#232 Alexander the Great

**David Senra** (0:00)
Alexander lived for 32 years and 8 months. He ruled for 12 years and 8 months. He was handsome, embraced hardship, and had the sharpest of minds. He was extremely brave and dedicated himself to both honor and to taking risks.
He had an insatiable appetite for glory.
Even when circumstances were unclear, he was highly skilled in seeing what needed to be done. When it came to drawing up, arming and equipping his army, he was highly knowledgeable.
He was able to raise morale among his soldiers, to fill them with hopes and through his own fearlessness, to dispel their fear in times of danger.
At moments of uncertainty, he acted with the greatest courage.
He kept his promises.
It is true that passion or temper may have sometimes led Alexander astray, that to some degree he inclined towards arrogance. But Alexander was noble enough to repent for his errors.
Whoever would reproach Alexander should first weigh up his own personality and achievements against Alexander's.
It is my opinion that at that time, there was no nation, no city, not even one man who had not heard the name of Alexander.
That is an excerpt from the last chapter of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Alexander the Great, the brief life and towering exploits of history's greatest conqueror, as told by his original biographers. Okay, before I jump back into the book, I want to go back a few episodes ago on episode number 226 I read this book called Heroes. It's by this fantastic writer named Paul Johnson, who I just discovered and absolutely love, and I'm starting to devour his books. And he breaks down, there's like 30 heroes throughout history, Alexander being one of those heroes. He's got this fantastic chapter in the book. It's called Earthshakers. And it's one chapter dedicated to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. And I want to read a few quotes. I want to review some quotes from that book before we jump into this new Alexander biography.
And so this is coming from the book Heroes. Again, you can see the episode and the book link on episode number 226 So first, it's talking about the introduction to this paragraph. It's comparing the traits that Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great both share. And it says, They carved out vast empires for themselves and hammered their names into the history of the earth. Each was brave, highly intelligent, almost horrifically self-assured, whose ambitions knew no bounds.
They were both also selfish, cruel, without scruple, and fundamentally unlovable. But they were admired, inevitably, more perhaps than any other two men of their kind. They were giant-like, almost superhuman in every respect.
And then I just want to pull out a few sentences from just about Alexander. So it says, He was a man of formidable achievements. He was highly creative. He woke up early. His diet was spare. He learned to drink heavily. And that was, in my opinion, his downfall, which I'll get into more in his biography. He was skilled with the sword and the spear, and an expert at all forms of arms drills. This was his trade from boyhood. He dressed to be seen in that flamboyant dress. It goes into detail in the Alexander biography. He dressed like that even during battle, which seems a bit crazy because the fact that he's standing out makes him a greater target. He read Homer all of his life, and he knew the passages by heart. It was to him a Bible. The book was a guide to heroic morality, a book of etiquette, and a true adventure story. He believed he was descended from the gods. This belief gave him a certain fatalism, which made the risk of death unimportant to him. Alexander traveled over 20,000 miles, most of it on foot in difficult mountain and desert terrain. How did he do it? The most important factor, as always with successful statesmen and men of action, was sheer willpower. He had supernatural self-confidence and persistence. There is no substitute for will. He invariably led from the front. He was wounded nine times.
And finally, Alexander thought, decided, and above all moved swiftly. He appreciated the importance of speed and the terrifying surprises speed made possible. He invented the Blitzkrieg. Okay, so now I want to jump into today's book. Reminder, Heroes is 226 Paul, the reason I recommend that book is because, I think it's like 200 pages. The episode I did before that, Episode 225, it was also written by Paul Johnson, and it was a 190-page biography of Churchill. And what I liked about it is Paul writes in very short sentences. There's no fluff. It's very easy to understand. To this book, although the book I'm holding in my hand is only 150 pages, it's more difficult reading, and I'll tell you why. Because outside the introduction, so the introduction is going to be written by this guy named Michael Wood. The rest of the text is biographies of Alexander that are 2,000 years old. Okay, so it says, The text in this collection are drawn from three ancient biographies of Alexander the Great, who died in Babylon in 323 BC at the age of just 32, having conquered half of the known world.