Alexander the Great - Was He Really That Great?
What could a person possibly do to earn the title of “Great”? What could they accomplish that would cause people to stare up at their statues in awe centuries later? Well, one thing’s for sure; Alexander the Great was certainly well remembered. But the question is, was he great, or was he a fake?
In my personal opinion, Alexander truly was a great guy. For one, he was really smart. In a battle against Porus, an Indian prince, on the bank of the Hydaspes River, with Alexander and his army on one side of the river and Porus and his army(which included war elephants) on the other, Alexander and his men kept pretending to cross the river, calling out war cries and making a clamor, until Porus no longer responded to their tricks. By then it was to late for Porus to stop their crossing. And his army became boxed in with their own elephants stampeding over them.¹
Source: Wikimedia Commons
“So extraordinary was the effect of this action that the water wasted by Alexander was as good a drink for every man in the army.” ²
“The Legend of the Helmet” was one of many stories told about Alexander. According to the legend, Alexander’s army was struggling across a desert of sand, with a desperate necessity for water. Alexander was marching at the head of his army, and just as thirsty as everyone else was, but still he kept going, which inspired his men to keep going as well. A small party that had gone out in search of water had found some, just a shallow trickle collected in a shallow gully. They painstakingly brought it back and offered it to Alexander in a helmet. He thanked them and took it, and then, in front of his entire army, dumped the water on the ground!2 I know, right! But this action(however outrageous it was!), was a thoughtful one, because Alexander did not want to be better off than any man in the army. So there you go. A more human, caring aspect of Alexander.
There was definitely more than one good reason that Alexander the Great acquired that title. And according to the text,”History Alive! The Ancient World”, Alexander didn’t want to destroy all the local customs that were part of his enormous empire(2,000,000 square miles in all!).³ In fact, his goal was to bring people of entirely different cultures together under a single government. He even married the Persian king Darius’s daughter to try to unify his empire. ⁴
In the end, Alexander seems like a good guy to me.
He was:
- Smart
- Caring
- Thoughtful
- Brave
- Strong(in forces as well as his own strength)
- Determined
- Accomplished
And those were only a few of the adjectives that could be used to describe Alexander. To sum it up, he was great. Not just a little. A lot.
Alexander the Great: did he deserve his title?
Yes, I believe he did.
Source: Flicker
1 Alexander’s Battle Against Porus, by Lucius Flavius Arrianus
2 Legends of the Helmet and the Hat Band, retold by Lucius Flavius Arrianus and Ian Worthington
3 Alexander’s Legacy(Chart), compiled from various sources
4 Mini Q: How Great Was Alexander the Great?
