ABSTRACT
This expedition of Alexander, which has been recounted all too briefly above, strikes us, and struck the ancients, as a marvellous and extraordinarily successful adventure. It is a wonder that, in all those eleven years of fighting, exploration, and conquest, no accident occurs to overthrow an enterprise “which cannot fail in one country without failing in all the others, nor fail once without failing for ever”. 2 So, in the ages in which there was a worship of Fortune, men spoke with a kind of religious admiration of the “fortune” of Alexander. Often, indeed, they only spoke of it thus to give the goddess the credit which a tradition of the philosophical rhetors refused to the King. But where the unintelligent pedantry of the sophists would see only lucky foolhardiness (felix temeritas, as Seneca says), 3 others, fairer and more discerning, perceived the action of a clear, strong mind and the effects of the inner energy which makes man truly a man, the “virtue” (ἀρετή) which not only governs the acts of a hero, but is the very source of his power. 4 Certainly no achievement bears the stamp of personal genius more clearly than that of Alexander. His conquest proceeds like the ordered accomplishment of a logical plan, and in this it is akin to the masterpieces of Hellenism. Once the road into Asia has been opened by the victory of the Granicos, two years are spent in securing a solid base and communications with Macedonia which cannot be cut; then, when the shore of Asia Minor has been subdued, after the downfall of Darius at Issos, this base is extended to Syria and Egypt; and it is only then that Alexander goes on into the heart of the enemy’s country, where Arbela deals the decisive blow. We must not suppose that his plan was drawn up, complete in every detail, once for all. His actions are frequently governed by circumstances. He has, for example, to follow the flight of Darius into the Hyrcanian mountains, that of Bessus into Bactriana, and the summons of Taxiles to unknown India. But he obeys events only to master them, and to make their consequences serve the execution of ideas which create a new order of things. Sometimes he allows himself to be carried away by the mystical enthusiasm of his pride, as in the visit to the Oasis of Siwa, but he does not fail to take advantage of it for his purposes; from his visit to Amon, for example, he receives a divine prestige such as justifies his power in the eyes of the conquered peoples. On one single occasion it is possible, if we are to believe a doubtful tradition, that his work was saved against his own will— when his army refused to let itself be lost in the search for the distant valley of the Ganges. But as a rule, on whatever roads he is taken by the needs of conquest, he is able to arrange his marches and battles according to his constant object of laying down the frontiers and organizing the framework of the Empire which he means to found.
