Alexander the Great: Bastard as Exemplar for an Age (356–323 B.C.)

 Continuing to excerpt my book The Book of Ancient Bastards. This week, that most terrifying of ancient conquerors, Alexander the Great!

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Alexander ordered all but those who had fled to the temples to be put to death and the buildings to be set on fire. . . . 6,000 fighting-men were slaughtered within the city’s fortifications. It was a sad spectacle that the furious king then provided for the victors: 2,000 Tyrians, who had survived the rage of the tiring Macedonians, now hung nailed to crosses all along the huge expanse of the beach.

                                                                        — Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni 

Alexander the Great

Held up throughout the ages as a shining example of both the great conqueror and the philosopher-king, Alexander III of Macedonia was considered by many to be the greatest monarch of the ancient world. 

He was also a homicidal megalomaniac who developed a god complex to go along with a drinking problem, likely had a hand in killing his own father, murdered one of his own generals in a drunken rage, conquered the Persian Empire, and unleashed the Macedonian war machine on an unprepared world, resulting in the deaths of untold numbers of people.

Born to parents who could barely stand the sight of each other by the time he came along, Alexander was in his teens and already trained as a cavalry officer and a leader of men when his father, Macedonian king and bastard Philip II, took a new, young wife, whom he immediately got pregnant. When the girl delivered a boy whom Philip promptly designated his heir, Alexander and his crazy snake-cult-priestess mother Olympias fled Macedonia for her native country of Epirus (modern Albania), where they cooled their heels until Philip was assassinated later that same year. Alexander and his mother probably had a little something to do with that. Within weeks, Philip’s new wife, her opportunistic nobleman father, and her infant son had all been quietly put to death. 

The destruction of Thebes

On news of Philip's death the tribes to the north rebelled, and Alexander was forced to take time out to resubjugate them. A rumor that he had perished while doing so sparked a revolt by the Greek city-states Philip had conquered two years previously. Alexander marched south at the head of the army his father had built, and attacked Thebes, one of the cities leading the rebellion, and also where Philip had learned phalanx battle strategy in his youth.

Destroying Thebes' army, Alexander went about making an example of the city so as not to need to worry about further Greek rebellions once he was off in Asia. Six thousand Thebans died in the fighting, and Alexander had a further thirty-thousand sold into slavery.The Greeks never rose against him again.

After this Alexander was finally on to Asia, leading an army that Philip had built, conquering territories left and right. He lived another thirteen years and never again set foot back in Greece.

When Alexander and his army entered Egypt, the priests of Amun there hailed him as a god himself and the son of one of their gods (a syncretic figure that combined aspects of the Greek god Zeus with the of the Egyptian god Amun), a connection that played to both his vanity and his political need to lend legitimacy to his conquests (after all, who can argue with the reasons of a god-on-earth for anything he does?). 

Alexander kills Cleitus

The further he got from Macedonia, the more binge drinking he and his senior officers did, and the worse Alexander’s god complex became. One evening, he got into a drunken brawl with one of his generals, a veteran named Cleitus, who had saved Alexander’s life in battle at the Granicus River years before. What's more, Cleitus's sister Laodice had been Alexander's wetnurse when he was a baby. 

The argument began when Cleitus confronted Alexander over comments he was making about his dead father. Cleitus, who had served as a junior officer in Philip's army, objected to Alexander disparaging the dead king, both men were very drunk, and it was all downhill from there. After a heated back and forth, Cleitus opened his tunic, offering his chest as a target, should his king wish to take his life. In the heat of the moment, Alexander snatched a spear from one of his bodyguards and threw it at Cleitus, killing him on the spot. 

Overcome with remorse once he sobered up, Alexander contemplated suicide but was talked out of it by his entourage, who convinced him that Cleitus was disloyal and since Alexander was a god, he was therefore infallible. 

When he finally died in Babylon of a combination of malaria and exhaustion at the age of thirty-three, Alexander left a changed world behind him. Whether or not it was for the better is up for debate.