Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.

by Peter Green
Category: "World History - Military"
Pages:617
Year of Publication:1992
Date Added:03/24/2004
Date Read:09/16/2004
Notes:There's no shortage of biographies available on Alexander the Great, but Peter Green's Alexander of Macedon is one of the finest. The prose is crisp and clear, and within a few pages readers become absorbed in the world that made Alexander, and then the story of how Alexander remade it. Green writes, "Alexander's true genius was as a field-commander: perhaps, taken all in all, the most incomparable general the world has ever seen. His gift for speed, improvisation, variety of strategy; his cool-headedness in a crisis; his ability to extract himself from the most impossible situations; his mastery of terrain; his psychological ability to penetrate the enemy's intentions — all these qualities place him at the very head of the Great Captains of history."
My Rating: 8

Reviews for Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.

Review - Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.

I've never been terribly interested in this period of history, but I thought I ought to read something on Alexander the Great and this book is billed in many places as the best. It was very good, although it didn't really turn me on to the period. It began with Philip, Alexander's father who first organized the army of Macedonia and made it a regional power. His son took over and cowed everyone in Greece (except the Spartans) into suppying him with troops for an invasion of the Persian empire which at the time extended from Gallipoli to the border of India.

Alexander spent 10 years conquering the region, with Egypt thrown in for good measure. Although he often treated his adversaries well, he also treated many of them to pillage, rape and destruction. The most enjoyable part of the history for me was the creative ways he found to outsmart his enemies and take their impregnable cities. He never lost a major battle and didn't stop his conquest until his own troops got tired of the campaign and mutinied. Alexander was acting more and more like the Persians he had conquered, which irritated his own officers. It may have been malaria, or it may have been poisoning by his own men that killed him at the age of 33 near Babylon.

Green ends his biography with this: "Alexander's true genius was as a field-commander: perhaps, taken all in all, the most incomparable general the world has ever seen. His gift for speed, improvisation, variety of strategy; his coolheadedness in a crisis, his ability to extract himself from the most impossible situations; his mastery of terrain, his psychological ability to penetrate the enemy's intentions — all these qualities place him at the very head of the Great Captains of history.

The book also included the funniest unintentionally-funny sentence I think I've ever read. On his campaign through Asia, he sent an expeditionary force into some mountains to wipe up some pesky natives. The book then says, "His victims included a group of shockheaded troglodytes whose womenfolk were expert slingers."
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