The Rest Is History - 116. Alexander the Great Part 1

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Alexander the Great is the most charismatic conqueror in history. Tom and Dominic, in the first of a two part special, trace the course of his dazzling career from Macedonia to his mysterious journey to the oracle at Siwa. Man or god? Visionary or blood-stained tyrant? The debate rages on! *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Welcome to The Rest Is History. Back in the mists of time when we were mere podcasting novices, when we recorded our very first episode, we hit on the subject of greatness. And today's podcast is about a man we talked about a lot in that first episode without ever really getting into his story. And it is probably the greatest story

in all history it is of course alexander the great tom holland there's probably no greater character no better story no more glamour and excitement and romance than in the life of alexander is there it's a great story i thought thought it was really interesting. And I was surprised that when I put the note up on Twitter saying we were going to do Alexander the Great, the response was absolutely overwhelming. I don't think we've ever had as many replies or questions, have we? I don't think we even had, I don't think we had more questions even for Hitler than we did for Alexander. And Sam, a heroic kind of backroom boy who he was basically ploughing through hundreds of questions in order to try and whittle them down a little bit.

Well, I was reassured. And I'll tell you why. It was because I went to this fantastic literary festival held at Patrick Lee Furmer's house on the shore of the Peloponnese. And there was a kind of a parlor game type thing in the evening where we all had to make an argument for who was the greatest Greek. And obviously I chose Alexander the Great because he's great. And I thought, of course, I'm going to walk this.

And Bethany Hughes chose Helen of Troy. And we came joint bottom. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Who won? Aristophanes because he would have opposed Brexit. That's a terrible. That's such an indictment of that whole occasion. So that may reflect the fact that i made a terrible case for him and i

think i'd rather but yeah but i think it also reflects um a kind of tension in uh attitude towards alexander now that we actually discussed in our very first right there he is obviously i mean he's a great figure he's the essence greatness. He's the first person to be called great. That's the whole point of him. But there's a slight ambivalence now towards him that perhaps wasn't there earlier. So there was this whole kind of, the heyday of the British Empire,

there was this idea that he was selflessly conquering the world for the good of the subject people, which obviously went down rather well. and now that kind of attitude is um but it's a certain degree of a scarce it's a tremendous adventure story isn't it i think you've got a question from stephen clark is that right so i'm just queuing you up yeah i don't know what you're talking about oh yes so i do yes so a question from stephen clark a friend of the show. Yeah, great man. Great man in his own right. A friend of Dominic.

I mean, this is a shameful question. It's the top question that Sam chose of all the questions. It is. You put it at the top of the sheet. Oh, God. I'm losing the will to live. Why did Dominic choose Alexander the Great as one of his Adventures in Time series? So, Dominic, Adventures in Time.

This is your series of children's books. You did an earlier one on Henry VIII on the Second World War. You've got one on the First World War, which is why we're going to be doing Remembrance Sunday as our next episode. It's a complete coincidence. It's a massive coincidence. And you've chose Alexander the Great. What story did you have to miss out or severely edit

to ensure your book about Alexander is appropriate for children? Funnily enough, I don't think I really did have to miss any stories out. Did you miss out Baguas? Baguas actually has been massively inflated. So Baguas is the Persian eunuch that he supposedly has an affair with. One of the top eunuchs. He was one of our top eunuchs. Baguas'

appearance in the sources are slight at best. So did you leave him out? No, there's one fleeting mention of him when I'm talking about Alexander adopting Persian customs. He's got a great friend called Bagwas. That's nice. A great pal. But no, I think – why did I choose it?

Well, why are we doing it on this podcast and why are we going to give it two episodes? I mean, the answer is because it is probably the single most exciting story in all history. I think the only one that would really compare would be the arrival of- It's the Persian invasion of Greece. I would not say that. Not even Watergate. Or indeed the Jeremy Thorpe scandal. I would say it's probably the arrival of the conquistadors in the new world.

For the sheer kind of- Almost science fiction level drama i mean the idea that alexander you know he fights his first major battle when he's 18 when he's 20 he's king he leads his men for a decade on this unbelievably strange and exacting journey where they go to places that they've they could barely imagine they're climbing mountains. They see the pyramids. They travel for, I think, historians have worked out, they keep going for about 22,000 miles. And they just keep going. And at the end, he thinks he's going to get to the end of the earth.

I mean, it's an incredible story. And in the course of it, he conquers, he defeats the world's most biggest and richest empire. He becomes king of kings. He enters unchallenged the greatest city on earth he thinks he's a god i mean what's not to like it's just a tremendous tremendous quest narrative and i think it's one of those stories that um you read about it as a child and it it gets you into history absolutely for life and then i think you slightly put it

away don't you because you sort of are a bit it's the kind of story i think that teenagers and people in their 20s put away because they're a bit embarrassed by it they don't want to do a seminar on it and then they come back to it later on that damn it's a good story so i think lots of you know we've talked about this before and lots of people myself included kind of get into history and perhaps particularly ancient history through the mythology greek mythology you read the trojan war and all that kind of stuff. And then you want a sequel. And in a way, Alexander is the sequel. And he's a sequel, I think for two reasons,

partly because he consciously models himself on Achilles. So he, he claims to be descended from Achilles and from Heracles, two great heroes. So ultimately he's, he's the descendant of Zeus. So he's wired into that world of mythology. He models himself on Achilles. He takes Iliad with him on his of Zeus. So he's wired into that world of mythology. He models himself on Achilles.

He takes Iliad with him on his great adventure. He does. And so on. But I think also it's because actually the story of Alexander the Great is, it is a kind of myth because actually the sources for it are a lot more patchy precarious and late than one might want to think uh and we we on our episode of muhammad and really the story of arab conquest is the only comparison to this um if you think you know massadin is on the margins of great empires and it conquers these great empires rather in the way that the Arabs do

in the seventh and eighth centuries. And just as the sources for the Arab conquests are late, kind of centuries later, and therefore the kind of stories that you get with lots of arrows and maps and things, and people confidently saying that the Arabs did this and they did that, you know, you've got to slightly kind of raise an eyebrow at that. Same is slightly true for Alexander, because I think the earliest account, narrative account of his life is 300 years after it. Most of the accounts that we draw on are actually written in the heyday of the Roman Empire. So in a sense are as much about the Romans as they are about Alexander himself.

They are. So, and on top of that, there's a further complication, which is that we have all, and this is something again that we talked about in the Thermopylae episode, we have almost nothing written sources from the Persian side. And so a bit as in a kind of romance, a nightly romance, you get the knight going out and having the adventures and you don't hear about, you know, what the dragon thought of it. So likewise with this, he leads his armies, he attacks all these people it's it's like they are just kind of exotic names they're just the stormtroopers in star wars they're kind of kind of his mail yeah i think i think i think that the great you know the the kind of the the great revolution the understanding of alexander and it was it's been pointed out by various academics that the study of alexander

has you know in terms of sophistication has been it's been a bit of a backwater for quite a long time. And I think that that has really begun to change. And it's chiefly begun to change because there are great scholars who have looked at the Persians and have tried to place Alexander in the context of the world that he conquers. And perhaps the greatest of them is a French scholar called Pierre Brion. He famously described Alexander as the last of the Achaemenids, and the Achaemenid is the Persian dynasty that Alexander overthrows. And I think that that actually does start to make sense of him as someone who is not a hero for myth, and is not a kind of monster, which are the two poles that tend to kind of govern how he's understood, but someone who is a brilliantly brilliantly inventive and creative

politician as well as kind of one of one of the greatest generals who's ever lived and i think the way the persianness of alexander is something we'll come to because we are going to tell the story and do it in proper detail but the persian has become so important doesn't it the extent which he ceases to be macedonian or greek and becomes a king of kings like he never takes on that title no he doesn't he never takes on that but as we will discover he certainly takes on the appearance yes he takes on a lot of the rituals he has the costume he has the wife he has the eunuchs because he recognizes that that's the only way well let's come on we're leaving ahead yes we are let's. Well, let's, come on, we're leaping ahead. Yes, we are.

Let's tell the story. This is arguably the most exciting story in all history, so we should really do it justice. So let's start with where he comes from. So he comes from the Kingdom of Macedon or Macedonia. And Amy Mantrovati has a question. She says, who gets to claim him, Greece or Macedonia or North Macedonia, as it's now called?

Well, Tom, you and I have recorded a documentary about this before haven't we um we have well I think I think so there's a huge argument isn't there uh in Greece and in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia yeah about who Alexander belongs to and it's an insane argument because he doesn't belong to either of them um because I think they both have every right to claim them you claim whoever you like they do but so but but in the context of the fourth century when alexander is born is macedonia greek this is this is a question that is kind of contested and debated and basically i think macedonia is greek because the macedonian kings are able to compete at the olympic games yeah and they speak a version essentially they speak a kind of dialectic greek

now other greeks do mock them so demosthenes in athens who's a great rival of the macedonians and hates the macedonians he says they're not even proper greeks they don't they they live like dogs you can't even buy a proper slave from macedonia he says um but in oliver stone's film yeah the macedonians speak with irish accents don't they i've actually never seen i can't i've never seen the story i've loved the story of alexander so much i can't bring myself towards all of us but i think perhaps the comparison is with scotland and england maybe yes i think that's the lowlands and there's highlands exactly yeah there's a sense that

they're warlike clannish highlanders aren't they and they've been divided and they've been a bit of a backwater and the key figure a massive figure is alexander's father philip ii who one-eyed lost a nine a siege and he unites all the clans behind his program of of basically fighting other people and conquering them and he crucially conquers some gold mines mount pangeum it gives him tons of money so he's able to basically buy off all these rival clan leaders in Macedonia. And he invents a very long spear. The Sarissa. The Sarissa.

Yeah. So there's a funk master. What made his army the best in the world? That's Alexander's, but it would be Philip's as well. Technology or leadership. I've never really understood the thing about the Sarissa. Haven't you? Well, it's just a very long spear. Yeah, but obviously I haven't heard to other...

But also they have different kind of shields. They have kind of smaller shields. They're more mobile, more flexible. And they have leather helmets rather than metal ones. I think the Greeks they're fighting are a bit more lumbering and sort of old-fashioned, and the Macedonians are more sort of supple and quick-moving.

Yes, but I still don't entirely understand why inventing a long spear. If only you had a family member who was really into military history and could enlighten you, then you would know. Well, I've got a top classical historian on the podcast, so go with it. Well, they're very flexible.

They've got a long spear. They've got a nice new shield. And they're wearing less armour. They're very fast. They're very well-trained. I think they're super well-trained. They've got a long spear. They've got a nice new shield. And they're wearing less armour. They're very fast. They're very well trained. I think they're super well trained. They've got a really good cavalry wing. They do.

So basically the Macedonian army has three... The Alexander's are great, kind of very dashing. They have the phalanx. They have these guys called the shield bearers, who are the kind of elite kind of infantry. And then they have the companion cavalry, as they're called, who are the kind of nobles. Yeah, very dashing.

They don't have stirrups, do they? No. And they always look for gaps in the lines and then they slice in. They do. Which is very much what Alexander does. So Philip is this sort of tremendous warlord who is basically bent on subduing the other Greek states to his will and creating a kind of informal empire in Greece, I suppose, isn't he?

But he has a justification for that, which is taking vengeance on Persia. Yes. For having burnt the Acropolis. Exactly. In 480 BC. So his sort of plan is, you know, if you're looking out from Macedonia, you say, well, I will deal with the other Greek city-states and bring them into my orbit. And then once they are on side, we can all go and attack the very very rich greek-speaking cities

of what's now turkey um the very western fringe of the persian empire because they are loaded sardis halicarnassus miletus you know that tons of money i'll be incredibly rich and popular everybody will say hurrah for me because i've beaten the persians you know it's kind of win win basically well or will they or will they so there's there's two attitudes to this in greece one represented by demosthenes you've mentioned the great orator in athens um who regards this as a massive scam yeah and philip has a crook and the whole thing is kind of highfalutin nonsense which is designed to provide a justification for the macedonian takeover and then you have other greeks who are inspired by a guy called Socrates, who sees it as

the Greek mission to subdue barbarians. Yeah, and that's a real thing. That's not just a sort of, it's not just a scam, because ideologically, people do believe in that, don't they? They do. Well, they do. So it could be a bit of both. But essentially, you know, there are people in Greece who are backing Philip in this. And there are others who see him essentially as a kind of shyster. Yeah. And maybe he's a bit of both both he's Val Kilmer in the film isn't he I think that's absolutely ludicrous casting well I we really need to see it before we talk about it it's true this is a sensational advert for our forthcoming um live show at the Odeon Leicester Square so we've promoted two things doing cinema yes nice it's really good the fact we're talking about a film that neither of us have seen yeah that bodes very well yes it really does so anyway philip has multiple wives but one of them

is this uh raven haired um woman called olympias from epirus uh who alossians yes she um is terrifying she yes there's a lot of stuff going on with sorcery and with snakes with her that other Greeks find a bit disconcerting. So it's claimed she spends all her time with these sort of necromancers fiddling with snakes and she takes the snakes to bed, which other Greeks say is

poor form. Including Philip. But she gives birth... Hello, darling. Oh! I wasn't expecting that. including philip but she gives birth yes hello darling that wasn't expecting that so she gives birth anyway uh in what is it uh 353 56 exactly to alexander uh which means alexandros defender of the people i think it means um and yeah he he famously now it's his education is really important because it's part of his sort of mystique and his romance isn't it he's brought up with a load of lads yeah basically there's a sort of boarding school yes and they're all great chums

yeah very good chums very good chums And these are the chums who will accompany him. It's like the Billy Bunter stories or something. And his chief chum is a chap called Hephaestion. Yeah, Patroclus to his Achilles. They really fancy themselves, don't they, as the sort of reincarnation of these heroes of old. And who does Philip get to be his tutor? He gets Aristotle.

Who else? He gets the top philosopher of the day. So that tells you how rich Philip is, I think. Well, he's destroyed Aristotle's hometown, hasn't he? He has. He has indeed. And so he's able to kind of get Aristotle along by saying that he'll basically make up for that. And they go to this sort of lovely wooded place called Mieza.

And they walk in groves and talk about philosophy and all this sort of thing. That sounds absolutely lovely to me. So we've got a question from Jordan Cox. Did Alexander consider himself an Aristotelian? I don't think he did. I don't think he would have had a concept of what that meant. But I think he was obviously very well educated. I mean, it's hard to think of anybody at the time who would have been better educated.

And we know he loved the Iliad. We know he loved mythology. It's said that he liked poetry and song and all these kinds of things. But I think the role that Aristotle plays in the myth of Alexander is that Aristotle is a great philosopher. Yeah. So, of course, Alexander the Great has to have the greatest philosopher. But it also, I mean, I don't think it's purely a sort of of that makes it sound like it's a concoction though tom which is that i mean he genuinely did teach him he i i'm not sure that that um that anything aristotle uh taught

alexander played a particular role in in enabling him to conquer the world dissing aristotle's teachings and saying i'm not dissing him i'm not diss dissing him. It's just that Alexander didn't sit around and become a philosopher. And actually, you know, Aristotle's teachings, he's very, very stern on the fact that Greeks are better than barbarians.

But we know two things about Alexander and philosophy. We know that he went to see Diogenes, the cynic, who lived in a jar. In Corinth? In Corinth. A barrel?

And was very keen to... It was a jar, Tom, not a barrel. It was a barrel. It's a a barrel. How's the barrel? It's a clay jar. It's a wine jar called a pithos. I'm so glad I've been able to instruct you about some Greek. I can't speak any word of Greek other than good morning, thank you, and so on.

Anyway, I've got the jar in. And then when they're in India, he goes to see some philosophers, some naked philosophers, and he takes one of them with him, a man called Kalanis. The gymnosoph man called colonists the gimno sophists yeah the gimno sophists exactly so alexander he loved a bit of philosophy but darjeel is very rude to him because alexander went and said to darjeel is there anything i can do for you and darjeel says get out of the get out of the sun yeah get out of the sun well i'm sure alex Alexander found that. Because Diogenes, Diogenes in his wine jar. Yeah.

Do you know what he used to do there? He, well, he often rolled it up and down the gymnasium in Corinth, I believe. But when he was in it, he would just sit there and masturbate. Would he? Yeah. I didn't put that in the children's book. No. Because the whole thing of Diogenes was that he despised convention and custom.

Yes. He believed you should live like a dog, like an animal. Hence the cynic. Right, so back to the story. Alexander, all we know about him as a boy is he famously, there's a story about him taming his horse, Bucephalus. He tames this horse that costs 13 talents and is incredibly expensive. He's afraid of its own shadow.

He's afraid of its own shadow shadow so the horse then becomes part of the story i mean this is what appeals to children i think that he has this sort of horse that accompanies him almost all the quest and the medieval legend is that um uh it's it's said that whoever will tame this horse will rule the world exactly and bucephalus or Bucephalus is said to be the ancestor of the unicorn did you know that that's great isn't it so all his youth Alexander's youth Philip is fighting

the other Greeks and he basically there's a battle at Chironaea I think it is yes outside Thebes yeah where they smash

the Thebans the sacred band of the Thebans kind of once and for all don't they well in Athens so Thebes and Athens have been old enemies,

but they sign up to face the Macedonian threat. Demosthenes fights at Chaeronea. And Alexander is 18, I think. Yeah, 18. He's a cavalry, slices in, and spectacular victory. Very harsh terms imposed on Thebes, because Philip had been a hostage there as a boy. That's right.

He had. Yes. So Philip is always slightly harsher with Thebes. He's much, much, much more sparing towards Athens. And Alexander goes as his emissary to Athens. So I think it's the only time he goes to Athens. That's the first. Yeah.

The first time he went, he takes the urns. Yes. The sacred urns with the ashes, is it, of the bones of the defeated Athenians. So then they have a big meeting in Corinth, don't they, after that? Yes, when Philip gets appointed head of all the Greeks apart from the Spartans. Yeah, Spartans. And Philip's so cross about this that all the dedications, it's, you know, in the name of Philip and all the Greeks, except for the Spartans. So petty.

But he's now really pumped because he thinks, great, I've basically beaten all the Greeks. They're all on side, except the Spartans. And we are going to cross the Hellespont and attack Persia. And he goes to the Delphic Oracle, Philip does. And they give him this message. Wreathed is the bull. The end is near. The one who will kill him is at hand. And Philip says to himself, well, this is tremendous. This is obviously the Persian king is going to be killed. But little does Philip know. What a twist, Tom. What a twist. What a twist. Because two years after the Battle of Currania, he gets assassinated.

In very strange circumstances, it has to be said. And at a wedding. And the question is, who is responsible? Well, we know it's a guy called Pausanias who wields the dagger, don't we? So he's a bodyguard. But who's suborned him? Because the bodyguard gets killed. It's a bit like Macbeth.

Yeah. Macbeth killing all the servants. The bodyguard gets killed and executed's a bit like Macbeth. Yeah. Macbeth killing all the servants. The bodyguard gets killed and executed before he can be interrogated. So Cui Bono, who benefits from it. So perhaps a Persian agent. Yeah. Perhaps Olympias.

Because Olympias by this point had a spectacular bust up because Philip has married Cleopatra. There's a lot of Cleopatras. A lot of Cleopatras. Who is, unlike Olympias, is Macedonian. And doesn't mess around with snakes. And has a baby who's a son. And so perhaps it's Alexander because he's already had his nose out of joint. He's gone off for kind of six months in a assault.

With his mates. They've all gone with it. Yeah, they've all gone off in assault. So relations between Philip and Alexander are really, really bad. And they seem to be patched up, but maybe they're not. So we don't know. I mean, we'll never know. But the interesting thing is that there's this bizarre story

behind the Pausanias murder. That Pausanias was feeling really sore. Well, I I mean literally sore because he had been raped by some other guy who Philip had then promoted

and Pausanias was outraged at this so that might have been just the reason but anyway yes it's the wedding

games isn't it he's killed on his way into the stadium they chase after him kill Pausanias Alexander is now

king he didn't have to be king and this is there's a slight element of a kind They chase after him, kill Pausanias. Alexander is now king. He didn't have to be king. There's a slight element of a kind of stitch-up with some of the commanders who are tooled up and ready to go to Persia. And the key one is Parmenio, isn't it? Yes. Who's already, I think, in Asia at this point. Or he's on the coast.

Exactly. He's Philip's right-hand man. And basically, Alexander says, you'll still be commander. We'll still do the invasion. Nothing will change. I am now king. I'm going to come with you. And he's 20 years old.

Yeah. And so where are we? We're about halfway through the first episode, aren't we? Going so slowly. He's 20 years old. And he goes north. He beats up various kind of tribes. He goes and fights lots of Balkan tribes first as a sort of

warm-up. Just for the fun of it. They're like their friendlies before the World Cup or something. Has a kick around. Then the Thebans revolt. Yeah. And he destroys the whole city. He wipes out the whole city. Except for the house of Pindar, the famous poet. Yeah. Nice. You see that's his love of literature coming through.

Yes. Aristotle kicking in there. He also, he goes to the Oracle as well. You know, that's his love of literature coming through. Yes, Aristotle kicking in there. He also, he goes to the Oracle as well. You know what happens at the Oracle? The priestess says, it's not the right day. You know, you've got the wrong day. I don't do it today. And he drags her out by her hair. And she says, my son, thou art invincible.

He says, great, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you very much. What a lad. Let's go. What a lad. Okay, go. What a lad. Okay, well, I think this is where we should stop for a break, shouldn't we? Yeah, this is clearly going to be about seven episodes. No, it's not.

It's not. So we've got Alexander to the shores of the Hellespont. Yeah. He's getting ready to cross. The Persians are waiting. Greece behind him is relatively secure. What's going to happen next? Couldn't be more dramatic.

We'll see you back after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to ther entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back to the rest is history and before we get back to alexander um i just want to mention a special offer uh for rest is history listeners that we've got from the people at UnHerd, U-N-H-E-R-D.

And Dominic, UnHerd, a very fine online magazine. Very fine. Very fine. Tom, I'm loving this because this is actually about the fifth take that you've done because you kept mispronouncing yourself, Alexander, everything. So I'll do the rest of it. I'll do some of the talking anyway.

UnHerd, it's an online magazine, so they say, that aims to put today's events do the rest of the, I'll do some of the talking anyway. UnHerd, it's an online magazine, so they say, that aims to put today's events in the context of broader history and philosophy. And I say, so they say, but actually we have both written for UnHerd, as some listeners will know. They aim to push back against herd mentality and publish independent thinkers. Do you try to do that, Tom? Is that what you're doing when you're writing for UnHerd? Yes, every time. And I like to think that I have pushed back against herd mentality and independence. Well done. So I could give an example of that.

We're writing for Alexander today. Just like a job interview, give me an example of yours. I know. I'm passionate. I'd say I'm passionate about pushing back against herd mentality. and as an evidence for that i would offer an example of a counterfactual piece that i wrote about what would have happened had the persians conquered greece oh very apt and it was yes very apt in the car and it was uh i mentioned um livy the roman historian talking about what would have happened if alexander had invaded italy oh good for you i've also written for unheard and i love

pushing back against herd mentality. Are you passionate about that? I'm probably not as passionate as you, but sometimes I like to go with the herd, just out of fear and cowardice. No, you don't. No, I'm joking. Of course I don't. I'm just being self-deprecating. And to be serious, Dominic, one of the things about UnHerd is that almost every, they publish kind of three or four articles every day. They do. And there is always, you know, at least one or two that makes you see things in a completely different way.

So there was an example last week about India, a piece about India and the challenge of looking at its history through the lens of victimhood. I remember it well. It was a jolly good article. I thought it was very interesting. So the good news for our listeners, there's tremendous news, isn't there?

Great news. Absolutely. There is a special offer. It's the first three months free. It's normally one pound a week. And if you don't like it, if you don't like pushing back- Why wouldn't you like it?

You're part of the herd. Yes. You're part of the herd. Then you can unsubscribe. So that is unheard.com slash rest. And unheard is U-N-H-E-R-D. So unheard.com slash rest. Yeah, don't be part of the herd.

Be part of the unheard. The unheard herd. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Alexander is at the Hellespont, Tom. He crosses the Hellespont. He throws a spear, doesn't he, to show that he's Asia. Spear one. It's his spear one prize.

He's claiming Asia. There's a really interesting question here right at this point. What do you think that he and his officers think they're going to do well the habit of of uh crossing into uh asia and trying to to steal various cities under persian rule is a bit of a habit um greek greek generals have been doing it for you know a long time and i think that that's why uh deris the third who is the the ecumenic king uh far away in persia and his um his deputies are not unduly worried about what's going on yeah because they've seen it all before um i i think that that alexander well people call it his pothos his kind of his yearning his yearning to reach beyond the limits.

I have that with podcasting. I think it's impossible to kind of psychologize Alexander in that way because he's so removed from us. But clearly he's a man of ambition. And I think that he kind of reaches the stage, you know, basically he just keeps going and he keeps winning. Why stop? And he ends up kind of able to see the prize in front of him, but knowing that he cannot afford a single mistake. And that's what's extraordinary about the story.

And that's clearly true. That he achieves what he achieves because he never once slips up badly. Yeah. He never loses a battle. He never makes a terrible strategic error. He's in tough spots, but he always gets out of it. He always gets out of them and i think that that basically the further he goes the more he wins the more tantalizing the prize becomes the more he's determined to to claim that prize and and i think the habit of

success breeds ambition and ambition breeds success i'm sure that's true i think my theory is i don't think at this stage he thinks he's going to be king of all Persia by any means. I agree with you. I think this is like a standard thing you do. It's a jaunt. It's a gap year. And I think all his men, I mean, you can sort of tell that when they get cross with him at the very end of the quest. Because I think at this stage they think this is great.

We'll go for like a couple of years take these very rich cities i'll come back absolutely loaded and be able to buy and be able to buy like a massive farm and you know loads of land and i'll be laughing if you said to them then you'll be gone for 10 years and you're going to end up in india you're going to end up in india they'd have said thanks but no thanks you know let the guy down the road go so anyway they cross over don't they and he he does this hilarious thing when they go to the tomb of uh the grave of achilles and he takes off all his clothes pours oil over himself and runs around the tomb again and again is that is that kind of standard behavior you know more about the greek world it's fair i mean as we, it's a lad's tour. What happens on tour stays on tour. I guess so.

Anyway, but it's not just running around naked, is it? He also has a Persian enemy to defeat. He does. Which he does at the Battle of the River Granicus. He does. But you said that Darius doesn't take this terribly seriously. I'm sure I absolutely agree with you because he doesn't go himself. There's a guy called Memnon of Rhodes

who is the Persian. So he's a Greek. So it just tells you actually. Greek mercenary, yeah. Greek mercenary. The Persians have got tons of Greek mercenaries. Memnon of Rhodes says to the Persians. Alexander has Greek contingents as well,

but there's a slight sense that they're hostages as much as they're allies. Yeah. So Memnon says to the Persians, listen, just retreat scorched earth. You know, he'll take some stuff and then he'll go away. And they refuse to do that. They say, no, I will attack, you know, I'm not going to, I'm Alexander, I should attack them straight away. And which you pick as a historian basically just depends

on how you see Alexander. Do you see him as calculating or do you see him as impulsive? And there's no guarantee that either of them are right. No, that's true. I mean, that's the thing. That's the problem. Anyway, let's go with the best version. They charge straight across the river

and they basically just wipe the floor. Alexander was almost killed. But he's rescued by Black Clitus. Right, who is the brother of his old nanny, Lanike. Yes, so this is important for later. It is important. When we get to episode 27 of this Alexander quest, you will need to remember that detail.

Right, so I think we need to slightly speed things up. So Alexander beats the Persians at River Granicus. He then kind of charges down. He takes all those rich cities. Now, even at that point, I think that's the first point at which you could say he could stop. He's got that coastline. But he thinks, no, I'll keep going. Why would I stop?

The Persians are nowhere to be seen. So I'll just kind of keep going. He goes to a place called Gordium and he cuts the Gordian knot. He has a famous knot. Yes. The only town in the world with a famous knot, I think. Well, except that he ruins it. Well, you know who tied that knot, Tom? It was Heracles, wasn't it?

No, Midas. King Midas. Midas. Of gold fame and asses' ears. So Midas had ridden into Gordium with his father, Gordias, who became king, and they tied up the cart and this great knot. And whoever cuts the knot, or sorry, whoever unties the knot will become lord of all Asia. And Alexander stands there and everyone's staring at him. He sets himself a very high, you know,

because he's going to look like a fool if he can't untie this knot. People are standing with their phones, boys, you know because he's gonna look like a fool if he can't on instagram yeah it's not people are standing with their phones boys you know and so eventually just takes out his sword and cuts it hurrah he's cut the gordian knot hence the expression yeah and so that proves he's going to conquer asia right and so it happens so he he um heads down uh towards the kind of the if you think the right angle between what's now Turkey and Syria. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah. And he meets with Darius.

He, by this point, has basically thought, hmm, need to sort this out. But he's come with a massive army. Massive army. And he's brought his family. Yeah, he's brought his wife. Yeah, he's brought his mum.

You're right, Sissi Gambus, he's brought his mum. That's madness. But that just shows how little he, you know, what he thinks of Alexander. He just thinks this is some crazy, you know, the Macedonians are primitive. Some barbarian raiding party will smash them up. I'll look really good. And he's trapped Alexander.

He's come behind him through the mountains and got him trapped between the mountains. Which is what the Persians always do. Typical Persians. Absolute masters of mountain warfare. I will never get into the mountains with ali ansari you'll just drop off a rock or something yeah throttle you so alexander is trapped there's men are soaked the weather has turned it's all awful and he says to them it's one of those moments that you said tom about him always making the right decision

he says to them well they will just turn around and attack the Persians. You know, this is our God-given chance. And they do. And because they're tightly packed between the sea and the mountains, the Persians can't quite bring their huge numerical superiority to bear. The Macedonians are much better trained. They have their long spears. They have their long spears.

And Darius runs away. Very foolishly. No, it's not foolish. Well, I think it's foolish. No, it's not foolish. Look at the end result. No, it's not foolish because he's the king. And he has to keep himself alive because he's got to fight on. I suppose.

And you could say it's poor because he dumps his mum mum and his wife and children I think yes but Alexander's very chivalrous well

there's a lovely detail isn't there so Darius has fled Alexander is he gets Darius's tent Darius has a huge bath in the tent

which has been run for him ready for his victory and he's got all this food like a huge spread like a buffet, basically. And one of Alexander's bodyguards, I think a guy called Leonartus,

comes to him and says, Darius has left his mum and his wife and kids and they're making a terrible hullabaloo or weeping and wailing. Can you come and calm them down? And Alexander comes with his great chum, Hephaestion, who's taller than he is. And Darius's mum drops at Hephaestion and who's taller than he is. And Darius's mum drops it.

Yeah. Yeah. Drops at Hephaestion's feet and says, Oh, you're such a great fellow. Please look after us. And I, and then she's very embarrassed because she realizes what's happened.

And Alexander says something like, he says that I nevermind mother for here too is Alexander. Yes. And people think what's going on there. And all of this definitely really happened. Anyway. So, yeah. so darius's mum according to the story is now team alexander yeah and his wife and he treats them all very nicely doesn't he's very chivalrously and um so he he now he now strikes south so he doesn't head east to to attack um babylonia Persepolis and Susa and all the great cities of the heartlands. And the reason for that is that he has sent away his fleet.

And so he's basically said, we're going to defeat the Persian fleet by taking away all their harbors. So that's what he's been doing through Asia Minor. And now he goes down the Phoenician coast. And Phoenicia, current day Lebanon day Lebanon is basically it's the great naval power it's the the heartbeat of the Persian navy and so Alexander forces the surrender of all the Phoenician cities except for one Tyre yeah which is the greatest of the lot uh and it's on an island and it's effectively impregnable so Dominic what does Alexander do does he builds a causeway Tom he he's also very cross with the Tyrians isn't he because there's some sort of business about heracles don't they have a statue of heracles or a temple

or something and alexander says he says i'm related to heracles i'd like to come and worship at that temple they say they say no no and he says right that right you don't do that to me so he builds this massive causeway and this is a month's siege it's the one of the amazing things about this story is the time frame so the hollywood version i imagine compresses it and indeed almost all of us i think imaginatively compress it so one event follows another pretty rapidly but i mean as you say it's like a half a year this siege goes on darius is off licking his wounds alexander is laying siege to tyre it's a terrible siege very bloody and then he basically kills them all doesn't he he crucifies him doesn't he yeah he does it's the one moment in his career actually i think the only moment

when you can say he really behaves according to the sources anyway very badly because generally people say badly it's it's it's a calculated atrocity it's it's cromwell at drogata isn't it isn't that what yes kind of it's but it's it's designed to be salutary it's a warning to other cities as to what will happen if they resist yeah and so again i mean you can say of course i mean you, by our standards, it's incredibly brutal, but it serves a purpose. And once again, so it's, I mean, I'm sure he's pissed off at having been kept there for so long. So obviously there's a kind of element of anger there, but there's also an element of calculation and everything Alexander does has calculation. Well, you were saying about him not going east, but going south.

At this point, I think all of this is completely commensurate with relatively limited ambitions. So if you were just doing a raid to get those very rich cities in Asia Minor that had subsequently become something a bit bigger, you would kind of turn south because you would say, why don't I secure the Mediterranean? Phoenicia is very rich. It'd be great for us to knock out a big rival of the Greek kind of trading cities and so on it's kind of the obvious thing to do isn't it but there's the famous anecdote that deriah sends a messenger to alexander saying well look okay you have the the western half i'll have the eastern half yeah and parmenians famously says uh well if i were you alexander i would i would take this

and alexander says so would i if i were parmenian i know that's a great story that's a great story well i think there's a couple of that's a great story but i think there's a couple of letters on that arius sends him one of them is like basically give my wife and mother back and i'll give you loads of money and the other is exactly he says well i'll give you the western bit and alexander says why i've already got it yeah thanks for nothing um well he has uh but the last bit that we should do this and I think that this should be the ending of this episode before we go on to record the second part, is he then invades Egypt. So that's an interesting thing. Do you think that is, if you were just proceeding in terms of sort of short term calculation, would that be an obvious next move?

I suppose Egypt is very rich, isn't it? And also Egypt, they hate the Persians in Egypt. Yeah, they've been they've been rebelling uh they've periodically throw persian rule off persians come back uh yeah yeah so they're they're very rebellious the persians have been very rude to the egyptian sacred bulls i believe they have been disrespectful not actually true is that not true no it's it's in herodotus. Yeah. So Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who's the great founder of the Persian Empire, who Alexander greatly admires, is said to have been rude to the Apis bull. I believe it. But this seems to be Egyptian propaganda. I think it's true.

Because isn't it notable that when Alexander pitches up in Memphis, he makes a great play of being very respectful to this bull? Yeah, but in that, he's behaving as the Persians do. The Persians show respect to everybody's gods. Famously, Cyrus sends the Jews back to the temple. This is your Persephilia coming out. So he arrives in Memphis. The Egyptians, they

hate the Persians. So he's pitched up. They're like, fine, you know, do you want to be pharaoh? They crown him with the double crown of Egypt. But then he does the first thing, I like, fine, you know, do you want to be Pharaoh? They crown him with a double crown of Egypt. But then he does the first thing, I think, in this whole story, which is just very bizarre. Yeah. And is the point at which you sort of think, okay,

so he's not a normal warlord. He's done something completely, utterly inexplicable, which is he says, you know what I'm going to do now? Having conquered all these cities and darius is out there in the east i'm going to go off for like a massive holiday across the desert of course not i'm going to go on a big trip across the desert to the oracle at siwa which is out in the sort of western desert yeah towards libya if you've played assassin's creed odyssey not assassin's creed odyssey assassin's creed origins you will know the Oasis of Seaworld very well

because that's where you start in the game. Do you? You do. But on the way, he does something very exciting, doesn't he, Tom? What has he found? He found Alexandria. He does. And you know who tells him to?

Homer in a dream. Good. Homer says to him, there's an island called Pharos. You should have found a city there alexander wakes up great and off he goes on bucephalus and so i reckon i reckon that that is one of the reasons why alexander is so keen on going to egypt is that it is a part of the fabric of greek yeah apologizing fantasy desire um so there are all these stories about helen and menelaus actually kind of ending up in in egypt that helen stayed in egypt throughout the whole of the trojan war and that they fought

a kind of fantasy phantasm of helen um herodotus writes about it um aristotle's very interested in egypt so you know there's been quite a lot of interplay hasn't there intellectual and a lot of greek a lot of greek mercenaries have been serving there so that they're very very interested in it and i think that that if you are um you know you you you see yourself as a world conqueror and perhaps as someone who is more than human then egypt is the obvious place to go because um you're going to be crowned as pharaoh. You are then heir to an unfathomably long line of kings. And if you go to Siwa, which is the oracle to Amun,

king of the gods, who the Greeks equate with Zeus, who is Alexander's ultimate ancestor, then you can see why Alexander might think that Ammon Zeus would look on him with favour. And one of the things that's bubbling under is the question of who Alexander's father actually is. I love that. I love that detail. Is it Philip? Or is it?

Or might it in fact be Zeus himself? So there's this story that on her wedding night, I think it is, Olympias was visited by a lightning. She was struck by lightning. And this was Zeus taking possession of her. And Alexander may, in fact, be the son of Zeus. And he goes to, so he goes across the desert. And this is no, so going to Alexandria kind of makes sense, going to the site of Alexandria.

Because if you're thinking about creating a new empire in the eastern Mediterranean, you need a port. You need a port. And that makes complete sense. This is the port that will connect Greece and Macedonia with your new Egyptian conquest. But then going across the desert, which he does for days, the sources say he does this for days. They tell all these stories.

There's a brilliant bit in Arian's account where Arian says, well, there are multiple versions about how they basically fight. They clearly get lost in the desert. So he's gone with quite a small group of the key mates, his old mates from boarding school. And Arian says, there are various different accounts about how they actually found the oasis, but the one I go with is the one by Ptolemy,

who is one of his great chums, who becomes pharaoh of Egypt himself. He says, because Ptolemy is a king and can therefore be trusted. And he says, Ptolemy says that they were shown to the oasis by some talking snakes. So that must be true. Because a king wouldn't lie.

So I don't think there's any reason, Tom, for us to doubt that they were not. They're shown to the oasis by the talking snakes. They pitch up. Now, the Oracle of Amon. I mean, Amon is a really interesting god because he's not quite – he's got horns, hasn't he? He's got the horns of a ram. Yeah.

And these are important because they will, again, remember these horns of a ram guys. Yeah. They'll come back. We'll come back to them. So Alexander goes on his own into the temple. The others all lurk on the steps or something, you know, having a drink and comparing sunburn. I think

at this point some of them might reasonably be saying this trip has not quite turned out as I expected. A stag do's don't go. Talking snakes. Your Bullingdon impersonation is worth doing the subject for that alone. Yeah, it is. But the

oracle Amon is a very peculiar oracle. I mean, I still think it's hard to conceive that taking place in front of you, the straight face, because it's basically a stone, isn't it? A moving stone. What I know about the oracle at Seaways, it's one of the very

last places to remain pagan in the Christian period. It's a stone that they put on a big sort of tray, and they carry it about and it has like dangling bells from it. And you ask your question, and they shuffle about with the stone

on the tray, where the stone directs often to pieces of paper with the answers written down to your question. But doesn't he have a completely private? Yes, there is. It is supposedly. And there are different accounts.

There are different accounts of what. Of course there are. He never reveals what was said. But some people say, as a top children's version of the Alexander the Great story has it in the taverns of Memphis the soldiers exchange gossip and rumours

and some people say that it's that he says to them have I sufficiently avenged the death of my father Philip and have I got revenge over the persians and they say no no because your father is not philip your father is zeus and at that point now the

thing is tom do you think he believes this do you think he thinks he's the son of a god based on his subsequent conduct? I just don't think that. It's going to give a very evasive answer. Well, okay. So there's an interesting answer to this, which is, have you seen this gold coin that was supposedly found down a well in Afghanistan? No.

Is that one of them, Iqanum, or one of those? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's, um, it's, it's Southern Afghanistan and there's a well, and they found a whole, supposedly a whole stash of a massive, massive hoard of, of,

uh, of coins. And, um, they kind of started turning up in, this is the 1990s. I think I'm the Taliban. Uh,

and these coins started turning up, filtering out. Um, and one of them is a 1990s, I think on the Taliban. And these coins started turning up, filtering out. And one of them is a gold coin, which has an elephant on one side and a picture of what's clearly Alexander on the other. And he has a kind of elephant hood, a hood made of a scalped elephant. And he has the horns of amun and it seems likely because there are also a whole series of of of coins which were definitely minted um in alexander's lifetime showing elephants uh for reasons that will come to

in due course when alexander invades india um and so it the thesis is that this is a coin that dates it's the only it's the only thing that dates from his lifetime because there are subsequent coins with him with ram's horns which are minted by Ptolemy as in yeah you know Mr Snake um and Ptolemy has his own interest in in branding Alexander as a god yeah of course because the egyptians think of pharaohs as well because alexander yes but alexander's body ends up in in of course in egypt so so ptolemy has a kind of massive interest in saying i have the body of a god yeah so that and as you can tell from the talking snake stuff quite a lot of these stories are not entirely reliable yeah don't tell me you're going to diss ptolemy's reliability so I think so I think it to that extent it's difficult to know but if this coin is genuine then that would suggest

and it's minted in Alexander's lifetime then that would suggest that it is coming from Alexander himself that still doesn't mean that um Alexander does necessarily believe it I mean it might be for propagandistic purposes yeah I don't know but I but I think the board you know in Greece the border between the divine and the human is is much moreous, much more amorphous than it is for us. I think that's definitely true, Tom. And I think as well, some historians say that Greece has been ever more tightly connected to Egyptian and Persian ideas of kingship in recent years. And the idea of a kind of sacral, I'm using a Tom Holland word. Yeah, you are.

Of a kind of sacral kingship. Welcome to my world. So when Philip was assassinated going into the stadium, which we mentioned in the first half, he was about to join a procession of images of the gods. There was going to be images of the Olympians and another image of Philip himself kind of as a god. So already that kind of idea that a king is very like a god, even godly um or godlike rather i should say is sort of in the ether and so it kind of explains why alexander might believe it in a sort of weird way and it's something that that really kicks in in in the decades after alexander's as death where so the athenians that they greet this um kind of you know uh warlord macedonian warlord um as a god because and they say well because you're on the earth and the god the other

gods aren't and we need right it's not a very good reason i don't think that's quite a good reason it's quite good they they greet him by carrying giant phalluses through the streets of athens right that would i would find that a bit disconcerting personally but um um so yes so those borders are porous we but i think and i don't know whether this coin is i think it's generally not thought to be uh authentic but there are various serious you think it is okay and and i am not remotely qualified to see i think, I think Alexander's subsequent behaviour makes more sense if you think he thinks he's really touched by something because this is the point I think.

Well, he's Achilles. He's Achilles. So Achilles is a hero. And, you know, we've talked about this before. Hero, the idea of a hero is, you know, you are a son of a god or you have something of the divine about you. That is a status that is kind of universally recognized in the Greek world. I'm sure Alexander thinks that he occupies that position, that he's a hero in that sense. But whether he thinks he's a god, it's impossible to say.

We're at the end of this episode so alexander is there in egypt with his mates tom holland's done a fantastic impersonation of the mate do you want to give us that one more time yeah top level yeah there we go and um there they are with prince harry and the others uh gearing up they're all there in egypt now i think this is the point at which anybody else might have packed up and gone home. But of course, Alexander doesn't. He goes on. And what happens next? We will discover next time, won't we, Tom? If you have Pothos, you have Pothos.

We'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Goodbye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.