BBC article on Alexander
Reading the BBC website this evening, I noticed in the H2G2 box a reference to an article entitled 'Alexander: The Tireless Conqueror'. The article is a very critical one, highlighting the number of people killed in the course of Alexander's march across Persia and the east.
Its value as an article on Alexander, however, is extremely debatable. The first three paragraphs must rate as three of the worst that I have read in an essay in a long time. They are the kind that look good in the first draft but inevitably must be deleted of when you realise that your space would be better used discussing the actual issue that you have committed to write about.
The rest of the article is only a little better if you like making assumptions about people based on figures alone and without regard for something that this author clearly has no time for, or perhaps hasn't heard of, namely, historical context. Nowhere is this made more clear than in his comparison of Alexander with Hitler. The only difference between the two, he says, is that we like Alexander because he won his wars whereas Hitler didn't.
Hm. If we leave aside the fact that the two are hardly comparable because one was a political leader while the other a military one, it is undeniable that Alexander was a successful general and he is admired for that. Why shouldn't he be? Rommel has a good reputation because he too was a good soldier. The ability to win battles and win them well is surely to be respected even if grudgingly, but that aside, there was more to Alexander than his pure combat role. For example, his commitment to the Homeric ideal, his love of his men, his respect for women, his interest in the natural sciences, his desire to draw Persian and Hellenic culture together and so forth. For all his wickedness, I am sure that Hitler had positive attributes - no man is fully evil - but I would suggest that they played a far less important role in his life than did Alexander's.
Unfortunately, this article is devoid of any such sense and appears to think that Alexander can be understand by reference only to the bodycount between Pella, the Hyphasis River and Babylon. Such a view is tiresomely simplistic and would not be deserving of a place in a student's essay let alone on the BBC website.
