As a Quaker committed to peace, the thought of saying anything good about Alexander the Great may seem odd. It’s fashionable after the event to speak well of conquering tyrants (Hitler excepted): what a splendid leader Napoleon was, and how amazing Julius Caesar was – why he even came to England, the first wave, and wasn’t that civilising for us all (apart from the dead)? And Alexander stands supreme in this genre; but we need to bear in mind that in his magisterial book, Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox quotes estimates of some 750,000 people dying in Asia alone as a result of Alexander’s progress – his triumphs. And that isn’t even as if they died through taking a sleeping-tablet. After the siege of Tyre, Alexander, to teach his enemies a lesson, had two thousand men crucified.
And yet when we speak of him, truly, there was something great about him that outside of his very greatest opposites, namely, spiritual leaders – Jesus, David, Moses, Buddha and so on – does the deserve the epithet ‘Great’. Yes, he seems to have been a psychopathic nut-job, but so much else besides – so complex, and so driven that few compare with him.
He was widely educated – Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, was his tutor; he loved poetry and indeed he not only loved poetry, he lived poetry. My all-time favourite story about Alexander was when a messenger, breathless, and excited with some good news he was anxious to relay to Alexander, doubtless with the expectation of reward, was cut short.
"What can you tell me that deserves such excitement," mocked Alexander, "except perhaps that Homer has come back to life?" Except that Homer had come back to life … the hairs go up on the back of my neck – to value the poet and his work so highly and in such a way that it seemed even more significant than news of his empire. He slept every night with two things under his pillow: a dagger and a copy of Homer.
Michael Woods in his epic TV documentary following in the footsteps of Alexander commented on how ‘lucky’ Alexander was. Time and again Alexander put himself in the very frontline of the military action or of the danger – he should have died long before he did at the age of 32, but ‘luck’ again and again was with him. But was it luck?
And so we come to the really interesting aspect of his story, the bit that all of us can take something from. He believed in himself – way beyond any measure of modern day personal development where people talk about ‘believing in themselves’ – nudging themselves into some false psyched-up state. No, Alexander believed in himself: he believed he was descended from Heracles, the great son of Zeus; ultimately, he came to believe he was the son of Zeus/Ammon – God – himself. As such, and with such a belief, what would be impossible?
Then, more amazingly still – we have his birthright – now the environment kicks in: the poetry weaves its magic spell. For of all things that Alexander aspired to be, first and foremost, his ideal self was Achilles, the great Achilles, the horse-tamer, the man-slayer, the fleet of foot, the one who knew no fear, ferocious, implacable, invulnerable until … the gods decreed his fate was otherwise. And all that he most knew about Achilles was contained in Homer’s Illiad. That was his measure – that his ideal self to which he aspired and by which he judged himself, and really did judge himself.
What is breathtaking is how deeply the belief he was the son of god and how profoundly the ideal self of Achilles permeated his consciousness and his whole being. With that as his core he became – he achieved – what the world can still scarcely believe: dominion and conquest of a kind not seen before and probably not equaled since. He was never beaten in battle and he faced and defeated overwhelming odds time and time again.
And the luck? Ah, the luck. Was it luck? There was another corollary that went with such extraordinary beliefs: namely, if you were a son of god, then gods exist. Call it superstition if you will, but I won’t: he sacrified to the gods at all times, prayed to them at all times, invoked their power and support. For him they were real – and as Christ once said: wisdom is vindicated by her children. Was he lucky or did the very universe itself respond to his devotion, his belief in the divine ultimate reality? Some might say, yes, the devil protected him. Whatever – until he died, his life was charmed.
Who do we believe we are, then: accidents, random collocations of molecules or sons and daughters of the divine spark? And who is our ideal self? To what height are we aspiring – or what default mediocrity? On such questions and such answers hangs our own capacity to be great whoever we are and whatever we do.
The Mapping Motivation Series 