Oh What A Time... - #138 Alexander the Great (Part 9)

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

We explore how Alexander’s story echoes through time. In history, his empire shapes Rome, Egypt, and the borders of knowledge itself.Also - is it just us or were 80s and 90s playground not quite up to today’s health and safety standards? If you’ve got something to share on this, do email: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before (and the entirety of the mini-series right now!), why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What a Time early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Hello and welcome to Oh, What a Time, the history podcast asked, would parenting with young children have been impossible in a time before swings and slides? because I've just spent two hours with my kids at the swings and slide what did people do before they existed with like a three year old and a four year old I will tell you what they did

because I am only a year or so older than you so I don't know you should have the same memories as me there were swings and roundabouts and all that kind of stuff in the 1980s it's just they were exceptionally dangerous yes yeah yeah so we are in Haverford West in Pembrokeshire West Wales where I grew up There was a playground very near my primary school, and there was a kind of ride-slash thing called the Witch's Hat,

a.k.a. the fractured skull zone. So they describe this thing to me. What am I looking at with the Witches' Cat? It was shaped like a witch's hat, sort of conical. It was a kind of conical climbing frame that spun. Okay. So you're being spun on a climbing frame by bigger kids. You can get tetanus at 100 miles an hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But obviously, it was on a concrete base. So if you fell off it, wallop, bang, you were down. That's the big change, isn't it? They've now got spongy floors. That's the thing that's changed. You're right. In the 80s and 90s, it was just concrete.

So if you fell off anything, you're off to the hospital. Some horrific injuries on that thing. And every now and then, someone's saying, I think the counsellor should do something. And they never did. Do you remember in the 80s as well, kids roundabouts but there used to be

about eight inches off the floor so there would be a gap underneath in which you could trap your leg get it sucked underneath and slapped. The mangled ankles of it. Also I see an awful lot of Facebook pages and it'll always be

oh I grew up in the 50s when milk came in a glass bottle and mum and dad lived together we'll call him in for your tea at 5pm and we played in sort of bombed out terrorist houses which hadn't been rebuilt after and a blitz.

Just sounds dangerous. The other one for me was the seesaws that would hit the ground so hard that it would vibrate your spine up to. Your brain would rattle. Such was the impact. Yeah, the concussion zone. Like a V2 bomb landing, which is incredible.

You say what did people do before the advent of swings and playgrounds? When I speak to my dad about his childhood in like the 50s, he talks about, That was literally it. It's sort of burnt out cars and abandoned her flights. My dad would go and stay with a friend who lived on a farm and they would piss on an electric fence.

They would pull their trousers down and they would piss so that they got electric shocks in their dicks. That is what you did. Are you kidding? No. That's true. I've got two questions. One is, was this a thing of bravery?

Or on some level, did they enjoy it? Second question, was their hair standing on end? I mean, on the top of their heads, did it make your hair stand on end while you're pissing on the phone? It was a sort of bravery test and a game who can last the longest. I made the point that nobody wins that game. Nobody's winning. So to answer your question, I know it was just extremely dangerous.

And some people died. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. There was also just a lot of sort of like wandering off into woodland. I remember that even from the 80s you'd just go off into an area and see if there was anything to climb

but no not necessarily safe you didn't know what you were going into in a way that we'd never be parented now When my son was about 18 months old there's a cast iron roundabout not far from my house and he was walking towards it and it was being spun very quickly

and it's cast iron and he wanted to see something thing on the Ronderboats and so he peered into have a closer look and I'd have lift him up because it would have knocked his head clean off his body

oh my gosh and I just thought to myself be vigilant man when I grew up I had a big Christmas tree I guess it was I don't know what the actual name for it is but it was basically

a huge Christmas tree that was probably like 50 foot tall it was a conifer a conifer yeah and it had loads of branches inside and I said to my dad, do you think you might be able to build me a tree house?

And he was like, yeah, no worry, son, I'll build you a tree house. I went to school when I came back, what he'd done is we had an old caravan that was being taken to the scrap and the caravan had like a table in the middle of the caravan, like you'd all sit around like a big square of wood. And what had

done, it'd gone up about halfway up the tree I don't know, 20 foot up, and hammered this table into with nails into a couple of branches and then propped a ladder up. So basically I could climb up into this huge fern and just sit in it.

That was the tree out. There was no sides. There was no roof. Do you know what, though? I'd have been up there all day. Yeah. My friend Thomas, his dad was very handy, very good woodworker

and he built him like a proper tree house like in a cartoon. Wow. That had like a roof and windows and everything. And we used to sit there any conflicts in the tree house. Amazing.

Oh, wow. That is absolutely incredible. And then he built him a Thomas a Tank Engine bed, but it took him ages. And then he grew up of Thomas a Tank Engine, but he didn't feel he could tell his dad because he was too old.

And you'd go around to his house to play, but like, what the fuck is that? My friend Francis, when I was growing up, his dad built him an underground air raid shelter. Like, so dug out the garden. Was he a prepper? So there was, it really was like one of those prepper things. And it had an old door you would lift up, which was concealed by turf.

And underneath the garden was this kind of underground bunker. It was a council house. They didn't own. And the council found out about it. And obviously went, you can't do that. That's unbelievable. So they had to fill the whole thing in. But it was like a year of work.

And he had his own little sort of boy cave underneath the, the, garden. That's amazing. I, by contrast, asked my dad for a tree house and he didn't make a tree house. But he said, it's fine. I've got something even better. And I came home from school when I was about eight. And what he'd done is he'd found an old chicken hutch in one of the sheds. My brother had had bantams years ago and he dragged it out. He'd sort of put a bit of old carpet in it and said that was my play thing. So I played in a chicken hutch. That was my thing. It was just on the lawn. I'd crawl in. It was covered. in chicken shit. We already know that Alexander the Great, you already know from the last episode

that Alexander the Great died of typhoid at the age of 33. It's amazing that you didn't die of something. Exactly. I think these health and safety guys get a sort of hard time really. I think sometimes it's good that attitudes have changed. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Our children aren't crawling around in the experiment of ends. So totally, 100%. Progress is good. My dad worked on building sites in the 70s. It's amazing. Oh, yeah, your death? That's my health and safety is poor. Oh, we'd all get the afternoon off if there was a death.

Okay, Dad. What was your granddad's relationship with safety then? He worked down the minds, didn't he? Was he kind of just completely accepting of the utter risks of it all? Yeah, but I think in my experience, those people were very sensible because they knew what the risks were. And they knew how to, so they were very rarely gung-ho. They were brave, but they were.

weren't thick if you know what I mean which I think is the ideal that is the perfect balance exactly what you don't want is the kind of person who before they do something really stupid turned on to their mates and says watch this that's what we're trying they're the kind of people we're trying

to legislate for the watch this brigade absolutely hey Tom watch this there's 40,000 volts in that Tom no Oh my goodness me.

A fair play to your dad. He's a brave man than I am. Now, I tell you who is brave and not thick, the sort of people that has a confidence to email into this show. They do not fear the fact that their emails may be read out and their emails are worth reading out because, as I said, they're not stupid. They write with beautiful flowing prose,

just like Chris Bennett has today. So should we stick off with a little bit of correspondence? Should we do that? Oh, yes, please. Chris Bennett has emailed the show to say, Oh, what an irony. Lads, dear lads. I've been with you pretty much since the beginning.

And I have to say, each one is a banger, not a duff one amongst them. Keep up the outstanding work. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Ref Epp 127 and Walter the Tyler. In my old hometown of Swindon, I know someone had to live there, the one of the many council offices was, and still is actually called the What Tyler House.

Oh. Yeah. And this is where the irony kicks in, he's written in capital letters. It used to be where one would have to go to pay one's poll tax before it was moved to another building up the road. Poor Mr. Tyler would have been spinning these grave fast enough to give the Hadron Collider a run for its money. Enough of this waffle.

Looking forward to the next episode, keep being awesome, Chris Bennett. P.S., I'm going to see if I can get the phrase, they made a real cranes up of that adopted at work. A bit hurtful there. But there you are. What Tyler House is where you would go to pay. your poll tax thoughts on that he didn't have any links with swindon though did he no not that i'm aware i'm i just i'm fascinated by the story of what tyler yeah and i think he is someone obviously i went

to school in wales so i i don't know what it's like but did you study him in in school in england no not really no it wasn't someone that came up i was aware of him but i didn't know a great deal really until we covered it really the thing is with what tyler i can imagine some people if they're asked to name their dream dinner party of anyone alive or dead some people may say what Tyler, but I think if he does come to your dinner party, he's a nightmare. Yeah, quite forthright in his opinions. He's very forthright. He's just, you know, he's spitting as he talks. He's probably turning up drunk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's going to offend some people. It's a nightmare dinner guest.

But at least he doesn't spend his day, he's pissing on lexor and worse. It could be. And I tell you one thing, I'd rather him at my dinner than Alexander the Great. who would put me on edge and that's a copper-bottom guarantee from me do you think Alexander the Great can turn on the charm in a dinner setting ah good question I'd make it look like he had turned on the charm everything he said I would react to like it was the wittiest

although profound thing anyone ever said so I don't think it matters of whether he could or not he's going to get the reaction of a man who has so yeah it's a safe bet that I'm going double thumbs up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he makes a really weak joke and every single time,

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, yeah, yeah, good, good. I'm going to the toilet once every half hour for sort of some deep breathing as well, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a lot of time of me alone going, it's going to be all right, okay, we've got about an hour left,

we can just get pudding done. He'll be off again, it'll be fine. Okay, hello, hi, hi. Both hands on the sink, staring in the mirror, you're fine you've got this just agree with the man but once again to go back on a point we made a few episodes ago

you know if Alexander the Great is feeling a bit murderous you've only got to pop on some like dubstep and you're just going to blow his mind you'll distract him from whatever murders he was planning to commit oh yeah you could just flick and put the telly on showing he stenders or something he'll start dancing to dubstep he'll want a few drinks to loosen it up

oh yeah and when he drinks as we found out from the past, he tends to kill people close to him. Yeah, yeah. So I think you want to be doing anything that avoids him going in sort of drinking, dancing, move, basically. You've got to spike him with ecstasy. You have to. For the good of the dinner party, please.

Please bring out the MDMA. Thank you so much, Chris Bennett, for that wonderful bit of local Swindon knowledge. If anyone else has anything you want to send to the show, there's many ways to do it. And here's how. All right, you hollible. horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. Today we conclude the story of this great dinner party ruining man Alexander the great. I think

should be a really fun episode. He died last time out. If you're joining us now, sorry to ruin that for you. But he is dead, Alexander the Great. And today we're looking at his legacy, aren't we? So later today, I'm going to be looking at his legacy that last still today in literature and music. What are you guys talking about? I'm talking about his legacy in film. And I'm looking at the people he influenced. So, the Alexander legend, because I was we said, I think in part one of everyone, you could argue that he's the most famous man who's ever lived. So there is a legend, there is a myth. The man himself did incredible things. But the accelerant for the Alexander legend was ancient Rome. Now, the Romans were fascinated

by him because they just couldn't believe that there was this man who managed to create an empire that was so massive in so little time. I would say, very briefly, if all the people you'd think would be able to get their head around it, it would be the Romans. because that's very much their ballpark, isn't it? Yeah. Hugely expanding empire. It's like, if you said the people of the Isles of Silly couldn't get their heads around it. Yeah.

Or I go, yeah, I get that. Yeah, yeah. My friend Greg who works in local Timpsons. He's absolutely astonished at the legend Alexander. Yeah, exactly. Not the culture. This is literally their hallmark. But I think it was so massive that they were very, very impressed with him.

So in the last day's of the Republic, and during the time of the emperors, Romans would carry around little cameos of Alexander or wear them as jewelry or decoration. No way. So if that weren't enough, yeah, if that wasn't enough, they'd install mosaics of Alexander as flooring. They'd erect statues of him, paint frescoes of him onto the wall, write about him. And it's not a surprise that most of the main sources we have about Alexander's life all date from the Roman period.

Roman generals, Julius Caesar among them, analyzed his tactics, as would later commanders, including Napoleon all with a view to matching or surpassing his feet. So when was Napoleon in the 19th century? That's amazing. They're still fascinated by this bloke. Well, that shows you how advanced his military techniques must have been if they're still being aped that time after.

So Caesar was a Quester, that's in Roman times, it was a sort of financial administrator slash paymaster. And he was working in Spain when he was 33 years of age, obviously the age Alexander was, died. He apparently became obsessed with reading about Alexander at that time. When he was reading from the history of Alexander, Prutak later wrote, he was lost

in thought for a long time and then burst tears. Wow. And his friends looked at him and they were like, why are you crying? And Caesar replied, don't you think it's sad that Alexander at my age was already king of so many, but I've achieved nothing? Oh. Now,

did you ever have this, especially in your 20s where you'd compare yourself to great people in history? when you were at the same age. My one was the Beatles. They did so much, so young. I'd be like, oh my God, like, you know, McCartney was 25 when Sartan-Pepa came out.

Yeah. And when I was 25, I was like, tempting. You're like, oh, my God. Only now have you matched them. People of my age, I would say, you know, were really impacted by the emergence of Wayne Rooney, who was a couple of years younger than me. And you're like, wow, this guy is so much better than me.

That's such a good point. Yeah, my one was Michael Owen, who is 11 months older than I am. Yeah. And when he scored that goal in the 98 World Cup, I remember thinking, OK, that's fine. Yeah. People develop at different ages. He's doing that, and I'm doing my A-levels, and they're both fine.

So the same year, travelling through Spain, Caesar arrived at what is today, Cadiz, and he saw a statue of Alexander at the city's Temple of Hercules. He heaved a sigh, wrote the historian, Sertonius, as if I had of patience for having as yet done nothing with his life. But for the most part, Romans used Alexander as a way of commenting safely on their own times, on what a recent historian is called the philosophical war against bad government. I suppose it's the equivalent of, if you're in Parliament now, you read books on like government blunders,

and he's sort of like, you'd mention it in a sort of light-hearted way, and then he'd like, yeah, yeah, but really, let's not do that. Yeah. So it's why Curtis says Alexander's so full of faults, booze, alien customs, debauchery and so on. So these things were symbolic of rulers who were bad, basically. So for Seneca, for instance, Alexander was a metaphor for the cruelties of Nero. And in a time when emperors were considered to be living gods who were deified after death, what are we to make of the poet Lucan's insistence on calling Alexander the madman offspring of Philip, basically saying he's a mortal and not a god?

Yeah. But you try telling the Egyptians because they created an entire cult devoted to Alexander. Really? So there's influence. I mean, it just looms solar, also Telemi did. Yeah. Since in this imperial culture, it served his purposes

and helped to cement his rule over that part of Alexander's former empire. So the Ptolemaic dynasty established Alexander as their chief god in place of more traditional Egyptian deities. positioned the high priest of the cult as the chief priest of Egypt. And once Ptolemy had nicked Alexander's bodies, as it was travelling from Babylon to Macedon, erected the king's sarcophagus, which was first located in Memphis,

but eventually placed within the tomb of Alexander in Alexandria as a site of pilgrimage. Wow. So it was to be a major tourist attraction. Isn't that mad? That is remarkable. Yeah, yeah. Tourist attractions back then, before Christ was born.

That's incredible. How did he nick the body as well? I find that remarkable. That's quite an achievement. Yeah, quite a hard thing to do, isn't it? Steal the body of the planet's greatest ever warrior. And is he then smuggling it sort of weekend at Bernie style? Whenever he stopped, he's sort of propping up,

making it look like Alacada's still going, he's still alive. And also not just that, thinking there's a tourist site in this, so we need a gift shop, we need a car park, all of the stuff that, you know, tourist sites need. So it was to be a major tourist attraction. I suppose culturally there was a history of humans being seen as deity. That is part of Egypt's history, it is. If you look at the pharaohs, of course, they all presented themselves as God.

They weren't just men on earth. They were, you know, God incarnate on earth. That's the way it worked, wasn't it? So culturally, that existed. So it was a major tourist attraction, and even Roman emperors made the trip. So Caesar visited in 48 BC and Augustus, Caligula, Cotavian. They all visited as well. So sadly, Alexander's tomb has long since been lost.

And so it's no longer possible to follow in the first. footsteps of Caesar or Augustus. How do you lose it? Well, this is what? I thought it was like immediately lost a Genghis Khan style affair where no one actually knew at all. But I didn't realise like

Julius Caesar had been to the tomb. So it was, it did exist for a period of time. Yeah. You think they'd be able to work it out where it was. Anyway, since Sadie Alexander's tomb has long since been lost. So it's no longer possible to follow in the footsteps of Caesar or Augustus. But other relics reflective of Alexander's posthumous status do survive.

straight just how much he was revered. So if you take, for instance, the Alexander sarcophagus, which was discovered near Sidon in Lebanon, but is now housed in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. So this sarcophagus, which depicts Alexander, but otherwise has got nothing to do with him, comes from the royal mausoleum at Ayah, the burial site of the kings of what was once the Phoenician city state of Saigon. So it shows, in part, the victory of Alexander or the Persians, and is one of the relics of the ancient world that still has traces of its original colour scheme, which is very, very exciting. That's amazing. I love that. I find that absolutely staggering when that's the case.

Yeah. The pigment remains. It's just mind-blown. So he became a historical figure, the subject of biographies, of histories and art. Alexander, as this happened, Alexander became even more entrenched in our understanding of the past. But his legacy wasn't just historical. It was also a figure that expanded the European knowledge of the wider world. So the military campaign had produced vast quantities Basically of paperwork Like maps, measurements, understanding of languages, travel literature All of this, which now demonstrated that the Himalayas existed,

that the Ganges existed, that the ancient Vedic religion existed and so on. So his work or his conquests had really expanded the breadth of human knowledge. I suppose what it's done as well is it's expanded the understanding of the world as a joined-up place. Yeah, yeah. Where you sit amongst everything else. Which must be a dramatic shift in terms of your understanding of life. Because before, for most people, at that point in history,

it would have been quite a closed affair. You live in your small community. You have no idea what's over the hill. You know, that's really what life is. But he spoke to some fishermen. And they were like, yeah, this is the end of the world. So that's it, no. Just see, mate.

Yeah, it's amazing. So 20 years or so after Alexander's death, the Greek writer and diplomat Megasthenes wrote his treatise indica, which was based on his experiences as an ambassador to the Maori Empire, its capital of what is today partner in northeast India. So this was the territory Alexander's men had balked their entering, but which they knew existed, which could now be explored. So Greek geography at the end of the 4th century BC extended, and this is extraordinary, from the British Isles to the borders of Nepal. Wow. That is staggering. I went on holiday to Greece with my mum and dad when I was about 15 or 16. And it was just a really nice place to go with a pool and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it was a nice week.

I'd love to go there now because bloody hell. It was the centre of the world. Yeah. They were the guys, you know, and they won Euro 2004. Now, because Megastinis wrote about these places, so the later Greeks and Romans knew about them as well, and vice versa. So Alexander's military conquests had blazed a trail for a much clearer sense of the world, at least as far as Europe, the Levant, North Africa, Central and South Asia

were concerned. So the sophistication of Roman trade with the Indian subcontinent. And that blows my mind that the Romans were trading with the Indian subcontinent. That followed in Alexander's footsteps along with coins, some of which made it all the way to Sri Lanka. Amazing. So even before the Romans turned up Hellenic-style coinage, sometimes featuring Alexander, sometimes not been in circulation. Some of these are now held at the British Museum where they're known

as the porous coinage after the Indus Valley King who Alexander defeated and then befriended. So all of this is a legacy. It's all the legacy of one individual. Well, not quite actually because Alexander travelled

with tens of thousands of people including historians, engineers and surveyors. So they produced the information for royal consumption for imperial administration and for the creation of a legacy which then contributed

to ancient libraries of So to put it another way, when Britons were still living in round houses and occupied hill forts and painting themselves blue with wode, the Greeks were busy grappling with the cultural differences of faith and language between their world and that of the Indians they'd recently met. Wow. So we were painting our dicks blue. Have you been to Athens and had a walk around? No, I haven't actually. I've not been to Athens. I've not been to Rome. There's two things I must put right. Rome's incredible.

It's just bonkers to me. If you love antiquity, boy, is that worth a holiday. You're just constantly walking around and be like, oh, there's the Parthenon when you're in Greece. So, oh, here's a library, the ruins of a library that was there knocking about two and a half thousand years ago. It just blows my mind that this ancient world was so rich and vibrant. The fine, if you've forgotten a book from that place, for two and a half thousand years. your family now owes us four billion pounds very briefly you mentioned there about his face being on coins what's kind of fascinating about that and that circulation of coins being so widespread it would have been

at that time where occasion where so many people would know what a particular person looks like so obviously there was no press or tv or these sort of stuff you have no so but this the coin really is a way where the image of someone would be spread so far and wide. And we talked at the very beginning of this about the idea him being one of the most famous people has ever lived. That must be one of the reasons. Because wherever you lived across that huge swath of the world,

you knew what that person looked like. Aside from knowing the power he held, what he represented, you knew what his face looked like because of the coin. And that would not be the case for anyone else at that time. I would also definitely ask for a slightly vainer interpretation of what I'd look like if it was a coin of me going all over the world. I'd be like, yeah, just make their hair slightly thicker there

and even up the beard a little bit. Let me take that further, Elle. If you can request for it to be an action shot, what's it going to be? If you could have anything on the coin. I don't know. Killing a rival king and having sex at the same time. I'm probably.

Finish line of the dad's race. Yeah. Let me present one to you, Elle, catching a perfect half on it. you can just outside the box. And you can see it's bending into the top left corner. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the image you want, isn't it?

Body shape! It's great having your face on a coin and the cash and the stamps, etc. But if we go back to the example of Daris III where he was trying to leg it, you know, I was thinking about, you know, is it Louis XVIth during the French Revolution?

He basically gets spotted when he's trying to leg it. So it's fine having your face on everything until you're trying to run away. Yeah, Mussolini was trying to escape because of the cult of personality built. Everyone knew what he looked like. So even though he was disguised as a German soldier. People were like, hang on, are you Mussolini?

No, yes. Yeah, sorry. It's almost in your own interest for them to depict you slightly wrong. Just, you know, make you a bit skinnier. Oh yeah, and if you could whiten the teeth, a bit more, a bit more, a bit more. Have you seen, do you remember Roberta Famini used to play for Liverpool? Yeah, that kind of bit more and a bit more. And a bit, well, yeah, that's perfect.

Well, that's it. For part nine of our Alexander the Great Odyssey, there is one more part, part 10. If you want that part right now, plus loads of other bonus episodes, and we're going to do more miniseries. There's so much to be enjoyed if you were to subscribe to Oh, What a Time,

including those two bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, early release episodes. To sign up, you can go to Oh,wattatatime.com, and sign up there via Wondery Plus or another slice. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow for the conclusion of our Alexander the Great miniseries. Bye. Bye.

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