon is in modern day Iraq.
- [50:19]
B
Yeah.
- [50:20]
A
Wow. So he ends up there. He never even makes it back to Macedonia.
- [50:24]
B
No.
- [50:25]
A
Wow.
- [50:25]
B
No.
- [50:26]
A
I wonder, because you gotta. I don't know. Again, I'm speculating, right. But Alexander's a man, just like I am. And have you heard of this idea of, like, gold medal depression? This is a feeling that like Olympians or different people in their own disciplines will have, once they achieve the ultimate thing that they've been striving for, then face large bouts of depression and sadness because their life now no longer has meaning. That the meaning was in the chase of this thing. And once they attain it, they sort of feel depressed. And I hear about it from soldiers now, even like ptsd, they say, comes less from the trauma that they experience on the battlefield, but more of their inability to reintegrate into society. That when they were in the battlefield, they had community, they were competent, they had purpose, they had some type of divine purpose, they were supporting their family. Then they come back into a society where they're incompetent at their job, they don't give a shit about it, and they're doing it for like a measly paycheck. And that is where, you know, it's less the conflict, but it's more the opiate of society and the convenience that we feel here and the lack of community and isolation that really gives people a lot of ptsd and depression exacerbates a lot of those symptoms. So I gotta wonder if for someone like Alexander that's on this mission from the gods to go conquer the world. And it is his manifest destiny to take over everything. All of a sudden he turns around and he goes, I'm fucking now. What? And then starts drinking a little, maybe too much. Does he have girlfriends? Does he have wives?
- [51:53]
B
Yeah.
- [51:54]
A
How many wives? Is it just one woman or.
- [51:56]
B
Well, yeah, he married a famous princess, Roxanne, had a. Had a child. There's speculation about his sexuality. Of course. Of course there is.
- [52:05]
A
Now we're talking.
- [52:06]
B
Yeah. Some people think male lovers. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that's not. Not that uncommon in the. In the wider Greek world in antiquity fair. But, you know, the kind of general attitude is that Alexander was married to his army.
- [52:21]
A
Right.
- [52:21]
B
Basically.
- [52:22]
A
So this is like.
- [52:23]
B
That's the life he knew. He would not have gone back to Macedon and become a gentleman farmer.
- [52:26]
A
No.
- [52:28]
B
And all the speculation is he would have kept going. He would have kept going in some direction had he been healthy and had a willing army to go. That's another question is how do you keep that army going? Probably it was the longest sustained military campaign.
- [52:43]
A
Yeah, it was what, 12 years? 10 years.
- [52:46]
B
Yeah. 10 years plus. That's extraordinary. Yeah.
- [52:49]
A
Especially in that time, in a world.
- [52:51]
B
Where it was seasonal warfare, kind of. But to go on a sustained military campaign and to have soldiers go along for the ride for that length of time is already beyond. Beyond belief. So there would have been limits to how far you could push the man, given some of the disasters they had faced and some of the battles, some of the fierce battles that they got away with their lives with. So there would have been limits there. He kind of knew that. Was he creating this new empire, this new empire of man idea of unifying east and West? Lots of speculation about that, too. Again, what were his intentions? What would he have created had he been living and given what plays out and all the competition between these little bits of the empire he had sort of formed by conquest. They were fighting each other constantly the last three centuries bc, before Rome takes over. A lot of it shows you how hard it would have been to keep that together politically and economically. So it was hugely challenging for him, maybe even beyond what he thought. I think he was kind of creating stuff kind of on the fly.
- [54:00]
A
Wow.
- [54:01]
B
Even though I just have argued he's also being strategic, but exactly what that means after the fact, to go from sustained military campaign to actually creating a state. Yeah. I think also on the limits of what he thought he could imagine was possible, had he lived a long life. Wow. It's nice to speculate about, but we see what happens after his death, and his generals kind of carve up the territory and create these smaller states that are highly competitive with each other.
- [54:39]
A
Wow. And how does he influence leaders after him? How does he influence Napoleon and Julius Caesar?
- [54:45]
B
Yeah. I mean, gosh, there's even business management books on Alexander as business strategists now. I've seen.
- [54:53]
A
Wow.
- [54:54]
B
So lessons about charismatic leadership and so on. He was extremely influential. He still is. I'm pretty certain. If you go to West Point, the campaigns are taught for good and bad, lessons about military campaigns and local populations and so on. I don't know that for sure, but I'd be surprised if it was not taught just as purely important military history, that he's definitely in the textbooks for that as well as lots of other things. Yeah, he was very influential just out of sheer, what looks like sheer success. I mean, we know that because a near contemporary after he died in the third century bc, Pyrrhus, as in Pyrrhic victory, is a king of Epirus, very close to where Macedonia is. And he gets this idea of trying to follow Alexander not east, but going west into Italy under pretext of trying to help some old Greek colonies in southern Italy who are in some disputes with Roman ships and so on. So he goes to the rescue with a fairly large army, complete with war elephants, because why wouldn't you, across the.
- [56:07]
A
Water, the Indus have them, you know.
- [56:09]
B
Got to bring them. It's part of being a Hellenistic lure. And Paris, in fact, was one of the great military strategists in history. He's kind of belittled because of Pyrrhic victory and what happens. But he was a brilliant military strategist as well, and he kicks Rome's ass constantly, by the way, even though Rome is. They're not in southern Italy yet, they're sort of coming and countering. Pyrrhus army. Pyrrhus keeps on winning, though. The problem is he's losing a lot of men. Pyrrhic victory. He's winning the battles, losing a lot of men and repeating. Meanwhile, Rome is learning how to be better at it. But eventually he can't sustain the campaigns. He goes back because of logistics. He can't sustain an army in southern Italy away from his homeland for very long. And he couldn't sustain the military losses that he was sustaining. So that's an example of another Alexander wannabe, definitely an Alexander wannabe. Military conquest, glory. This is what great kings do. Like looking for something to conquer. It's what you do, but not Very successful.
- [57:17]
A
Wow.
- [57:18]
B
He ends up getting beaned. Getting beaned by an old woman. That's the story from a roof. A roof tile she throws at him, kills him. What? That's the legend. Yeah, that's how he dies. Yeah. The great military. That's the legend. The great military conqueror dies. Ignobly.
- [57:34]
A
Some chick on a roof just slings a tile at him.
- [57:38]
B
Bad again. It's a kind of moral lesson in Plutarch of this is not what you do. A good military conqueror would win hearts and minds and be a little bit different than Pyrrhus was just pure, pure glory. Pure military glory. Didn't work out so well. But that's an immediate example just after Alexander's death by a couple decades of what can happen if you're not careful.
- [58:05]
A
Wow, what a fascinating character.
- [58:08]
B
Pyrrhus is underestimated. He's known because of pyrrhic victory. But he's a very interesting character. And of course, Rome at the end of this is now going, what is this Hellenistic world? This like the world to the east, These kings with these war elephants. Rome never has war elephants, by the way, ever. They don't adopt them because they're. They're kind of silly.
- [58:33]
A
What about Carthage?
- [58:34]
B
And Carthage does have more elephants.
- [58:36]
A
They get some more elephants.
- [58:37]
B
They definitely do. Any army worth their salt in the military Mediterranean world has war elephants because why wouldn't you? It's like high tech, really cool.
- [58:46]
A
It's like a tank or something, kind of tanks.
- [58:48]
B
But also, I mean, one of the things is the smell of elephants freaks horses out. So it's a way of countering. It's a way of countering cavalry. That's kind of the operational theory is his horses freak out. But it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work out that way.
- [59:04]
A
Well, who fights Hannibal? Well, Rome, they never get the elephants. But they are fighting elephant armies.
- [59:13]
B
Yeah, yeah, they are. They just don't. They don't get them. They don't know how to use them. They think they're not worth their time.
- [59:20]
A
So, Italian, why do we need the elephants? Elephants are silly, scoffing at us. It's not a fiat. It's like, oh, come on, Italians, get the elephants. They're sick.
- [59:33]
B
Well, yeah, they are. The latest, greatest military tool, except for Rome doesn't. Rome never uses them.
- [59:41]
A
They don't need them. Turns out.
- [59:42]
B
And it turns out elephants are bad. It turns out that there's one case where we know this from ancient sources. You can count out the number of elephants each side had, with one exception, the side with the least number of elephants wins in head to head combat.
- [60:01]
A
It's just too much to sustain them. They cost a lot of money.
- [60:04]
B
They're hard, they're hard to control. They don't exactly. They're a little bit skittish.
- [60:09]
A
Right. They're afraid of mice, according to Cartes.
- [60:15]
B
They're a tricky thing, you know, you get the theory behind them. And they are really big and fearsome and they might scare the shit out of horses sometimes, but they're not very manageable on the battlefield.
- [60:27]
A
Right.
- [60:27]
B
They're not exactly mobile.
- [60:29]
A
Right. Yeah.
- [60:30]
B
So anyway, so Alexander again, in contrast, really stands out that even people who try to imitate him around conquest. And you ask about legacy. The legacy is conquest is empire. It is like, what is it? What are these things? And this kind of glory of conquest kind of goes all the way through the British Empire, if not beyond is. This is sort of a legacy. It's created by this idea of opening up the world of governing foreign lands, opening up trade, which is a huge component of everything Alexander was doing. I think east, west, trade is important all the way back. And Alexander certainly thought that was a component of what he was doing with Alexandria.
- [61:22]
A
Changed the world forever.
- [61:24]
B
He did. And go look at Google Earth and tire.
- [61:28]
A
Yeah, I'm going to check that out. He literally, literally changed the geography of the Earth.
- [61:34]
B
Yes.
- [61:35]
A
Wow. Well, Joe, thank you so much, brother. I really appreciate it.
- [61:38]
B
Mark, this has been a blast, man.
- [61:40]
A
I really enjoyed this.
- [61:41]
B
I did too.
- [61:41]
A
Fun.
- [61:42]
B
I did too.
- [61:42]
A
I feel like a better. A better citizen of the earth. Now that I understand Alexander the Great.
- [61:47]
B
I appreciate it.
- [61:47]
A
I'm going to use this in my, in my comedy career to destroy my enemies. Okay. Okay.
- [61:53]
B
See, you got to get a hairstyle a little bit more.
- [61:56]
A
Yeah, I got to cut it. Maybe Jim Morrison. Yeah, I'll go Jim Morrison. Yeah, I got it.
- [61:59]
B
I usually go Jim Morrison.
- [62:00]
A
Well, Joe, thank you so much.
- [62:02]
B
Pleasure, Mark.
- [62:03]
A
Much like a war elephant. I'll never forget this.
- [62:05]
B
Thank you.
- [62:05]
A
Thank you.