The genius of Alexander the Great | Gregory Aldrete and Lex Fridman

to honor the uh aforementioned undergraduate student who loves Alexander the Great we must absolutely talk about Alexander the Great for a little bit uh why was he successful do you think as a conqueror probably one of the greatest conquerors in the history of of humanity yeah and I mean that is is then he one of the greatest heroes or one of the greatest villains in humanity too um it's like Julius Caesar he's famous for conquering Gaul well about a million people were killed a million in sled in that so is that does it make him a horrible person or one of our heroes but Alexander um is a combination of two things one is he really just was a skilled individual and he was one of those guys who had it all he was smart he was athletic and he was supremely charismatic I mean it's obviously one of these people that would walk into a room and everyone just kind of gravitates to him he had that magic uh that made him an effective leader um and secondly he was lucky because it wasn't all him he had inherited a System created by his father Philip II so he was in the right time at the right place and had this instrument placed in his hands and then he had the intelligence and the Charisma to go use it so it's one of these coming together of different things but often his father's contribution I think is is not recognized as much as it is it's his father who reformed the Macedonian army who came up with that system of equipping them with the Sissa this extra long spear that made them really effective created the mixed Army so one of the keys to Alexander's success as on a tactical sense is that his army was composed of different elements heavy Cavalry light Cavalry heavy infantry light infantry missile troops and he understand that he can use these in different and flexible ways on the battlefield whereas a lot of warfare before then had just been you line up two side smashed together so he did clever things with this Army that was a better tool than others did and then he was just supremely ambitious I mean he cared about his Fame which I guess is ego but he clearly cared about that more than he did about things like money um he was indifferent to that um and he did have a Grand Vision so he did have this vision of trying to unite the world both politically under his control but also culturally and this is an interesting thing so he was very open in fact uh insistent of trying to meld together the best elements of all the different cultures so he himself was a Macedonian but he admired Greek culture so he pretty much adopted Greek culture as his own when he conquers Persia he starts adapting elements of Persian culture he dresses in Persian clothing he marries a Persian woman he uh sort of forces thousands of his troops to marry local women he appoints Persians to positions of power he integrates Persian units into his military he really wanted to fuse all these things together um and some people see this as a very enlightened uh Vision that oh he's not just I want to conquer people and now they're my slaves that he was really trying to create this one culture that was sort of the best of everything others see it of course as a form of cultural imperialism you're destroying other cultures uh and trying to warp or twist them into something but what I think is interesting is that this Vision he had of uniting cultures creates very atic tensions among his own followers because the macedonians his original troops did not like this on the whole they wanted the old model where we conquer you you're our slaves we don't want to share stuff with you we don't want you joining us in the Army we don't want you appointed to positions of power we are your conquerors and that's it and so Alexander had to deal with a lot of friction from his own oldest most loyal elements at the way he was being in their eyes too generous to the conquered um so Alexander is one of these interesting personalities because every generation sees him in a new light and focuses on different things so for some he's this enlightened Visionary who was taught by Aristotle the Greek philosopher and they say well this influence him others see him as an egomaniacal War bonger just I'm out to kill and gain Glory uh there was a book a couple decades ago it says oh he's just an alcoholic which he probably was yeah um so you get all these competing images and the great thing is we don't really know what the true Alexander was or what his motivations were it's it's a mixed message why do you think uh the Roman Empire lasted while the Greek Empire as the Alexander expanded did not that's a clear answer so Alexander's Empire fragmented the moment he died and so his Empire was all about personal la loyalty it was his Charisma holding it together his personality and he completely failed to create a structure it so that it would continue after his death and of course he died young he didn't think he would die when he did but still you should put something in place so his was a flash in the pan it was he had this spectacular Conquest in 10 years he conquered what was then most of the known world but he had no permanent structure in place he didn't really deal with the issue of succession it fell apart instantly the Romans are much more about building a structure so I mean as we talked about a little they were very good about incorporating the people they conquered into the Roman project um I mean they're oppressive they're imperialistic as well let's not whitewash them I mean they had moments when they would just wipe out entire cities um but on the whole they were much more about trying to bring people into the Roman uh world and I think that was one of their strengths is that they were open to uh integration and bringing in different people to keep rejuvenating themselves