Alexander the Great

During the centuries of their slow decline, the Greeks' own education by the East is a far more delicate subject. Although to western geographers, Alexander's conquests seemed to have opened a wider and more accurate knowledge of a far East where men spoke Greek, their own views of the East were not noticeably more correct. The one advancement may have been spiritual rather than scientific. Like western intellectuals who idealized Stalinist Russia, distant academics fathered Utopian ideals on far eastern peoples whom they had not seen; this attitude was possible because they felt that the philosophy of the East had a claim to their respect. Though debates between Oriental wise men and Greek philosophers had already featured in Greek literature, under Greek rule the theme persisted that the East possessed the older and more venerable wisdom. So far from suppressing Oriental gods the Greeks identified them with their own and a certain attitude of deference shows through the art of the gods they combined. In portraits of Greco-Oriental deities, especially the many Eastern mother-goddesses, the oriental element tends to be dominant; it is easy to imagine how the diverse religion of the Olympians gave ground before the moral and spiritual faiths of Zoroaster and Buddha and the tenderer goddesses that characterized the obedient societies of the East, not the self-willed cities of free Greece. There are hints of this, even in the very limited evidence; there were Macedonians, probably in the colonics of Asia Minor, who followed the Magi and took to the Iranians' fire-worship, while in the Greek cities of western Asia, the influence of the Iranian families who held the city's priesthoods of the goddess Artemis, their own Anahita, ca

If the Greeks were aware of a certain wisdom in the Orient, they still interpreted it in their own western terms. Unlike the British, who encouraged the study of native Indian culture, the Greeks took little interest in eastern tradition except where they could bend it to concepts of their own; they saw the East through eyes trained by Plato and Herodotus and their own culture determined the points which they chose to notice. Each eastern tribe and community was fitted into the Greeks' prehistory of myth and heroes without respect for their independent origins; Buddha became a descendant of a fellow-soldier of Dionysus's Indian invasion, just as Thessalians in Alexander's army had already explained the Armenians as sons of their hero Jason, because they wore clothes of Thessalian style. No Greek writer is known to have spoken an Iranian dialect, and Orientals who wrote Greek books on their kingdoms' history tailored their narrative to concepts common to a Greek; a hellenized author could not distance himself from the Greek attitudes he chose to share. For Greeks, Zoroaster the prophet was described more as a magician than a religious reformer; it is only a worthless legend that Alexander arranged a Greek translation of the many Zoroastrian scriptures which he found at Persepolis.

When the history of the hellenized Orient is known more fully, it will still seem a story of missed opportunities, of new frontiers thrown away by the quarrels of Alexander's Successors. Alexander's own intentions will never be certain, but as he passed through the villages and tribal wastes beyond Hamadan, it must have been easy (except to our post-colonial fashion) to feel that a Greek upbringing and Greek aspirations were a power from a superior world. The wide and absolute break with the past that came over the East after Alexander's conquest had so far seemed more obvious to historians of eastern art than to students of the written and scattered evidence. But art is a measure of society and the more that is known of it, the more Alexander deserves to be seen as decisive.

Most historians have had their own Alexander, and a view of him which is one-sided is bound to have missed the truth. There are features which ca

front line of battle, a position which few generals since have considered proper; he set out to show himself a hero, and from the Granicus to Multan he left a trail of heroics which has never been surpassed and is perhaps too easily assumed among all his achievements. There are two ways to lead men, either to delegate all authority and limit the leader's burden or to share every hardship and decision and be seen to take the toughest labour, prolonging it until every other man has finished. Alexander's method was the second, and only those who have suffered the first can appreciate why his men adored him; they will also remember how lightly men talk of a leader's example, but how much it costs both the will and the body to sustain it.

Alexander was not merely a man of toughness, resolution and no fear. A murderous fighter, he had wide interests outside war, his hunting, reading, his patronage of music and drama and his lifelong friendship with Greek artists, actors and architects; he minded about his food and took a daily interest in his meals, appreciating quails from Egypt or apples from western orchards; from the naphtha wells of Kirkuk to the Indian 'people of Dionysus' he showed the curiosity of a born explorer. He had an intelligent concern for agriculture and irrigation which he had learnt from his father; from Philip, too, came his constant favour for new cities and their law and formal design. He was famously generous and he loved to reward the same show of spirit which he asked of himself; he enjoyed the friendship of Iranian nobles and he had a courteous way, if he chose, with women. Just as the eastern experience of later crusaders first brought the idea of courtly love to the women's quarters of Europe, so Alexander's view of the East may have brought this courtesy home to him. It is extraordinary how Persian courtiers learnt to admire him, but the double sympathy with the lives of Greece and Persia was perhaps Alexander's most unusual characteristic. Equally he was impatient and often conceited; the same officers who worshipped him must often have found him impossible, and the murder of Cleitus was an atrocious reminder of how petulance could become blind rage. Though he drank as he lived, sparing nothing, his mind was not slurred by excessive indulgence; he was not a man to be crossed or to be told what he could not do, and he always had firm views on exactly what he wanted.

With a brusque ma