It was early in the morning (well, more like 10am, but it felt early to me) as we climbed off the bus in the harbor of Thessaloniki. After taking in the inspiring view, our group soon found itself facing a magnificent monument to Alexander the Great. As our guide regaled us with the story of how Alexander, as a young boy, convinced his father (Philip II, King of Macedonia) to buy the stubborn horse Bucephalus and succeeded in taming him, I could not help noticing some interesting aspects of the monument and the contradictions that the “greatest of all Greeks” represents.
Alexander, upon the stubborn Bucephalus, faces east, where the goal of his conquests is located. It is also the future of not only Greece, but the West, for Alexander and many of the ancients would consider (begrudgingly) the Persian Empire and the east as the source of civilization and culture, along with possessing vast amounts of riches. Heading west from Greece held no glory for Alexander or the unruly Greeks the Macedonians had subdued. It’s also important to note that Alexander, along with his father and many of his companions and generals, was a Macedonian and not “Greek” in the strictest sense of the word. His father, Philip II, had spent his life conquering the independent city-states of Greece to the south of Macedon and building the lean, military machine that Alexander would use to conquer their nemesis, the Persian Empire.
Perhaps it was this disconnect between Alexander and the “Greeks” he ruled that compelled him to transform what originally was supposed to be a simple conquest in search of glory and riches, to ultimately forge a multicultural empire that would expose the Greeks to a world that was much larger and more exotic than they had ever known. Alexander himself did not live long enough to consolidate his gains and establish a politically stable empire. When asked by his generals as he lay dying who would inherit the empire, his response “to the strongest”, while not the best advice in establishing a stable line of succession, does indeed betray Alexander’s obsession with his quest to emulate the Homeric ideal and Greek heroes of mythology. As his generals tore the empire apart after his death, what they did not destroy was the cosmopolitan world he had left behind. The blending of Greek and Eastern culture created the Hellenistic world, where the exchange of ideas and philosophies sparked a dialogue and internal debate that has driven the Western world ever since.
At the same time, what the Greeks and the rest of the Hellenistic world gained in the free exchange of goods and ideas, they lost in terms of political freedom. The polis, that small, independent world of citizen-soldiers who governed themselves, was sacrificed on the altar of Philip II and Alexander’s ambitions. While their day to day affairs were mostly still their own, the real decisions now rested in the hands of Alexander and the generals/kings who came after him. So when Alexander asked that he be recognized as a god by his fellow Greeks, they really had no choice in the matter. Alexander’s acquired godhood was a thoroughly non-Greek tradition (if anything, it smacked of one of the worst crimes in Greek culture – that of hubris) and a staple of eastern monarchies. In this sense, Hellenization was in many ways a two-way street. Aristotle’s most famous pupil, it seemed, had rejected most of the moderate counsel, ethics, and philosophy of his mentor (Aristotle, likewise, had categorically rejected his mentor Plato’s philosophy as well…funny how that happens). Aristotle, it seems, could not completely temper the passions of the young Macedonian prince. Alexander, one could argue, was Aristotle’s greatest failure.
As the group prepared to move on, I quickly snapped one last picture of the whole monument. This time, Alexander’s features are visible in the sun as he gallops east to meet his destiny. And carrying him is the unruly Bucephalus (is he willingly charging east or is he still fleeing his shadow?) In many ways, he seems to represent the stubborn, independent Greeks Alexander claimed as his own. Today, he is no longer “the Macedonian”; instead the Greeks have claimed him.
