The Ancients - Alexander The Great vs Julius Caesar

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

They’ve both been described as the greatest military commander in the ancient world, but who really takes the title (if either of them)? Alexander, the undefeated conqueror of one of the largest empires the world had yet seen, or Caesar, a leader who was critical in expanding and creating what later became the Roman Empire?For this episode, Tristan is joined by Dr Simon Elliott, author of Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar: Who was the Greatest Commander in the Ancient World? Together, they analyse their leadership styles, victories, and their tactical and strategic genius, to finally answer who really was the greater military leader.Order Tristan’s book today: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perdiccas-Years-323-Alexanders-Successors/dp/1526775115/ref=zg_bsnr_271237_68/260-7675295-7826601?pd_rd_i=1526775115&psc=1While you’re here, don’t forget to leave us a rating and review - let us know who you think was the greatest leader.For more ancient content, subscribe to our Ancient History Thursday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to the Android or Apple storeMusic:Phoenix Rising - Edgar Hopp

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, we are kicking 2022 off with a bang because we are talking about Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar, who was the greatest military commander. This is going to be a fun episode. A few weeks back, I headed down to Dr.

Simon Elliott's house down in the southeast. He's written a new book all about Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar. Which of them was the greater commander? He's analysed their leadership styles, their strengths, their weaknesses and this was a really fun conversation. You might know Simon, he's been on the podcast a few times before for instance for a podcast all about the 9th Legion and its mysterious disappearance. He's a Romanist, he does a lot around Julius Caesar. He actually came on the podcast to talk about Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain

not too long ago. And as you might know, I'm a bit of an Alexander the Great geek myself. So this had the recipe of being an incredible podcast. We had a lot of fun. And so I hope it lives up to expectations and even exceeds your expectations. So without further ado, to kick off 2022, here's Simon and myself talking about Julius Caesar versus Alexander the Great. Simon, it's good to have you back on the podcast again. As always, I love coming on, talking with you guys on the podcast. We talk about fantastic

sort of subjects in ancient history, and today is one of my favourite topics of them all. Well, there's going to be a lot of debate. there's going to be a lot of back and forth today Simon. We can't get rid of you on the podcast so it's always good to have you on the show and we are doing it. I'm like the ghost in the machine. Exactly, the ghost in the machine but the ghost, a good ghost and we're doing it in a lovely place today as well. It's a beautiful, beautiful place that you've got here. Lovely to do it in person but you do mention it is a big topic. Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar almost against each other because comparing two of the greatest military commanders

from ancient history. Not just military commanders, I mean, two of the greatest leaders of ancient history. So this is based on my most recent book, Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar, who is the greatest commander in ancient history. But actually you need to spread it much wider to look at both of their sort of respective stories,

not just in terms of fighting, but sort of their broader societies as well, because they have very different stories. They are two of the best known figures, not just in the ancient world, but also in the entirety of world history. I mean, Alexander the Great, my own son's named after Alexander.

And then Julius Caesar, you know, the guy that sort of gave us the sort of name for the Kaiser and the Tsar. Both of them sort of military and political leaders, which despots and dictators and leaders more benevolent have starved themselves on ever since. Certainly sort of in the ancient and medieval world and even today. since, certainly sort of in the ancient and medieval world and even today. But in approaching this book, what I decided to do was actually sort of break down their stories into two halves of the book. So the first half of the book is about Alexander, the second half of the book is about Caesar, and then I have a conclusion when I review what I've looked at for both of them before coming to my conclusion, based on a certain set of criteria that I set out in the conclusion and within each of the two sections one on Alexander one on Caesar

I then break that down into four parts so there are eight chapters the first part is about the sort of like the basic history on the one hand Macedon the kingdom of Macedon and on the other hand the basic history of republican Rome and then for each of them I then look at their own biographies so there's a chapter-length biography of Alexander and a chapter-length biography of Caesar. I then look at the military systems of firstly the Macedonians and then the Republican Romans and finally to enable us to sort of flesh out some of the key aspects of their styles of command and control on the battlefield what was good what was bad i look at some of their best known campaigns

and battles of each of them and so there are the eight chapters and it proves a really really useful way of actually approaching the whole subject because actually focusing on one and then the other and then reviewing both in the conclusion and having to read both chapters before doing the conclusion actually really enabled me to focus on what they were good at what they were bad at and who was the best and we'll finish today on me telling you controversially who i think was the best intriguingly when i posted sort of any developments as i do a lot on social media about how this book's been progressing i can guarantee you on facebook in particular where a lot of my followers are lovers of ancient history and are war gamers like I am and play toy soldiers

people don't comment on the book they just tell me what they think so half of them are saying Alexander you idiot and half of them are saying Caesar you idiot so it's almost like you can't win because everybody has an opinion so let's have a look at them both in turn

so in terms of the origins of Alexander the Great well Alexander the Great is his father's son he's the son of philip ii king of macedon who is one of the great if not greatest of the macedonian kings in terms of what he did for the macedonian state because it was he through his time as a hostage learning from the thebans at the beginning of the fourth century bc that saw the evolution of the g hoplite-based military system towards something which would later become what he's turned into the Macedonian military system.

So he went from having this system where you have the hoplite-based phalanx to having the pike-based phalanx of the Macedonians, which was a much more dangerous beast. It was he that doubled down on the quality of his own shock cavalry which set the macedonian cavalry apart from their greek counterparts who still largely use skirmishing cavalry it's he that revolutionized the siege train of the macedonian army which allowed it to tackle and take out any fortification it came across so he revolutionized the macedonian military system and then he was assassinated and

his son alexander took over and when his son alexander took over he inherited all of this so you could say in a sense that alexander had it all on the plate from the point he began his conquest of the ackermanid persian empire except he had a rather long way to go didn't he basically he had his entire known world so alexander most of his adult life, and remember he died at 32, 33, spent most of his adult life actually on this Anabasis, this Homeric process of trying to conquer the Persian Empire. Not trying, he did conquer the Persian Empire. Then didn't know where to stop.

So he kept going and kept going. So he finds himself in modern Afghanistan. He finds himself in modern Central Asia. He finds himself in the Punjab, planting cities with his own name here and there, planting cities named after his horse, planting cities named after his dog, earlier going to Egypt and thinking that as he returned from Egypt that he was a god. This is one of the most incredible stories in actual fact in the entirety of world history. It's a story in actual fact that I as an author, if I went to a historical fiction publisher and pitched it, they'd laugh me out of the office

because it's almost too unbelievable. But it did take place. You know, we know it took place. And then his inheritance for the rest of the world was the Hellenistic kingdoms, which later come into conflict with Rome. And then throughout the rest of history, he has legacies everywhere around the world. This is Alexander the Great, one of the great figures of world history. There, let's bank that aside. Let's use the way I structured the book. We'll now move on to Julius Caesar,

who has a completely different upbringing. So Julius Caesar is a member of the Julii, Gentiles or clan. It's interesting actually where his name comes from actually. Julius Caesar, the Caesar, many people think it's from something like a Caesarian birth or something like that but in actual fact there's no evidence at all that he had a Caesarian birth. He had a perfectly normal birth. His mother may have actually lived longer than he did and if you're a lady who had a

Caesarian section in the ancient world you'd probably die and his mother clearly didn't die so he probably had a very normal birth. We think actually that he got the name Caesar because of the activities of a fall that fall bear because he wasn't the first Gaius Julius Caesar the first Julius Caesar lived at the time of the second Punic war and apparently single-handedly so he's a pretty tough guy killed an elephant and the Carthaginian Punic name for elephant is Kaiser which becomes Caesar and so it becomes a sort of a cognome and a nickname Caesar and so 150 years later our Geist Julius Caesar has his cognome is still named after an elephant which I think is beautiful by the way because if you go through to the Kaiser William II and the First World War etc that means that clearly his name

the Kaiser is starred after Caesar. He probably didn't realise that it was actually originally starred after Elephant. So it's Elephant William II. One of the great quirks of history there, Tristan. So Julius Caesar comes from this clan, the Gentese, the Julii, and he's not a very famous Gentese clan. And it's also not a very famous branch of the Gentese or clan either. So he's not born to greatness at all.

He's at the top of society. He's in a senatorial level family in the society in which he lives. So he's at the top of society, but he's not born to greatness in the way that Alexander the Great was born to greatness. And then he spends his entire adult life life his father dies when he's 16 he spends his entire adult life living in the shadow of this amazing clash of two political cultures in rome the optimates pro-senate party and the popularis pro sort of radical party as it were the right and the left of their day if you wish of the roman world he's on the popular side of things

and everything that happens in his life is set against the backdrop of their day, if you wish, of the Roman world. He's on the popular side of things. And everything that happens in his life is set against the backdrop of that. Initially, he's a pawn within it. Later, he's a leader within it. And he's always fighting. He's always fighting politically or he's always fighting militarily. There's never a stage in his life where not only could he stand still, but he's allowed to stand still.

So, for example, as he begins to rise to political prominence he's borrowing money and he finds himself from a fairly sort of less well off sort of family and a less well off clan coming across the likes of the crassest the richest man in the world the roman world um pompey the great etc and then you know little old julius caesar so he's borrowing money and he's always punching above his weight and in so doing he's always exposing himself so he's always trying to stay one step ahead of people who do him down as he fights his way to the top this is the reason intriguingly why he ultimately pumps for either being a pro-consul so a governor in charge of a province or a consul in Rome because they're the only two posts where he can't be sued so therefore he's free from being sued by his

creditors and his political opponents so the reason why he plumps for going to Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul as the pro-consul at the beginning of the Gallic Wars is because he's safe from prosecution the reason why he later crosses the Rubicon and then forces his way into Rome and forces out Pompey the Great is because he knows at the end of his Gallic Wars in Gaul he's vulnerable and the Senate won't give him what they want to make him invulnerable so he basically just risks all on the roll of the dice which is a typical Caesarian thing to do. Then he ends up fighting the series of very sanguineous civil wars against first Pompey the Great and then later the leading up to Martes. And all the way through to his assassination,

he's always fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting. He can never stand still. So you've got two completely different stories here. You've got the story of the boy born to greatness who actually and usually turns out to be as great as his peers and his father expected him to be in a spectacular fashion by conquering the whole known world. But he's born to it. And on the other hand, Julius Caesar, who has to fight for everything and again comes to dominate everything in his own known world. But it costs him his life two very different stories so how would you respond if i challenge that as a great interviewer would do let's say

with alexander the great and his rise to greatness his background as he mentioned he is born into this royal family but what about let's say how do his challenges compare when let's say looking at the polygamous nature of philip ii that actually Alexander does have an elder half-brother who initially we hear is actually the person who Philip is looking to be his successor until something happens to this Aridaeus. We'll go perhaps near the end of Philip's life when he marries another lady and then there's a new child.

And then perhaps that could be a threat to Alexander or perhaps other threats he might face from other court factions within this newly united Macedonia which continues into the reign of Alexander himself how would you respond to those challenges when compared to Caesar it's worth going back to the nature of the Argaic court okay so although succession was common in the Argaic court if you're a member of the Argaic family any member of the Argaic family could pitch at the death of a given king to become the new Argaid king. So it was never, ever a shoo-in that Alexander would become the king of Macedon. Never a shoo-in, number one. Number two, there are many occasions as a young man, a boy and a young man in actual fact, when he was under threat.

During the periods that you talk about, when he has to flee with his mother to Epirus, etc. during the periods that you talk about, when he has to flee with his mother to Epirus, etc. However, I think from a young age, it would have been apparent to Philip II, who I think really was the real deal, actually. I think Philip II was one of the greatest rulers of the ancient world, was very pragmatic, hot-headed, but very pragmatic, and as good a ruler as you'll get in terms of a king in the ancient world. I think from a young age, Philip II knew Alexander the Great was going to be his successor. And I don't think at any stage after that, despite all the various things which happened, there was any real threat to that, especially once he took to the battlefield and proved himself in the eyes of his father.

Whether Alexander realised that or not, I don don't know but i still think he was always effectively the heir apparent whereas caesar was never guaranteed greatness and even right through until the end of the civil wars in spain at the very end of the late period of the caesarean civil wars he would have been anywhere near a position to rest on his laurels because he would have always been looking over his shoulder i think alexander always was destined to be the king and because of his nature then was always destined to greatness well if we therefore move on from rise to greatness it seems like caesar has a harder time getting there which is very very commendable himself, if you're looking at that light. But let's then talk about another area, which I know you cover in your book.

And this is the whole idea of self-belief and destiny. Wow, that's a great point. Okay, well. Go. There, you could say there's a huge degree of commonality. I think if you were to look at any three figures in history to say that they had an innate sense of self-fulfillment and destiny three of them that you could choose would be Caesar and Alexander or probably Napoleon

two of those are covered in my book and they're classical world figures they both had this incredible sense of destiny Alexander I think born to greatness and then proved worthy of being born to greatness as well given this fabulous education embedded in the amazing world of Homer where he thought that almost certainly that he was leading a sort of Homeric religious conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire you know sort of almost a sort of a fulfilling destiny on the one hand and Caesar also in his own way doing exactly the same kind of thing by the same token julius caesar clearly

also had this amazing sense of self-destiny remember his father died when he was the age of 16 which is probably why the family were impecunious and he was impecunious all the way through his life in a sense because his father had previously been the pro-consul of the province of asia which is the province where the romans went to make their money basically if you're the pro-consul there that should set your entire family and their descendants for life but his father died young and it didn't happen then he got caught in the toing and froing of the civil wars of the later Roman Republic to achieve what he achieved in his life Julius Caesar clearly also had an incredible sense of self-destiny and actually it will be fascinating to see them both put side

by side and to see who psychologically dominated the other in conversation etc because actually it's got to be a very close-run thing again i would just reflect on the fact that to achieve what he had to achieve against what was set against him ca Caesar's sense of self-destiny probably played an even greater role in his success than Alexander's did because it kept him on point despite the fact that time and again he suffered setbacks and he suffered opponents who were completely set within his own society, let alone a foreign society, who wanted him to lose. Is it fair to say that Caesar's self-destiny, part of his inspiration is Alexander? That is an absolutely fascinating point to make. I mean, we have this wonderful story, and it's absolutely accurate. We have this wonderful story, don't we, of Caesar in his early

30s, knowing this was the age when Alexander died, being in Cadiz, going to a temple and seeing a statue of Alexander and touching it and weeping because he'd achieved so little in his life and Alexander had achieved so much. And in actual fact, you can see throughout the narratives of all of the Roman warlords of the later Republic, whether it's Pompey, Crassus, earlier Sulla, Marius, certainly Julius Caesar, Octavian, that they all saw Alexander the Great as this incredible role model if you go into the house of the faun in Pompeii what's the thing you're drawn to? for me, it's not the faun it's the battle scene with Alexander the Great

is thrusting his Ziston lance at Darius and his chariot you know, this is a very powerful piece of symbology for the later Roman Republicans and a real driving force and in actual fact Caesar will be shocked shocked that we're even having a conversation comparing him wondering who's the greatest between the two of them because if you'd have asked Caesar himself he'd have said don't be an idiot Simon it's Alexander it's very interesting when you actually do think of it through the lens

of what Caesar thought himself isn't it and how, how titanic a player Alexander the Great was. And let's actually keep that on the mat as a tangent at the moment. This idea, because I feel it's right for us to mention it, in what the Romans thought of Alexander. You know, they had these great games, didn't they? What if Alexander had marched west and had faced the Romans in battle? Well, this is the period, of course, we're talking about with Julius Caesar after the fall of the mighty Hellenistic kingdoms in the east. This is a period, of course, when the Romans have begun to, for over 100 years,

appropriate the fabulous wealth of the Hellenistic east. So to them, looking eastwards, it's all very glamorous, et cetera, et cetera. But the key thing when you're looking at the two of them as a military commander is to think about them in the cold light of day, very, very objectively. And there in actual fact, in the book, I look at three things in particular, which enabled me to come to the conclusion. So number one was the command and control they were able to exert in their own military systems and how it differed number two was public relations in actual fact because the reason why we're talking about them today is because of contemporary public relations and then the third one is finally who was the greatest commander on the battlefield and if i pick on them one by one command and control in sort of an argaeid Macedonian army was all through the king

if you're an Argaeid Macedonian monarch you were the leading member of a very very aggressive hard drinking opinionated hard fighting aristocracy and you're expected to be the best at all of those things of all of them and in battle you are not allowed to do anything other than lead your troops from the front line. There's no option to do elsewhere. You find actually in contemporary history that any commander that does something different actually is singled out as being a bit weird so your command and control is this you set up the battle plan think alexander before gorgomela you set up those very very very complex battle plan by the way so he had ultimate faith in the amazing military establishment he had because it's a very

complicated battle plan with a battle that many of his leaders thought he was going to lose, let alone him, although he had complete faith in victory. You set in place your battle plan the night before the battle. You make your arraignments. The following day, you lay out your troops where you want them on the battlefield. You ride up and down the front of your army to motivate your men to fight on your behalf

because you're going to lead them from the front. And then for Alexander, using the classic anvil and hammer tactic of philip ii and alexander the idea was for the phalanx to pin their opponent's main battle line highlight a weakness in the battle line and then for the shock cavalry led by the king alexander to smash through and that's what happened that's how the battle that's a very very broad way of saying it but that's what happened and then darius ii flees but once the battle's in train Alexander has to let it go he can't do much to influence it Gorgomila actually they have this famous incident where Alexander's on the verge of complete victory pursuing Darius off the battlefield he's fled

and then he gets called back by Parmenion who's looking after the left wing and rear of the Macedonian formation which is allegedly in danger of folding and you can almost hear through the contemporary historians the screeches the harrowing howls of Alexander shouting shouting at the gods my god I'm so close and I've got to go back to look after this idiot general at the back you can just imagine the sort of like the complexity of the decision he's got to make he's going against against his battle plan. It's one of the very few occasions in a battle led in the Macedonian way where he has an opportunity to do something different. And then basically saves his left and rear, wins the battle, but Darius flees. So he doesn't finish it there and then.

He has to wait until Darius is assassinated. Now, Caesar's way of fighting a battle is completely different. It's much later for a start. So this has gone through the evolution, the hotbeds of conflict, the Second Punic War, the Macedonian Wars, all the Punic Wars, the Macedonian Wars, the Roman Seleucid War, and various manifestations of civil war in the Roman world as well. It's gone through the Cimbrian Wars as well,

where the German Cimbrians have sort of repeatedly defeated the Romans. So the way Caesar fights and also the way that Caesar commands his army is very very different. So he's much more comfortable being at the rear. He's much more comfortable fighting his battle in the way that a modern commander would fight a battle. Think of the difference actually it's an analogy I used in one of the essays for my master's degree. battle midway actually where you look at the way that nimitz fought his battle with the way that yamamoto fought his battle yamamoto's at sea so on the front line with the japanese fleet nimitz is not nimitz is at the back he's actually in hawaii with all of his intelligence resources available to him and eventually the americans win the battle and there's lots of other reasons why but that's one

of the key reasons i think command and control so caesar often positions himself in his battle line where he can control things much more agreeably the battle of pharsalus is a great example where he's positioned between two of the roman lines so he knows where to deploy the reserves and it proves crucial when pompey's cavalry breakthrough early in the battle and he can redeploy some legions to deal with it. However Caesar also is a warrior in his own right so when he has to fight he does fight so when he has to help steady the lines he fights in the front rank at Alesia when he has to engage to steady the lines like the battle of Munda for example he again fights in the front line so he will fight when he needs to to steady the line look at the early engagements for example fighting the nerve in 57 bc in his gallic campaigns again he's forced to fight in the front

lines but the key word is they're forced he's forced to fight in the front line because he needs to steady the ranks and show that he's a military leader but he's forced to fight and when he does he's very brave but he's forced to fight alexander chooses to fight there's the difference caesar only fights when he has to alexander always has to fight he has no choice and it's so interesting isn't it it's whether it's galgamela although i think you're a bit harsh on parmenion there you know poor parmenion on the left he had a lot to deal with at that battle but you know whether it's the big battle at Galgamela or whether it's like him storming the city of Cyropolis or the city of Multan in India or Uzbekistan Afghanistan whether

it's a huge large-scale battle or it's a siege or it's a river crossing or trying to get round the pass as you say he's always there he's always at that point of the battle where he has to lead the decisive breakthrough as it were he's got to be at the battle where he has to lead the decisive breakthrough, as it were. He's got to be at the place where that decisive breakthrough is made, which, as you say with Caesar, is completely different. You can make a very good case, actually, that one of the reasons Alexander died so young, for whatever the cause of his ultimate death, one of the reasons Alexander died so young was because he had to fight that way all the way from probably the age of 14.

Let's say he died at 32 33 so for the majority of his life he was fighting you know think alexander later in life he'd suffered multiple illnesses fevers etc these are macedonians from the balkans finding themselves in the jungles of the punjab in the wastes of central asia you know so he's wracked with illness he's been wounded from fighting on the front time multiple times been heavily wounded twice once nearly killed and also probably absolutely loaded with ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder because basically he's spending most of his life at the point of a sword this might explain his drinking by the way the letter to drink very heavily maybe it's the reason why he's trying to cope with the emotional challenges of the lifestyle that he had to lead. Whereas Julius Caesar, who's a later classical Hitler leader,

had much more control over what he had to do on the battlefield. And, you know, it was not the done thing for a Roman consular leader to flee a battlefield and leave their army to die, but they survived. But some did. I don't think Caesar would, but some did. Whereas Alexander, it wouldn't even have been sort of remotely in his thinking, you know, he'd go down with his men. Welcome to Gone Medieval, the podcast that will dust off and polish up some of the medieval period's most fascinating characters and stories. So this is a really kind of funny way where,

you know, medieval people differ from us immensely because as far as they are concerned, sexual desire and interest in sex is a feminine trait. It's a very difficult one, isn't it? I mean, I think that Henry I did not probably intend to be buried under a school and he is one of the great kings of medieval history. We found that about 18% of our sample had evidence of bunions. So we think this change over time is directly related to the type of footwear that people were wearing. I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis. And on Gone Medieval, we'll tell you just why the so-called Dark Ages really weren't that dark after all. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit

wherever you get your podcasts. So, well, you mentioned wounds there, so let's then go on to the next, which seems logical next step, which is personal courage of these two titanic figures. How do they compare? Both equal, pretty equal there, actually. I think they're both had incredible amounts of personal courage so you match this innate sense of belief with both of them, this sense of

destiny with incredible courage with clearly supreme skills on the battlefield as a leader at strategic and tactical level and you end up with these two titans of military leadership in any phase of history. Absolutely any phase of history but to answer your question directly i think they both were very personally brave and if we move further

on from that let's have a look at like admiration by their soldiers the rank and file but also their subordinates so with alexander you know the soldiers famously follow him all the way to the high fastest river until they ultimately say no. I know it's a hypothetical situation, but do you think Caesar, with his legionaries and with his subordinates, people like Labienus, like Mark Antony, do you think they would have done likewise? Do you think they would have been able to follow Caesar? They would have followed him all the way to the Hyphasis or further. What do you think? Who has more admiration among their men, among who followed them? It's just a brilliant brilliant question it's a really brilliant question because i mean remember caesar's campaign he was planning at the point when he was assassinated was parthia because he wanted to do

something that no roman had done that crassus had crassus have fatally failed at looking at the forces they got right so for the majority of alexander's career through to the punjab campaign i think that he got complete loyalty from his army but then he suffered a series of mutinies all the way through to his death because he had a vision for his empire which ultimately was out of step with that of the core of the macedonian royal army he was much more agreeable to having sort of a very homogenous empire where all of the peoples of this former Achaemenid Persian Empire, now the Macedonian Empire, had a role to play. And he started incorporating Persian troops, Indian troops into his army, which didn't go down well with the Macedonians.

So I think to the point when he got to the Punjab towards the end of his active career, he carried most of them with him in a very law sense, but ultimately they mutinied. And they wouldn't go with him any further. And then when he tried to change the nature of the Macedonian Royal Army, began to count against him.

I've got a feeling that I don't want the listener to think there's a pattern here as I go through the logical thought processes in this interview, that I'm always coming to the conclusion Caesar's better. But that being said, if you look at Caesar's core troops, towards the end of his campaigning, he was probably leading 30 legions. That's an incredible force.

And then he got to find money to fund that as well. And he got the fleets which he was operating in the Mediterranean. And then he got his own elite troops like the 10th Legion as well and the veteran legions which have fought with him for example in his Gallic campaign and then another key differentiator is that the majority of troops Alexander utilised were the core Macedonian Royal Army whereas Caesar created probably more legions from scratch than any other

republican Roman military leader. One of the key points of difference actually when you look at the loyalty of the troops of Caesar and the troops of Alexander is actually to look at the Marian reforms of the Roman legions so that the Marian reforms took place in the wake of multiple defeats of the Roman legions of the mid-republic against the German Cimbrians, the Cimbrian War, when legions were being annihilated. And Marius had to completely reform the military establishment of the Romans and he created the legions which we see all the way through the Principate Empire,

which were 6,000, 5,000, 500 men strong, with all the men armed in the same way. But the key thing here is that for the first time now there's no wealth qualification to become a legionary so the poor can join the legion and therefore this poor man who joins the legion and gets a middle class salary at the risk of his life but nevertheless a middle class salary is therefore absolutely completely and utterly loyal to the warlord Caesar who is in charge of paying him. Caesar creates more legions than any other republican Roman warlord therefore he's commanding let's say

30,000 men who are absolutely completely totally utterly loyal to him no matter what because firstly they need to be paid and the only person that's going to pay them is him. So actually in terms of loyalty even set above and beyond loyalty because of battlefield success. So you have this situation where these new legionaries are completely, totally, utterly loyal to their political leader Caesar because he's going to pay them. And if that's 30,000 men, then they're not going to go away. They're going to be loyal to Caesar all the way through to the point he's assassinated. I guess it's no coincidence that following the deaths of Alexander and Caesar respectively, their former troops who loved them so much, following

Alexander's death, there's a mutiny in Babylon among his former veterans who want to make sure that they're represented in the division of his empire that follows. And with Caesar's veterans who outlive him, I guess it's no surprise that these two groups of soldiers, the Macedonian veterans of Alexander and the Roman veterans of Caesar, that both of these units following their deaths of Alexander and Caesar, they become the elite fighting forces of their time. They become the most highly sought after soldiers in the area of the world following the deaths of Alexander and Caesar. You know what, it's an amazing point to make Tristan actually and you know one of the things I wish I could have seen in history was the dawning look on the faces of Caesar's assassins when they realised they got it all wrong.

When they realised, hold on a minute minute these legionaries they really were loyal to him actually we better leg it i know let's go to greece and you get the same with alexander as well where you know his troops i think something different with alexander actually i think actually a lot of his troops may be ashamed a lot of his veteran veteran troops remember some of these pike phalangites are going to be in their 40s now, some of the Silver Shields, former high pacifists, and some of his line phalangites. A lot of them are going to be ashamed, actually, when they look back on the fact that when Alexander called on them, as an example, go even further east, or to follow his gut feeling that he should incorporate more Persians into the Macedonian military. They should have gone along with it and they didn't. So there may have been a feeling of being ashamed there and then suddenly feeling almost alone because no matter how amazing many of the figures of the Hellenistic world which followed were, many of them who were around

his deathbed when he died. And think of Ptolemy as an example. Think of all the later Hellenistic monarchs as an example. To them at that point, they'd have seen Pygmies compared to the greatest figure of history to their day, Alexander the Great. So it's a really good point to make. Absolutely. Those figures, those generals trying to acquire the loyalty of those veterans and silver shields, you know, it's one of the great challenges that several of them face, from Perdiccas to Eumenes and so on. The key thing you can do there, then,

is segue through to how do we know all this about these two great figures in history, Caesar and Alexander. Well, we know this because of public relations, because in their own ways, they both were amazing at telling their own stories. All right, let's go on to PR, then. Let's go on to PR. I know you want to go on to PR, so we'll go on to PR now.

Well, speaking as a PR man, I think they're both the greatest PR men of the ancient world Alexander took historians with him you know he took military engineers he took civil engineers he took geographers and he took historians so he knew he wanted to have his anabasis in these conquering the Achaemenid Persian empire removing the threat of Persian conquering Greece forever he wanted to have that written and in his own terms caesar himself wrote his own history i mean he probably is the greatest p.r. man of the ancient world simply because everything we know about him is because of what he wrote which is amazing really it's almost a sweet spot for us somewhere in public relations

to make sure that they're absolutely on the message well we're all on the message about julie caesar because the only thing we know about him is because of what he wanted us to know about him. At least with Alexander, we get a degree of, an only degree, clearly, of objectivity, because you have some of the history being reinterpreted very, very close, actually, to when his own historians wrote it. And he, of course, actually had Caliph Eames, one of his own historians, killed. So in terms of being able to spin everything he did in a positive light, that may have been sort of fairly negative in the way he did it.

But nevertheless, most of what we know is through the historians which were with him. With Caesar, it's all because of what he said. It's absolutely amazing to think that we're talking about Julius Caesar because of words which he dictated in 57, 56, 55 BC. How do we know Julius Caesar came to Britain? Because he tells us he did it in 55 and 54 BC in his own words. That's amazing. I'm reading the Gallic Wars at the moment.

It is grippy as an ancient book to read. It must be one of the most popular ancient history books, pieces of literature that we have surviving. Maybe Marcus Aurelius' Meditations might be up there. But Julius Caesar's commentaries, that must be up there near the top especially circling back to what we said at the very beginning especially because of the role model that he has been throughout history alexander has been as well but caesar has been throughout history to other leaders civil and military who would have grown, until the pre-modern world certainly,

reading Caesar's own words. So when you are a Renaissance prince and you're growing up and you want to read about Alexander the Great, what are you going to do? You're going to read your Polybius, you're going to read your Diodorus, etc. You're not going to read Alexander himself. When you want to read about Alexander conquering Gaul, you're reading about Caesar himself.

You're reading what he wants you to know. Because Alexander becomes this more mythical figure with the Alexander romance, of course, as well. So, you know, there's kind of like King Arthur-like kind of Alexander that they'd have to read about, not the actual real one. Well, that's an interesting point to make there, actually, which is a differential between the two, because the way that they've both been appropriated throughout history since. Caesar's fairly straight, a military and political leader. No sort of like glamour there. Basically, he's a very, very successful political and military leader. Alexander, though, is this amazingly glamorous figure, which is one of the big

differences between the two I pull out in the book about why Alexander turns out to be this glamorous figure that appears in the narratives of parts of the world that he never went to, Ethiopia, for example, whereas Caesar is a very straight political and military leader. Well just before we really go into legacy, before we start wrapping up, one other area which seems really important for all military commanders and sometimes overlooked is of course logistics and the attention to detail. Yes. Now how do these two compare in that regard? Very close again, in actual fact it's one of the traits i actually sort of bring out in the conclusion to compare them they're very very similar starting with alexander alexander has the most incredible logistics nightmare to deal with

basically he's conquering all of the known world so it's like putting the map of middle earth on the table and saying right i want the lot how do i do it and actually he's very practical in the way he does it when he can go down river systems he always goes down a river system great example when he's approaching the gorgomela campaign he has the option of going down the euphrates valley but in the middle of summer when it's very hot and he doesn't he goes down the tigris valley to the north which is what pulls him towards arbor and then um gorgomela because he knows it'll be cooler and he knows that the logistics will therefore be much easier for him and then he's leaving logistics bases on the way and then manning them with not just the troops to control them so that the dot to dot to dot to dot on his conquest which is incredibly lengthy

he's controlled but also putting strong military leaders in place to control them so antigonus the one-eyed for example example, who's controlling Anatolia for him, to make sure that that very beginning of the logistics chain is in place. And he plays a very important role when we think of the Persian counter-attack. He holds the line. He keeps that logistics venue open, as you say. And then later, of course, he gets the nearest person to actually get the entirety of Alexander's empire. But that that's another podcast that's another podcast indeed but julius caesar julius caesar also is very mindful but on a smaller scale clearly because it's not transcontinental it's usually continental with him of his own logistics supplies and often often in say in the gallic campaign caesar campaigns for

the campaigning season and then withdraws certainly himself to cisalpine Gaul and make sure that he's building the logistics ready for the next campaign and again it's of course Caesar who invades mythical Britain across terrifying Oceanus that is more Game of Thrones than Game of Thrones whether that's a PR exercise or not that's an incredible absolutely incredible feat to do an amphibious operation of that nature but then again when he starts the Pharsalus campaign, this begins with an amphibious operation, transporting his troops in the middle of winter, remember, from Italy through to Albania to begin the campaign. So Caesar himself is also a very, very top level logistics planner as part of his military campaigning. So they're both right up there. Very much so. And to wrap it all off, then we've kind of hinted at it already they're talking about the

more mythical alexander the more straightforward caesar the legacy of these two titans how do you go about trying to compare these two figures when looking at their huge legacies firstly legacy is very difficult to deal with in the modern world we We as modern historians, because I'm in my 50s, I grew up being taught that Alexander the Great was this great conqueror, that Julius Caesar was a great military and political leader, etc. But of course, being a modern historian, we look at the negative aspects of their stories as well as the positive aspects. I can remember, Tristan, when I was doing my master's degree at KCL in Worcester, in a debate talking about Alexander the Great, when people focused on all aspects of his legacy. One of which was the fact that to certain parts of the areas that he conquered today is considered to be the devil.

He defeated the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Certainly I would imagine not in Iran a hero in any way shape or form. And also he's a conqueror. People lost their lives in thousands in millions because of what he did so there are certainly negative aspects to put in place i do think there you should if you look at him as purely a political and military leader through the eyes of people who lived at the time and the ways related at the time which is where we get the fact that he's called the great because to them he was the great and by the same token caesar is never bashful is he in the way

that he tells us about the way that he tells us about the way that he conquered Gaul. Caesar himself tells us that he killed a million Gauls and he enslaved a million Gauls. Is that going to be of the people who lived in Gaul at the time? It's going to be very significant. The reasons why the Romans probably incorporated the conquered territories in Gaul into the Roman war so quickly and easily was because the place had been decimated, you know, to have been absolutely gutteredted because these sanguineous campaigns of conquest so there are negative aspects the positive aspects that people focus on even today are them as military leaders and political leaders and the book i've written focuses on them as military leaders and i look in the book at traits and

their legacies before coming to the conclusion and here's the interesting thing Tristan when I started writing the book and again I say my son's called Alexander I had always assumed it was always going to be Alexander the Great but having spent a year researching and writing the book I came to the conclusion ultimately it's probably Julius Caesar simply because of the fact that he had to achieve more in the age in which he lived to achieve the incredible feats he did than Alexander who also achieved maybe even greater feats in his own day so for me it's Julius Caesar but I would argue that everybody form your own conclusion read the book do your own research because it's one of the great questions of ancient history who was the greatest commander in the ancient world alexander the great or julius caesar well

simon i think let's wrap it up there that was a great chat i mean there's so many other news we could still go down from successors of these two figures to their wives and to siege engines to so much else but we're going to wrap it up here this This was a great chat. Last but certainly not least, your book on this topic is called? Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar, who was the greatest commander of the ancient world. Does what it says on the tin. Simon, great to have you back on the pod again.

Thanks so much for coming back on the show. Pleasure. Thank you for having me. So there you go. Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar, who was the greatest commander? The questions have been answered hypothetically at least now i hope you enjoyed this episode i loved heading over to simons to record that chat and well if you want more anxious content if you want more in particular more alexander the great content and i can guarantee you a lot of that in 2022, including perhaps a few more explainers by myself, especially for a clash, I'll give you a little hint, that occurred roughly, let's say, two to three weeks from when the episode was being released today in mid-January time.

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