sWhat Is So Great
About Alexander?
Would
Have Been A Worst War Criminal, Looter, Rapist, Betrayer, Enslaver, Persecutor,
and Mass Annihilator by the Present Standard - Causing Endless Diaspora and
Slavery in The Peaceful Ancient Free World!
Deepak
Sarkar, www.kolki.com
{Note: Many times in victorious history we find mentions of ‘Great Wars’
deifying the war criminals as “GREAT”!
Alexander certainly could be Great to the Macedonian Noble Warmongers
(Elites), Mine Owners (Bankers) and their subsequent worldwide offspring who had
been sharing and enjoying the fruits of the looted Gold, Silver as well as
slaves from the defeated/occupied lands including Tyre (Syria), Persia, Babylon
and Egypt but to the sufferers he is nothing but the worst war criminal,
looter, and murderer in history who also murdered his own best friend as well
as most trusted General and his son on mere suspicion.}
[Background History: Macedonians
are believed to have as ancestors Dorian Greeks, who had overrun other people
in the area. Macedonians worshiped Greek gods and spoke a dialect of Greek. But
it was a dialect that was difficult for the Greeks south of them to understand.
Greeks to the south of the Macedonians saw the Macedonians as uncouth
barbarians. When Greece was a thriving participatory democracy some Greek aristocrats from of the Peloponnesian city
of Argos had immigrated to Macedonia in the 600s. Alexander’s father Philip was
a product of those aristocrats who declared him
king of Macedonia killing his infant nephew as king under his care.
Alexander was
born1 the sixth of Hecatombaeon*,
the month Macedonians call Lous,
the same day that the temple of Artemis of Ephesus
was burned down while its mistress was absent, assisting at the birth of
Alexander. And all the Eastern soothsayers who happened to be at Ephesus at
that time, looking upon the ruin of the temple feared it be the forerunner of
some other calamity, ran around the
town, beating their faces, and crying that this day had brought forth something
that would prove fatal and destructive to all Asia. They didn’t know eventually it would be fatal to all over the world.
This article
will show that Alexander might have been a great hero to many who have been
historically enjoying the fruits of the aggressive Macedonian wars and deadly
expansions around ancient world but any
humane analysis of his actions Would
prove him as A Worst War Criminal, Rapist, Looter, Betrayer, Enslaver,
Persecutor, and Mass Annihilator by the Present Standard - Causing Endless sufferings
and Diaspora in The Peaceful Ancient World!]
Summary of
Alexander’s Atrocities:
▪ During seven-month siege of Tyre the many who did not
surrender were put to death, and the
women and children were sold into slavery.
▪ Looted Tyre Treasury - 50 Tons of Gold,
equivalent silver as well as Jewellery from women
▪ Gaza's defenders
fought to the last man. Alexander sold its women and children into slavery
▪ Expelled Samaria's
inhabitants, and in their place he invited Macedonians to populate the city
▪ Massacred Darius'
poorly led army second time
▪ Macedonian General
Antipater's army crushed the armies of Sparta and its allies
▪ Alexander entered Babylon in
triumph and his soldiers spent their pay on Babylon's women
▪ Alexander acquired
Persian City Susa’s great treasury and reward his troops generously
▪ In Susa, Alexander
sacrificed bulls to the gods in accordance with Macedonian custom
▪ Alexander seized a
wondrous amount of money from the Persian treasury in the capital
Persepolis,
then turned the city over to his troops who stormed
through its streets, slaughtered men,
plundered their property and stripped women
of their jewellery; then Alexander and his army
burned Persepolis' great palace of Xerxes.
▪ Alexander inflicted heavy casualties on Bactrian gaining control of the
route farther east and
forcing local peoples to accept his rule
▪ Cut off Persian Leader
Bessus' nose and ears before execution
▪ Alexander killed his best friend
and saviour unarmed Cleitus running a pike through him
▪ After killing 2180
soldiers of a kingdom near Indus River, Alexander and the others began a
murderous march of fifteen hundred miles
▪ Murdered Parmenion (c.400-330):
most trusted general of the Macedonian
king Philip
II, loyal
supporter of Alexander
the Conqueror, on a false charge of treason.
▪ Upon returning to Persepolis he
had most of the errant Governors executed
▪ Zoroastrian priests
demonized Alexander describing him as one of the worst sinners in history
About Philip,
Father of Alexander
[In 359 BCE,
the Macedonian king, Perdiccas III, was killed fighting an invasion by the
Illyrians. His infant son succeeded him, and Perdiccas' twenty-two year-old
brother, Philip, was made the infant's regent. Philip pushed aside his infant
nephew. Perhaps he had the child murdered. Then he made himself
king, taking the title Philip II. Philip claimed to be descended from
Greeks of the Peloponnesian city of Argos, where Homer's king Agamemnon was
said to have ruled - a city from which, it was also said, some Greek
aristocrats in the 600s had emigrated to Macedonia.
The nobility
in Macedonia
had been a source of division, and Philip mitigated this by making nobles of
men who supported him. In 358, with his strengthened army, he invaded Paeonia.
Then he led his army against the Illyrians, killing seven thousand in one
battle and reversing the defeat of the year before. That year he transferred
Macedonians to his kingdom's northern plain, splitting hostile groups and
defining the frontier against the Illyrians. The following year he helped
stabilize his western frontier by marrying Olympias, the daughter of king
Neoptolemus of Epirus.
These successes gave Philip more land with which to support horses, more men
for his armies and more revenues. He had more land to give to nobles as
rewards for their loyalty, and the nobles, impressed by Philip's military
successes, were now firmer in their recognition of his authority.
In 342,
Philip installed his brother on the throne of Epirus. He left his
sixteen year-old son, Alexander, in charge of Macedonia and led his army eastward
into Thrace,
reaching the city of Perinthus
in 340. Philip held autocratic authority over his league of Greek cities. He
created a federal constitution and a council of representatives for his league,
and he made the city of Corinth
the meeting place where these representatives would settle issues that arose
among them. The league's
politics were to be conservative, bringing an end to the trend toward reform
and democracy that had begun with Solon more than two hundred years before. Philip's
league declared war and commissioned Philip to lead their armies against Persia.
Philip had
divorced Alexander's mother, Olympias, and had married a younger woman.
Olympias and Philip attended the marriage celebration of their daughter, and
there one of Philip's former close companions, who now had a bitter grudge
against him, leaped upon him and murdered him. Philip's generals supported
Alexander as Philip's successor, and Alexander restored his mother as queen of
Macedonia.]
From Issus, Alexander moved southward through Syria, taking
one Mediterranean seaport after another. In January 332, he and his army came
upon the Phoenician city of Tyre, a naval base and home for many
crewmen in Persia's
navy, a city of fanatical fighters and a city that was a bitter enemy of
surrounding city-states. Alexander began a seven-month siege of Tyre, and against Tyre he used catapults,
rams and finally swords. Then he resorted to
tradition: the many who did not surrender were put to death, and the women and
children of Tyre
were sold into slavery.
Early in the year 331, Alexander sailed down the Nile, and he found a place he thought perfect for a city.
There he founded Alexandria, soon to be Egypt's new capital
- a city that would be populated by
people from neighbouring villages and towns and by Macedonian, Greek and Balkan
veterans from Alexander's army. Like a Macedonian city, Alexandria's inhabitants were to be subject
to royal edicts but otherwise self-governing, with an assembly and a city
council.
At Siwah, Alexander was welcomed by the local high
priest as a great conqueror and as the son of Amon-Ra. Alexander
welcomed this proclamation of his divinity. It was Macedonian and Greek tradition
that a hero might be the son of a god
and yet human.
In early 331, Alexander returned to his pursuit of
Darius. Along the way, during the early summer, Alexander conducted a campaign
against a rebellion in Samaria. There a group of Jews had
captured and burned alive their governor. Samarians surrendered those
responsible for the killing, and Alexander had the
murderers executed on the spot. Then, as a further lesson against such rebellions, he expelled Samaria's
inhabitants, and in their place he invited Macedonians to populate the city.
Moving eastward across Mesopotamia,
Alexander came again to the Royal
Road, and he turned south toward Susa. On October 1, Darius and his army
of a million men arrived on a wide plain along the Royal Road, by a town called Gaugamela, and the two armies clashed. And
Darius' poorly led army was massacred.
Alexander marched southward unimpeded, leaving the
Royal Road and traveling along the Tigris River, past great fertile fields of
barley and millet, past rows of date palms, man made canals and huge estates,
to Babylon. The Persian governor of Babylon
surrendered the city to him, and with his army Alexander entered the city in
triumph. For Alexander's soldiers it was time for another rest, and they spent their pay on Babylon's women.
Sparta still
resented Macedonia's
occupation of the Peloponnese peninsula, and Sparta's king, Agis II,
was encouraged by a large force leaving Macedonia to join Alexander, and
Agis II was encouraged by an uprising against Macedonian rule in Thrace.
Alexander's general in charge of defending the home front, Antipater, sent an
army against the uprising. In the year 331, Antipater's
army crushed the armies of Sparta
and its allies - indicating again that Sparta's days as a great military power had
ended.
Alexander
pushed farther east - leaving the former governor of Babylon in charge of Babylon's civil affairs and a military force
in Babylon
under Macedonian charge. In twenty days he and his army traveled two hundred
miles and arrived at Susa, the administrative center of the
Persian Empire. Susa surrendered to Alexander
before he entered the city. With this
Alexander acquired the city's great treasury, which allowed him to reward his
troops generously - his troops not having been allowed the usual form of
payment to soldiers: pillage and loot. In Susa, Alexander sacrificed bulls to the gods
in accordance with Macedonian custom.
In December, 331, Alexander left the Persian governor
in charge in Susa, a Macedonian in charge of local troops, and with a refreshed army of
about sixty-thousand, he fought his way southeastward through mountainous
terrain. Then he swept through an open plain of woods, canals and estates,
toward Persia's
capital city, Persepolis. Alexander and his army of
sixty thousand entered Persepolis
and took control of its palace. They saw themselves in the heart of Persia. Alexander seized a wondrous amount of money
from the Persian treasury. Then he resorted to the tradition of vengeance. Those in Persepolis were to pay
for the misdeeds he believed the Persians had committed some hundred and fifty
years before, when Xerxes had invaded Greece. Alexander
turned the city over to his troops, who stormed through its streets,
slaughtered men, plundered their property and stripped women of their jewellery. Alexander
and his troops spent the remainder of the winter at Persepolis, and after a night of drinking, Alexander and his army burned Persepolis' great palace of Xerxes.
Alexander and his troops then pushed north along a
mountainous course toward the Caspian Sea, to
Darius' summer palace, where, according to reports, Darius and Persian troops
were encamped. But before Alexander and his men could reach Darius, the leader
of Darius' Bactrian cavalry, Bessus, and some accomplices, killed Darius.
Bessus moved eastward with his troops and proclaimed himself Darius' successor.
In pursuit, Alexander pushed eastward into Bactria. With reinforcements that
arrived from Greece
and Macedonia,
Alexander
fought local rulers and independent tribes whom the Persians had only barely
managed to dominate. Alexander
inflicted heavy casualties on them, gaining control of the route farther east
and forcing local peoples to accept his rule.
Alexander marched into the Hindu Kush mountains, and, in these
mountains, local people showed Alexander the rock where the mythical Prometheus
was said to have been chained after he gave the gift of fire to humanity.
Alexander, together with local rulers, managed to capture Bessus, who was brought
naked in bonds and a wooden collar to stand before Alexander at the town
of Bactra. And in keeping with Persian
tradition, Bessus' nose and
ears were cut off. Then he was sent to be tried by a Persian court,
which had him executed.
In the vast area of Bactria, Alexander founded more
towns, and he married a local chieftain's daughter, Roxana, apparently more for
good relations with a local ruler than for love. As king of the East he began
borrowing from the pomp of the Persian throne, and those who came to see him
had to prostrate themselves before him in recognition of his divinity.
Alexander's troops found it embarrassing and considered it a part of the
slavishness and inferiority of Eastern people.
Alexander took more Persians into his ranks,
including Darius' brother as one of his companion soldiers. One of Alexander's
most trusted commanders, Cleitus, who had saved his life at Granicus, was
offended by Macedonians having to petition Persians for an audience with their
own king, and he objected to positions of command passing to Persians. While
Alexander and his companions were having one of their wine parties, Alexander
and Cleitus argued. Alexander, thinking that Cleitus was attacking, ran him
through with a pike and killed him though unarmed.
After two years in Bactria, the king of an area by the
Indus River - which had been a part of the
Persian Empire - declared himself an ally of
Alexander and requested Alexander's help against a rival kingdom. In the summer
of 327, Alexander and his army started a 400-mile journey to India, arriving
there in the spring of 326. He attacked the enemy's flank, compelling the enemy
to rearrange his forces, and he took advantage of the enemy's confusion and
imbalance. Alexander lost 990 men. The other side lost 2,180 and the battle.
Alexander hoped to advance to the Ganges River
and make it his eastern border, but after a march of a hundred miles his troops
refused to go farther east. Unable to persuade them to continue they journeyed
south along the Hydaspes to the Indus
River and down the Indus to the Arabian Sea.
Some of Alexander's entourage boarded ships, and Alexander and the others
began a murderous march of fifteen hundred miles through
mountainous and dry terrain to Persepolis,
then another three hundred miles to Susa
- a journey that began in September, 325,, and ended in the spring of 324.
When Alexander returned he listened to charges
against the errant governors, and he had
most of them executed. Then he continued his policy of integrating his
forces with local people. He encouraged his officers to take local women as
wives. He set an example by taking two more wives for himself. And one of them,
Stateira, was a daughter of Darius, which added legitimacy to Alexander's claim
of kingship over the Persians.
Some ten thousand of Alexander's soldiers are said to
have married local women. These soldiers
received generous dowries, were demobilized and sent home. Their wives and
children stayed in the East, where the children were to be maintained and
educated in Greek ways, at state expense, and to be handed over to their
fathers when they reached adulthood.
With new troops that arrived from Macedonia,
Alexander created an integrated force, with Macedonians in the
front rank carrying pikes, and Persians in rows behind them with swords and
javelins. It was a force with greater mobility than before -
and a creation that was to be adopted by the Roman Republic.
In 323, Alexander returned to Babylon, which he planned to make the capital
of his great new empire. He hoped to create a new loyalty
across the lands he had conquered. He planned to colonize the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf. And he planned to
have Arabia circumnavigated and explored. He looked for
his empire to be strengthened by a common culture, Hellenism, including the Greek language. His Persian cadets were to have
instruction in Greek literature, and his other subjects in the East were to be
encouraged to become like the Greeks and Macedonians.
Alexander was laying plans to extend his conquests to
Sicily and Italy - to unite more of the world under
his rule, but a fortuity intervened. In 323 BCE, at the age of thirty-two,
Alexander died - possibly from malaria. Eventually Caesar would fulfil his
dream making roman Empire Greco.
Zoroastrian priests demonized Alexander. They were jealous of foreign creeds and, reeling from the damage that
Alexander had done to the prestige of their religion, they began a legend
that described him as one of the worst sinners in history, as having slain many Persian teachers and lawyers and as having
quenched many sacred fires. And in Ethiopia, Christians would describe his
father, Philip, as a Christian martyr, and they would describe Alexander as an
ascetic saint. That will tell the world where Christianity came from long before
Yahshua of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem.
Conclusion: Thus Dorian
Greeks spread from Greece to Macedonia, to Asia Minor, to Syria, to Gaza, to
Egypt, to Babylon, to Persia, and India holding monarchical positions and
breeding freely among local population keeping memories of Alexander alive as
divine ‘Son of God’ and creating deified Myths. Now imagine what Zionist evangelists think
of second coming of the messiah Christ, another violent Son of God (Not loving Yahshua/Jesus)
resembling Hitler or any combination of George W. Bush Sr./Jr., Tony Blair,
John Howard, Obama, David Cameron, King Harper – to colonize the entire world ?
Reference:
- Macrohistory and World Report, http://fsmitha.com/h1/ch11.htm
2.
http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_t32.html#6
Notes:
*The first
month of the year, theoretically starting on the first new moon after the
summer's solstice. This could mean that Alexander was born on 20 July 356.
Unfortunately, the astronomical, religious and civil calendars did not coincide
in the fourth century; as a consequence, it is impossible to give the date of
Alexander's birth.