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A Mini Document Based Question (Mini-Q)
Do you know the definition of “great”? Great is having an amount or intensity above the average, something Alexander never had. I strongly believe Alexander doesn’t deserve the title Alexander the “Great.” He killed a thousands of people, cruelly destroyed land and people, and made decisions that his people, especially his army, disliked.
I’m doing this review a little bit different. Above is my opinion about Alexander and below are my feelings towards him in the form of a letter to Alexander, which includes a list.
Dear Alexander-
Please don’t kill any more innocent lives or make any more rational decisions. I think you are:
- Cruel
- For the most part, a bad leader
- Too ambitious (in a bad way)
- Ruthless
- Repugnant
- Barbaric due to the fact that you would kill innocent lives for your selfish pleasures.
Thank you for stopping when your army, however only when your army told you to stop. You’ve already killed about 100,000 people in four major battles alone. If you hadn’t stopped, you might’ve burned more cities, made more people into slaves, torture people by crucifixion, or frankly go crazy. On the other hand, when you got back from eight years of war and started to make other races and cultures blend (which is extremely distasteful) against your people’s will, you should’ve known you took things too far. When I realized how horrible you had become, it took me a moment to recognize you, like coming out of a deep dream. You could’ve been better than this.
I loved watching you become the happiest person on Earth with every extra piece of land you conquered but not by the dead bodies scattered around me. For goodness sake, you beheaded one of your own men just for the flap of a hat! Utterly destroying buildings and forcing your army to keep on fighting is no way to rule. If not, you may crash and burn, and not in a honorably way.
**.Source: Alexander the Great Mini-Q
Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, University of California Press, 1991
Lucius Flavius Arrianus, The Campaigns of Alexander circa 130 CE
Table Displaying Alexander’s Legacy
