Measuring Greatness

...A hot topic of philosophical debate in the ancient world, post-Alexander, was whether his successes were the result of luck or virtue...

...Rogers's prose is rarely sparkling and at times his recounting of the often-told history comes across as perfunctory...

...He must be judged on the whole of his life...

...But Rogers argues well (if not wholly convincingly) that Darius did not, in fact, flee prematurely at Issus...

...He shared in the danger as well as the glory, often leading his men into battle, and being wounded eight times...

...Or Bradbury blaming his wife for driving him to infidelity, when she obviously did nothing of the sort...

...And there is a lot more in here, about his 14 other books, about his migration from being a supporter of Harry Truman to voting for Barry Goldwater, and about his love for the Founding Fathers...

...The good news is that there is more to come...

...Rogers objects to the characterization of Alexander's Indian campaign as a failure (as some have charged), writing that if it was, "rarely in the history of imperialism can a conqueror be said to have failed so successfully...

...High Fidelity JOURNALIST SAM WELLER'S RECENT EBULLIENT, at times embarrassingly gushing biography of fantasy-literature legend Ray Bradbury, The Bradbury Chronicles, lodges many indelible images in readers' minds...

...At a drinking party his general Cleitus—who had saved Alexander's life at the Granicus by chopping off the arm of a Persian cavalry officer who was about to put a sword through an exposed Alexander—criticized Alexander's ego and his policy of bringing Persians into his ranks...

...Guy MacLean Rogers, a renowned classical scholar and former chairman of the Department of History of Wellesley College, objects to this "new orthodoxy" that compares Alexander with modern totalitarian tyrants...

...Did Alexander adopt Persian dress and customs because he had "gone oriental," or because he simply wanted his Persian subjects to recognize him as their new king...

...But that was never an option for Alexander...

...Alexander would die in Babylon, probably from feverrather than from foul play...

...Such an analysis of almost any "great" person, argues Rogers, ultimately reveals the "ambiguity of greatness...

...which inspired the boy to find immortality through the written word...

...He notes that much of Alexander's military success was the direct result of the highly disciplined and professional army that he inherited from his father, Phillip II, and that Alexander was also lucky that his inherited army had highly competent commanders, such as Parmenio and Cleitus...

...A mother nurturing an imagination with trips to see Lon Chaney films in Waukegan, Illinois, the town that would serve as background for such classics as The Martian Chronicles (1950), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), and Dandelion Wine (1957...

...The historian who writes with a grandiloquent flourish, consulting only emotions, ideology, or popular prejudices is an entertainer, not a historian...

...Nonetheless, Rogers clearly gives Alexander credit for his military triumphs, extolling his qualities as a tactician, innovator, and leader of men...

...The historian who consults only the diktat of the academy is a charlatan...

...Such examples notwithstanding, Alexander the Great remains a very flawed individual...

...He was also innovative...

...He just wanted to get Recovering the Past out of the way, so he could set to work on an undisclosed work in progress somewhere down the galaxy...

...And the witnessing of a tragic car accident and the death of a woman that so scarred Ray Bradbury that he never learned to drive...

...Unfortunately, there are some seedier images that will stick with readers from here to eternity as well...

...Most have given Alexander his due and have concluded that his various failings were more than offset by his virtues...

...To have a woman soak you and wash you at that age, if you're not careful, it's all over...

...A young Bradbury receiving a note from the painfully reclusive creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, sent from his home in Tarzana, California...

...He was a binge drinker with a quick and violent temper...

...His opponent, Darius II, did flee the Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness by Guy MacLean Rogers (RANDOM HOUSE, 383 PAGES, $26.95) Reviewed by Brandon Crocker JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 79 BOOKS IN REVIEW battlefield, destroying his troops' morale and discipline, while the outcomes were still in doubt...

...Yes, he was a brutal warrior, but he lived at a time in which war was considered a natural state of affairs and he led what most of his countrymen considered a justified punitive expedition against the Persians for their sacrileges against the Greeks, including the burning of the temples on the Acropolis in Athens in 480 BC...

...Fittingly, his tomb continues to elude archeologists...

...And, of course, that was almost fatal...

...Told by a man who is keen on evidence, his tale is just matter-of-fact...

...True, at Granicus and Hydaspes he also had numeric superiority (in addition to superior troops), but at Issus and Gaugamela he faced much tougher odds, being vastly outnumbered...

...If Alexander had merely garrisoned the town of Taxila east of the Indus, whose ruler was a willing ally, and then simply turned around, back through the Khyber Pass and retraced his route home, he would have gained hardly less than what he had, without the loss of thousands of his soldiers and civilian camp followers (and tens of thousands of Indians) in battle and in the course of the deadly return trek through the pitiless Makran Desert and Gedrosia (southwestern Pakistan...

...Some, perhaps, may also find it difficult to read Fahrenheit 451 ever again without the intricacies of Bradbury's high school romp with a "plump" prostitute invading their consciousnesses: "She washed me off," Bradburytells Weller...

...Rogers also cannot help but engage in the analysis of whether Alexander was good or lucky...

...He insists on using the "culturally sensitive" BCE rather than BC, which only serves to confuse, and ignores the fact that whether it's "BC" or "BCE" we're still counting from the birth of Jesus Christ...

...Was his integration of Persians into his army and into his administration a manifestation of Alexander's belief that all men were sons of Zeus and that Zeus preferred the best, regardless of race (as Rogers theorizes)—or just the result of military necessity...

...BECAUSE OF ALEXANDER'S PREMATURE DEATH we will never know for certain how he intended to rule his empire...

...But judging Rogers's work as he would like us to judge Alexander's life—that is, on its totality—Guy Rogers has produced a very readable, entertaining, and thought-provoking book...

...Rogers makes interesting arguments regarding all these questions...

...That conquest, however, was never to be...

...Alexander viewed himself not just as a king or a commander but also as a Homeric warrior Rogers objects to the characterization of Alexander's Indian campaign as a failure (as some have charged), writing that if it was, "rarely in the history of imperialism can a conqueror be said to have failed so successfully...

...His friend and comradein-arms, Ptolemy, absconded with Alexander's body to Egypt—one of Alexander's conquests that would remain under Greek (specifically, the Ptolemy family's) control for 300 years—where Ptolemy ruled as satrap (and later as Pharaoh), laying Alexander to rest in the most successful of the numerous Alexandrias founded along his routes of conquest...

...The oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the Egyptian desert at Siwa had (it seems) told Alexander that he would conquer to the end of the known world, and that's exactly what he intended to do...

...Electrico knighting a young Bradbury with an electrically charged sword, demanding he "Live forever...

...And his deferential treatment towards the female relatives of Darius, captured after the battle of Is sus, was exceptional for the time—and indicative of his respect for women (he executed Greeks convicted of rape and appointed a woman to govern one of his conquered provinces...

...Alexander, however, was, beyond Brandon Crocker is a real estate executive, writer, and armchair classicist living in San Diego...

...doubt, "the greatest conqueror in the history of Western civilization...

...80 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 BOOKS IN REVIEW (throughout his campaign, he kept a copy of the Iliad, annotated by his tutor, Aristotle, under his pillow...

...From time immemorial, we have collectively Shawn Macomber is a reporter and staff for The American Spectator...

...The fact is, however, that Greek influence in the southern Indus region evaporated as soon as Alexander left, and though Greek control lingered in the northern region of the Indus, Alexander did not have to fight for that control...

...The majority of Rogers's work is a retelling of the history of Alexander's rise to the throne of Macedon and the subsequent conquest of the vast Persian Empire and beyond...

...ik't Measuring Greatness THE MODEL ANCIENT SET-PIECE BATTLE is not any of Alexander the Great's victories, but Hannibal's encirclement and annihilation of a numerically superior Roman force at Cannae in 216 BC...

...At least, that was the case until the mid-20th century when a growing number of historians started to treat Alexander more roughly, judging him a bloodthirsty, maniacal aggressor...

...For example, Bradbury's groping and making out with his cousin Vivian—who more than half a century later summed up 14-year-old Ray Bradbury to Weller in one line, "He was horny...

...Thus McDonald's work-based success and prodigious output as a historian made him more and more unsuitable for the company of other members of his profession...

...BOOKS IN REVIEW of history, where the facts dictate what the conclusions should be, and not the other way around...

...It is possible that his decision to burn the Persian royal palaces at Persepolis was made while drunk...

...The result is a fresh and even-handed new biography, Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness...

...But does that make him "great...

...Only the refusal of his troops to go any farther, after running across giant snakes and enduring weeks of monsoon rains in the jungles of India, caused Alexander to head back for home—or at least to Babylon where he made preparations for his next military adventure, the conquest of Arabia...

...Cleitus was probably drunk, too, and didn't know when to shut up...

...Was the mass marriage of Persian and Median noblewomen to officers in his army an attempt to create a new mixed Greek-Persian ruling elite...

...At the battles of the Granicus River, Issus, Gaugamela, and the Hydaspes, Alexander was clever and bold...

...Alexander must be judged in the context of his own time and in the context of the historical conflict between Greece and Persia and not looked on, as we would, the leader of a modern European nation...

...He almost immediately ordered the flames to be put out, but it was too late...

...Part of what makes ancient history so much fun is that, even with larger-than-life figures such as Alexander the Great, reliable source material is often rare and accounts often contradictory, so there is lots of room for analysis, informed speculation, and good old guesswork...

...Alexander, however, like any figure, cannot be honestly judged by a few incidents, as dramatic as they might be...

...Alexander's conquests had important, and sometimes overlooked, consequences for subsequent world history, but it is difficult to say that they were more consequential than Scipio's conquest of Carthaginian Spain and North Africa, which ensured Roman domination of the Mediterranean—a domination that would last for more than 600 years...

...Was his marriage to the Bactrian princess Roxane a love match or a political match (as surely were his later marriages into the Persian royal family...

...The classic short story "The Fog Horn" coming into being during a late night walk on a beach during which Bradbury and his wife came upon the abandoned hulk of a serpentine roller coaster half-buried in sand...

...Never offered cushy appointments in the Big Name schools, he was forced into exile, like Ovid being sent to the desolate shores of the Black Sea...

...Later he escaped to a more comfortable existence at the University of Alabama...

...It would be a disservice to McDonald to suggest that Recovering the Past is any kind of a personal whine or exercise in self-puffery...

...Rogers's main and most passionate argument is not about Alexander but about his historical treatment...

...One such post was at Wayne State University in the wasteland of inner-city Detroit...

...His army committed atrocities, but for the most part these were no more foul than those committed by his opponents...

...Some are extraordinarily beautiful: A strange carnival star named Mr...

...Alexander shut Cleitus up by running him through with a spear—and Alexander immediately regretted that drunken action, too...

...The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, Predicting the Past, Remembering the Future by Sam Weller (MORROW, 400 PAGES, $26.95) Reviewed by Shawn Macomber JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 81...

...Rogers runs through Alexander's life chronologically, outlining some of the main contradictory theories about important events...