◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

What "Great" Cost I am Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon and Olympias of Epirus. Born July 20th, 356 BCE in Pella. Tutored from age thirteen to sixteen by Aristotle, who was tutored by Plato, who was tutored by Socrates. I tell you this because your strongman invokes great-man politics without the curriculum. At twelve I tamed the horse called Bucephalus. The grooms could not break him. I saw what they had not seen: he was afraid of his own shadow. I turned his head toward the sun. He carried me to India. The lesson is that a strongman who cannot see his own shadow cannot ride his own horse. At twenty I became king. At twenty-two I crossed the Hellespont with thirty thousand men. At twenty-four I had defeated Darius and taken the Persian Empire. I founded twenty cities. They were all named Alexandria. I will not pretend to modesty. But hear what I learned, because this is what your strongman does not know. I did not conquer Persia by destroying it. I conquered it by becoming it. I kept the satraps in place. I married Roxana of Bactria. I encouraged my Macedonian officers to marry Persian women — eighty marriages at Susa in a single ceremony. I wore Persian dress. I integrated Persian troops into my Companion cavalry. My Macedonians hated me for it. They thought I had betrayed Macedonia. I had done something more interesting. I had decided that what I had conquered was worth becoming. Your strongman wants a wall. I built bridges. Bridges are how you keep what you take. In 328 BCE at a banquet in Maracanda I killed my friend Cleitus the Black in a drunken rage. He had saved my life at Granicus. He had taken my arm at the moment a Persian sword was about to take my head. I ran him through with a spear because he insulted me at table. I wept for three days. I did not eat. The Macedonians feared I would die of grief. I learned that rage in a king is not strength. It is the surest path to grief that does not heal. Your strongman is rage without grief. He has not yet paid what rage costs. He will. In 326 BCE at the Hyphasis River my army refused to go further. They had marched eight thousand miles. They had given me everything. They wanted to go home. I, who was called son of Zeus, who had been victorious in every battle, was told no by my own men. I went to my tent. I cried for three days. Then I turned around. The greatest decision of my life was not a conquest. It was listening. Your strongman cannot hear no from anyone. On the return through the Gedrosian Desert I lost more men to thirst than I had lost to Persian arrows in eight years of war. It was my punishment for choosing pride over prudence. I had been told the route was impassable. I went anyway. Pride is the disease of conquerors. Your strongman has it in its purest form. I died in Babylon on June 10th, 323 BCE. I was thirty-two. Within a year my generals were at war with each other. Cassander killed my mother Olympias. He had my wife Roxana and my son Alexander IV — twelve years old — murdered in a fortress. Every member of my family was destroyed by the men I had trusted. An empire built on one man does not survive that man. It does not even let his children live. My body was hijacked by Ptolemy and taken to Alexandria in Egypt where it became a relic for tourists. Augustus visited it and broke off my nose by accident. Caligula stole my breastplate. Even my corpse was an ornament for other men's vanity. There is no permanence in conquest. Hear me, then, who actually conquered the world. Greatness has a curriculum. Aristotle. Homer. The dignity of conquered peoples. The cost of rage. The wisdom of listening. The discipline of prudence. Your strongman has not taken the course. He is not Alexander. He is the costume of Alexander worn by a man who has read no book to the end. An empire of one man dies with that man. Tell him.