The Madness of Alexander the Great by Richard A Gabriel

Author:Richard A Gabriel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Ancient / General
ISBN: 9781473852365
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

It must be borne in mind that Alexander did not just order these atrocities to be committed, but he was an enthusiastic participant in them. He enjoyed wading into the slaughter, almost as if he could not stop himself. Arrian suggests as much in trying to explain Alexander’s dangerous leap behind the walls of the Malli, an impulsive act that almost got him killed. ‘The truth is that … such was his passion for glory that he had not the strength of mind, when there was action afoot, to consider his own safety; the sheer pleasure of battle, as other pleasures are to other men, was irresistible.’93 Whether he fought on foot or on horseback, Alexander’s killing was bloody business indeed, where he could see the fear in his victim’s eyes, hear their cries of pain, and feel the splash of blood and the warmth of their hacked flesh upon his own skin. And yet, like Achilles, he was drawn to it again and again.

Except for the death of Hephaestion, the texts reveal few expressions of Alexander’s remorse or pity for suffering of any kind, not even for his own troops or his friends. His soldiers died in windrows from wounds, battle, disease, and exposure to days of rain, heat, ice, snow, snakebites, and the slow painful death from poisoned Indian arrows. Only once did he visit the wounded. Only once, when Alexander feared that Ptolemy might die from his wounds, do we find any expression of concern or sorrow for the loss of a comrade in arms. By the end of his life, Alexander was emotionally dead, incapable of any human emotion beyond the exhilaration produced by the excitement of killing.

Alexander had become Achilles.

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