Alexander: Why he is greatest commander

[john1565]

I have found some topics here which cast a doubt on Alexander's greatness. Some people compare Ceasar with him, while few others tried to say Genghis Khan is greatest. As those posts are years old, I am creating a new thread on this topic.

 

To support my opinion that Alexander is greatest commander, I would like to attach 2 tour maps. One is of Alexander and another of Julius Caesar. If anyone look at the maps, he/she can easily understand the greatness of Alexander.

 

 

Keep in mind, Alexander the Great have reached various parts of the world within a short life-span of 33 years. If he had managed a 60 year life, wouldn't he conquered all parts of the world?

 

Tour map credit: Wikitour

[caldrail]

When he was in Spain, Caesar was visiting a town with friends and spotted a statue of Alexander. He started to weep. His friends asked what was causing his misery. "This man" Caesar said, "at my age had conquered the world. I have done nothing".

Alexander did not merely conquer a large area, he set in place a greek-orientated culture across the regions he had dominated that lasted long after he was dead. These regions demonstrate extensive ruins and remains of the period to this day, some now in obscure or difficult areas. Caesar did not inspire the same pro-Roman culture - that was the result of later influence or prior work by merchants. Had Alexander reached the age of sixty it's unlikely he would have extended his reach much further because his army in India had already threatened to mutiny if he did not stop.

[Pompieus]

Alexander engaged in every type of warfare, and was victorious in all of them.  He defeated armies of Greek hoplites, Iranian cavalry and asiatic masses, barbarian tribes and Indian Rajahs; besieged and captured great Greek and Phoenician cities, as well as remote, inaccessible, rock-bound mountain strongholds; succeeded in guerilla warfare against hill and mountain tribes, and defeated steppe horse-warriors. No army, city or people in arms ever defeated him.  Nobody, not Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Scipio, Cyrus, Caesar, or his father Phillip were as successful.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Pompieus

[indianasmith]

I am a big fan of Julius Caesar as a general and statesman, but I will concede that Alexander MAY have been a better general - at least in his own time.  But, I think if you took Caesar and three of his most veteran legions and gave Alexander a force twice as large, Caesar might still have emerged victorious.  The Romans raised war to a science as few other cultures in the history of the world have ever done.

[john1565]

On 2/27/2018 at 1:44 AM, indianasmith said:

I am a big fan of Julius Caesar as a general and statesman, but I will concede that Alexander MAY have been a better general - at least in his own time.  But, I think if you took Caesar and three of his most veteran legions and gave Alexander a force twice as large, Caesar might still have emerged victorious.  The Romans raised war to a science as few other cultures in the history of the world have ever done.

Caesar is also great. No doubt!

[caldrail]

The Romans raised war to a science as few other cultures in the history of the world have ever done.

You have to be joking. I agree they were ruthless, determined, and capable of engineering that some armies couldn't match, but much of the methodology was derived from the greeks, and Egyptians in periods gone had been equally capable and it seems just as well organised. People sometimes place too much emphasis on te Roman model of warfare I think - which evolved into a one-trick tool. They used a heavy infantry army, useless against Surena's mounted archer army at Carrhae. Paulus' unelnlightened tactic of attack in a huge mass led to a spectacular defeat at Cannae. The Roman system worked not because of any innate superiority - they had any number of defeats to their credit  - but because they always tried to exercise initiative, though the advantages of scale increasingly worked for them too. By the late empire the Roman legions were not exactly capable, nothing like their peak in the early empire.

What is true is that the Romans often found capable leaders and that made the difference. A poor commander and the legions were not better than anyone else, even lacklustre in performance (Titus nearly had many junior officers executed when he was threatened by zealots during the siege of Jerusalem, and lwgionaries were not following simple regulations of having weaponry to hand during their siegeworks). Well led, a Roman legion was a difficult beast to defeat. Bear in mind, nearly half the major battles fought by Romans were against each other.

[john1565]

In such way, all known history will false