Alexander the Great & Philip V of Macedon
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Alexander the Great and his father, Philip V of Macedon, were the first "modern" leaders to recognize the geopolitical implications of their activities. In this recognition lay the key to their unqualified success as conquerors. By the reign of Philip V, the alliances between various Greek city-states and his kingdom were complex. As a member of the Sacred League, Philip had warred on behalf of various city-state alliances over the years. Upon the invitation of Thessaly, another "semi-barbarian" country valued by the Greeks for their cavalry, Philip of Macedon joined his realm with theirs - and was suddenly an independent power in the chess game of peninsular politics. Philip was uneducated himself in Greek standards of learning, but he was not unlearned in their ways. As a teenager he was kept as diplomatic hostage in Thebes for several years: Philip saw their infantry at close range, and, being in diplomatic circles, observed the strengths and weaknesses of the Greeks' ever-shifting "federal" alliance systems. If one is to understand Alexander's subsequent military success leading Macedonian armies to conquest, one must study the lessons of his best teacher, his father. As a matter of tradition, the usual Greek army was one drawn up for a specific war. The Spartans of old made their citizens a permanent warrior class, living off a permanent slave caste - an arrangement long since debased by Philip's time through internal betrayals of the Spartan meritocratic trad
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ventual conquest of lands stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. All the tactics and strategies would have been for naught, however, if Alexander of Macedon had not been a brave general - and Darius III, King of Persia, a fearful one. It had to do with personalities, yes, but also with the nature of the times.
Modern leaders are forced to project an image of false modesty; in the pre-modern world the leader strove to be fame-worthy. There was nothing shameful about this aspiration; even the last word of the English epic Beowulf is "lofgeornost" - "most eager for fame" - and it is a complement to the title hero. It can, of course, be compared to a modern propaganda technique. Alexander benefitted from being famous by the number of opponents who surrendered rather than face the reputed victor of so many battles. ("Reputation" is an important pre-modern concept as well, there being no information media as such.)
But such fame was also recognition by others that a leader earned his reputation through deeds: a general could not lead from the rear. Or, at least, no Macedonian general could. In Alexander's era a general worked by eyesight, voice and visual command. In order to be an effective general, one had
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4040
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)
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