The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

His worthless friend Hephæstion died; and Alexander celebrated his burial in a manner which showed utter senselessness and absurdity, in his prodigality and in his perpetration of oriental horrors. In order to offer to the deceased a worthy sacrifice, he undertook an expedition against a free people of mountaineers, and extirpated the whole nation; and according to a truly eastern fashion, he slaughtered all the prisoners in honour of his deceased friend. All that is related of this period is disgraceful; insensible to all that is good, and dissatisfied with himself, he abandoned himself more and more to frightful drunkenness. He offered prizes for the best drinkers, and an ἀγὼν πολυποσίας ended with some thirty persons drinking themselves to death: a proceeding which we can contemplate only with the most complete disgust.

Perhaps no man has personally exercised a greater historical influence than Alexander; this cannot be questioned. But what influence he exercised, and whether it was beneficial, is a question on which opinions are divided. In regard to Greece, his conquests were altogether injurious. Through him the Greek nation was, as it were, seized with consumption, for he reduced its numbers immensely. A vast number of recruits must have gone from Greece and Macedonia to India and Upper Asia, whom he forever withdrew from their country by assigning to them settlements in those countries. It lay in the nature of things, that Greece should be lost, and should fall into a state of complete weakness, when a new wealthy and military state arose by the side of it. Even the good which arose from the establishment of this Macedonio-Asiatic empire, was injurious to Greece. Commerce was transferred to Alexandria; and Athens ceased to be spoken of as a commercial city. Alexander’s influence upon the nearer and remoter parts of conquered Asia was different in different countries. Upon Egypt it was beneficial, for that country was evidently better off under the Ptolemies than it had been under the Persians. The first three Macedonian kings of Egypt were excellent princes, and raised the country to a degree of prosperity, which it never enjoyed either before or after: and that period was sufficient for such a country to heal its ancient wounds.

Alexander’s contemporaries among the Greeks were not mistaken as to the influence which he exercised. He died detested and cursed by Greece and Macedonia. If he had lived longer, he would perhaps himself have seen the downfall of the structure he had reared. He could not be otherwise than active and stirring, and he could not have gone on without bringing ruin upon himself. His intention was not to hellenise Asia, but to make Greece Persian; hence if he had longer remained in Asia, we should have seen the formation of a Græco-Persico-Macedonian empire. As he wanted to arm the Greeks and Macedonians in the Persian fashion, those nations would afterwards probably have revolted and put him to death. The only means by which Greece might have been saved, and have recovered its liberty, would have been, if Alexander had passed through the natural course of his life, and had fallen with the glory of his exploits.i