Alexander the Great

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. Philip gave me Macedonia, discipline, cavalry, and a throne. Aristotle gave me Homer, inquiry, and the desire to measure myself against something larger than inheritance. A kingdom can be received. A mind has to be trained.

My father gave me Macedonia. I shall make it the world. Aristotle taught me what to want from the world. He taught me to love Homer, to memorise the Iliad, and to model myself on Achilles. I always slept with a copy of the Iliad and a dagger under my pillow — one for the mind and one for the morning.

There is nothing impossible to him who will try. My generals told me the Persian empire could not be crossed at the Granicus. We crossed it. They told me Tyre was impregnable — it sat on an island. I built a causeway across the sea and took it in seven months. A wall is not a limit. It is a project.

My father gave me Macedonia. I intend to give myself the world. When tutors taught me the Iliad I did not read it as history. I read it as instruction. Achilles was not a lesson in how men used to fight. He was a standard against which I measured what I had not yet done.

I would rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent than in the extent of my power and dominion. Aristotle taught me this before I had the power to test it. I have since discovered that it is far easier to conquer Persia than to conquer oneself.

At the Gordian knot I did not untie it. I cut it. My critics said this was cheating. I said the prophecy promised only that whoever dealt with it would rule Asia, and it made no specification about method. When the rules of a problem are used to prevent its solution, revising the rules is the correct response.

The mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii — made perhaps two hundred years after the battle — shows me at Issus, charging directly at Darius. The Persian king is turning his chariot to flee. I am looking at him.

This is approximately what happened. At Issus in 333 BC, I rode directly at Darius's position. He broke. An army of several hundred...

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. Darius had numbers. I had momentum and the willingness to fight in the front line with my men. Leadership is not direction from the rear. The king charges first, or he is not a king.

At Gaugamela, Parmenion urged me to attack at night. I answered: I will not steal a victory. Not from nobility alone. A victory stolen under cover of darkness leaves the enemy's morale intact and your own soldiers unsure whether they could have won by day. We fought at dawn. We won.

Those who say I became Persian forget what empire requires. To rule Asia as merely a Macedonian would have been to conquer territory and lose obedience. Customs are not costumes when they teach defeated peoples that the king intends to govern, not merely plunder.

When we drink, boys, I know something the sober do not: that there are too few hours in a life for all the campaigns I intend. I did not drink because I was afraid of death. I drank because the days were short and the empire was large and sleep seemed a waste of the only life I had been given.

The Alexander Sarcophagus is misnamed — it did not hold my remains. It held the remains of Abdalonymus, whom I installed as king of Sidon after taking the city in 333 BC. He had the sarcophagus carved with battle scenes from my campaigns as a memorial to the man who had given him his throne.

The figure hunting lions on the narrow end — wearing the...