Alexander the Great

Read Alexander the Great for Free Online

Book: Read Alexander the Great for Free Online
Authors: Norman F. Cantor
also tense. Philip conquered much of the Greek peninsula but left it to his son to organize. Philip was cautious in dealing with the noisy and resourceful cities of southern Greece. He did not try to conquer them, except for Thebes, which lay halfway down the Greek peninsula and rebelled actively against him.
    Justin, a Roman writer of the late second or early third century AD and author of a life of Philip, drew a sharp distinction between Philip and Alexander:
    Philip was succeeded by his son Alexander who surpassed his father both in good qualities and bad. Each had his own method of gaining victory, Alexander making war openly and Philip using trickery; the latter took pleasure in duping the enemy, the former in putting them to flight in the open. Philip was the more prudent strategist, Alexander had the greater vision. The father could hide, and sometimes even suppress, his anger; when Alexander’s had flared up, his retaliation could be neither delayed nor kept in check. Both were excessively fond of drink, but intoxication brought out different shortcomings. It was the father’s habit to rush straight at the enemy from the dinner-party, engage him in combat and recklessly expose himself to danger; Alexander’s violence was directed not against the enemy but against his own comrades. As a result Philip was often brought back from his battles wounded while the other often left a dinner with his friends’ blood on his hands. Philip was unwilling to rule along with his friends; Alexander exercised his rule over his. The father preferred to be loved, the son to be feared. They had a comparable interest in literature. The father had greater shrewdness, the son was truer to his word. Philip was more restrained in his language and discourse, Alexander in his actions. When it came to showing mercy to the defeated, the son was temperamentally more amenable and more magnanimous. The father was more disposed to thrift, the son to extravagance. With such qualities did the father lay the basis for a worldwide empire and the son bring to completion the glorious enterprise. 1
    Philip was satisfied not to try to conquer Athens, Sparta, and Corinth. He formed them into a league with himself as hegemon (similar to today’s chairman of the board or CEO). In Athens the orator Demosthenes so raged against Philip and forecast the threat he posed to the Greek city-states if he was not stopped (like Churchill on Hitler in the 1930s) that his speeches are a synecdoche for opposition to a tyrant. These orations are called philippics, the same term used later for the orations by Cicero against Mark Antony. (The term is still a synonym for speeches of rage and condemnation.) Alexander eventually succeeded in getting Demosthenes exiled from Athens; Mark Antony had Cicero killed.
    Though Alexander was carefully trained and educated in the humanities and sciences, from the age of five he was meant to be a highly skilled soldier. He had an affinity for diplomacy, and by the time he was fifteen, he was engaging Greek ambassadors in discussions. He had a special inclination to be a horseman and is said to have personally broken in his horse Bucephelus, in whose saddle he rode into battle for the next twenty years until the animal died.
    The story goes that in the Balkans King Philip had acquired a very handsome horse of a special, elegant breed, but Philip and his grooms could not break the horse. It stood taller than the common run of runty Macedonian horses, and it boasted a proud mane and shimmering brown coat.
    Philip and his grooms were about to give up on the Balkan horse as incapable of ever being broken in when Alexander, who was there, remarked that they were losing a wonderful horse simply because they were too inexperienced and too spineless to handle him. Initially Philip remained silent, but after Alexander repeated his comment and became visibly upset, Philip asked Alexander if his criticism of his elders was due to his knowing more

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