Table Of Contentalexander the great
alexander the great
And His Time
Agnes Savill
Introduction by Thomas N. Beck
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introduction
Alexander the Great. The very name conjures up
images of the invincible conqueror in battle, arrows
arcing across the sky, chariots thundering over the
desert, swords clanging against shields, and the hand-
some hero standing tall amidst the fray, slaying ene-
mies by the score, and inspiring his men to triumph.
Yet how much of this romantic notion is true, how
much is myth, and what does it really matter to us
anyway?
Agnes Forbes Blackadder Savill, in her study of
Alexander’s life (which was essentially one long cam-
paign from Greece to India and part of the way
back), argues that almost all of it is true despite its
having passed into myth since the great man’s death.
She also argues that it matters quite a bit to us — now
more than ever, in fact. Considering the evil that one
man could do, Savill wanted to show its polar oppo-
site, to demonstrate that one man could change the
world for the better; indeed, that one man in particu-
lar had. As she wrote, “We have seen in modern
Europe how the people have been led astray by false
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introduction
idols who brought about disillusionment and destruc-
tion. In ancient Greece wise philosophers declared
that when one man excelled all others in intellect
and character he should be regarded as a god among
men, and the people should gladly obey him. The
Youth of the future, seeking for such a guide, should
measure him by comparison with Alexander of
Macedon.”
Alexander the Great and His Timeis a very old-fashioned
book. Savill subscribes almost totally to the now out-
moded “Great Man” theory of history; outmoded not
so much because it overestimates the hero but
because it underestimates almost everything else.
What are the conditions in which a single man, how-
ever great, can influence events and make himself
immortal? That is a question academic historians pre-
fer to grapple with, in studies of the “forgotten” peo-
ple of history, the ordinary folk whose daily lives were
formerly ignored in favor of biographies of the noted
and powerful. Savill does not totally ignore the
excluded, but her purpose is to show precisely why
Alexander was great — and why we should care.
The first edition of Alexander the Great and His Time
was published when Savill was 79 years old. She had
no training as a historian, but with her medical back-
ground (most of her previous publications were
about dermatology and other health-related topics)
she had an analytical mind and an ability to trace the
line between cause and effect. She was the first
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introduction
woman to receive a degree from St. Andrews University
in Scotland. Her medical background shows up most
clearly in her tentative attempts to offer a psychologi-
cal portrait of the great king.
There are two parts to the book. The first is a nar-
rative of Alexander’s life, starting with his childhood
and following him on his famous campaign through
Persia, Central Asia and India, then back, culminat-
ing in his premature death in Babylon at the age of
32. A shorter section depicts life in ancient Greece,
the Polis, Greek culture, philosophy and religion,
and provides brief descriptions of such luminaries as
Pericles and Aristotle. There are several unspoken
premises to Savill’s work. One is Alexander cannot be
understood except as a product of his time. Others
are ancient Greece was in many ways far superior as a
culture to anything that came since its time, genius is
its own justification, and Alexander’s self-imposed
mission should be a guiding light to our own trou-
bled times.
Savill wants to convey Alexander’s sense of mission
to readers. That sense of mission seems to have come
to Alexander in a vision during his visit to the oracle
of the Temple of Ammon at the Libyan oasis of Siwah
in 332 B.C. As Savill writes:
He had long believed that he had a mission; probably it
was at Siwah that he had received confirmation of the intu-
itional force which impelled him along his phenomenal
career.… A vision of the brotherhood of mankind had been
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introduction
with Alexander since he had come under the spell of Egypt
with its monuments of past splendor and reverence for the
gods. Who can say whether men of genius are not driven by
some mysterious and as yet inexplicable force of the spirit
when they are impelled to follow a path without apparent
reason? In some cases these dreams of future promise arrive
suddenly, irradiating as if by a flash of lightning the monot-
ony of the daily routine. At Siwah Alexander certainly
received a message which sustained him throughout long
years of war and suffering and enabled him to surmount
obstacles which would have deterred most of the bravest men.
Not that his followers understood, even those clos-
est to him. For eleven years, Alexander drove his cam-
paign further and further eastward, ever more distant
from Macedonia, from what his entire retinue consid-
ered to be true civilization, even as they were encoun-
tering in Persia and India cities grander than their
own. Yet Alexander, himself the son of a state the rest
of Greece considered to be almost barbaric, wanted
to spread the light of Greece to the rest of the world.
In Savill’s words:
His expressed desire to extend Hellenic culture did not
imply worship of Pagan deities, but the Greek ideal of excel-
lence, arete. With this aim, he strove to extend knowledge of
Greek art, science, philosophy and the many high qualities
that characterized that gracious civilization. When the ‘urge’
from the unconscious is accepted by the intellect, it has a
clear path; in that personality there is in truth a vocation, a
call to follow, a mission. This intuitional drive in such indi-
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viduals as Alexander is an imperative demand; it cannot be
pushed aside for lesser claims; it is the man’s destiny, and for
aught we can tell, it may fulfil the purpose for which he was
created. As Arrian, the careful historian, concluded, ‘There
seems to have been some Divine Hand presiding over both
his birth and actions.’
One problem with biographies is that they tend to
ignore everything except their hero, a natural, if
inevitable, flaw. Alexander may have been a truly
great man. Indeed, Savill is highly convincing that he
was, and why. But he was, nevertheless, only one man.
For all his own sense of destiny, of divine inspiration,
his almost volcanic sense of competitiveness with his
estimable father, Philip of Macedon, his intense
desire to exceed (the Greek concept of arete to which
Savill refers frequently), there is in most studies of
Alexander a trace at least of what the great British
military historian John Keegan refers to in his seminal
The Face of Battle as the “battle piece.” That is the ten-
dency for whatever great man is the writer’s subject to
be depicted as solely responsible for all the success
attained in the battle under discussion.
Alexander was unquestionably a great man on a
mission of brotherhood, a wise ruler, a gifted, even
brilliant, commander, intrepid in battle, unsurpassed
at planning, skilled in diplomacy, humane in victory.
But what of his followers? Why did they follow him for
almost twelve years away from their homes, their fami-
lies, their lives? Savill’s answer is, he was Alexander; of
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course they followed him. He was their king, he was a
descendant of Heracles, son of Zeus, he was so visibly
superior to all others that they could not but follow
him. For Savill’s purpose, which is to persuade us of
Alexander’s ultimate virtue, this is sufficient. But a
more modern student wants to know of the motiva-
tions of Alexander’s retinue, of their personalities, not
just whether they were loyal and true, or when they
betrayed Alexander. They existed in their own right,
not just as “spear-carriers”. This is another indication
of how old-fashioned Alexander the Great and His Time
is, and was already even when it was first published.
Alexander the Great and His Time is an excellent
introduction to the subject for a non-academic
reader but much less so for the serious student. Savill
uses very few sources, although she is not uncritical of
them or of the received stories about Alexander that
have passed into legend. Frequently she uses her own
sense of reason to decide if certain things said about
Alexander could possibly be true or accurate, particu-
larly stories about his penchant for strong drink or
his harsh treatment of certain subordinates. She cites
various scholars and archaeologists who also used
their own reason to determine the truth in the leg-
ends. Her purpose, however, is not to be 100% accu-
rate but rather to persuade her readers to be as
impressed with her great subject as she is.
This she certainly does. Chapter 13, “The Character
of Alexander,” is the most interesting in the book. Away
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