Posted on 07/25/2012 9:39:37 AM PDT by Renfield
Alexander the Great is portrayed as a legendary conqueror and military leader in Greek-influenced Western history books but his legacy looks very different from a Persian perspective.
Any visitor to the spectacular ruins of Persepolis - the site of the ceremonial capital of the ancient Persian Achaemenid empire, will be told three facts: it was built by Darius the Great, embellished by his son Xerxes, and destroyed by that man, Alexander.
~~~snip~~~
He razed Persepolis to the ground following a night of drunken excess at the goading of a Greek courtesan, ostensibly in revenge for the burning of the Acropolis by the Persian ruler Xerxes.
Persians also condemn him for the widespread destruction he is thought to have encouraged to cultural and religious sites throughout the empire...
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Ping
Alexander the so-so.
Only in this day and age is history rewritten for and by the alleged victims.
The Book of Danial talks ALOT about this time period.
That’s right....in our new more ‘multicultural’ era we must see all sides of everything. I guess the Persians forgot ( or never knew) that victors write history and always have.
The Ayatollahs should be pleased that he razed all those non-Islamic sites for them...
Wouldn’t Alexander “the homosexual degenerate” be more historically accurate?
And any thinking person would understand that modern day Iranians would have a different view of Alexander the Great than do we in the west.
Its also true that our view is no less valid than their's.
Their Empire is one of the most impressive, cultural and tolerant examples I can think of.
Poor Darius
I was listening to a history podcast a while back where the guy was making the point that, arguably, Alexander was worse than Hitler. The rationale was that Hitler, evil though he clearly was, thought that he was doing something for the greater good of the German people; there was some “cause” there, heinous as we find it. Alexander’s only cause was his own glory.
The homosexual claims are unfounded and unlikely.
“Alexander married twice: Roxana, daughter of the Bactrian nobleman Oxyartes, out of love; and Stateira II, a Persian princess and daughter of Darius III of Persia, for political reasons. He apparently had two sons, Alexander IV of Macedon of Roxana and, possibly, Heracles of Macedon from his mistress Barsine. He lost another child when Roxana miscarried at Babylon.”
Doesn’t sound like a homo to me.
There is no historical evidence that Alexander was homosexual.
It is all the rage now to consider anyone who had close friend to be a homosexual.
It sucks to lose wars.
Prostration was such an issue to the Hellenize warrior-citizen that two Spartan warriors sent to atone to Xerxes for killing his emissaries by throwing them down a well; by having Xerxes kill them - were horrified to learn that they were expected to prostrate themselves in his royal presence. They came to be killed - but not to bow down!
Alexander was generally a benevolent conqueror.
One exception was the city of Tyre but only because that city butchered his heralds on the walls in full view of Alexander and his men.
They thought wrongly, that because the city was on an island with high walls that they were safe from attack. It actually was a very difficult job but Alexander seems to have been particularly determined to conquer Tyre.
Okay, those daggum homosekshuls, they even fooled me with their propaganda. :P
While the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus may or may not have been homosexual (very common and sometimes even institutionalized among the Greeks); during the time of Alexander such a comparison was bound to have such connotations.
So I guess the lesson would be that if you don't want such speculation of homosexuality about the close relationship between yourself and your lifelong male companion; you don't go around comparing yourself and him to two who were widely believed to be so.
The principal problem of the very impressive Persian empire was, as is so often the case in empires in general, one of succession. Alexander caught them at a bad time; so, for that matter did Xenophon's Greek army earlier, who got sucked into fighting for the losing side and ended up having to cut its way to the sea.
Persia's earlier (mid-sixth-century BC) conquest of Ionia was a rather impressive show as well. A good deal of fighting, quite a great deal of diplomacy, intimidation, and bribery. Persian history that complains about Greek invasions should acknowledge that they started the thing, after all.
Once the radiation diminishes, tourists will be able to visit the not-quite-so-spectacular ruins of Tehran.
So where does Cyrus the Great fit in? I’ve always been told he was the golden boy of Persia.
Tolerant, yes, but an extremely top-heavy Gov’t.
The fact remains that he was a military commander of amazing ability with the best army of the day.
As the chariots approached the line, the Greek soldiers in the first few rows moved sideways, forming a pocket for each chariot, with spears on all sides — the chariots were forced to stop in the pocket, and the soldiers at their rear simply killed them. The pride of the Persian Army was destroyed in minutes.
War chariots were never used in battles again.
Macedon conquering the Persian Empire would be roughly equivalent today, in manpower and other resource today to Venezuela conquering the United States.
It still seems to me the Persians had appallingly poor strategic planners. They apparently could not face the Macedonians in battle and win. So why not use Fabian tactics and attack his supply lines? With massively larger numbers, they could force Alexander to keep his army concentrated, while they still had the men to raid and attack elsewhere.
The reason this wasn’t possible is probably because the Empire was not a nation. They had to go toe to toe with the invader or lose the prestige that kept the subject nations down. The Romans and their allies had sufficient cohesion to use Fabian tactics. The Persians, not so much.
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Thanks Renfield. Big Al adopted Persian ways, and even dealt with the Persian usurper using Persian laws and penalties, after chasing and catching him up in what is now Afghanistan. Naturally (and obviously) one of the greatest "what-if"s of history is, what if Alexander doesn't die young? |
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Did somebody say Persians?
The first source to refer to Alexander as "the Great" was long after his death, I believe. In his lifetime he would be called "Alexander the son of Philip" if "Alexander" by itself wasn't sufficient.
He was not popular with most Greeks of the day--Darius III had large numbers of Greek mercenaries fighting on his side. After Alexander's victory at the River Granicus, he had the Greek mercenaries he captured slaughtered in keeping with his myth that he was fighting a war of revenge (because of Xerxes' invasion--Macedonia had been on the Persian side in that war).
An Iranian friend I had, whose father left when the Shah fell, was always emphatic about how great Persian culture had been before the Arabs destroyed it.
Cyrus was a pretty amazing ruler; his heirs not so much.
An Iranian friend I had, whose father left when the Shah fell, was always emphatic about how great Persian culture had been before the Arabs destroyed it.
Cyrus was a pretty amazing ruler; his heirs not so much.
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