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“You Greeks are children”. That’s what an Egyptian priest is supposed to have said to a visiting Greek in the 6th century BC. And in a sense he was right. We think of Ancient Greece as, well, “ancient”, and it is now known to go back to Mycenaean culture of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. But Egyptian civilisation is much earlier than that: in the mid 2nd millennium BC it was at its height (the “New Kingdom”), but its origins go right into the 3rd millennium BC or even earlier.

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An epigram is a short poem, most often of two or four lines. Its typical metre is the elegiac couplet, which is also the metre of Roman love poetry (elegy) and the hallmark of Ovid. In antiquity it was a distinctively Greek literary form: Roman writers were never comfortable in it as they were in other imported genres, such as epic and elegy. When they dabbled in epigram they often used Greek to do so. Martial’s decision to write books of Latin epigrams, and nothing else, is thus a very significant departure.

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Although Alexander the Great died more than two-thousand years ago, his name is synonymous with power, innumerable conquests and incredible leadership. Born in 356 BC, Alexander was tutored in his early years by Aristotle before succeeding his father Philip as King of Macedonia and the mainland of Greece. Early in his reign he set about releasing the Greeks from Persian domination, but continued his campaigns into a programme of imperialist aggrandizement that eventually created a massive, albeit short‐lived, empire from India to Egypt. After his death from fever in 323 BC his hastily constructed dominion fell apart. The most lasting tribute to his achievement being the town of Alexandria, which he founded in Egypt in 331 BC.

How much do you know about one of history’s greatest leaders?

Headline image credit: Alexander the Great in the Temple of Jerusalem, by Sebastiano Conca, 1750. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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By Ian Worthington

Recent events in Iraq, as the militant group ISIS (or ISIL) strives to establish an Islamic state in the country that threatens to undo everything that western involvement achieved there after 9/11, illustrates well the volatility of the entire region and the interplay of religion and politics. Sunnis who felt cast aside to the periphery of political affairs by the Shiite government are rallying to ISIS. American-trained Iraqi forces (at a cost of several billions of dollars) have proved ineffectual, and who knows if the Iraqi government could fall, and what the country will look like — and be doing — in a year’s or even a matter of months’ time.

For well over a decade we have witnessed Western involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, ostensibly to benefit the wellbeing of the native peoples and in the case of Iraq, to stamp out the exploitive and murderous dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. The result was going to be the introduction of democracy for an oppressed nation; the diverse factions and different religious faiths would unite, and ties with the West would thus enter a new (and grateful) phase. But the Iraqi war that Donald Rumsfeld confidently asserted would take only six weeks and certainly not more than six months took far longer than that and cost an inexcusable number of lives. And the strategies to what might be called nation building failed miserably. The last few weeks are proving that. The campaign in Afghanistan likewise hasn’t met its objectives. Taliban influence remains strong and even growing, and as the death count for military and civilian personnel bloodily grew, people realized Afghanistan was the unwinnable war. So the question is inevitable: will Afghanistan go the way of Iraq as well?

There is a lot to be said for the phrase “history repeats itself,” and a lot of lessons to be learned from history. Although analogies have sometimes been made to the earlier and unsuccessful British and Russian involvement in Afghanistan, Alexander the Great’s campaigns in the former Persian Empire and Central Asia over two millennia ago need to be studied more. He was the first western conqueror in the east, and the problems he faced in dealing with a diverse subject population and the strategies he took to what might be called nation building shed light on contemporary events in culturally dissimilar regions of today’s world.

The Macedonian empire of the later fourth century BC was the largest empire in antiquity before the Roman, stretching from Greece to India (present-day Pakistan) including Syria, the Levantine coast, and Egypt. Yet it took less than 40 years to form thanks to Philip II of Macedonia and especially his son Alexander (the Great). Alexander’s conquests in Asia opened up economic and cultural contacts, spread Greek culture, and made the Greeks aware that they were part of a world far bigger than the Mediterranean. When Alexander crossed the Hellespont in spring 334 and landed on Asian soil he had a clear strategy in mind: to replace the Persian Empire with one of his own. A decade later in some spectacular battles and sieges against numerically greater foes, he had done just that. In 323 he was all set to invade Arabia when he died, just short of his 33rd birthday, at Babylon.

Detail of the Alexander Mosaic, representing Alexander the Great on his horse. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

But as Alexander discovered to his detriment, and as makers of modern strategy know all too well, defeated in battle doesn’t mean conquered. Moreover, he hadn’t anticipated how he was going to rule a large and culturally diverse subject population, whose religious beliefs and social customs weren’t always understood by the invaders and even disregarded. When the last Great King of Persia, Darius III, was murdered, Alexander faced a dilemma: how to rule? There had never been a Macedonian king who was also ruler of Persia before. Alexander had to learn what to do on his feet, without a rulebook or foreign policy experts.

He couldn’t proclaim himself Great King as that would create stiff opposition from his men, who wanted only a traditional Macedonian warrior king. So he opted for a new title, King of Asia, and even a new style of dress, a combination of Macedonian and Persian clothing. In doing so he pleased no one — his men thought he had gone too far and the Persians not enough. Alexander also didn’t grasp — or didn’t bother about — the personal connection between the Zoroastrian God of Light, Ahura Mazda, and the Great Kings, whose right to rule was anchored in that connection. The religious significance of the great Persian palace centers were disregarded by the westerners, who saw them only as seats of power and home to vast treasuries. Then in what is now Afghanistan, Alexander banned the Bactrians’ custom of putting out their elderly and infirm to be eaten alive by dogs kept for this purpose. A barbaric practice to us, for sure, but another instance of high-handedness and imposition of western morality in a foreign land.

It is little wonder that Alexander was always seen as the invader, that his attempts to integrate his various subject peoples into his army and administration failed, and that “conquered” areas such as India and Afghanistan revolted as soon as he left so they could go back to how things used to be. Unwinnable wars indeed, then and now. Alexander’s dilemma of West meeting East set a pattern for history. He unashamedly set out to rule a great empire by force, and failed. Today, the West might embroil itself elsewhere to help spread democracy, but those best intentions can fall apart without understanding the peoples with whom you’re dealing. The problems Alexander faced in dealing with a multi-cultural subject population arguably can inform makers of strategy in culturally different regions of today’s world. But at the end of the day politics and religion are so tightly interwoven and misunderstood, and animosity towards the invader, be it Alexander then or the West now, so great, that for anyone from the West to talk of imposing stability and a new order is hubris. Iraq now is proving that, no different from the Persian Empire to outside rule two millennia ago.

Ian Worthington is Curators’ Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Missouri. He is the author of numerous books about ancient Greece, including Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece and By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire.

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By Ian Worthington

Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), King of Macedonia, ruled an empire that stretched from Greece in the west to India in the east and as far south as Egypt. The Macedonian Empire he forged was the largest in antiquity until the Roman, but unlike the Romans, Alexander established his vast empire in a mere decade. As well as fighting epic battles against enemies that far outnumbered him in Persia and India, and unrelenting guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan, this charismatic king, who was worshiped as a god by some subjects and only 32 when he died, brought Greek civilization to the East, opening up East to West as never before and making the Greeks realize they belonged to a far larger world than just the Mediterranean.

Yet Alexander could not have succeeded if it hadn’t been for his often overlooked father, Philip II (r. 359-336), who transformed Macedonia from a disunited and backward kingdom on the periphery of the Greek world into a stable military and economic powerhouse and conquered Greece. Alexander was the master builder of the Macedonian empire, but Philip was certainly its architect. The reigns of these charismatic kings were remarkable ones, not only for their time but also for what — two millennia later — they can tell us today. For example, Alexander had to deal with a large, multi-cultural subject population, which sheds light on contemporary events in culturally similar regions of the world and can inform makers of modern strategy.

• Battle of Granicus, 334 BCE

   

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  West met East violently when Alexander crossed from Europe to Asia in 334 BCE. In bitter fighting with massive casualties Alexander overcame enemy armies to establish the largest ancient empire before the Roman.

• Alexander the Great

   

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  Alexander III ('the Great') was born in 356, the son of Philip II and his 4th wife Olympias, and died in Babylon in June 323.

• Map of Macedonia and Greece

   

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  In far northern Greece, Macedonia was a political, military and economic backwater before the reign of Philip II (359-336); when he was assassinated in 336 he had conquered Thrace and Greece and doubled Macedonia's population.

• Phalanx formation with sarissas

   

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  Philip's military reforms created the formidable professional Macedonian army with new shock and awe tactics, training, and weaponry, including the deadly sarissa, a 14-16' spear with a sharp pointed iron head that impaled enemy infantrymen.

• Bust of Aristotle

   

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  When his son Alexander was 14, Philip hired Aristotle, foremost intellectual of the day, as his tutor. Aristotle taught Alexander for 3 years, turning him into an intellectual who spread Greek culture in the East.

• Mosaic of Alexander the Great, Pompeii

   

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  Alexander the intellectual was nowhere near Alexander the warrior. In 333 BCE he battled Darius III, Great King of Persia, at Issus, forcing him to flee the battlefield. This was the beginning of the end for the ruling Achaemenid dynasty. This famous mosaic was discovered buried under Vesuvius' ash at Pompeii and is modelled on a contemporary painting showing Alexander bearing down on Darius, who is surrounded by the Macedonians' sarissas.

• Death of Alexander the Great

   

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  Alexander died in Babylon in June 323 BCE. he had not left an undisputed heir, so his generals carved up his empire among themselves, bringing to an end what Philip and Alexander had fought so hard to achieve. Alexander's legacy and his failing as a king and a man question whether he deserves to be called great.

Ian Worthington is Curators’ Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Missouri. He is the author of numerous books about ancient Greece, including Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece and By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire.

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Images: 1. From By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire. Used with permission. 2. Bust of Alexander the Great at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek by Yair Haklai. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 3. Map of Greece from By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire. Used with permission. 4. Macedonian phalanx by F. Mitchell, Department of History, United States Military Academy. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 5. Aristotle Altemps Inv8575 by Jastrow. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 6. Alexander Mosaic by Magrippa. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 7. The Death of Alexander the Great after the painting by Karl von Piloty (1886). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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By Adam L. Brandt and Alfred L. Roca

Do conservation genetics and ancient Greek history ever cross paths? Recently, a genetic study of a remnant population of elephants in Eritrea has also addressed an ancient mystery surrounding a battle in the Hellenistic world. After Alexander the Great died unexpectedly in 323 BC, his generals divided his territory, founding several empires. Their successors ended up fighting each other during the next few centuries, often using elephants to intimidate the enemy and disrupt military formations. The Seleucids, heirs to the lands neighboring India, traded treasure and territory for access to Indian war elephants. They fought the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, seeking control of the lands between the two empires during the Syrian Wars. The Ptolemaic pharaohs, desperate for their own pachydermal tanks, established outposts in what is today the country of Eritrea, to capture African elephants for warfare.

Elephants from the two continents were put to the test at the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC, between Antiochus III and Ptolemy IV Philopater. In The Histories, which includes the only known account of African and Asian elephants meeting in warfare, the Greek historian Polybius described the resulting fiasco:

“Most of Ptolemy’s elephants, however, declined the combat, as is the habit of African elephants; for unable to stand the smell and the trumpeting of the Indian elephants, and terrified, I suppose, also by their great size and strength, they at once turn tail and take to flight before they get near them. This is what happened on the present occasion; when Ptolemy’s elephants were thus thrown into confusion and driven back on their own lines.”

As every school child knows, Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants. So why did Polybius get this wrong?  One British writer, perhaps unconsciously affected by the corporal punishments meted out by Classics teachers to disruptive students at English schools, decided that Polybius must after all be correct. He pointed out that, although African savanna elephants are larger than Asian elephants, there is a different species of elephant that lives in the tropical forests of Africa, and which is smaller in size than the Asian elephant. Thus began the tale that the war elephants of the pharaohs were actually African forest elephants, ignoring the thousands of kilometers that separate the range of forest elephants from places where the Egyptians captured their war elephants. This tale was then perpetuated by subsequent authors, each citing authors before as definitive sources.

A savanna elephant in Kruger National Park, South Africa

In a recent conservation genetics study, we examined the elephants of Eritrea, the descendants of the population that was the source of Egyptian war elephants. Eritrea currently has the northernmost population of elephants in eastern Africa. Perhaps one or two hundred elephants persist there, in isolated and fragmented habitat. Using DNA isolated from non-invasively collected dung samples we examined three different genetic markers. First we looked at slow-evolving nuclear gene sequences in the Eritrean elephants. In every case the sites always had the same sequence found in hundreds of savanna elephants, and in no case did we ever get a match to sequences found across all forest elephants. This established that Eritrean elephants were savanna elephants.

When we then looked at very fast evolving regions of the nuclear genome, the Eritrean elephants proved to be a close match to savanna elephants in East Africa, and again were genetically unlike forest elephants. Finally, we looked at mitochondrial DNA, which often has a different pattern than other genetic markers in elephants. Mitochondrial DNA is transmitted only by females, and these females do not geographically disperse away from the natal heard. Very often, one can infer a signal of ancient genetic events that persist only in the pattern of the mitochondrial DNA. Yet in this case, the mitochondrial DNA agreed with the nuclear results: these were savanna elephants, and there was not the slightest trace of any ancient forest elephant presence in Eritrea.

Given this result, why did Polybius claim that the Asian elephants were larger than African elephants? It turns out that in the ancient world there was a legend that, due to the wet climate, animals were always larger in India than they were elsewhere. This legend was widespread among authors before and after Polybius. Go back and look at the way the translation of the Polybius text is worded. Even in translation, it is evident that Polybius has interjecting his own beliefs onto the account, and not recounting an actual observation.

Our genetic study indicated that the isolated population of elephants in Eritrea has low genetic diversity. Habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict are major concerns for conservation of this population, which luckily has not yet been impacted by China’s lust for illegal ivory. Increasing and protecting suitable habitat for their long-term survival is critical, and in the very long run it may become possible to create habitat corridors to other surviving but distant populations. Luckily, the government of Eritrea is committed to protecting the country’s natural environment, and has recently reported an increase in the range and number of elephants.

Adam L. Brandt is a PhD candidate, and Alfred L. Roca is an Assistant Professor, in the Department of Animal Sciences of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are the authors of the paper ‘The elephants of Gash-Barka, Eritrea: Nuclear and mitochondrial genetic patterns‘ published in Journal of Heredity.

The Journal of Heredity covers organismal genetics: conservation genetics of endangered species, population structure and phylogeography, molecular evolution and speciation, molecular genetics of disease resistance in plants and animals, genetic biodiversity and relevant computer programs.

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Image credit: Savanna elephant in Kruger National Park, South Africa. By Felix Andrews (CC-BY-SA-3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.

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There has been a lot of press recently about e-readers and the long-awaited revolution of e-books. If we are to believe the manufacturers’ claims, people will soon be downloading entire novels to read on these gadgets – not just one at a time, but hundreds of books all on the same handy little electronic device. This got me thinking about what exactly a book is and (more importantly) what makes people buy them.

I sometimes buy books for the content alone. This might be because a friend has recommended a title, because I’ve read some interesting reviews, because I need a certain title for research, or because I've enjoyed other books by that author. In this case, I don’t really care about the packaging and am happy to read it in any form of packaging, however dog-eared. I suppose it’s possible I would read such a book in e-format, though I tend to find print easier on the eye than a screen so it would be no great pleasure for me.

But I also buy books on impulse because I am attracted to the cover image, the title, the colour, the sparkly bits, the fonts used, the illustrations, the feel of the book in my hands, its smell, its age, its value if a first edition, its memories if signed by the author… all the things an e-book cannot deliver. The packaging is especially important if I am buying a book as a gift for someone else.

It's interesting to note that I buy twice as many books on impulse/as gifts than I do because I know I want to read them. So if you are in the business of selling books, removing the packaging that attracts the impulse buyer seems a bit like shooting yourself in the foot. E-books will have no packaging, other than the e-reader itself. Content becomes all. Advertising and promotion will be the only way of bringing such “books” to a potential reader’s attention. The way we buy books will change.

Does it matter? I think it does. I know that as an author my text never feels quite real until the proofs arrive, and if I am disappointed by the production quality of the finished book then I often feel a need to create a more beautiful version myself to do justice to the work. “I am the Great Horse” will one day be a collection of handwritten scrolls kept in a box like Alexander the Great’s edition of the Iliad that he took with him on his epic journey to India and back, and I know many other authors create book art in their spare time, perhaps seeking something more permanent than the electronic text that can be so easily lost, stolen or abused. In contrast, my latest title is a highly illustrated novelty book in beautiful packaging that I keep wanting to pick up just for the pleasure of looking at it - that's the cover above, though a picture can't show you how the actual book glitters and sparkles in the sunlight. Maybe the e-reader will prompt a return to such art, and production values (which have been falling for some time where mass market paperbacks are concerned) will become more important again? I hope so.

As for the e-reader itself, apparently you can get them in pink. But I bet they don’t come in swirly pink and violet with sparkly silver stars and prancing white horses on them. I know which type of book I want on my shelf - and I'm not even seven years old any more!