alexander

150 THE WISDOM OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
brought the very idea of a Greek-style king to Asia, where
three successor kingdoms continued to employ it and expand
it after his death. He revolutionized trade by introducing
coins and establishing a common language for
long-distance commerce. Indeed, trade flourished across an
entire continent where mostly local barter existed before.
Greek culture, religion, and art spread throughout enormous
expanses where it had heretofore been unknown. Military
architecture had to be changed because of the need to
be able to resist the siege towers that Alexander introduced
to Asia. One could go on and on. Tarn put it succinctly
when he asserted that ‘‘he was one of the supreme fertilising
forces of history. He lifted the civilized world out of one
groove and set it in another; he started a new epoch; nothing
could again be as it had been.’’ 1 I believe that is not
overstatement.
I end with an apology. He came to be known as Alexander
the Great, not Alexander the Perfect or Saint Alexander.
He did horrible things to people, he made terrible mistakes,
but he changed the world irredeemably. Despite his shortcomings,
I offer three larger-than-life lessons that were not
explicitly addressed earlier: vision, human resources acumen,
and magnanimity.
Vision. Most historians take some time to speculate as
to Alexander’s motives and aspirations, but I have eschewed
such speculation. All great leaders I have met have a vision—some
sort of a desirable image of the future, almost
1. W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great: Sources and Studies (Cambridge:
Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 145.