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26 - Rise of the Macedonian Empire by Arthur M. Curteis · Rise of the Macedonian Empire

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  Speaker 1: Section twenty six of Rise of the Macedonian Empire by
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  Speaker 1: Arthur M. Curtis. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Read by Pamelinagami, Chapter seventeen, closing Scenes, Part two. It
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  Speaker 1: has been said that none of mortal birth ever went
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  Speaker 1: through such an ordeal as Alexander. The Great, and Arian
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  Speaker 1: insists on certain points which ought not to be forgotten
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  Speaker 1: in forming an estimate of his hero. He was the
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  Speaker 1: son of the able and unscrupulous Philip and of the
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  Speaker 1: violent Olympius. He was brought up in a court notoriously licentious.
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  Speaker 1: He was a king at twenty, the greatest monarch of
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  Speaker 1: the world before thirty, a general who never knew defeat.
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  Speaker 1: He was surrounded by men vastly inferior to himself, who
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  Speaker 1: intrigued for his favor and flattered his weakness, thus inheriting
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  Speaker 1: a fierce and ambitious temper, and placed in circumstances calculated
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  Speaker 1: to foster it. It would have been little short of
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  Speaker 1: a miracle had Alexander shown a character without alloy to
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  Speaker 1: stand on a pinnacle of greatness higher than man had
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  Speaker 1: ever reached before, and to be free at the same
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  Speaker 1: time from vanity. Would have required a combination of virtues
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  Speaker 1: impossible before Christ, perhaps never possible. Alexander was beyond question, vain, impulsive, passionate,
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  Speaker 1: at times furious, but he had strong affections and called
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  Speaker 1: out strong affections in others. A man of energy and ambition,
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  Speaker 1: he was the hardest worker of his day, both in
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  Speaker 1: body and mind. Incapable of fear. He foresaw difficulties or
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  Speaker 1: combinations which others never dreamed of, and provided against them
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  Speaker 1: with success. Amid endless temptations, this son of Philip remained
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  Speaker 1: comparatively pure, Unlike his fellow countrymen. He was cesarean, no
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  Speaker 1: great drinker, though he loved a banquet and its genial
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  Speaker 1: flow of conversation. On one point in his character, Arian
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  Speaker 1: dwells with an admiration in which we may heartily join. Alexander,
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  Speaker 1: he says, stood almost alone in his readiness to acknowledge
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  Speaker 1: and express regret for having done wrong. That in his
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  Speaker 1: later days, and when he had succeeded to the position
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  Speaker 1: of the great king, he adopted the Persian dress and
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  Speaker 1: customs may be ascribed to the same motive which induced
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  Speaker 1: him himself to marry and to press his officers and
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  Speaker 1: soldiers to marry Asiatic women, a politic desire, not indeed
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  Speaker 1: to ape the ways of foreigners, but to amalgamate his
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  Speaker 1: diverse subjects into one body. And if over and above
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  Speaker 1: this he went so far as to claim divine honors
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  Speaker 1: as the son of a God. We may remember that
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  Speaker 1: of all men, Greeks were most easily thrown off their
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  Speaker 1: balance by extraordinary prosperity, as were Miltiades and Alcibiades, Pausanius
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  Speaker 1: and Lysandrus, and that few men of his day or
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  Speaker 1: country were more susceptible to the charm of heroic and
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  Speaker 1: legendary associations than was Alexander. Elated therefore by success, and
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  Speaker 1: genuinely wrought upon by the legends which were as the
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  Speaker 1: air he breathed, he set an extravagant value on obtaining
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  Speaker 1: a public recognition of the superhuman nature of his powers,
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  Speaker 1: in which perhaps he had even come to believe himself.
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  Speaker 1: It has been said in depreciation of Alexander that his
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  Speaker 1: conquests were needless and the bloodshed wanton, that he gave
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  Speaker 1: the final stroke to the ruin of free Hellas, and
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  Speaker 1: that whatever benefits Asia derived from its conquests by Greeks
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  Speaker 1: were due rather to Alexander's successors than to himself. These
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  Speaker 1: objections are as false in the Sad Spirit as they
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  Speaker 1: are true in the letter. For on the first of
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  Speaker 1: these points we shall go altogether astray unless we place
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  Speaker 1: ourselves at the point of view of a Greek of
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  Speaker 1: the fourth century. His view of the relations between himself
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  Speaker 1: and a barbarian, and all who were not Greeks were Barbarians,
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  Speaker 1: was something similar to that of a medieval Christian towards
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  Speaker 1: a Mohammedan, or of a Mohammedan towards an Infidel. The
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  Speaker 1: natural state of things between them was war, and for
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  Speaker 1: the vanquished there remained death to the men, slavery or
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  Speaker 1: worse for women and children. Any milder treatment was magnanimous clemency.
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  Speaker 1: Four years before Alexander, the idea of a war of
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  Speaker 1: revenge against Persia had been rife. That he should invade
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  Speaker 1: Asia therefore and put down the great king and harry
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  Speaker 1: and slay his subjects would seem to almost every Greek
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  Speaker 1: right and proper. A few here and there, indeed were
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  Speaker 1: clear headed enough to see that the elevation of Macedon
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  Speaker 1: meant the downfall of free Greece. It clearly was so.
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  Speaker 1: And yet if we look the facts in the face,
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  Speaker 1: we observed the free life of Greece in the fourth
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  Speaker 1: century assuming a phase incompatible in the long run with freedom.
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  Speaker 1: It was the day of orators, not of statesmen or warriors,
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  Speaker 1: of timid action and peace at any price. It was
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  Speaker 1: the time of isolation, when thanks to Sparta, the glorious
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  Speaker 1: opportunity of a free Hellenic nation had been forever lost,
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  Speaker 1: and when the narrow Greek notion of political life within
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  Speaker 1: the compass of city walls and no further had reasserted itself.
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  Speaker 1: It was the day of mercenary forces, when freemen talked
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  Speaker 1: of freedom but did not fight for it. It was
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  Speaker 1: a time of corruption, when politicians could be bought and
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  Speaker 1: would sell their country's honor. Indeed, considering that the hegemony
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  Speaker 1: of Macedon was distinctly less oppressive than that of Sparta,
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  Speaker 1: we may well believe that while cities like Athens or Sparta,
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  Speaker 1: which had once been leaders themselves, felt a real humiliation
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  Speaker 1: and subjection to Macedon, many less prominent states felt it
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  Speaker 1: to be a change for the better. In proportion, as such,
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  Speaker 1: government was less oppressive than rulers of the type of
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  Speaker 1: the Spartan Harmasts or the thirty tyrants of Athens. Technically,
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  Speaker 1: the Macedonian conquest did put an end to Hellenic freedom.
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  Speaker 1: On the other hand, that freedom was fast tending towards,
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  Speaker 1: if in some cases it had not already passed into
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  Speaker 1: the anarchy which belies freedom, or the pettiness which cramps it. Lastly,
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  Speaker 1: we may allow that in all probability, Alexander neither intended
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  Speaker 1: nor foresaw half the benefits which resulted from his career
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  Speaker 1: to Asia and the world, Without saying more than has
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  Speaker 1: to be said of every man of command and progressive ideas,
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  Speaker 1: it is not as a rule given to men to
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  Speaker 1: see the fruit of their labors. Nevertheless, the world combines
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  Speaker 1: to honour those who initiate its varied steps of progress.
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  Speaker 1: The change for the better which Alexander's conquests made in
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  Speaker 1: Asia can hardly be exaggerated. Order took the place of disorder.
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  Speaker 1: The vast accumulations of the Persian kings lying idle in
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  Speaker 1: their coffers were once more brought into circulation, and at
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  Speaker 1: least tended to stimulate energy and commercial activity. Cities were
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  Speaker 1: founded in great numbers. New channels of communication were opened
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  Speaker 1: between the ends of the empire, confidence was restored, and
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  Speaker 1: it may fairly be added that only the king's own
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  Speaker 1: premature death cut short the far sighted plans which he
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  Speaker 1: had devised for the gradual elevation of his Asiatic subjects
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  Speaker 1: to the level of his European and which indeed had
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  Speaker 1: off already begun to work the results which he intended.
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  Speaker 1: It is true we can trace no signs of political
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  Speaker 1: reform in Alexander's projects, but Asiatics had never known any
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  Speaker 1: but despotic government, and beyond question, were unfit for any other.
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  Speaker 1: While a king of Macedon would probably look on government
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  Speaker 1: by free assemblies with as much contempt and suspicion as
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  Speaker 1: a Czar of Russia in our own day. Even Greece,
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  Speaker 1: which gained no direct benefit from the Macedonian Empire, was
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  Speaker 1: yet indirectly a gainer in the fact that it was
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  Speaker 1: her language which was the medium of communication, her literature
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  Speaker 1: which modified the religion that came back to her and
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  Speaker 1: to Europe from Asia. It was Alexander who planted that
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  Speaker 1: literature and language in Asia. And it was to Alexander
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  Speaker 1: that the great Christian cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria
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  Speaker 1: always looked back with reverence, as in some sense or
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  Speaker 1: at their founder and benefactor. It would be difficult to
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  Speaker 1: conclude this short sketch of a heroic life more aptly
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  Speaker 1: than in the words of Bishop Thurle. Alexander was one
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  Speaker 1: of the greatest of Earth's sons, Great above most for
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  Speaker 1: what he was in himself, and not as many who
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  Speaker 1: have borne the title for what was given to him
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  Speaker 1: to effect. Great in the course which his ambition took,
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  Speaker 1: and the collateral aims which ennobled and purified it, so
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  Speaker 1: that it almost grew into one with the highest of
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  Speaker 1: which man is capable, the desire of knowledge and the
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  Speaker 1: love of good. In a word, great has one of
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  Speaker 1: the benefactors of his kind. End of section twenty six
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  Speaker 1: read by Pamela and Nagami, M. D. And Encino, California,
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  Speaker 1: July twenty twenty four. End of Rise of the Macedonian
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  Speaker 1: Empire by Arthur M. Curtis