Alexander's parents were both striking personalities. Olympias, a native of Epirus, whose family traced their ancestry back to Achilles, was jealous and possessive—and terribly passionate. Her emotions found an outlet in the wild orgiastic rites of Dionysus, and at Alexander's accession and again after his death her desire for vengeance erupted in acts of unbridled savagery. This streak of cruelty reappears in Alexander, especially when in his later years he was under increasing strain. Philip, too, was capable of great passion although he nearly always managed to control himself. It is scarcely surprising therefore that their son should occasionally be subject to volcanic outbursts. To call him, as Mithridates VI of Pontus has been called, a ‘barbarian varnished’ would be absurd; it is scarcely less so to expect from him the conduct of a Greek gentleman or the product of one of our public schools. He also reproduced some of Philip's most notable qualities. We see in him the same reckless, even foolhardy, bravery, the same dogged persistence, the same open-handed generosity. From his father he inherited too his capacity for managing men and affairs.

Macedonia was the springboard of the movement which led to the conquest of the Persian Empire. Though Philip and Alexander ostensibly embarked on war with Persia as Leaders (Hegemones) of the Greeks, and though the Greek cities did make their military and naval contribution—not to mention the comfort and support furnished by certain Greek publicists, intellectuals, and politicians—nevertheless the essential power which had harnessed Greece and now was to harness Persia came from Macedonia and the Macedonians, officially unmentioned, and in many Greek circles unmentionable.

Napoleon said that in war ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one’. Alexander would have agreed. He was not only a great strategist and tactician; he was a personal leader of heroic mould, heading every major assault, probably more often wounded than any other man in his army. First up the ladder when the troops hung back at the city of the Malloi in India, leader of the last five in the search for water, when his desert column nearly foundered in Gedrosia, pouring out for a libation, David-like, the water brought to him in a helmet, earlier in that same march, he kept the love of his soldiers even through times of exasperation. Thus, from the very first, he built up in his army a tremendous feeling of moral superiority, a certainty that under his leadership no one could stand against them and no obstacle was impossible, in the strength of which his thirty to forty thousand marched from the Dardanelles to the Nile, the Oxus, and the Indus, with never a check, save at Tyre for a time, when he was present. Any special defiance, or any reputedly impossible problem, he took as a personal challenge, and fell upon it with especial ardour. The Gordian Knot yielded when he slid the yoke sideways out of it—and revealed many rope-ends, not only two. The defenders of the ferocious defile of the Cilician Gates fled at the mere terror of his approach; no doubt he would have scaled the Taurus to outflank them, but they could have gained time. Of Gaza on its high tell he said ‘the more “impossible” it is, the more it must be taken’, because of the moral effect: ‘for the achievement would amaze and dismay the enemy, and failure would be a disgrace when told to the Greeks and to Darius’. It was at Gaza that he is said to have disgraced himself by the atrocious killing of the captured Batis (Berve, ii. 104 f., no. 209—an atrocity unmentioned by Arrian, and disbelieved by Tarn—but Tarn had convinced himself that Alexander was a saint). More often, anyone who gave Alexander a stern fight gained his respect. Porus the Indian was among those who survived to enjoy it. Batis, a eunuch, perhaps aroused Alexander's disgust.

No army leader has become more famous in history than Alexander. He has been praised and admired as well as blamed and cursed. But even if blemishes can be found in his career and character, no one can deny his ‘daemonic’ strength of will and leadership, which alone are sufficient to mark him out as one of the greatest generals history has seen. Opinions may, however, differ as to whether he was more than that.

When Alexander invaded Asia, he almost certainly had no idea V V how far he would go or what the end would be. For the moment, Antipater was left in complete charge of Macedon and (with ill-defined powers) of the ‘free’ Greek allies and other European dependants; it was only towards the end of his life that the King began to worry about the excessive power that Antipater had fashioned for himself; and by then, as it turned out, it was too late to deal with him and Alexander died without doing so. As far as Asia was concerned, there were no blueprints on how to organize it. This is not mere conjecture, but can be proved. One point of policy was inherited from Philip and inescapable: the ‘Hellenic crusade’, to liberate the Greeks of Asia and to punish the barbarian for the events of 480. It might be thought that on this point Alexander had little freedom of action. Yet it is precisely here that we see him proceeding—within the elastic framework of ‘liberation’—slowly and pragmatically. Bypassing Greek cities that he knew were unfriendly, he did not take one (Zelea) until after the battle of the Granicus: the Zeleans were ‘forgiven’ for having helped the enemy under compulsion, but got no special concessions (A. i. 12. 6; 17. 2). After his stay at Sardis—which will occupy us soon—he entered Ephesus. This city had been occupied by Parmenio in his invasion of Asia before Philip's death. He had established democracy (since the Persians had ruled through a narrow oligarchy), and the grateful citizens had set up Philip's statue in the great temple of Artemis (‘Diana of the Ephesians’). But a counter-revolution had brought the city under Persian control and undone Parmenio's work. Alexander could do no less than restore the democracy that welcomed the son of Philip. As for the tribute paid to Persia (and presumably, for a time, to Philip), he ordered it to be paid henceforth to Artemis (A. i. 17. 9 ff.)—a gesture befitting both his religious feeling and his love of display. He offered to do more: to finish the restoration of the temple (which had been burnt down the night he was born) and dedicate it in his name, and he was prepared to pay for this honour; but the Ephesians politely declined (Strabo xiv. i. 22).

The unusual personality of Alexander the Great is reflected in an extraordinary number of portraits. They begin in his early youth, and do not end with his death. They continue during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and all subsequent periods down to modern times. The portraits of Alexander not only reflect the different phases of his short life but become an artistic motif for all following periods.

The course of Athenian history during the fifteen or twenty years after the battle at Chaeronea was strongly influenced by the dominating spirits of two men, one of whom was ever present and the other far away. The latter, of course, is Alexander, whose departure from Europe with the major portion of Macedon's fighting strength afforded the opportunity for the Greek states to develop resistance and opposition to Macedonian control which the fiery young king, had he been present, would hardly have tolerated. The former is Lycurgus son of Lycophron, the only Athenian after Pericles who so successfully dominated his city's policies and left such an indelible mark upon the city, its institutions and buildings, that his twelve-year period of influence rightly bears his name. Furthermore, so many of the things that were accomplished or attempted during this period seem to have been initiated in conscious imitation of the Golden Age, that we are justified in calling it the Silver Age of Lycurgus. His is the comprehensive programme of reconstruction, reform, and revitalization that the present paper proposes to describe.

Sir William Tarn wrote that ‘the primary reason why Alexander invaded Persia was, no doubt, that he never thought of not doing it; it was his inheritance’. The invasion had been planned and begun by Philip. It was, in name, a Panhellenic enterprise, to exact retribution for the devastation wrought by Xerxes in Greece and to liberate the Greeks of Asia Minor. These aims Alexander faithfully fulfilled. From the spoils of the Granicus he dedicated three hundred Persian panoplies to Athens' tutelary goddess; he sent back to Athens the statues of Harmo-dius and Aristogiton which Xerxes had carried off to Susa; and he excused the burning of Persepolis as a reprisal for the sack of Athens. The Panhellenic war was then over, and Alexander sent the Greek contingents home (A. iii. 19. 5). In general he freed the Greek cities of Asia from the control of satraps; they were to pay no taxes, to receive no garrisons and to live under their own laws. By expelling tyrants or oligarchs and setting up democratic governments, he not only removed the partisans of Persia from power but did homage to the growing tendency in Greece to equate freedom with democracy. The gratitude of the liberated cities was long-enduring; it was here that his cult survived into Roman times. In reality of course they were as much subject to his will as less privileged subjects. And to Greek cities that opposed him he was less accommodating. Halicarnassus and Aspendus, which certainly counted as Greek, were subjected to his satraps. They could be treated as disloyal to the Panhellenic cause, like the captive mercenaries who fought against him at the Granicus and who were sent back in chains to forced labour in Macedon. But Alexander was not always so merciless. He spared the mercenaries who were holding out against him on an island in the harbour of Miletus, and enlisted them in his own army; it would not have been easy to take the island by force. Sentiment and principle gave way to his own interests, as they always did.

Whether men make history or history makes men is an old problem, and one of which the ancients were fully conscious. In Book XV, for example, Polybius describes an extraordinary, certainly fictional interview between Hannibal and Scipio. Here were the two ablest commanders of the day, and on the morrow the issue was to be settled between them on the field of Zama. Polybius knew that this was a contest of generals, and that the better would win. But in the discussion, there is reference only to Fortune and the gods. Of the latter, one knew that they gave or withheld success for good and know-able, if not always obvious, reasons. The former, however, was quite unpredictable, the cause of events which could neither be explained nor anticipated. She was the personification of What Happened, τὸ τυχόν; that is to say, in modern terms, of History.