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REVIEW BY MARC DESANTIS
Alexander of Macedonia is known as the Western world’s greatest conqueror. Not for nothing has he been given, since antiquity, the appellation ‘the Great’. In just 11 years, he drove his army of superb cavalry and unstoppable pikemen against Greeks, Persians, Scythians, and a host of other enemies, defeating them all.
Genius though he undoubtedly was in the ways of war, Alexander had to be more than an excellent general to maintain his grip on the lands he overran. He had to change himself to become the kind of king who could manage the immense task of pushing his weary soldiers ever onward, while leaving trustworthy officials behind to keep the peace in provinces to his rear.
Ancient historians tended to emphasise Alexander’s decline over time from the young and heroic man who set out to conquer Persia in 334 BC (he was just 22 when he did so) to the often drunk and sometimes blood-thirsty tyrant of his later years. It made for a compelling morality tale. In Alexander at the End of the World, author Rachel Kousser argues otherwise. ‘The last years of Alexander were not just the sordid aftermath of a once impressive career; they were in fact what made him “Great”,’ she says.
Alexander, Kousser explains, came to realise that ‘he could not solve his problems through force alone’. He would have to accept untidy solutions to the issues he faced. Mere compulsion would not secure a lasting domestic tranquillity – the populations of his empire would have to be reconciled to his new regime. He would impose himself on the ancient civilisations of the Middle East, but these would push back and affect Alexander in return. The world that resulted, Hellenistic civilisation – largely Greek in language and culture – endured for centuries, and had a profound influence far afield, especially on Rome, which would have an equally strong impact far and wide.
Kousser’s narrative opens in 330 BC, following Alexander as he takes possession of the spoils left behind at Persepolis by the defeated Persian Great King, Darius III, and accompanying him on his march until his last days in Babylon in 323 BC. Alexander’s war, whether at its inception or its end, was never noble. It started out grim, and became grimmer as time wore on, at least for the Macedonians themselves, as they discovered that their king would not call a halt to his campaign, no matter how much he had won for himself. Conspiracies multiplied, and men who had fought beside Alexander for years were executed or murdered as he became more the Great King of Persia (at least to Macedonian eyes) and less the young and daring king they had known when they’d first set foot on Asian soil.
But Kousser emphasises that Alexander ‘learned to share power with those he conquered’. This was a shrewd move, bringing important, useful men into his government. Out of 20 regional governors, Alexander ‘named a string of 11 Iranians in his last years’. The Persian Empire had always been a multicultural one, and the king was simply accepting this reality by attempting to unite its disparate peoples under himself. Other efforts included an enormous draft of young Persians into the royal army, as well as a mass wedding at Susa, one of the old empire’s imperial capitals, in 324 BC. Those marrying included himself, his best friend Hephaestion, and 90 other Macedonian officers, all of whom were partnered with aristocratic Iranian women.
Though Alexander’s empire scarcely survived his passing, his legacies – cultural and political – endured long afterwards. There are no boring chapters to Alexander’s short life, and Kousser’s work is surely proof of that.
Alexander at the end of the world: the forgotten final years of Alexander the Great
Rachel Kousser
Mariner Books, hbk, 416pp (£26.29)
ISBN 978-0062869685
