CHAP. XCIV.] PROBABLE FUTURE OF ALEXANDER.

351

Romans could have successfully resisted Alexander the Great; though it is certain that he never throughout all his long marches encountered such enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and Lucanians combining courage, patriotism, discipline, with effective arms both for defence and for close combat1.

excellence

military

Among all the qualities which go to constitute Unrivalled the highest military excellence, either as a general of Alexor as a soldier, none was wanting in the character ander, as a of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous man. courage-sometimes indeed both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him-we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingences. Amidst constant success, these precautionary combinations were never discontinued. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity, by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force as an individual warrior, and as organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing

1 Alexander of Epirus is said to have remarked, that he, in his expeditions into Italy, had fallen upon the ảvôpwvitis or chamber of the men; while his nephew (Alexander the Great), in invading Asia, had fallen upon the yuvaiκwviris or chamber of the women (Aulus Gellius, xvii. 21; Curtius, viii. 1, 37).

Alexander as a ruler, apart from military affairsnot deserving of

esteem.

compression which he personifies in Athênê. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies; in which category indeed were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns, amidst tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defence, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains, are alike pursued and slaughtered.

Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a soldier and a general, some authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government, and for intentions highly favourable to the improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander's future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever-repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded until he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal dominion-conceived not metaphorically, but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time was the master-passion of his soul. At the moment of his death, he was commencing fresh aggression in the south against the Arabians, to an indefinite extent'; while his vast projects against the western tribes in Africa and Europe, as far as the pillars of Herakles, were consigned in the orders and memoranda confidentially communicated to Kraterus. Italy, Gaul, and Spain, would have been successively attacked

1 Arrian, vii. 28, 5.

2 Diodor. xviii. 4.

CHAP. XCIV.] IMMENSE PROJECTS OF ALEXANDER.

353

and conquered; the enterprises proposed to him when in Baktria by the Chorasmian prince Pharasmanes, but postponed then until a more convenient season, would have been next taken up, and he Iwould have marched from the Danube northward round the Euxine and Palus Mæotis against the Scythians and the tribes of Caucasus'. There remained moreover the Asiatic regions east of the Hyphasis, which his soldiers had refused to enter upon, but which he certainly would have invaded at a future opportunity, were it only to efface the poignant humiliation of having been compelled to relinquish his proclaimed purpose. Though this sounds like romance and hyperbole, it was nothing more than the real insatiate aspiration of Alexander, who looked upon every new acquisition mainly as a capital for acquiring more2. "You are a man like all of us, Alexander-except that you abandon your home (said the naked Indian to him3) like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself, and inflicting hardship upon others." Now, how an empire thus boundless and heterogeneous, such as no prince has ever yet realized, could have been administered

1 Arrian, iv. 15, 11.

2 Arrian, vii. 19, 12. Τὸ δὲ ἀληθές, ὥς γέ μοι δοκεῖ, ἄπληστος ἦν τοῦ ktão¤aí tɩ deì’Aλégavdpos. Compare vii. 1. 3-7; vii. 15, 6, and the speech made by Alexander to his soldiers on the banks of the Hyphasis, when he was trying to persuade them to march forward, v. 26 seq. We must remember that Arrian had before him the work of Ptolemy, who would give, in all probability, the substance of this memorable speech from his own hearing.

3 8 Arrian, vii. 1, 8. σὺ δὲ ἄνθρωπος ὢν, παραπλήσιος τοῖς ἄλλοις, πλήν γε δὴ, ὅτι πολυπράγμων καὶ ἀτάσθαλος, ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκείας τοσαύτην γῆν ἐπεξέρχῃ, πράγματα ἔχων τε καὶ παρέχων ἄλλοις.

VOL. XII.

2 A

Alexander would have continued

the system

of the Per

sian empire,

with no

other improvement

of a strong

organization.

with any superior advantages to subjects-it would be difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining-of keeping satraps and tributegatherers in authority as well as in subordinationof suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions distant by months of march'-would occupy the whole life of a world-conqueror, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited to peace and stability, if we give him credit for such purposes in theory.

But even this last is more than can be granted. Alexander's acts indicate that he desired nothing better than to take up the traditions of the Persian empire; a tribute-levying and army-levying system, under Macedonians, in large proportion, as his inexcept that struments; yet partly also under the very same Persians who had administered before, provided they submitted to him. It has indeed been extolled among his merits that he was thus willing to re-appoint Persian grandees (putting their armed force however under the command of a Macedonian officer)-and to continue native princes in their dominions, if they did willing homage to him, as tributary subordinates. But all this had been done before him by the Persian kings, whose system it was to leave the conquered princes undisturbed, subject only to the payment of tribute, and to the obligation of furnishing a military contingent when required. In like manner Alexander's Asiatic em

Arrian, vii. 4, 4, 5.

2 Herodot. iii. 15. Alexander offered to Phokion (Plutarch, Phok. 18) his choice between four Asiatic cities, of which (that is, of any one of them) he was to enjoy the revenues; just as Artaxerxes Longimanus

CHAP. XCIV.] WHOLESALE TRANSPORTATION OF COLONISTS. 355

pire would thus have been composed of an aggregate of satrapies and dependent principalities, furnishing money and soldiers; in other respects, left to the discretion of local rule, with occasional extreme inflictions of punishment, but no systematic examination or control'. Upon this, the condition of Asiatic empire in all ages, Alexander would have grafted one special improvement: the military organization of the empire, feeble under the Achæmenid princes, would have been greatly strengthened by his genius, and by the able officers formed in his school, both for foreign aggression and for home control 2.

ander

purpose of

different

mankind

common

The Persian empire was a miscellaneous aggre- Absence of nationality gate, with no strong feeling of nationality. The in AlexMacedonian conqueror who seized its throne was still more indifferent to national sentiment. He fusing the was neither Macedonian nor Greek. Though the varieties of absence of this prejudice has sometimes been into one counted to him as a virtue, it only made room, type of subin my opinion, for prejudices yet worse. The jection. substitute for it was an exorbitant personality and self-estimation, manifested even in his earliest years, and inflamed by extraordinary success into the belief in divine parentage; which, while setting him above the idea of communion with any special nationality, made him conceive all man

had acted towards Themistokles, in recompense for his treason. Phokion refused the offer.

1 See the punishment of Sisamnes by Kambyses (Herodot. v. 25). 2 The rhetor Aristeides, in his Encomium on Rome, has some good remarks on the character and ascendency of Alexander, exercised by will and personal authority, as contrasted with the systematic and legal working of the Roman empire (Orat. xiv. p. 332-360, vol. i. ed. Dindorf).