Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/15

Rh From Fraser's Magazine.

opens his preface to "Alexander the Great, a Dramatic Poem," by informing us that in the last century it was thought philosophical to sneer at "the Macedonian madman," and moral to declaim against him as a bandit. The ancients, he says, made no such mistake. He proceeds to panegyrize Alexander as uniting the highest military genius with a statesmanship instinctive and unerring. His intellect, he tells us, was at once vast and minute. His aim was to consolidate the whole world into a single empire, redeemed from barbarism and irradiated with Greek science and art; an empire such that its citizens, from the mouths of the Ganges to the pillars of Hercules, should be qualified to learn from Plato and to take delight in Sophocles. It is not necessary to quote further from Mr. Aubrey de Vere. The above sufficiently shows what a picture he aims to hold up for our admiration, what impressions he desires his drama to leave on the minds of readers. In this article it is not purposed to discuss its poetical merits, which must be left to another pen and time, but to enter into the historical questions whether Alexander the Great was a beneficent or a malignant star to Greece and to mankind, and what sentiments are just concerning him. But it may concisely be said at once that the present writer is intensely opposed to Mr. de Vere's avowed judgment.

No one ever has grudged, and no one will ever grudge, praise to Alexander for military talent; but the talent was not that of a scientific general who plans a campaign, as a Von Moltke or even a Napoleon; it was only that of a quick-eyed Garibaldi or Condé. Generalship of the highest modern type was then impossible, for the plain reason that maps did not exist, and the roads which Alexander traversed were in every instance unknown to him. Not only was he without the means of forming previous plans of operation; he was also destitute of storehouses and stores for feeding his troops, and of gold or silver to purchase food and remunerate their services. The Romans, who methodized war, accounted money to be its sinews (pecuniam nervos belli); but all agree that Alexander entered upon war against the opulent Persian monarchy with resources of money and stores of provisions utterly inadequate, so that nothing but instant and continuous success could save him from ruin. But, says Plutarch gaily, though his resources were so small and narrow, he gave away his Macedonian possessions freely to his comrades; houses to one, a field to another, a village to a third, harbour-dues to a fourth; and when some one asked, "O king, what do you leave for yourself?" he replied, "Hopes!" This was very spirited, no doubt. In the midst of a martial people, and from a prince barely of age, it may be thought very amiable; but with Grecian statesmen and philosophers the delusiveness of hope was a frequent topic. Nothing is plainer than that from the beginning Alexander was a gambler playing "double or quits," and that causes over which he had no control, and knew he had none, might at any moment have involved him in sudden overthrow. The unexpected death of Memnon as much as anything (says Arrian) ruined Darius's fortunes. No doubt it was just to count on the great superiority of Greek armour, Greek discipline, and Macedonian military tactics; also on the feebleness entailed on Persia by royal luxury and half-independent satraps. The successes of Xenophon and of Agesilaus had long familiarized the Greeks to the belief that a moderate Greek army was superior to a Persian host. Experienced Greek generals did not esteem the invasion of Persia to be a wild expedition; the congress of Greece, from which only the Spartans were conspicuously absent, deliberately sanctioned it. No one could foresee such a commencement as was the battle of the Granicus; every one in the retrospect judged Alexander's conduct rash in the extreme. That it succeeded we know, but Mr. de Vere has not said a 