His Mission
• Finding symbols that unify diverse people
• Leading from the front, not the back
• Creating loyalty among non-Greeks by respecting symbols of their past
• Hailing exceptionalism and not feeling guilty for it
• Displaying creativity and mobility in war and in peace
If you stand along the fence of your local elementary school playground and shout “Alexander!” chances are a bunch of boys will snap their heads and look at you from the swing set. If you shout “Alex!” you might also attract an Alexis, Alexia, or Alexandra. Alexander has ranked among the top names in the United States for a number of years and reached number 4 among boys in 2009 (in Greece the name is less popular, ranked 21).1 How is it possible that the reign of Alexander continues twenty-three hundred years after the Macedonian’s death? Now, I suppose that some parents might be commemorating other notable Alexanders, but Alexander Hamilton seldom comes to mind and many young parents might think Steve Jobs created the telephone, not Alexander Graham Bell. In popular culture, the name Alexander the Great appears in TV series and heavy metal music (by Iron Maiden), and is even the name of a barbershop in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 video game.
The name Alexander means “to protect” or “to ward off,” and if you know the history of the real Alexander the Great, you might worry that calling his name even from behind the safety of a playground fence could spark a fierce military charge, led by pointy twenty-foot-long spears and followed by ransacking. Dante places Alexander in the seventh circle of hell, boiling in blood while centaurs aim arrows at him. At the end of this chapter I’ll explain why Dante felt so incensed. Other medieval writers admired Alexander.2
So if Alexander appears equally at home on television, in video games, on the playground, and in boiling blood, what place does he have in a book focused on the economic and social problems of rich nations? Alexander shows us that many of the challenges we face today are ancient and that some were insurmountable even to one of the most courageous and highly educated men in history. From Alexander we can learn lessons about the stresses of globalization and multiculturalism, as well as the need to instill grit, mobility, and confidence in the population. He also teaches us that good leaders must identify and then ennoble important cultural symbols that can bring people together especially in times of chaos. In this chapter I will sketch his fascinating and controversial life, while also discussing the tremors that shake rich nations today. Let us begin with his early days. The most successful business strategy book of our century is entitled Good to Great. Alexander’s story might be called “Goody Two-shoes to great.” He earned his title.
MOMMA’S BOY OR ZEUS’S BOY?
His mother was a sorceress who slept with snakes. His father had just one eye, and it was a roving one that often focused on handsome young men. What makes Alexander great? Merely the fact that he was born of these two eccentrics. His mother was named Olympias and she must have really liked her name, for she concocted stories that she was actually impregnated by a thunderbolt-hurling Zeus, who must have come down from Mount Olympus to mount Olympias nine months before Alexander’s birth in 356 BC. Alexander’s one-eyed, mortal father, King Philip II, ruled Macedonia and kept six other wives but at least for a few years favored Olympias, who was from Epirus, a region to the west. It would be hard to call King Philip an attentive father, using today’s idiom. It was tough to play father while leading cavalry charges in the field and then devising tax systems that covered disparate regions. The king’s many hobbies—from heavy drinking and horsemanship to conquests over Illyrian tribes—diverted him from playing father to Alexander. On the day that Alexander was born, Philip received three messengers. The first reported that his favorite general had conquered the Illyrians, giving Macedonia control over its western borders. The second announced that the king’s favorite horse had won first prize in an Olympic race. The third declared the king had a new son, Alexander. The king celebrated by ordering his treasurers to mint a new coin—honoring the horse.3
With Olympias planting her fanciful visions in his mind, Alexander had no problem developing self-esteem. Roman historians tell us that he grew up to be handsome but not very tall, and that he had a habit of holding his neck at an angle, which some interpreted as haughtiness. His hair was curly and probably tawny, but not nearly as ridiculously bleached Technicolor blond as in the portrayals of him on film by Richard Burton (1956) or Colin Farrell (2004). Plutarch reports that a Greek contemporary said that Alexander smelled nice, with a “pleasant odour exhaled from his skin and that there was a fragrance about . . . all his flesh.”4 Even in Alexander’s infancy, Olympias lullabied him with tunes promoting his future kingly glory. But to reign over Macedonia and Greece would never be an easy task. Macedonia was geographically diverse, with mountain herders living in the north and lowland farmers in the south. Though Macedon covered a large swath of land, rivals from Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, and Byzantium stood ready to attack at any moment.
The Greeks disdained the Macedonians as hicks and thugs who could never appreciate democracy or a literate bon mot. When Greeks playwrights wanted to portray a country bumpkin, they would give the yokel a Macedonian dialect.5 To prepare Alexander for his daunting leadership challenges, Philip found a tutor for him. The tutor was a bandy-legged man with a lisp named Aristotle—which is like getting Albert Einstein to help with your kid’s physics homework. Aristotle had studied with Plato but was passed over as dean at the Academy in Athens when Plato stepped down. Aristotle was originally from Macedonia and was comfortable in Philip’s court. In legends passed down through the Middle Ages, Philip tells Aristotle, “Take this son of mine away and teach him the poems of Homer!” Aristotle taught Alexander literature, philosophy, science, and medicine. Year later as a battle commander, Alexander nursed his wounded men, using some of Aristotle’s medical techniques. Of course the author of Politics also taught Alexander about the polity and his views on democracy, ethics, and slavery. Alexander grew fascinated by Homer after Aristotle gave him his own annotated copy of the Iliad, which Alexander would carry under his robe into battle. When bivouacked abroad, he would sleep with two items under his pillow: the Iliad and a sharpened dagger. Aristotle’s political teachings were more than ethereal musings; they had sharp practical points, too. Strolling in the Gardens of Midas, he advised the young man to be a “leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants.”6 While Alexander would sometimes act ruthlessly, by and large, he was more liberal to foreigners than Aristotle had counseled.
King Philip did Alexander one more favor in his schooling: he required him to learn the art and sciences of wrestling, archery, and warfare. It did not come easy to Alexander, who preferred the flute and lyre to a grappling takedown. Philip sneered at these allegedly feminine pursuits and told his instructors to rough up his effete son and show no leniency. Olympias, who had ties to an orgiastic Dionysian cult, was herself concerned that Alexander was not naturally as macho as other young soldiers, so she arranged for a prostitute named Callixeina to cure her adolescent son.7 We do not know what the cure was or how well it worked. We know only that Alexander was later known to have both female and male liaisons and to have fathered at least one child, born shortly after his death. Still none of his ancient or modern biographers would call him particularly lusty, randy, or fecund. He could have had his way with innumerable slaves, concubines, and conquered beauties, but he usually passed them by as if they were stone statues, not alluring flesh.8 His failure to think about siring sons, a successor, or even the fate of his kingdom after his death looms as a major flaw in his reign.
With no leniency in his athletic training and his face ground into the dirt by superior fighters, Alexander eventually learned grit and the skills of a warrior. He came to admire a cranky old tutor named Leonidas, whose idea of breakfast was rousing him at night for a forced march and of supper giving him a light breakfast. Leonidas would also barge into Alexander’s bedroom sniffing around for treats that his mother might have snuck in, treats such as candy, not courtesans.9 Soon Alexander began to show sparks of ingenuity. Hints of Alexander’s intellect and unbounded courage first showed up in a tale of a dark horse, in a story shared with us by Plutarch. In the Louvre today hangs a painting by Charles Le Brun showing Alexander and his steed slicing through the Persian army. (Alexander seems to resemble Le Brun’s benefactor, Louis XIV.) One sunny day when Alexander was still a boy, a breeder shows up before a crowd offering to sell Philip a beautiful stallion named Bucephalus for an outrageous sum of thirteen talents (equal today to about a quarter of a million dollars). Philip is intrigued by the man’s audacity. When the horse starts snorting, bucking, and proving itself unridable, Philip waves the trader away. Alexander rushes into the scene and confronts the king, telling his father that a man of courage and skill ought to be able to tame that magnificent beast. Philip turns on the boy and scolds:
“Dost thou find fault with thine elders in the belief that thou knowest more than they do or art better able to manage a horse?”
The boy replies, “This horse, at any rate. I could manage better than others have!”
Alexander bets his father that he can tame the beast. Philip laughs and accepts the deal. But Alexander had more than bravado on his side. He had been watching Bucephalus closely and noticed something about the horse’s behavior. The stallion appeared to go wild whenever the sun was behind it. However, when the horse was facing the sun, despite the glare, he calmed down. Alexander realized that the horse’s oversized body had been casting a large shadow on the ground, and that the mighty Bucephalus was afraid of his own shadow. The boy took the reins and turned Bucephalus’s face into the sun. He stroked the horse’s muzzle and lips, whispered sweet nothings, and gently turned the horse around. Then with some flair, he threw aside his coat and jumped upon its back. The horse began to buck and the crowd was convinced at any moment the boy would be thrown and trampled. But Alexander held firm and maneuvered the horse to trot, gallop, and then race across the field. When the two returned swiftly and safely, the onlookers cheered and Philip began to weep. Plutarch quotes Philip in a prescient burst of tearful pride: “My son, seek thee out a kingdom equal to thyself—Macedonia has not room for thee”10 Following his victories in battle, Alexander was memorialized on coins, friezes, and statues, often astride Bucephalus.
LIFE WITH AND WITHOUT FATHER
Unfortunately, as Alexander’s relationship with his horse grew closer, his relationship with his father withered. Philip was increasingly drunk, obstreperous, and lecherous. He allowed his court to spread rumors that Olympias was an adulterous witch and that Alexander might be a bastard son. When Alexander was twenty years old, Philip decided to marry a full-blooded Macedonian named Cleopatra, who was the niece of one of his favorite generals and, unlike Olympias, was not known for sleeping with snakes. Cleopatra’s family had useful political ties to Caria (now a part of Turkey). An infamous banquet scene finally destroyed the tattered bond between Philip and Alexander. At a feast celebrating Philip’s engagement to Cleopatra, the general toasted his king and his niece, wishing them a happy marriage. Then the coup de grâce: with gall and guile, the general wished upon them an heir to the throne who would not be a bastard—like Alexander. Alexander leaped to his feet and angrily hurled his cup at the general. Philip, drunk as ever, stood up and drew his sword, aiming to attack his own son. He stomped toward Alexander, waving his sword aloft. Would Alexander defend himself and kill the king, his father? Luckily for both, the wine won the battle, and Philip tripped to the ground before he could reach the seething Alexander. Alexander shouted, “Look now! The man who is preparing to cross from Europe to Asia can’t even make it trying to cross from couch to couch!” Philip probably never heard the mocking line but when he woke up from his stupor, he temporarily banished Alexander. To make things worse, Philip then married off one of his daughters to a young man from Epirus, who was also named Alexander. When Alexander the not-yet-Great returned to the king’s court, he was forced to sit with his half-brother-in-law named Alexander and worry whether he would ever have the opportunity to live up to the promises of his crazy mother’s Olympian visions.
In 336 BC, Philip drew up plans to invade Persia, aided by his new family ties and their troops. He threw himself a magnificent going-away party, replete with athletic games, musical contests, bouquets, and more banquets. He invited many Greeks to show off his wealth, amiability, and good taste. His architects built a new theater, encircled by gilded statues of the twelve Olympian gods. But visitors were surprised to find a new, thirteenth god among the pantheon of Zeus, Apollo, et al. Who was the new god? It was a statue of Philip himself.11 Philip strutted into the arena wearing a flowing white robe and surrounded by no one. As if protected by the gods themselves, he shoved his bodyguards aside. Applause and cheers shook the theater. As Alexander kept a wary and jealous eye on his new brother-in-law Alexander, a young court attendant rushed toward the king. Everyone knew the young man. Had Philip forgotten a scroll or called for a last-minute flask of wine? But the boy looked intense and wild-eyed. As Philip’s expression turned from hubris to confusion to fear, the young man whipped out a Celtic dagger and drove the blade deep between Philip’s ribs and twisted it. He then ran to the gates to jump onto a waiting horse. Finally realizing the treachery, the king’s guards tracked the boy and hurled javelins into the air, which landed by piercing his body before he could reach his getaway horse. Meanwhile, Philip’s white robe quickly soaked with blood. The king—this thirteenth god—was dead. He had reigned twenty-four years. And now what?
In Macedonia, the king was not usually considered a deity. Moreover, custom did not ensure that his son would inherit the throne. Alexander would have to fight or argue his way onto the throne. As Alexander pursued his father’s mantle, many wondered why the young assassin, named Pausanias, had turned on the king. It was a grimy story, but worth hearing to understand the sordidness and perfidy of the court. Just as there were two Alexanders in the royal family, there were two Pausaniases in the court. Both had been favored lovers of Philip. The first lover, the assassin, spread rumors that the second Pausanias was a hermaphrodite, a coward, and a whore. But the second Pausanias was in fact a proud, fierce soldier. To defy the vicious rumors of cowardice, the soldier had sacrificed himself in battle, saving King Philip from a mortal blow. The dead Pausanias was a close friend of Philip’s favorite general, Attalus, the uncle of Philip’s new bride who uttered the ugly toast at the banquet. To avenge the soldier’s death, Attalus arranged a brutal evening for the rumormongering Pausanias. Attalus invited him to a lavish dinner and filled his goblet and his gut with too much wine. Macedonians usually watered down their wine, but Attalus gave the boy the undiluted stuff. Then, with the boy unable to defend himself, Attalus turned him over to his mule drivers, who threw him into the stables and gang-raped him.12 When he recovered, Pausanias reported the awful crime to Philip, who shared his anger at the barbarism, but refused to punish Attalus. At this point, Pausanias began to sharpen his blade and plan his murderous revenge.
At the time Philip was murdered, he had controlled Macedonia, along with Thessaly, and key city-states of Greece, including Thebes and the snobs in the parlors of Athens. A year before his death he showed diplomatic skill by creating the League of Corinth (or the Hellenic League), whose members pledged not to go to war against each other. Their oath, pieced together in fragments discovered by archaeologists, begins with a charming nod to the gods: “I swear by Zeus, Gaia, Helios, Poseidon, and all the gods and goddesses. I will abide by the common peace and I will neither break the agreement with Philip, nor take up arms on land and sea.” The oath contains a key phrase that Alexander would not have missed: “Nor shall I depose the kingship of Philip or his descendants.”13 But would the oath hold? Hollywood folklore says that Samuel Goldwyn once oxymoronically sniffed that “a verbal contract is not worth the paper it’s written on.”14 The lawyers in Athens did not think an oath etched in stone was etched in stone. They immediately turned on Macedon and on Alexander. In Athens, Demosthenes, the great orator and unrelenting critic of Philip, declared a holiday and dressed with a garland to celebrate Philip’s murder. The Assembly minted a special gold coin in honor of the assassin Pausanias. The Athenians, Thebans, and Thessalians plotted a revolt. The Spartans, who were not members of the League of Corinth, began stropping their swords and mounting horses. Meanwhile, back in Macedon, Philip’s generals and courtiers began to point their fingers and blades at Alexander himself. Alexander had the motive and the means to order his father’s murder. Many suspected that he was a conspirator, if not the ringleader. Alexander displayed a lean and hungry look 290 years before Cassius gazed on Caesar. It did not help that his mother, Olympias, placed a gold crown on the head of hanging Pausanias, as he was splayed in crucifixion, and then built him a tomb nearby Philip’s.15 One could hear the peals of thunder rumble from Mount Olympus as Alexander and the Greek city-states poised for their next moves.
WHAT WOULD ALEXANDER DO?
Facing a revolt and a possible stranglehold siege by neighboring armies, Alexander rushed into battle. But he knew the battle involved as much diplomacy as weaponry. His actions teach us that countries under stress must move decisively, but sometimes their fiercest weapons are symbols and gestures. First, he had to show his fealty to Philip. He gave his father a funeral befitting a thirteenth god, cremating him on a pyre in front of all the Macedonian army. His bones were washed in wine and swaddled in a royal purple robe, before being lowered into a golden chest in a tomb, divinely decorated with hunting scenes and victory medallions. Alexander was, witnesses observed, a worshipful and mournful son. But Alexander could not spend many days with his head bowed. It was too dangerous. He heard that the Athenian blowhard Demosthenes had been sending messages to General Attalus, the man who had insulted Alexander and had thrown Pausanias to the rapists. Attalus was closely tied to noble families in Macedon and tried to incite a coup d’état. Alexander commanded his favorite general to seek out and kill Attalus. When the mission was accomplished, Alexander turned to the treacherous Greek city-states and readied an attack on nearby Thessaly. When the Thessalian army blocked the only road to the city, Alexander ordered his army to build a new path and threatened to wipe out villages. The Thessalians caved in and many joined Alexander’s cavalry. He then turned to the north and crossed the Danube to put down rebellions against his reign and then face down the Illyrian tribes to the west. Finally, and most forcefully, he turned to Thebes, the prideful city of Oedipus where citizens believed ancient myths that the city had grown from the teeth of dragons. The Thebans were tired of playing the role of Macedonia’s strip mall, a convenient place for Macedonians to pick up tradable goods but not one to respect or admire. Encouraged by rumors that Alexander had been killed in the north, the Thebans attacked a Macedonian garrison. But Alexander was no ghost. His forces launched a blitzkrieg that frightened the Thebans’ well-equipped, well-fed army. Their army gave up quickly, but Alexander’s troops had something to prove. Under the guise of an order from the League of Corinth, they burned the city to the ground. Demosthenes and the Athenians got the message and dispatched ten ambassadors with a letter of apology and note of congratulations. Alexander still felt a grudge and sent back a demand for Demosthenes himself and several other rebel leaders. Demosthenes gave a speech to the Assembly, citing a fable about a sheep, and the Assembly sent another set of ambassadors to calm down Alexander.16 The second missive worked, and Athens was spared and humbled. This Alexander was no pampered prince.
WHAT WE LEARN FROM ALEXANDER
Rather than using the remainder of this chapter to document Alexander’s triumphs in chronological order, from North Africa to Syria, Persia, and the edges of India, let us set out his methods and lessons that may aid us today. First, I must acknowledge that under our modern understanding of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” Alexander could be considered a megalomaniacal, enslaving, retrograde pervert. On occasion he burned down villages, took slaves, and put people to death without providing state-appointed legal counsel. The Miranda rights would not have lasted long in his hands. This chapter is not aiming to rescue him from Dante’s river of boiling blood, although I will explain why Dante was so tough on him. The purpose is to learn strategy from a great leader, who also had his moments of nobility, kindness, and compassion, as he faced an impossible task of blending disparate peoples, cultures, and economies.
FINDING SYMBOLS THAT UNIFY DIVERSE PEOPLE
In March 2015 the student council at the University of California at Irvine voted to ban the American flag from the campus, charging that it inspired nationalism, symbolized colonialism and imperialism, and triggered hurtful feelings of “racism and xenophobia” among undocumented immigrants and other students.17 While the council soon overturned its own resolution under pressure from the chancellor, the act does remind us how symbols can both unify and divide. Surely, the original intent of the American flag and the interpretation shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans is that the flag brings far-flung citizens together. The thirteen stripes and fifty stars, of course, represent the joint and solemn pledge of the original colonies and of the fifty states. Visitors to the Washington, DC, area line up to snap photos of the Iwo Jima Memorial, the bronze sculpture depicting the five marines and one navy corpsman who climbed to the top of treacherous Mount Suribachi, after days of bombardment, and managed to drive the flagpole into hard and craggy volcanic rock. Not all flags originating in the United States command such acclaim. An overwhelming majority of Americans now believe that the Confederate flag has riled up tensions and bitterness, a view confirmed dramatically when the governor of South Carolina lowered and removed the flag on its state capitol grounds in 2015.
Alexander specifically chose symbols and symbolic words that unified. He called his compatriots and soldiers Companions. This was not a trifling term. He ate with them, slept with them in the fields, and knew thousands by name. The Companions were not the hangers-on party boys from HBO’s Entourage. Companions (hetairoi in Greek) is a Homeric term and young men raised in the courts understood the bond: it conferred both honor and death-defying responsibility. In Homer the Companions rowed oars alongside Odysseus and risked their lives alongside Agamemnon at Troy. When they died, Companions received heroic burials in guarded tombs. Alexander brooded and wept when he lost a Companion, just as Achilles wept for Patroclus. But here was the key to it all: by deeming his men Companions, Alexander pledged that he would be willing to die for them. No one doubted this side of the bargain.
LEADING FROM THE FRONT, NOT THE BACK
When Alexander crossed the Dardanelles to invade Persia in 335 BC, he commanded sixty war boats. He could have hung back in the sixtieth boat or in the middle of the fleet. But instead he grabbed the helm of the first boat, offered a sacrifice to Poseidon, and aimed straight for the very beach where Achilles had made his stand against Hector. Dressed in armor he drove his spear into the ground—much like the men at Iwo Jima—and claimed the land in the name of the Greek gods. In mosaics and paintings of Alexander in battle, he is always in the front, most famously in the mosaic at Pompeii, where he chases down the Persian Darius. This was not propaganda or a matter of supplicant artists genuflecting before their benefactor. Every historical source paints a similar portrait of the man. And if there were any doubters, Alexander would challenge his soldiers: “Come then, let any of you strip and display his wounds. And I will display mine in turn. . . . I have been wounded by the sword hand to hand, shot by arrows and struck by catapult.”18 He forgot the documented cleaver slash to the head. But he was no god, no superhero, and eventually Alexander limped and faltered from all these battle scars. I might add that Alexander had a penchant for stripping off his clothing, in the interest of maintaining Greek tradition, so they say. After gaining control of Troy, he and his Companions anointed themselves with oil and ran naked around a tombstone dedicated to Achilles.
CREATING LOYALTY AMONG NON-GREEKS BY RESPECTING SYMBOLS OF THEIR PAST
Alexander was not a warrior who came to humiliate villagers and plunder (though occasionally he allowed his soldiers to do so). Even when he conquered a territory, he would show respect to the gods of the villagers by praying at their shrines, or holding games and festivals in their gods’ honor. When he chased the Persians from Babylon, women and children greeted him as a liberator and threw flowers at his feet. He did not impose his own gods on the people, however. He commanded his men to arrest looters and then ordered them to restore the Babylonian temples that the Persians had trampled on. After driving the Persians from the Nile in Egypt, Alexander traveled to Memphis, bowed at the pyramids, and then rode to the temple dedicated to the Egyptian god Ptah. Under Egyptian tradition, worshipping Ptah included a specially chosen sacred bull, called the Apis bull. Pilgrims sought blessings from the animal. In the previous century, the Persian king had disgraced the Egyptians by slaughtering the esteemed bull. Alexander reversed this sacrilege by bringing sacrifices to the Temple of Ptah, for which the Egyptians saluted him, some calling him pharaoh. He also established the massive port of Alexandria, later the site of the Library. The Roman historian Josephus writes that Alexander even made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he met with the high priest of the Hebrews and paid homage at the Temple.19
Alexander knew that the most far-reaching symbol of his conquests would be indestructible coins. When his troops captured the state mints, the metallurgists began striking coins with his image melded with the image of Greek gods and local luminaries. As merchants traveled with their wares and coins, Alexander’s fame spread, from fish markets to brothels. A typical Alexander coin, issued by one of his twenty-six official mints, featured Hercules on one side and on the reverse Zeus seated on a throne. The Hercules image wore a lion’s skin, representing the Nemean Lion he killed with his bare hands. Alexander believed that he himself might have been descended from Hercules and sometimes donned a lion’s skin for battle. When coins were minted in the east, the figure of Zeus might be seated like a Semitic deity, for instance, Baal. On coins struck in Egypt, Alexander might ride an elephant or wear the horns of the Egyptian god Ammon.
WEST MEETS EAST: ACCULTURATION, ALEXANDER, BUSH, AND OBAMA
Beyond the crises of battle, Alexander faced this thorny question: How to reign over such different cultures? A simpleton would take one of two stark routes: either (1) force all people, whether vassals or allies, to bow down to his language, gods, and culture; or (2) let them scatter in diffuse pluralism and not care whether any unifying themes or forces emerged. We see these debates in nearly every country today, bounded on one side by those who want to prevent any immigration and demand fealty to the past; and on the other by naïfs who think that a country can hang together even if everyone drifts apart, following the beat of his own drummer, whether reggae, rumba, Ringo, or Gene Krupa. Alexander was no simpleton. He was ambitious and smart and created an innovative but sometimes jittery third path that we can call “balanced hellenization.” He brought in his coins and the Greek language, and his engineers designed city streets in straight, classical lines. But he knew he did not have enough Macedonians or Greeks to occupy the known world. So he trained and appointed trusted Egyptians, Indians, and Persians to administer the kingdom. He even adjusted his royal title to fit the geography. For example, when he rode into a Macedonian city he would be called “king,” but when in Arabia he was the “suzerain.” In Persepolis, he wore the familiar Persian sash and jeweled crown. Then he enlisted tens of thousands of Persians into his army, training them in the same organized manner of fighting as his Macedonian forces. Finally, Alexander himself married wives from a number of different lands so that his tents became a symbol of unity (if you can forgive the polygamy). After capturing the throne of King Darius III (who had managed to escape), he took the king’s mother, wife, virgin daughters, and son under his protection and pledged to grant dowries from his own treasury when the daughters reached marrying age. He gave a kiss to the son and jewels to the queen mother, even addressing her as “mother.” A man who had the opportunity to butcher and plunder, instead chose to comfortably—but not menacingly—slip on the robe of father and son.
We might take a moment to compare Alexander’s welcome in Babylon and his policies with the American and European forces that arrived in Babylon, that is, Iraq in 2003 and Syria in 2015. In 2003 Vice President Dick Cheney gave media interviews stating that the Iraqis would greet Americans as “liberators.” His advisers predicted that the Iraqis would throw flowers at their feet. Clearly, Alexander the Great received a warmer welcome than the US Air Force and its allies. Why? Perhaps Alexander’s predecessor was deemed more dastardly than Saddam Hussein; or perhaps Alexander’s arrival was seen as less heavy-handed than a modern air force’s “shock and awe.” Second, many military specialists believe that the Department of Defense made a terrible mistake when it disbanded the Iraqi army in May 2003, throwing 250,000 desperate young men into the streets, vulnerable, angry, and susceptible to the enticements of warlords, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. This was called Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order No. 2. One day before, CPA Order No. 1 barred Saddam’s Baath Party from all but the most menial government posts.20 President Bush himself acknowledged the mistake: “The policy had been to keep the [Iraqi] army intact; it didn’t happen.”21 President Obama had no better success. In January 2015 he sent hundreds of US soldiers to Syria to recruit and train rebels. The Department of Defense planned to equip five thousand in the first year. But in September 2015 Obama’s defense undersecretary sheepishly admitted to Congress that after spending $500 million training Syrians to fight ISIS, just “four or five” were on the ground ready for combat. Not four thousand or five thousand, but only a handful. A few weeks later, on a sleepy Friday afternoon, he quietly scuttled the program.22 Alexander would have avoided these errors and recruited the best local forces into his own ranks in order to help maintain order. In fact, occasionally Alexander went too far in his idealist push to integrate cultures under one flag. At one point his Macedonian soldiers feared that Alexander was training too many Persian soldiers and they worried that they would be displaced by the newly hired foreigners. When the Macedonians protested, Alexander responded by offering them pensions, pay raises, and vacations.
HAILING EXCEPTIONALISM AND NOT FEELING GUILTY FOR IT
Alexander may have admired other cultures but he felt no guilt when trumpeting his own superiority or that of Greek culture. A man who carries Homer into battle apologizes for neither heroism nor literacy. This is important, for as we learned in chapter 5, a feeling of exceptionalism (or superiority) creates adhesion and cohesion within a group. While chasing his archrival Darius through the sands of Syria, Alexander forges a letter from Darius insulting the Macedonians. When he reads the fake missive to his council, they rise up and demand retaliation. Alexander then sends a letter to needle the soon-to-be-deposed great king. Alexander pens a simple salutation, “King Alexander to Darius,” avoiding any title for his foe. Then he accuses Darius of bribing mercenaries, fomenting uprisings among the Greeks, and hiring assassins to kill his father, Philip. Then the boasting begins: “First I defeated in battle your generals and satraps; now I have defeated yourself and the army you led. . . . I have made myself responsible for the survivors of your army who fled to me for refuge . . . they are serving of their own free will under my command.” Finally, Alexander offers to give back to Darius his family and his possessions under one condition: “any communication you wish to make with me be addressed to the King of all Asia. Do not write to me as to an equal.”23
We have learned that feelings of superiority are especially needed to keep groups together in the worst of times, so that members believe that they have a chance to recapture their lost pride or lost terrain. Alexander’s troops faced such a moment while fighting in the Hindu Kush. Entering a region known as Sogdiana, the soldiers confronted not the regimented soldiers of Persia, but wild, fearless, horseback-riding guerrilla fighters. An arrow ripped through Alexander’s leg, requiring infantrymen to carry him for several days. When Alexander and his men tried to breach a town called Cyropolis (named after King Cyrus II, the Great), they faced thousands of warriors ready for house-by-house combat. As Alexander stood at the base of a city wall, one Sogdian hoisted up and hurled a heavy stone, which smashed down on Alexander’s head, knocking him cold. He appeared dead, but later revived, groggy and embarrassed. Soon another band of warriors on horseback, the Scythian tribe from the north, joined the Sogdians, together outnumbering the Macedonians. To make matters worse, the Macedonians ran low on drinkable water and, during a multimonth brutally hot siege with temperatures surpassing 110 degrees, dysentery spread through the Companions, bringing even Alexander to a sickbed and possibly to his deathbed. In retreat, this was his least finest hour in battle. The Sogdians and Scythians massacred thousands of Alexander’s Companions. Smelling Macedonian blood, another tribe called the Spitamenes rushed to the scene, unleashing their arrows and catapults. The reign of Alexander could have ended at that moment. But calling upon past glory and relentless determination, Alexander rallied, got out of bed, and led his own swift horsemen on an almost two-hundred-mile trek in three days to the center of the Sogdian city. Alexander had called for reinforcements, but could not be sure how many would arrive. To his relief, he saw twenty-one thousand approaching. The unmistakable pounding hoofbeats of Alexander’s cavalry shook the guerrilla warriors, who suspected a massive, unstoppable invasion and turned their horses away, retreating toward the deserted plains. Alexander had appeared to come back from the dead, in the eyes of his Companions and in the eyes of his enemies. Each side believed that such a resurrection could take place, because each side had heard of his claim to superiority and his deeds to back it up.
DISPLAYING CREATIVITY AND MOBILITY IN WAR AND IN PEACE
Contemporary politicians often bemoan “intractable” problems. They shy away from reforming pension programs: “Social Security is the third rail of American politics—touch it and you die.” Forty years ago Jimmy Carter called the tax code a “disgrace to the human race,” but now it is thousands of pages longer. Congressmen seem content that the ratio of debt to GDP will approach 100 percent in the coming years. The United States has no fresh or potent ideas on how to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. (Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin takes advantage of a leadership vacuum and moves from pariah to geopolitical chess master.) Alexander was not intimidated by the status quo and not willing to limit his options to the usual nostrums. From Alexander we get the metaphor of the Gordian knot and real stories of reframing intractable problems in order to create new solutions.
The myth of the Gordian knot predates King Arthur’s Excalibur by a thousand years but tells a more instructive tale. In the English, Welsh, or Cornish tale, a magic spell provides that only Arthur can pull the sword Excalibur from a rock and thereby inherit a kingdom. In contrast, Alexander faces a knotted bark on an oxcart, a less royal object, but one that could not be untangled by mere mortals. Alexander must rely on his wits, not a magic spell. So he draws his sword and slices through the knot.24 That’s the legend. But the metaphor is more important than the bark in understanding Alexander’s lesson for us. Alexander shows us that good leaders and strong nations must figure out new solutions when old solutions fail. King Arthur tried to yank the sword just like everyone else, but he had sorcery on his side. Alexander, however, did not rely on magic. He employed a different method from those who tried laboriously to untangle the knot. The overused cliché in too many business meetings is “thinking outside the box,” or even worse, “stepping outside one’s comfort zone.” (I have become convinced that anyone deploying these phrases should literally be locked inside a box and dropped in a very uncomfortable place, perhaps the queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles on a day when the air-conditioning fails.) Alexander devised innovative answers when the stakes were far more deadly than a twisted piece of bark in an oxcart. For Alexander, mobility required invention.
Off the coastline of Lebanon was Tyre, one of the most powerful of the old Phoenician cities. Tyre’s central zone was located on an island half a mile offshore, protected by high stone walls, howling winds, and fierce waves that could crush a landing party that did not know how to navigate the surf. Homer had written of bloodthirsty pirates and kidnappers from Tyre, and Alexander knew that the Tyrian navy was muddling up his trade routes. Convinced that he must take Tyre, Alexander asked his sea captains to plot an invasion. It was too dangerous. The island was impregnable, they told him. Now, Alexander could have asked for, as the frightened sheriff in Jaws says, a bigger boat. Or he could have scoured for savvier captains. But instead he gazed at the island and told his men to imagine that it was not an island. Imagine they could march to Tyre with their horses, catapults, and ladders. A fantasy, it seemed. But not to Alexander. He ordered his engineers to build a causeway, a man-made road through the surf to the island. It took months and Alexander helped haul rocks himself. At first, the Tyrians laughed at the folly. Then they took it more seriously, filling a rickety old ship with flammable wood chips, sulfur, and sawdust and launching the flaming wreck into the causeway. Fire erupted, which destroyed some of the road. The Macedonians resumed building and, when they got closer, the Tyrians rained down on them flaming arrows and giant sheets of silicon from the shops of glassblowers. Eventually, Alexander got his battering rams in place and the city fell. But only because Alexander saw a road that no one else could see.
The point here is that Alexander’s acclaimed military victories were often preceded by intellectual triumphs. Sometimes though his intellectual triumphs derived from his study of history. It turned out that the leader Dionysus had built a causeway in a faraway battle four hundred years before Alexander. In another brawl, with a tribe known as the Triballi, Alexander chased warriors to an island in the middle of the Danube River. Alexander did not have boats to cross the river and did not have engineers to build pontoons or a causeway. This was a smaller skirmish than the siege at Tyre. Scrolling through his knowledge of history, he remembered a trick employed by Xenophon in a battle in Mesopotamia seventy years before. Alexander ordered his men to grab their tent covers and fill them with hay. Then he told them to sew together the edges, basically creating life preservers or small rafts. Though the soldiers doubted that the trick would work and feared they would drown, those who proved to be good seamsters made it across the Danube.
As we look at the stubborn issues facing rich nations today—pension obligations, low labor participation, etc.—we might want to reframe these issues and show a bit more courage and innovation.
AND HE COULD FAIL, TOO
Alexander’s biggest failing—if you forgive the occasional brutal siege of a city—came at his deathbed. How could anyone else hold together the vast lands he had conquered and tried to administer with his balanced hellenization? Where did he hide the instructions for his successor? Was there an heir? No one knew. Granted, he showed some long-term planning, equipping his engineers and scientists with the means to develop new ways of building bridges and better weapons. He nodded toward tomorrow by giving his soldiers time off to go back home and have sex with their wives, thereby ensuring a new generation of soldiers. He even paid back the debts they had amassed when dealing with Arabian loan sharks.
But there should have been more. Perhaps Alexander believed his good press and thought he would live forever. Some small part of his brain did truly believe he carried the blood of Hercules and Zeus. Hubris and vainglory got him in trouble in the end, and explain the mystery of why Dante put him in a boiling stew. Aristotle had a nephew named Callisthenes, who became a close friend of Alexander. Callisthenes was quite literate and became a court historian, a Companion with a sword and a pen. Like Alexander, he revered Homer and Greek literature. But he objected to Alexander’s tilt toward Persian customs and Alexander’s occasional desire to receive the same deep, servile bows as a Persian leader (proskynesis, similar to the Chinese kowtow). This was not the Macedonian or Greek way, Callisthenes insisted. Furious that the historian would not bow, Alexander enmeshed Callisthenes in a criminal conspiracy. Soon Alexander’s men killed Callisthenes, possibly on a cross. Aristotelians know how to hold a grudge. Aristotle’s teachings were preserved in the libraries of Alexandria, Cordoba, and Babylon. In the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s teachings made it to northern and central Europe via these routes. Dante worshipped Aristotle, calling him “the Master of those who know,” and depicts Socrates and Plato looking up to him.25 Because Alexander terminated Callisthenes, a direct descendant of the Master, Dante decided to plunge fiendish Alexander into the ring of unforgiveable tyrants.26
As for the real Alexander, long before Dante threw him into the bloody river, he died of a fever at age thirty-two. After all the conquests, he went quietly. Here are his last words in answer to the question, who takes over? “Toi kratistoi—to the strongest.” Upon his death, the “known world” erupted all over again. Now, we should be asking ourselves, which nations will be strong enough, externally and internally, to survive another century?