In defence of Alexander the Great

The charity Classics for All staged its annual moot in the Supreme Court on the question of Alexander the Great: hero or war criminal? (Search for ‘Classics for All Moot Trial’.) The prosecution drew masterfully on the Nuremberg trials (1945-6) for war crimes and crimes against humanity to condemn him; the defence thought this anachronistic and that Alexander’s reputation as a hero could be justified by Homer’s Iliad and many other examples of heroism in ancient eyes. The jury found for the defence.

The case goes to the heart of the debate about colonialism, imperialism and slavery and raises the question: ‘Through whose eyes are you making your judgments – ancient or modern?’ The two positions cannot be reconciled.

The ancient case, at its most basic, goes as follows. The only assets a community had were its people and its lands to feed them. To survive, it needed to protect both. The duty of its women, therefore, was to keep up the birth rate to produce enough males for the adults to train sufficiently well to protect those assets. Great fighters became their leaders. There was no room for those who could not, or would not, play their part. Human rights did not exist.

To expand your assets, you took land from others. That made you wealthier and more powerful, and therefore more secure and more in control of your own destiny – good business, if usually bloody. The Romans were expert at it, having learnt the art of (mostly) benefiting the communities they defeated.

The ancients had words for love, mercy, respect, good faith and so on, but the values of a world where survival was at stake were more transactional than ours. Even so, what they achieved in the way of e.g. politics, philosophy, literature, architecture and law was staggering. Those who so blithely condemn the recent past for colonialism (etc), and refuse to understand the social and cultural differences of a world so alien from the enormously privileged one we inhabit, do it no justice.