Alexander The Great: A Good Conqueror, But A Less Than Noteworthy Ruler

Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great, looms over history as a quintessentially great man. In antiquity, Plutarch paired Alexander with Julius Caesar in his Parallel Lives, and if a perfect great man archetype ever existed, Caesar was he. Both Caesar and Alexander have the distinction of conquering an empire, only for it to disintegrate after their death, a fact which tarnishes both men’s legacies. Caesar’s heirs proved more successful than Alexander’s, however, building on the great man’s success to create something greater still.

But the disintegration of Alexander’s empire was in large part Alexander’s own doing. Inheriting from his father Philip a tremendously powerful and well-run state, Alexander proceeded to conquer another powerful, well-run state. Unfortunately, he could not meld the two together; his efforts to that effect in his final years being too little too late. After Alexander’s death, the Hellenic world was much larger than it had been before him, but just as divided and violent.

Philip II, Alexander’s father, was in many ways more deserving of the title great man. Sent to Thebes as a boy, Philip absorbed Greek culture and got a chance to observe the most modern Greek city-state at the height of its power. Macedon was at that time entirely dependent on the quality of its king for its power: an energetic and efficient monarch could keep his lords in line, negotiate with the Greek city-states, and preserve and expand Macedon’s borders. Many strong and wily men had ruled Macedon successfully in the past, but with their passing, chaos returned. There was no institutional state or established principle of succession, so that a king’s death brought pretenders out of the woodwork and foreign powers moved to snatch up Macedonian territory.

In 359 B.C. King Perdiccas III died in battle against the Illyrian king Grabos, leaving an infant son as his heir. Being both an adult and the man-on-the-spot, Philip quickly assumed power as regent and set to work modernizing the Macedonian state. Most immediate were his military reforms: Philip created a professional army capable of campaigning in all seasons made up of both heavy infantry and heavy cavalry trained to operate in concert. The next year, Philip returned to Illyria and defeated Grabos. In recognition of this victory, as well as his successful diplomatic initiatives to neighboring states, the Macedonian nobility permitted Philip to formally ascend the throne the next year.

Philip’s political reforms were all designed to strengthen the monarchy. He put royal finances on sound footing by seizing gold mines and timber forests. In addition, he established an efficient royal bureaucracy which collected taxes and organized public works projects. Finally, he forced the Macedonian nobles to send their sons to all be educated together at Mieza in order to strengthen nationalistic feelings among the nobility. In exchange for this rather substantial demand, Philip provided the best possible education for these young men by hiring Aristotle as the royal tutor. These reforms, even more than Philip’s various military campaigns constituted the strong foundation upon which Macedonian greatness was built by his successors.

Philip’s own energy and genius were tremendous, but the true key to his success was a triumvirate formed by himself and two of his closest advisors, Antipater and Parmenio. All three of these men were superb administrators, diplomats, generals, and politicians, allowing Philip to effectively be in more than one place at once. In 356 B.C., for instance, Philip campaigned in the Chalcidice while Antipater governed Macedon itself and Parmenio led a successful campaign against Grabos in Illyria. Antipater’s genius lay especially in the diplomatic realm, and Philip called upon him repeatedly to negotiate treaties with the Greek cities. Parmenio, on the other hand, was a superlative general: over the course of his 30-year career under Philip and Alexander, he campaigned successfully in Illyria, Thessaly, the entire Aegean region, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. For his part, Philip served as the charismatic figurehead of the Macedonian state, though he was by no means passive in this role, personally determining the direction and detail of state policy.

The Philippic triumvirate proved successful in the long run also because it was anti-fragile: it could survive the death of any one member provided an at least adequate replacement could be found. This occurred in 336 B.C. when Philip was assassinated. Antipater and Parmenio supported Alexander’s accession and continued to work under him much as they had under his father. Especially later on, Alexander greatly resented the extent to which he relied on the support of these two older men, legacies of his father, but in the interim, the 20-year-old king accepted that he needed their help and made good use of it.

After a few lightning-quick campaigns against Illyria, Thrace, and Thebes, Alexander set out on the long-planned expedition against the Persian Empire. His most notable act in these first years was the destruction of Thebes, an act which terrified the Greek city-states into submission but confirmed their opinion of him as a bloodthirsty barbarian. Antipater remained as viceroy of Macedon and was responsible for maintaining the Greek peace. In this endeavor he was quite successful: aside from Agis III’s revolt in 331 B.C., which Antipater quashed before news of it even reached Alexander, there was no significant warfare in Greece throughout Alexander’s reign. Only at the end, when Alexander finally insulted all of the city-states into revolt did Antipater’s diplomacy fail.

During the Persian campaign both Alexander and Parmenio covered themselves with glory, though Alexander insisted on the lion’s share of it. Nonetheless, through careful reading of the sources it is possible to discern that Parmenio was in fact the mind directing the campaign. Plausible arguments can be made that most of Alexander’s strokes of genius actually came from Parmenio. In addition to providing military guidance, Parmenio was responsible for setting up much of the administrative system in the newly conquered territories, filling it with his own family and friends who proved much more honest and efficient administrators than the ones Alexander appointed later on.

Parmenio’s administrative program was to keep the old Persian system of satrapies and simply appoint loyal and competent people to the old offices. The Persian system had been introduced by Cyrus the Great two centuries earlier and been a model of efficiency before devolving into a pseudo-feudal arrangement. Still, the satrap system was well-designed for imperial governance and the Persians were well-trained and equipped for ruling an empire.

The main problem the Macedonians faced was finding good people to hold these offices.

A critical moment came in 332 B.C. when Darius III tried for peace with Alexander. He offered Alexander half of the empire along with his daughter’s hand in marriage and to make Alexander his heir. This was a golden opportunity for Alexander to take control of the Persian Empire, consolidate his political position, and smooth over any problems created by cultural differences between the Persians and Macedonians. Parmenio advised Alexander to accept, but Alexander refused. Unlike his father, Alexander wanted to conquer a great empire more than he wanted to rule one. Fortunately for Alexander, with Parmenio’s aid he triumphed over Darius in battle the next year, but this episode foreshadowed difficulties to come.

Once Darius was dead and the empire all but conquered in 300 B.C., Alexander destroyed the triumviral system his father had established by murdering Parmenio in order to secure his own, unchallenged supremacy. Parmenio was beloved by his men, and much of the army immediately mutinied upon his death. Over the next seven years, Alexander was to learn just how great a mistake he had made. Not only did Alexander rob himself of an extremely useful subordinate, but Parmenio’s murder provoked tremendous resentment from both the common soldiery and the nobility. Additionally, Parmenio had served as a loyal opposition leader for Alexander: nobles who were upset with Alexander’s personality or decisions would rally around Parmenio, who addressed their grievances but nonetheless refused to undermine his king. With Parmenio gone, these malcontents had no one to turn to, and plots and mutinies plagued Alexander for the rest of his career.

Parmenio’s murder also created a staffing problem for Alexander because it meant that the old man’s family and friends could no longer be relied upon. There were a few competent men Alexander could trust, some of them Parmenio’s own protégés, but they were too few, and so Alexander appointed incompetents to official posts. When these men proved their worth, he had to resort to Persian administrators. These men were perfectly good at their jobs, but their appointment only stoked further resentment among the Macedonians.

Alexander by himself was not up to the task of governing an empire, and if he could not stand Parmenio, then the logical alternative was to call upon Antipater in a greater capacity. Unfortunately, Parmenio and Antipater were close friends, so by murdering the one Alexander alienated the other, and Alexander hated Antipater just as much as he hated Parmenio. Not only did Antipater constantly quarrel with Alexander’s mother Olympias, but Antipater also proved too competent for Alexander’s liking.

In 334 B.C., while campaigning in Ionia, Alexander had disbanded his fleet, effectively giving the Persians run of the Aegean. Persian raids began threatening not only Alexander’s conquests but also Greece and Macedon itself. In response, Antipater raised a fleet on his own authority which proved so effective that not only did he clear the Aegean coast of Persian raiders but he could even spare a few ships to help Alexander with the siege of Halicarnassus. On top of this, Antipater’s triumph over the Spartans was much more impressive to Greek eyes than Alexander’s own victories over the vastly inferior Persian armies. Alexander derisively referred to Antipater’s victory at Megalopolis as “a battle of mice.”

Eventually, Alexander grew tired of Antipater and in 324 B.C. ordered him, at the age of 74, to give up his viceroyalty and travel to Babylon. Antipater was delayed, however, by revolts in Greece: Alexander had ordered all the Greek city-states to receive their exiled citizens back. In response, the Greeks plotted rebellion and when they heard news of Alexander’s death all revolted together against Macedonian rule. It took Antipater a few years to quell this revolt and a few years more to forge a tenuous peace among Alexander’s generals. Unfortunately, Antipater died shortly thereafter in 319 B.C., and the peace evaporated upon his death.

Eventually, the wars among Alexander’s successors, the Diadochi, resulted in three main, stable empires: the Antigonids in Macedon, the Seleucids in Persia, and the Ptolemids in Egypt. These were in fact the three main, independent kingdoms in existence when Alexander himself was born. Egypt, part of the Persian Empire but not part of Cyrus’ original conquests, had a long history of independence and frequent revolts; the Persians only managed to reconquer Egypt in 343 B.C.

Alexander serves as a cautionary tale for the historian: though the sobriquet “the Great” is not lightly handed out by history, one must look carefully to be sure that the man in question truly deserves the title. Alexander’s accomplishments were indeed remarkable, but he couldn’t make anything more out of them. Alexander did not build an empire, but rather simply destroyed one and lorded over its ruins for a few years. He brought Greek civilization to India and Egypt and everywhere in between, but aside from that, there is little to recommend him to posterity.

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