Myth Of Alexander
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Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, vol. VI, no. 1/2009
The Myth of Alexander the Great. A Model for Understanding the Other Irina FRASIN
Gh. Zane Institute of Social and Economic Research, No. 2, T. Codrescu street, Iasi, Romania [email protected]
Abstract. Under Alexander the Great the Greeks conquered Asia. This extraordinary undertaking was made possible, beside the military achievement, by the Greek thought and philosophy. The belief in the superiority of the Greek over the barbarian and freedom of the first and slavery of the second rendered the conquest and domination of Asia into a noble mission of civilization. What is more, Western historians of philosophy and culture have used this Greek self-understanding to legitimate the view of Western cultural superiority based on universalism. But the expedition and conquest was also an amazing opportunity of meeting and knowing directly the Other. What Alexander discovered was that the world was much larger than it was thought in Athens and the barbarians were not so unreasonable as Aristotle believed. All these things, that raged the kings contemporaries, are very well kept by his legend. The deep sense of his adventures is revealed by the legend. Alexander, passionate for adventure, discovery, curious to know the Other is the hero that fights the absolute other: the foreigner, the barbarian, the monster. But with all his actions he demonstrates that the Other can be recognized, understood and even loved. And maybe his extraordinary discovery should guide us as a model in the turbulent times we live in which cultural differences become more and more important. Keywords: culture, myth, the Other, conflict, domination, communication.
The problem of the Other, the meeting, the conflict and the communication with the Other are issues as long as history. Ever since we have recorded history we find proof of conflicts and attempts to understand and face the Other. The perception of ones own identity in ethnic groups is accompanied by a delimitation with regard to an external world that is felt to be totally different from oneself. The idea that this world is uniform derives simply from the fact that it differs, to a sometimes varying degree, from customary standards. It is enough to cite the way Greek view of the 193
Irina FRASIN, The Myth of Alexander the Great. A Model for Understanding the Other
barbarians1 or the way in which the Egyptians understood themselves, recognizing theirs as a kingdom of order in contrast with an external world characterized by chaos2. This way of understanding ones own identity is still valid today as it was in ancient times. The world in constant change, the shrinking of the distances, the migrations on large scale and even the contact with other cultures by mass media may create the wrong impression that the whole world is known and the cultural differences are understood and accepted. Although this may be true for certain media, the world is still shaken by wars that have to do with cultural differences or, as Samuel Huntington3 considers, mostly with cultural differences. In nowadays world the problem of understanding and communicating with the Other is of crucial importance and perhaps the way our future will be shaped depends on that. The most part of modern history consists of the conquest, submission or domination of the Western powers over the rest of the world. Inheriting and developing a Greek idea, Western Europe, in the name of its universal values, tried to assimilate the Other, to make it disappear and it was mostly successful. Its way of thinking and its values are nowadays present all over the world. But this is far from creating, as it was supposed many times, a united and peaceful world. That is why our purpose is to go back in history, to read it once more and try underline the useful lessons for us today; the moment of the Greek conquest of Asia, the meeting of different traditions, customs, religions and languages in the same melting pot it is such an example. Under Alexander the Great the Greeks conquered Asia, taking to the ends of the known world their thought and philosophy. The belief in their own values, thought to be universal, made the war of conquest a mission of civilization over the barbarians. It is very interesting to see how it was possible that the empire be born out of democracy, and the civilization of the barbarians change the way the Other was understood. In our time, when the civilizations confront and all the cultures claim their right to existence, the notion of barbarian captured the attention of researchers. In the beginning, the word barbarian named those who didnt speak Greek or spoke it incorrectly. It was a purely descriptive notion: it did not oppose the Greeks to the non-Greeks, but a Thomas Harrison, Greeks and barbarians, Edinburgh University Press, 2002. Lewis Spence, Egypt, Senate, London, 1996. 3 Samuel Huntigton, Ciocnirea civilizatiilor si refacerea ordinii mondiale, Editura Antet Samizdat, Bucuresti, 2007. 1
2
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purely spoken language to a inarticulate pronunciation. The emphasis will be changed from pronunciation to language and from there to the culture of other people who cannot attain the Greek way of life. It is mostly agreed that the moment for this change are the Persian Wars. Face to Persian menace the Greek sense of self was awaken and the distinction began to grow. Herodotus4 tells us that the Persian king Xerxes is amazed to see that the Greeks can fight and resist in war without a leader like himself who can drive them by force and the Spartan Demaratos tells him that free men obey only the law. Finally the war becomes, in the Greek eyes, the fight between a free people and one that obeys an absolute king. This fundamental distinction between law, which is Greek, and slavery, which is barbarian, will achieve different other nuances along the way: the respect of the law and the courage are connected with restraint as well as for the barbarians luxury leads to weakness and cruelty. But these features do not have historical truth more than any other features by which the enemy, or the Other is in other occasions characterized. In short, all this can be reduced to a discussion over values. It is obvious that in their writings and speeches the Athenians wanted to suggest that they posses one virtue or the other, but what is more important maybe is their attachment to these values. The Greeks prized virtue, that they wanted present in everybody and complained its absence in them or the others. Consequently, if we follow the way the Greeks invented the barbarian, we follow in fact the way they viewed themselves. This thing is most obvious where all these virtues are united to form a political ideal. The democratic ideal, invented by the Greeks, supposes a type of society formed by the free an willingly acceptance of its members. All citizens are equal and they obey only the law. Thus Greece becomes the model for all that is civilized, rational and by contrast the barbarians embody different stages of irrational thought. We have to admit that this ideal made the Greeks despise the foreign cultures in a way that continues to amaze us. But the idea must be clarified not to get a caricaturized image of the barbarian. We must emphasize that in the eyes of the Greeks the distinction was not so clear as we might suppose at a first glance. The Thracians or the Scithians are viewed differently than the Persians or the Egyptians. And if the Greek can accept that other civilizations predated his own in matter of religion, customs and even science, there is one aspect that he cannot understand or accept: the obedience and slavery of the barbarian. The most important 4
Herodotus, Histories, Wordsworth Classics Editions, London, 1996, p. 549. 195
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distinction between Greek and barbarian is the dependency of the second on desires and impulses that denies him the way to freedom. In The Persians Eschiles puts these words about the Athenians in the mouth of a messenger to the queen Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus the Great: They are nobodys slaves, they are not submitted to any man5. But we should not characterize the Greek barbarian distinction as ethnocentrism. Most of the Greek texts refer not to innate features but to achieved ones. We become barbarians living among barbarians and we can learn the Greek way of life. In fact there is no difference of nature, it is only one of culture, and the Greek superior culture is opened to everyone. The idea is clearly stated by Isocrates when he says that Athens has become the teacher of the other cities, and has made the name Greek no longer a mark of race but of intellect, so that it is those who share our upbringing rather than our common nature who are called Hellenes6. We have here a beautiful declaration of universalism. This marks the moment when the Greek laws become the laws of all mankind. But it is just this universalism that may worry us if it means imposing to all mankind one law and one culture the Greek one in our example. Regarded in this light, the expedition of Alexander the Great has as its purpose the extension of Hellenism to a world wide scale. We know how this kind of attitude is blamed today, when we admit the multitude of cultures and the right of each to exist. But this should not prevent us from regarding the relations between Greeks and the others for what they were and not through the eyes of the conflicts of our times and the theories they generated. In the very short description that we made of the barbarian we didnt talk of polygamy, incest, promiscuity or other tendencies. Herodotus talks about them and the tragic authors use them sometimes for hostile allusions. But if Herodotus talks about them is because he is curious to the regard of the variety of customs and traditions. But he also believes that a great relativism7 is normal for these things. In other words, there is a tendency to separate social traditions and customs, where everyone can act following his own convictions, and the major virtues that define a human ideal. The Greeks tried to define these major virtues and because these Eschil, Persii, trad. Alexandru Miran, Editura Univers, Bucuresti, 2000, v. 242, p. 92. Isocrate, Panegiric, trad. Andrei Marin, in Pagini alese din oratori greci, E.P.L.A., Bucuresti, 1969, p. 138. 7 Herodotous,Histories, Wordsworth Classics, London, 1996, III, p. 270 and next. 5
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embodied the universal values they wanted to take them all over the world. They believed in the unique and superior value of their culture. Concepts like that of nationalism and xenophobia were built having as base the innate fear that makes us regard the others from different cultures with lack of trust or envy. This leads to the desire or the need to surpass the other cultures. It is impossible not to notice that the domination over foreign peoples and territories is common throughout history. It has often been said that the empire that Alexander the Great founded in Asia was made possible by the influences of the Persian culture over the young king. But despite this, the possibility of making an empire depends on the existence of an idea of empire. And this idea was born from the aspiration towards the universal that we find in the writings of the Greeks authors one century before. But the great achievement of Alexander of Macedon surpassed the imagination of the Greek thinkers. And if their theories were used by the Europeans to help them understand themselves and legitimize their cultural superiority based on universalism, maybe we should use the experience of Alexanders exploit to help us understand and respect the Other, recognizing the differences in the same time. The conquering hero dreams of an universal empire that supposes the melting in the same pot which is kosmopolis of all the different traditions and customs of Greeks and Macedonians and all the peoples of the Persian Empire. Plutarch8 tells us clearly about this dream. The cultural and spiritual panhellenism of Isocrates is but the starting point considering that the Greek thinker could only admit as right what was in the spirit of Greek culture from other places of the world. But the oriental influences of the kosmocrator, his proclamation as rightful heir of the pharaohs and master of the Achaemenids kings surpasses any Greek utopia. Some historians9 have suggested that these actions of Alexander, like many others 10, were dictated to the king by practical reasons: it would have been simply impossible to dominate such a huge territory only with the soldiers brought from Greece and Macedonia and without the cooperation of the locals. Nevertheless this should not make us neglect the extraordinary vision of Alexander the Great.
Plutarch, Vieti paralele, Editura Stiintifica, Bucuresti, 1957, LXX, LXXI, p. 89. Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, University of California Press, 1997. 10 The introducing of Persian men into the army, the mass marriages at Susa and so on. 8
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What Alexander of Macedon discovered conquering Asia is that the world was much larger than what they thought in Greece and also much more complicated and beautiful. The expedition in the east was an amazing opportunity of meeting and knowing directly the Other and this altered gradually the old theories; the uncivilized, irrational and enslaved barbarians were not exactly as they were viewed. The fundamental distinction between Greeks and barbarians that become obvious beginning with the Persian Wars started to be subjected to debate and changes in the attempt to face the new realities. The legendary figure of Alexander the Great amazed his contemporaries and his successors, for whom he became a model, as well as historians along the ages. Alexander of Macedon took the Greek culture deep into the east and opened new ways of trade and communication. And even if he could not achieve the political unity he dreamed of he realized a spiritual one. The king began his conquest in the name of the Hellenic League, to revenge the humiliations of the Persian Wars. But he was not content even after he became the master of the Persian Empire; he always wanted to go further and maybe in this desire of his we find the seeds of the future legend that makes him arrive to the ends of the Earth and even beyond. Far from the destruction of Persepolis, the marriages of Susa tend to create the conditions for an absolutely new future: the universal monarchy, uniting under the same rule Greeks, Macedonians and barbarians all dominated by feelings of mutual friendship and sympathy. The great importance of these measures of the king couldnt be understood by his Greek contemporaries. The young conqueror, absolute master of so many different peoples, ignoring the Greek vanity, proved an exquisite sense of the political realities. Although the Greeks considered him a tyrant for his convictions and way of acting, Alexander the Great wanted to create an empire where all the peoples could stand side by side and work together for the common good. He did not want to repeat, in the name of the Greek imperialism, what Xerxes failed to do in the name of the Persian one. It was time for a new way of thinking. Alexander had all the physical and moral traits of a leader of men. With more enthusiasm and honesty than his father, he viewed himself as the leader destined to avenge the Greek humiliations of the Persian Wars. He believed in the glory of Macedon. But the Orient gave him the amazing opportunity to meet a new world, new peoples with new laws and customs, for the knowing of which he showed an extraordinary openness. Inspired by the Greek idea of omonoia, the good understanding between people that 198
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generates the equality of rights, he tried realize the universal empire he melted and recomposed in a great pot of friendship the lives, the characters, the marriages and customs and wanted that everyone consider the whole Earth his country11. His politics, although created enmity between his generals and plots against him, brought for him the admiration of the thinkers of the following centuries. There are many ways of understanding Alexander the Great and his exploits and the various interpretations of thinkers and historians stands proof to this. Along the centuries his personality, his empire and legacy have been studied from different perspectives. The relics and the ancient literary sources offer just a base for our image of Alexander the Great. Thus our interest refers not so much to historically proven data but to the thought of people. Reading the legend of the conqueror and following its development along the centuries we can see and understand not only the image of the king, but also the preoccupations of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantians and other peoples and societies including the contemporary one. For the purpose of our research the historical truth is not as relevant as the image of the conqueror in peoples mind. The facts are for historians to debate on, but what is more interesting is the idea that stands behind them: what determined Alexander the Great to act in the way he did. And as this question will probably remain forever without a certain answer we should turn to legend to see the probable replies, to see what people along the centuries imagined and wanted to believe that stand behind Alexanders actions. The idea of world wide domination was very early associated with Alexander the Great. In spite of anterior projects the Egyptian idea that the pharaoh is the master of the peoples of the four cardinal points or the tradition of the Great Persian Kings this idea reflects the Greek desire to underline the universal mission of the conqueror. Thus the idea of the kosmocrator is very largely known and appreciated all over the Greek and Roman world. This emphasizes the universality and eternity of Alexanders conquest, denouncing any form of despotic ambition and lack of measure. Any way, the general impression that the great adventure of Alexander of Macedon leaves in the mind of the reader cannot be resumed to a military and economic exploit. The desire to know the world, to understand the mysteries of an even larger universe as got farther away Destinul lui Alexandru, I, 6, 1, quoted by Jean Sirinelli in Urmasii lui Alexandru, Editura Teora, Bucuresti, 2000, p. 21.
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from Greece, played in his expedition a role at least as important as the wish to gather victories and wealth. The elements that history offers to the reader no matter how great and important they prove to be are never kept unchanged in the minds and memory of the generations, in the folklore. They have to undertake certain mutations till they become legend. History, for the one that lives it as well as for the one who describes it, does not have an immediate meaning. It appears, for the one that meditates over it, as a series of unpredictable and incomprehensible events. There is no meaning, just a succession of different events, wars, disasters, victories. And if we see history as an endless row of victories and defeats, greatness and decadence, we end up finding in this the law of history itself: there is no greatness without decadence and whoever reaches to high ends up by knowing the abyss. The great and glorious heroes become victims of history, of destiny. This is the lesson Herodotus and the Greek tragic poets teach us. The legendary Alexander achieves victory where all the others fail, gets to know success without having to taste the bitter taste of defeat. Not only that he becomes the master of Athens and defeats king Darius (something that no other king could do), but he surpasses Herakles himself in his attempt to get to the ends of the Earth. The story of this fabulous destiny drives its roots into the historical events: of all the known kings Alexander is the only one who was never defeated and got to the limits of the known world. His death at only thirty two, when he was preparing his expedition in Arabia, is the event that immortalized his glory. In his case, the law of history as the ancients saw it had to bind its head to his example: Alexander got so high and had no time to know defeat. His historic destiny is in itself an exception of history. In the attempt to understand the sense of the adventure that took Alexander the Great to the limits of the known world we discover that his destiny represents in fact a search for identity, for the meaning of existence, for freedom. If the historic Alexander gave us an amazing lesson by his political measures that used both Greeks an barbarians to create a better world, the Alexander of legend turns to represent the hero that searches the ultimate Other to discover himself. The famous Greek warrior and traveler Odisseus, in spite of the fact that he goes all around the world, meets all kinds of strange creatures, knows different kinds of living, remains firm to his goal of getting home. No matter how good life can be elsewhere, there is no place like home and not even the promise of 200
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immortality can make him change his mind12. From this point of view Alexander and Odisseus are opposite characters: no matter how far from home Alexander gets, no matter how many wonders he discovers his need of the new is never satisfied. The passion for adventure, discovery and the curiosity to meet the Other make of Alexander the hero that meets the ultimate Other: the foreigner, the barbarian, the monster. But with all that he does he demonstrates that the Other can be recognized, understood and even loved13. Finally, at the end of his adventures Alexander get the wisdom he was searching for. He remains the prototype for the adventurous hero, passionate for knowing the Other and the world, free by his knowledge and with the promise of immortality. Centuries after the death of the hero, the legend of his adventures continues to be retold, adapted to different cultures and traditions that it encountered. In Arabic, Persian or Hebrew, Alexander becomes a visionary prophet, a builder, the greatest and fairest king. The deeds and actions of Alexander the Great continue to fascinate us even today because they surpass the limits of time and the adventure hero is the best example of a non-historic individual14. By what it has more deep and profound, his exploits continue to be a model for us today, in the turbulent times we live in. For a long time the Western civilization dominated the world. It tried, and succeeded, most of the times, to impose its model all over the world. Fed by the ideas of the superiority of its thought and way of life, inspired by its Greek ancestors, the European actions mirrored its despise and lack of understanding of the others. The colonial thinking shows this very clearly: the imperialistic tendencies mean profit not only for the mother country, but also for the colony, that gets the benefits of civilization. This way of seeing things created restlessness and conflict, especially as the subjected parts began to get back their voice. All the societies try to preserve themselves, their belief and customs, their language and religion and economic and political independence. And nowadays, as Samuel Huntington underlines in this book15, the cultural maps become more and more important. The global politics are dominated by rivalry between different cultures. Homer, Odiseea, Editura Tineretului, Bucuresti, 1966. See the episodes with the death of Darius and the weddings of Susa. 14 Georg Simmel, Cultura filosofica, Editura Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1998, p. 15. 15 Samuel Huntington, Ciocnirea civilizatiilor si refacerea ordinii mondiale, Editura Antet Samizdat, Bucuresti, 2007. 12 13
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But today, the Others appear on the scene of the worlds politics and the Western civilization must take them into consideration. This situation creates new possibilities for all partners. The model that was successful for so long needs change, and this leaves the West somehow puzzled. The globalization in the name of western values needs now the contribution and acceptance of the others. As many researchers debating this problem showed, the future of us all depends on the ability of communication, the ability of true dialogue, in which all partners are heard and understood. It is of crucial importance that the West finds new ways of communicating not to but with the Other. And what is perhaps even more important is to realize that its not doing this on its own, but together with the others. And for this the great lesson of history that we turned to should help. The visionary king understood much before us that to create harmony in the world we should open up a dialogue where no one has the last word. On the other hand, if we keep reading the myth of Alexander, we discover that the deep truth and hidden knowledge that the king uncovers at the end of his fabulous adventures is that the Other is indispensable. The Socratic knowledge, the discovery of ones self passes by the knowledge of the Other. King Alexander tries to find the ultimate other at the ends of the world in order to get a better knowledge and understanding of himself. In the end he achieves a mysterious land, where men know a superior kind of happiness: he obtains wisdom, the Absolute, the Immortality. For whoever reached the wisdom, the universe has no more secrets. The whole voyage of Alexander is an initiation. But what we should not neglect is that to get to the self knowledge that the Delphic oracle demanded Know thyself we should reflect ourselves in the mirror of the other. For a long time the Other was seen as a threat or an inferior race or simply neglected; but if we learn to take him as a dialogue partner, we have the promise that this will lead to a totally new kind of experience.
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The Myth of Alexander the Great. A Model for Understanding the Other Irina FRASIN
Gh. Zane Institute of Social and Economic Research, No. 2, T. Codrescu street, Iasi, Romania [email protected]
Abstract. Under Alexander the Great the Greeks conquered Asia. This extraordinary undertaking was made possible, beside the military achievement, by the Greek thought and philosophy. The belief in the superiority of the Greek over the barbarian and freedom of the first and slavery of the second rendered the conquest and domination of Asia into a noble mission of civilization. What is more, Western historians of philosophy and culture have used this Greek self-understanding to legitimate the view of Western cultural superiority based on universalism. But the expedition and conquest was also an amazing opportunity of meeting and knowing directly the Other. What Alexander discovered was that the world was much larger than it was thought in Athens and the barbarians were not so unreasonable as Aristotle believed. All these things, that raged the kings contemporaries, are very well kept by his legend. The deep sense of his adventures is revealed by the legend. Alexander, passionate for adventure, discovery, curious to know the Other is the hero that fights the absolute other: the foreigner, the barbarian, the monster. But with all his actions he demonstrates that the Other can be recognized, understood and even loved. And maybe his extraordinary discovery should guide us as a model in the turbulent times we live in which cultural differences become more and more important. Keywords: culture, myth, the Other, conflict, domination, communication.
The problem of the Other, the meeting, the conflict and the communication with the Other are issues as long as history. Ever since we have recorded history we find proof of conflicts and attempts to understand and face the Other. The perception of ones own identity in ethnic groups is accompanied by a delimitation with regard to an external world that is felt to be totally different from oneself. The idea that this world is uniform derives simply from the fact that it differs, to a sometimes varying degree, from customary standards. It is enough to cite the way Greek view of the 193
Irina FRASIN, The Myth of Alexander the Great. A Model for Understanding the Other
barbarians1 or the way in which the Egyptians understood themselves, recognizing theirs as a kingdom of order in contrast with an external world characterized by chaos2. This way of understanding ones own identity is still valid today as it was in ancient times. The world in constant change, the shrinking of the distances, the migrations on large scale and even the contact with other cultures by mass media may create the wrong impression that the whole world is known and the cultural differences are understood and accepted. Although this may be true for certain media, the world is still shaken by wars that have to do with cultural differences or, as Samuel Huntington3 considers, mostly with cultural differences. In nowadays world the problem of understanding and communicating with the Other is of crucial importance and perhaps the way our future will be shaped depends on that. The most part of modern history consists of the conquest, submission or domination of the Western powers over the rest of the world. Inheriting and developing a Greek idea, Western Europe, in the name of its universal values, tried to assimilate the Other, to make it disappear and it was mostly successful. Its way of thinking and its values are nowadays present all over the world. But this is far from creating, as it was supposed many times, a united and peaceful world. That is why our purpose is to go back in history, to read it once more and try underline the useful lessons for us today; the moment of the Greek conquest of Asia, the meeting of different traditions, customs, religions and languages in the same melting pot it is such an example. Under Alexander the Great the Greeks conquered Asia, taking to the ends of the known world their thought and philosophy. The belief in their own values, thought to be universal, made the war of conquest a mission of civilization over the barbarians. It is very interesting to see how it was possible that the empire be born out of democracy, and the civilization of the barbarians change the way the Other was understood. In our time, when the civilizations confront and all the cultures claim their right to existence, the notion of barbarian captured the attention of researchers. In the beginning, the word barbarian named those who didnt speak Greek or spoke it incorrectly. It was a purely descriptive notion: it did not oppose the Greeks to the non-Greeks, but a Thomas Harrison, Greeks and barbarians, Edinburgh University Press, 2002. Lewis Spence, Egypt, Senate, London, 1996. 3 Samuel Huntigton, Ciocnirea civilizatiilor si refacerea ordinii mondiale, Editura Antet Samizdat, Bucuresti, 2007. 1
2
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purely spoken language to a inarticulate pronunciation. The emphasis will be changed from pronunciation to language and from there to the culture of other people who cannot attain the Greek way of life. It is mostly agreed that the moment for this change are the Persian Wars. Face to Persian menace the Greek sense of self was awaken and the distinction began to grow. Herodotus4 tells us that the Persian king Xerxes is amazed to see that the Greeks can fight and resist in war without a leader like himself who can drive them by force and the Spartan Demaratos tells him that free men obey only the law. Finally the war becomes, in the Greek eyes, the fight between a free people and one that obeys an absolute king. This fundamental distinction between law, which is Greek, and slavery, which is barbarian, will achieve different other nuances along the way: the respect of the law and the courage are connected with restraint as well as for the barbarians luxury leads to weakness and cruelty. But these features do not have historical truth more than any other features by which the enemy, or the Other is in other occasions characterized. In short, all this can be reduced to a discussion over values. It is obvious that in their writings and speeches the Athenians wanted to suggest that they posses one virtue or the other, but what is more important maybe is their attachment to these values. The Greeks prized virtue, that they wanted present in everybody and complained its absence in them or the others. Consequently, if we follow the way the Greeks invented the barbarian, we follow in fact the way they viewed themselves. This thing is most obvious where all these virtues are united to form a political ideal. The democratic ideal, invented by the Greeks, supposes a type of society formed by the free an willingly acceptance of its members. All citizens are equal and they obey only the law. Thus Greece becomes the model for all that is civilized, rational and by contrast the barbarians embody different stages of irrational thought. We have to admit that this ideal made the Greeks despise the foreign cultures in a way that continues to amaze us. But the idea must be clarified not to get a caricaturized image of the barbarian. We must emphasize that in the eyes of the Greeks the distinction was not so clear as we might suppose at a first glance. The Thracians or the Scithians are viewed differently than the Persians or the Egyptians. And if the Greek can accept that other civilizations predated his own in matter of religion, customs and even science, there is one aspect that he cannot understand or accept: the obedience and slavery of the barbarian. The most important 4
Herodotus, Histories, Wordsworth Classics Editions, London, 1996, p. 549. 195
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distinction between Greek and barbarian is the dependency of the second on desires and impulses that denies him the way to freedom. In The Persians Eschiles puts these words about the Athenians in the mouth of a messenger to the queen Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus the Great: They are nobodys slaves, they are not submitted to any man5. But we should not characterize the Greek barbarian distinction as ethnocentrism. Most of the Greek texts refer not to innate features but to achieved ones. We become barbarians living among barbarians and we can learn the Greek way of life. In fact there is no difference of nature, it is only one of culture, and the Greek superior culture is opened to everyone. The idea is clearly stated by Isocrates when he says that Athens has become the teacher of the other cities, and has made the name Greek no longer a mark of race but of intellect, so that it is those who share our upbringing rather than our common nature who are called Hellenes6. We have here a beautiful declaration of universalism. This marks the moment when the Greek laws become the laws of all mankind. But it is just this universalism that may worry us if it means imposing to all mankind one law and one culture the Greek one in our example. Regarded in this light, the expedition of Alexander the Great has as its purpose the extension of Hellenism to a world wide scale. We know how this kind of attitude is blamed today, when we admit the multitude of cultures and the right of each to exist. But this should not prevent us from regarding the relations between Greeks and the others for what they were and not through the eyes of the conflicts of our times and the theories they generated. In the very short description that we made of the barbarian we didnt talk of polygamy, incest, promiscuity or other tendencies. Herodotus talks about them and the tragic authors use them sometimes for hostile allusions. But if Herodotus talks about them is because he is curious to the regard of the variety of customs and traditions. But he also believes that a great relativism7 is normal for these things. In other words, there is a tendency to separate social traditions and customs, where everyone can act following his own convictions, and the major virtues that define a human ideal. The Greeks tried to define these major virtues and because these Eschil, Persii, trad. Alexandru Miran, Editura Univers, Bucuresti, 2000, v. 242, p. 92. Isocrate, Panegiric, trad. Andrei Marin, in Pagini alese din oratori greci, E.P.L.A., Bucuresti, 1969, p. 138. 7 Herodotous,Histories, Wordsworth Classics, London, 1996, III, p. 270 and next. 5
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embodied the universal values they wanted to take them all over the world. They believed in the unique and superior value of their culture. Concepts like that of nationalism and xenophobia were built having as base the innate fear that makes us regard the others from different cultures with lack of trust or envy. This leads to the desire or the need to surpass the other cultures. It is impossible not to notice that the domination over foreign peoples and territories is common throughout history. It has often been said that the empire that Alexander the Great founded in Asia was made possible by the influences of the Persian culture over the young king. But despite this, the possibility of making an empire depends on the existence of an idea of empire. And this idea was born from the aspiration towards the universal that we find in the writings of the Greeks authors one century before. But the great achievement of Alexander of Macedon surpassed the imagination of the Greek thinkers. And if their theories were used by the Europeans to help them understand themselves and legitimize their cultural superiority based on universalism, maybe we should use the experience of Alexanders exploit to help us understand and respect the Other, recognizing the differences in the same time. The conquering hero dreams of an universal empire that supposes the melting in the same pot which is kosmopolis of all the different traditions and customs of Greeks and Macedonians and all the peoples of the Persian Empire. Plutarch8 tells us clearly about this dream. The cultural and spiritual panhellenism of Isocrates is but the starting point considering that the Greek thinker could only admit as right what was in the spirit of Greek culture from other places of the world. But the oriental influences of the kosmocrator, his proclamation as rightful heir of the pharaohs and master of the Achaemenids kings surpasses any Greek utopia. Some historians9 have suggested that these actions of Alexander, like many others 10, were dictated to the king by practical reasons: it would have been simply impossible to dominate such a huge territory only with the soldiers brought from Greece and Macedonia and without the cooperation of the locals. Nevertheless this should not make us neglect the extraordinary vision of Alexander the Great.
Plutarch, Vieti paralele, Editura Stiintifica, Bucuresti, 1957, LXX, LXXI, p. 89. Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, University of California Press, 1997. 10 The introducing of Persian men into the army, the mass marriages at Susa and so on. 8
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What Alexander of Macedon discovered conquering Asia is that the world was much larger than what they thought in Greece and also much more complicated and beautiful. The expedition in the east was an amazing opportunity of meeting and knowing directly the Other and this altered gradually the old theories; the uncivilized, irrational and enslaved barbarians were not exactly as they were viewed. The fundamental distinction between Greeks and barbarians that become obvious beginning with the Persian Wars started to be subjected to debate and changes in the attempt to face the new realities. The legendary figure of Alexander the Great amazed his contemporaries and his successors, for whom he became a model, as well as historians along the ages. Alexander of Macedon took the Greek culture deep into the east and opened new ways of trade and communication. And even if he could not achieve the political unity he dreamed of he realized a spiritual one. The king began his conquest in the name of the Hellenic League, to revenge the humiliations of the Persian Wars. But he was not content even after he became the master of the Persian Empire; he always wanted to go further and maybe in this desire of his we find the seeds of the future legend that makes him arrive to the ends of the Earth and even beyond. Far from the destruction of Persepolis, the marriages of Susa tend to create the conditions for an absolutely new future: the universal monarchy, uniting under the same rule Greeks, Macedonians and barbarians all dominated by feelings of mutual friendship and sympathy. The great importance of these measures of the king couldnt be understood by his Greek contemporaries. The young conqueror, absolute master of so many different peoples, ignoring the Greek vanity, proved an exquisite sense of the political realities. Although the Greeks considered him a tyrant for his convictions and way of acting, Alexander the Great wanted to create an empire where all the peoples could stand side by side and work together for the common good. He did not want to repeat, in the name of the Greek imperialism, what Xerxes failed to do in the name of the Persian one. It was time for a new way of thinking. Alexander had all the physical and moral traits of a leader of men. With more enthusiasm and honesty than his father, he viewed himself as the leader destined to avenge the Greek humiliations of the Persian Wars. He believed in the glory of Macedon. But the Orient gave him the amazing opportunity to meet a new world, new peoples with new laws and customs, for the knowing of which he showed an extraordinary openness. Inspired by the Greek idea of omonoia, the good understanding between people that 198
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generates the equality of rights, he tried realize the universal empire he melted and recomposed in a great pot of friendship the lives, the characters, the marriages and customs and wanted that everyone consider the whole Earth his country11. His politics, although created enmity between his generals and plots against him, brought for him the admiration of the thinkers of the following centuries. There are many ways of understanding Alexander the Great and his exploits and the various interpretations of thinkers and historians stands proof to this. Along the centuries his personality, his empire and legacy have been studied from different perspectives. The relics and the ancient literary sources offer just a base for our image of Alexander the Great. Thus our interest refers not so much to historically proven data but to the thought of people. Reading the legend of the conqueror and following its development along the centuries we can see and understand not only the image of the king, but also the preoccupations of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantians and other peoples and societies including the contemporary one. For the purpose of our research the historical truth is not as relevant as the image of the conqueror in peoples mind. The facts are for historians to debate on, but what is more interesting is the idea that stands behind them: what determined Alexander the Great to act in the way he did. And as this question will probably remain forever without a certain answer we should turn to legend to see the probable replies, to see what people along the centuries imagined and wanted to believe that stand behind Alexanders actions. The idea of world wide domination was very early associated with Alexander the Great. In spite of anterior projects the Egyptian idea that the pharaoh is the master of the peoples of the four cardinal points or the tradition of the Great Persian Kings this idea reflects the Greek desire to underline the universal mission of the conqueror. Thus the idea of the kosmocrator is very largely known and appreciated all over the Greek and Roman world. This emphasizes the universality and eternity of Alexanders conquest, denouncing any form of despotic ambition and lack of measure. Any way, the general impression that the great adventure of Alexander of Macedon leaves in the mind of the reader cannot be resumed to a military and economic exploit. The desire to know the world, to understand the mysteries of an even larger universe as got farther away Destinul lui Alexandru, I, 6, 1, quoted by Jean Sirinelli in Urmasii lui Alexandru, Editura Teora, Bucuresti, 2000, p. 21.
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from Greece, played in his expedition a role at least as important as the wish to gather victories and wealth. The elements that history offers to the reader no matter how great and important they prove to be are never kept unchanged in the minds and memory of the generations, in the folklore. They have to undertake certain mutations till they become legend. History, for the one that lives it as well as for the one who describes it, does not have an immediate meaning. It appears, for the one that meditates over it, as a series of unpredictable and incomprehensible events. There is no meaning, just a succession of different events, wars, disasters, victories. And if we see history as an endless row of victories and defeats, greatness and decadence, we end up finding in this the law of history itself: there is no greatness without decadence and whoever reaches to high ends up by knowing the abyss. The great and glorious heroes become victims of history, of destiny. This is the lesson Herodotus and the Greek tragic poets teach us. The legendary Alexander achieves victory where all the others fail, gets to know success without having to taste the bitter taste of defeat. Not only that he becomes the master of Athens and defeats king Darius (something that no other king could do), but he surpasses Herakles himself in his attempt to get to the ends of the Earth. The story of this fabulous destiny drives its roots into the historical events: of all the known kings Alexander is the only one who was never defeated and got to the limits of the known world. His death at only thirty two, when he was preparing his expedition in Arabia, is the event that immortalized his glory. In his case, the law of history as the ancients saw it had to bind its head to his example: Alexander got so high and had no time to know defeat. His historic destiny is in itself an exception of history. In the attempt to understand the sense of the adventure that took Alexander the Great to the limits of the known world we discover that his destiny represents in fact a search for identity, for the meaning of existence, for freedom. If the historic Alexander gave us an amazing lesson by his political measures that used both Greeks an barbarians to create a better world, the Alexander of legend turns to represent the hero that searches the ultimate Other to discover himself. The famous Greek warrior and traveler Odisseus, in spite of the fact that he goes all around the world, meets all kinds of strange creatures, knows different kinds of living, remains firm to his goal of getting home. No matter how good life can be elsewhere, there is no place like home and not even the promise of 200
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immortality can make him change his mind12. From this point of view Alexander and Odisseus are opposite characters: no matter how far from home Alexander gets, no matter how many wonders he discovers his need of the new is never satisfied. The passion for adventure, discovery and the curiosity to meet the Other make of Alexander the hero that meets the ultimate Other: the foreigner, the barbarian, the monster. But with all that he does he demonstrates that the Other can be recognized, understood and even loved13. Finally, at the end of his adventures Alexander get the wisdom he was searching for. He remains the prototype for the adventurous hero, passionate for knowing the Other and the world, free by his knowledge and with the promise of immortality. Centuries after the death of the hero, the legend of his adventures continues to be retold, adapted to different cultures and traditions that it encountered. In Arabic, Persian or Hebrew, Alexander becomes a visionary prophet, a builder, the greatest and fairest king. The deeds and actions of Alexander the Great continue to fascinate us even today because they surpass the limits of time and the adventure hero is the best example of a non-historic individual14. By what it has more deep and profound, his exploits continue to be a model for us today, in the turbulent times we live in. For a long time the Western civilization dominated the world. It tried, and succeeded, most of the times, to impose its model all over the world. Fed by the ideas of the superiority of its thought and way of life, inspired by its Greek ancestors, the European actions mirrored its despise and lack of understanding of the others. The colonial thinking shows this very clearly: the imperialistic tendencies mean profit not only for the mother country, but also for the colony, that gets the benefits of civilization. This way of seeing things created restlessness and conflict, especially as the subjected parts began to get back their voice. All the societies try to preserve themselves, their belief and customs, their language and religion and economic and political independence. And nowadays, as Samuel Huntington underlines in this book15, the cultural maps become more and more important. The global politics are dominated by rivalry between different cultures. Homer, Odiseea, Editura Tineretului, Bucuresti, 1966. See the episodes with the death of Darius and the weddings of Susa. 14 Georg Simmel, Cultura filosofica, Editura Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1998, p. 15. 15 Samuel Huntington, Ciocnirea civilizatiilor si refacerea ordinii mondiale, Editura Antet Samizdat, Bucuresti, 2007. 12 13
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But today, the Others appear on the scene of the worlds politics and the Western civilization must take them into consideration. This situation creates new possibilities for all partners. The model that was successful for so long needs change, and this leaves the West somehow puzzled. The globalization in the name of western values needs now the contribution and acceptance of the others. As many researchers debating this problem showed, the future of us all depends on the ability of communication, the ability of true dialogue, in which all partners are heard and understood. It is of crucial importance that the West finds new ways of communicating not to but with the Other. And what is perhaps even more important is to realize that its not doing this on its own, but together with the others. And for this the great lesson of history that we turned to should help. The visionary king understood much before us that to create harmony in the world we should open up a dialogue where no one has the last word. On the other hand, if we keep reading the myth of Alexander, we discover that the deep truth and hidden knowledge that the king uncovers at the end of his fabulous adventures is that the Other is indispensable. The Socratic knowledge, the discovery of ones self passes by the knowledge of the Other. King Alexander tries to find the ultimate other at the ends of the world in order to get a better knowledge and understanding of himself. In the end he achieves a mysterious land, where men know a superior kind of happiness: he obtains wisdom, the Absolute, the Immortality. For whoever reached the wisdom, the universe has no more secrets. The whole voyage of Alexander is an initiation. But what we should not neglect is that to get to the self knowledge that the Delphic oracle demanded Know thyself we should reflect ourselves in the mirror of the other. For a long time the Other was seen as a threat or an inferior race or simply neglected; but if we learn to take him as a dialogue partner, we have the promise that this will lead to a totally new kind of experience.
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