The Madness of Alexander the Great

And the Myth of Military Genius

Richard A. Gabriel

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473852365
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Over the years, some 20, 000 books and articles have been written about Alexander the Great, the vast majority hailing him as possibly the greatest general that ever lived. Richard A. Gabriel, however, argues that, while Alexander was clearly a succesful soldier-adventurer, the evidence of real greatness is simply not there. The author presents Alexander as a misfit within his own warrior society, attempting to overcompensate. Thoroughly insecure and unstable, he was given to episodes of uncontrollable rage and committed brutal atrocities that would today have him vilified as a monstrous psychopath. The author believes some of his worst excesses may have been due to what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, of which he displays many of the classic symptoms, brought on by extended exposure to violence and danger. Above all the author thinks that Alexander's military ability has been flattered by History. Alexander was tactically competent but contributed nothing truly original, while his strategy was often flawed and distorted by his obsession with personal glory. This radical reappraisal is certain to provoke debate.

Chapter 1

Alexander’s World

The settlement of Macedonia began at the end of the Bronze Age when a people called West Greeks migrated south into Upper Macedonia. They spoke a form of Greek, but also possessed their own Macedonian dialect.¹ By Alexander’s day, Macedonian had developed into its own unique language with Thracian influences, and was unintelligible to Greek speakers.² By 700 BC there were ‘Macedonic’ tribes living on the lower plains. Among these were the Arestai, a powerful clan that traced their ancestors to the Argeadai, a family claiming descent from Argead of the Teminid kings of Argos in the Peloponnese, and through them to Heracles himself.³ By the eighth century BC, the Temenid family had become the royal house of the Macedonian kings. The Temenids sustained an unbroken dynastic lineage from the eighth century until the death of Alexander the Great’s son in 312 BC. According to legend, the first of these Macedonian kings, Perdiccas I, followed a herd of wild goats through the mountains to the Macedonian plain where he founded the first city in Macedonia. Perdiccas named the city Aegae (modern Vergina) which means ‘goat town’.⁴ Aegae became the capital of the country and the sacred burial place of Macedonian kings.

Around 410 BC, King Archelaus transferred the capital to Pella. The new capital was located on the shores of Lake Loudias surrounded by low-lying swampy terrain that made it more defensible from invasion by sea, afforded it access to the Thermaic Gulf, and made communication with the interior easier.⁵ Archelaus spent considerable sums on the new capital, and Pella was soon the largest city in Macedonia. Philip II, Alexander’s father, converted the lake into a spacious harbour by connecting it to the Axius River by means of an artificial channel permitting direct access to the Thermaic Gulf. The flow of the channel was controlled by artificial gates. This was the first harbour constructed on a river estuary in Europe.⁶

The city was heavily fortified from the beginning, and in Alexander’s day the walls were 8km long, longer than the circuit wall of Athens.⁷ The walls were constructed of mud brick set upon bases of stone.⁸ The city itself was laid out in a regular urban grid with buildings and houses running along its streets. Main roads, 30ft wide, ran east to West and north to south. Two roads connected the city to the artificial harbour. The city had a permanent water source that supplied its many fountains, reservoirs, baths, and sewers. The government compound and palace occupied 15 acres, and was the heart of the Macedonian government, with offices for all financial, military, economic, diplomatic, and administrative activities. The Greek complaint that Macedonians were a primitive people was hardly believable after a Greek diplomat had visited Pella.⁹

The society that the Teminids took over was a transhumant society of pastoralists who moved their herds each season in search of pasture. The social order was divided into pastoral groups, each led by a tshelniku or ‘chief shepherd’.¹⁰ All land and livestock were held in common, and the tshelniku had wide authority to look after the group’s welfare. He alone directed the timing and seasonal movements of the group, conducted its internal affairs, and negotiated with outsiders as the only representative of the group. He controlled the group’s economic life by decisions regarding when to cut timber, hunt, and slaughter livestock. To protect the group from attack and to enforce his decisions, the tshelniku surrounded himself with a group of warrior companions who carried out his orders. In these three elements of the first pastoralists – land owned in common, a powerful chief, and a group of companion warriors to protect the group – ‘we see the seeds of the constitutional monarchy that was the mark of the later Macedonian state’.¹¹

Another important legacy of Macedonia’s pastoral past was the absence of slavery. Unlike the Greeks whose societies rested upon a sub-stratum of slave labour and whose wealthy households might contain as many as fifty slaves, slavery as a formal institution did not exist in Macedonia. Some parts of the population were serfs whose labour could be commandeered, however, and criminals and prisoners were forced to work in the mines. For the most part, however, Macedonian peasants and shepherds tilled their own fields and herded their own animals with their own hands and energy. Women cooked the meals, tended the children, and made the family’s clothes. When Alexander the Great entered the Persian capital as conqueror, he was dressed in simple homespun clothes fashioned for him by his sister. There was no royal household to attend the Macedonian king. His wife and relatives performed all the chores of daily life. For most of the king’s subjects, Macedonia was a relatively egalitarian society in which all enjoyed the same basic rights.

It was this sense of all subjects being part of the same society and one people and the absence of slavery that made Macedonian cities and towns relatively peaceful places to live. The political purges, executions, factionalism, expropriations of property, and forced exile which so often characterized the political life of the cities of the ‘democracies’ of the Greek states are noticeably absent from Macedonian history. Curtius says as much when he tells us, ‘The Macedones were indeed accustomed to the rule of a king, but they lived in a greater semblance of liberty than any other who were subject to a king.’¹² Macedonian subjects enjoyed greater liberty and freedom from fear than could be found in most Greek city states.

Without a substructure of slaves or foreign peoples living in Macedonian cities or on its farms, Macedonians came to think of themselves as one people, Macedones. This sense of belonging to the same societal group had its origins in the pastoral past when everyone was part of the same pastoral group, where everything was held in common, where everyone contributed by working the land or tending animals, and where everyone shared in the life and defence of the society. Occasionally, some new person would be added to the group by marriage or other circumstance, in which case they would be considered a Macedone. Over time the Macedonians came to live in cities and towns as well as tending their herds in the mountain pastures. Regardless of where they lived or how they earned their living, the people of Macedonia considered themselves as one people and accepted the rule of the Teminid royal house and its king.

Thus it was that the Macedonians were the first Europeans to develop a sense of national identity defined as being members of a territorial state. To be a Macedone came to mean being anyone who lived within the territory over which the king exercised direct authority.¹³ As Macedonia expanded, especially under Philip II, each newly acquired territory was regarded as being part of Macedonia itself, and its people regarded as Macedonians. In modern legal parlance, Macedonian ‘citizenship’ was defined by the doctrine of ius territoriale and not ius sanguinis. The Macedonian idea of who constituted a Macedone was different from the idea of citizenship common in the Greek states. The Greek states were ‘citizen states’, in that their fully enfranchised persons, whether residing in Attica or in Athenian possessions overseas, were regarded as citizens of their home state. Whenever a Greek state took over other territory by conquest, they planted some citizen-landholders (kleroukhoi) on the land, but did not regard the conquered peoples as citizens. Citizenship was limited to residents of the city-state, and no provision was made to accommodate large numbers of new inhabitants to full participation in the polity.

The Macedonian practice of extending the status of kings subject to newly conquered peoples made possible the establishment of the first national territorial state in Europe. When new peoples were absorbed into the realm, the full rights of all Macedones were extended to them. The towns and tribes were mostly left to govern themselves, often retaining their own kings or assemblies. Conquered peoples were permitted to practise their own religions, laws, and customs, to speak their own language, and raise their own taxes. Even the military forces of local chieftains were sometimes permitted to remain, but were retrained in the new weapons and doctrines of the Macedonian army, and redefined as the king’s militia. Particularly powerful and talented local barons and warriors were invited to come to Pella where they became Companions of the king. Parmenio, Philip’s most talented and trusted general and a Pelagonian by birth, was one of these.¹⁴ The Macedonian king remained the ultimate authority on all matters unhindered by local representatives. One tenth of all produce or its cash equivalent was paid annually to the state, and the Macedonians demanded the personal service of segments of the population for use as soldiers or labourers.

Thinking of Macedonia and its acquired territories as one national unit is what permitted Philip II to develop his kingdom along national lines. To this end, he established new cities, transplanted populations to live in them, drained swamps, constructed roads, fortified key passes, and drew military units from specific geographical areas of the kingdom, permitting them to retain their local designations.¹⁵ This is what Alexander meant when he reminded his troops that ‘he [Philip] brought you down from the mountains to the plains, making you a match in battle for the neighbouring barbarians, trusting for your salvation no longer in the natural strength of places so much as in your courage. He made you dwellers in cities and graced your lives with good laws and customs.’¹⁶ The effect of Philip’s policy was to bring under his command manpower and economic resources greater than those of any Greek state or alliance of states. Philip of Macedonia created the first nation state in the West.

The Land and Its People

In the fourth century BC, Macedonia was the largest and most fertile area of Greece.¹⁷ Lower Macedonia comprised extensive alluvial plains at the mouths of its two great rivers, the Haliacmon and the Axius, that flowed into the Thermaic Gulf.¹⁸ The Lower Macedonian plain was ringed by hills and mountains, except to the east where the Strymon River formed its natural boundary with Thrace. Along with Thessaly, Lower Macedonia comprised the largest area of alluvial plains on the Hellenic peninsula.¹⁹ West and northwest of Lower Macedonia were the smaller plains and pastures that lay at higher altitudes between the mountain ranges that comprised the cantons of Upper Macedonia. Together, the territories of Upper and Lower Macedonia were able to support a population larger than any of the Greek states or combination of Greek states of the day.²⁰ Estimates of the country’s population during Philip’s reign range from 500,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants.²¹

The plains of Lower Macedonia were well-watered by the country’s perennial rivers and streams, producing rich pasture lands ideal for raising horses, cattle, goats, and sheep. The alluvial soil was fertile, and extensive farming produced large harvests of cereal grains that provided the staple diet of the inhabitants and sufficient surplus to serve as a major export crop. The population of peasant farmers lived in the towns, villages, and cities scattered upon the plain. The Macedonian plain was almost devoid of rock, so that the houses and town buildings were constructed of mud brick. Almost all cities and towns of Lower Macedonia were fortified with walls, a necessary means of defence against the frequent raids conducted by the neighbouring tribes and the military expeditions of the Greek city-states.²²

Upper Macedonia was a very different place. Its population was smaller than on the plains, and life was harder. The economy centred upon the pastoralism of animal husbandry, mostly sheep and goats. The climatic severity of the area forced the transfer of livestock on a seasonal basis from winter to spring pastures. The mobility required by this mode of economic existence made it impossible to establish cities of any size, and the population lived mostly in small hamlets and a few trading towns when not on the move or living in tents with their animals.²³ Alexander described the hard life in Upper Macedonia when he scolded some mutinous army units that had been drawn from the Upper Cantons. ‘When Philip took you over you were nomadic and poor, the majority of you clad in skins and grazing sparse herds on the mountains, and putting up a poor fight for them against Illyrians, Triballians, and the neighbouring Thracians. He gave you cloaks to wear instead of skins.’²⁴

Not all Macedonians were shepherds or farmers, however. The country possessed large forests of pine and fir. Macedonia was a land of lumberjacks that produced much of the wood for the ships of the Athenian and other navies of the Greek city-states. Macedonia was also rich in metals. Hundreds of mines produced iron and copper, and some of the largest silver and gold mines were found there. It is not surprising that so rich a land became the target of frequent attacks by neighbouring tribes, states, and nomadic peoples seeking access to its resources. Macedonia was the wealthiest area of Greece.

Besides breeding large warhorses, Macedonians did so in larger numbers than anywhere else in Greece except, perhaps, for Thessaly. While elsewhere insufficient pasture and grain supply for horses forced cavalry to remain a secondary arm of Greek armies, cavalry in Macedonia became the primary combat arm of Philip’s army. There were hundreds of stud farms in the country, and the nobility prided itself on its horseflesh and horsemanship. It was said that a Macedonian boy could ride before he could walk. Many Greek states had difficulty feeding even their small populations. Athens imported almost half its food, and malnutrition and sporadic famines were not uncommon throughout Greece. Macedonia had sufficient meat and grain for its people, with the result that Macedonians were a large, strong, and healthy people. They were probably the largest people in Greece. They made excellent soldiers, and their ability to endure the rigors of the campaign amazed the Greeks.

The Macedonian State

The king and the Macedones meeting in Assembly were the only official organs of Macedonian state government. The roots of the Macedonian monarchy reached back to Homeric times. The original kings brought with them a Homeric view of kingship and imposed it upon the native peoples. Over time, however, this concept was modified by elements incorporated from Macedonia’s own pastoral past, when the original society of pastoral companies was ruled by the ‘chief shepherd’ or tshelniku, whose position seems to have been largely confined to members of the same family, confirmed from time to time by election of the warriors around him. The powers that the Macedonian king derived from both traditions, Homeric and pastoral, were extensive, although not absolute.

The Homeric idea that the king was descended from the gods and embodied their favour was central to the Macedonian king’s legitimacy. This embodiment was seen to reside in the person of the king who passed it on to his male heirs. Macedonian kings were always chosen from within the same bloodline, if not from the same immediate family. By Alexander’s time, the Teminid dynasty had ruled Macedonia for more than three centuries, and Alexander himself was its direct heir. In some instances, the infant son of the previous king was anointed while a regent ruled until the child was old enough to assume his rightful position. For a Macedonian king to be legitimate, however, required that the Macedones meeting in Assembly consent to his appoi...