How does a worn out grocer and amateur prize-fighter consider the greatest conqueror known to us down the stairs of time. On the geo-military plane, only Genghis Khan and Tamerlane compare. Yet Alexander gained a greater portion of the world that was known to him than did they, did it without the stirrup and gunpowder, and gained a range of territory, and population under rule similar to Tamerlane. Moreover, both of these later conquerors, at the age Alexander was when he gained nearly all, were hunted men with little real power. More importantly, few romances of the other great conquerors of history have been written. Alexander has had some 180 popular mythic works assigned to his brief flame of conquest, these out of what Arrian called “popular tradition.” Such popular tradition must have come down through the Conquered and through the soldiers of the conqueror.
How can this pulp writer identify with Alexander?
More importantly, how can academics, men of inaction, who have never traded blows, been wounded in hand to hand combat, who have never beaten down foes, understand the man?
One problem is age, all of us who write on Alexander have not even gathered our materials by the time he was dead at 33.
Empathy
How does a man who would have been carrying baggage as a slave in Alexander’s army attempt to understand him? Recall the popular tradition, not the royal histories squabbled about by historians.
I will apply the methods used in The Broken Dance history of ancient boxing and the Fighter’s View self-defence books The Logic of Steel, The Logic of Force and When You’re Food. These projects were begun when I was a year younger than Alexander was when he was undone. Hence, material about the business of Alexander’s trade, closing with the enemy, breaking their will, as a man slightly smaller than most of his adversaries, is something that I shared with Alexander. Just as he was not able to best Hephastion in combat, I have always trained with, and/or fought against some men who are simply bigger and better. Yet, Alexander conquered more than any front line fighter. I, who have had more stick fights and machete duels than any other human alive, understand the mania of doing more, in order, to DO MORE.
Condition
For seven years I have been homeless on the face of the earth. That is a condition Alexander embraced from age 19 through 33. This investigator must consider things from a nomadic perspective every day. The hard task is to consider it from the mind at the peak of the social pyramid, when this cipher toils at its base.
Worldview
Alexander, according to all sources, embraced The Iliad as a manual for behavior, a model for warfare. All academics scorn this, because they are not fighting men and do not see any of the sense behind Homer’s work, which is easily understood from a boxing, stick-fighting, or in the case of the Odyssey, a crime avoidance perspective. Like Hector, I have had a man come to my father’s house to harm my brother.[1] I have also faced armed men surrounding my house to attack my son. [2] Just as important, I have read the Iliad and the Odyssey dozens of times now. I cannot quote them like Alexander. But, I understand the martial Truth in those lines that academics scorn. Again, where Alexander was a king, I have spent my life as a debt slave and then a vagabond. In considering Him, I must always look up, from my feet, my seat, not look down through the ages from an academic eminence. I have not the credentials to read in Greek, and have not been trained in scholarly ways. However, unlike the dozens of eminent scholars who have considered Alexander in modern times, if an enemy kicks in the door of this room with bad, or even mistaken, intentions, I have, I can, and I will fight rather than bend the knee. I at least have that in common with the subject.
This washed-up grocer, a traveling boxing coach, driven from his own town by tribal enemies, who could not, in three years pass 9th Grade, is not qualified to conduct a comprehensive inquiry into the greatest conqueror of antiquity. However, those aspects of the human condition I share with this man dead now some 250 years may, I hope, offer some vantage as to why so many of his men, and so many of those simple folks he conquered, lionized him in many languages for more political ages than the years of his short life. The man who shocked Indian ambassadors who found him dirty in his combat kit, sitting a stool in his campaign tent, spear in hand, yet able to discuss theology with those academics, who risked all, is, I argue, closer in spirit to the men I have shared 50 years with in boxing gyms, dive bars and martial arts schools, then with a professor.
Guideposts
Empathy and a practical, experience-based understanding of hand-to-hand combat, does not take one deep enough. In my youth I read 14 histories of Alexander found in various libraries. Now, in my old age, being a tramp writer, I am only able to carry half that many books as my back crumbles. Below I shall place the order in which the modern sources will be walked back in time to the age before we became so womanly as a race.
The Ancient Sources
Arrian is the best source for Alexanders DEEDS, as he worked from still extant royal and popular traditions, and was himself a general and political leader in some of the same areas where Alexander campaigned.
Quintus Curtius gathered the most material on Alexander, and seems to have coined the term Alexander Magnus, or The Great, The Magnified.
Diodorus offers the least material, but wrote a hundred years earlier than the others, closer to the subject’s time.
Plutarch was a priest and historian of characters in the spiritual sense, and offers the most cultural context.
For other ancient fragments I depend on the following authors, and shall serialize summaries of the early sections of their works to get at the nature of the young Alexander, when he ascended to the throne of his embattled country. Once completed, these will be reread, arranged and edited in retrograde, in the order below, in order to determine how modern degeneracy and world events in the 1900s and 2000s have biased the academic view of the subject. Some of the books below must be sought in used book stores on my travels, others must be read and dropped off. The idea is to use modern distillations to arrive at a portrait of Alexander which makes sense as a fellow fighting man and wanderer, then to abandon these sources and let Alexanders actions tell the rest of his story. One will note that the modern tendency is to follow Curtius in titling. Recall, as we look back, that all of our ancient sources where written under Roman rule, where we get “the Great” or “Magnus.” Before that, he was simply ALEXANDER: Protector-of-men, a traditional name assigned to Macedonian princes by their embattled fathers. Some of the following are recalled from memory and shall be properly cited in their sections when I reacquire the book. This pulp writers modern guides are, to Prince Alexander’s first 19 years, are:
-1. Anthony Everitt, Alexander the Great, 2019
-2. Phillip Freeman, Alexander the Great, 2011
-3. James Romm, Alexander the Great, 2005
-4. Hammond, Alexander, 1990s
-5. Green, Alexander the Great, 1980s
-6. [ ] a History of Phillip and Alexander
-7. Robin Lane Fox, In Search of Alexander, 1970s
-8. J.R Hamilton, Introduction and notes to Aubrey De Selincourt’s translation, 1971
-9. Aubrey De Selincourt, Preface and notes to Arrian’s Alexander Anabasis, 1958
-10. William W. Tarn, Epilogue, a 26 minute audio recording appended to De Selincourt, a wonderful history of Alexanders death and popular legacy in antiquity
-11. Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon: the Journey to World’s End, 1946
Also, in seeking Alexander’s pathos, the Scythians, a tribe who defeated his great enemy Persia, and was then allied with Persia against him, and slew one of his governors, and whom slew Cyrus founder of the Persian Empire, must be considered. For Alexander defeated them in the Ukraine, and in Central Asia. These people were related ethnically, his archers undoubtedly contained Scythian mercenaries and slaves, and he borrowed and even bested their horse tactics. Their hinterland presence must have haunted him in his campaigns. For one of his last acts was developing a navy force on the Caspian. For the Scythians I will use:
-12. Christopher I. Beckwith, the Scythian Empire, 2023
Other sources, such as logistical and methodological studies, are treated separately, most in the Prologue to Areid, titled Grace. See the essays, Considering the Agrianes.
