Customer Reviews

The Conquests of Alexander the Great (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity)

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The misleading and inaccurate review posted by "Barrie W. Bracken" has prompted me to write this.

The author of the book, Waldemar Heckel, is one of the most respected and knowledgeable authors and historians on Alexander the Great. If you do a Google search on him you will see that and his prolific scholarly additions to the field of Alexander study.

This book is a wonderful general book on Alexander and includes insights found no where else. It's the most interesting and enjoyable books on Alexander I have read in a while. And I try to read them all.

Very highly recommended!

Following the 2004 release of Oliver Stone's spectacular historical film "Alexander," a deluge of scholarly and popular studies of the career of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) has inundated the market. Most of these are biographies, often providing "insights" into Alexander's complex psychological makeup. Historian Waldemar Heckel, on the other hand, focuses on what he regards as the epitome of Alexander's greatness: his military conquests. Indeed, the future world conqueror saw his first action at age 18, when Alexander led the victorious Macedonian cavalry charge at the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). Following the assassination of his father Philip II, Alexander became King of Macadonia and then began his conquest of the ramshackle Persian Empire while only 22. After a series of spectacular and brilliant victories, the young king led his army all the way to India, creating the largest empire the world had then known. Dead at the age of 32, by natural causes or poison, Alexander passed from history into legend.

In this book, Heckel offers "an intelligent introduction" to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Thus, he does not provide a "blow-by-blow" description of each of the young king's battles, which has been done successfully by earlier historians such as Major-General J.F.C. Fuller. Rather, the author gives full attention "to aims and impact, to political consequences of military action, and especially to the use of propaganda for both motivation and justification." In this fascinating study, Alexander the Great rightly emerges as "one of the world's greatest military strategists" and not the bloody megalomaniac -- in the mold of a Hitler or Stalin -- as in some revisionist historiography.

There are, however, two of Heckel's conclusions with which I strongly disagree. First, the author presents Alexander's nemesis, the Persian King Darius III, in a more favorable light, counteracting what he regards as a negative depiction of the Great King generated by Alexander's "propaganda mills." Nevertheless, one cannot help but regard Darius III as anything but a "cowardly" figure. Twice he "ran out" on his men in the heat of battle, an action which turned the tide of two crucial battles (Issus and Gaugamela) against the Persians. Following the first of these defeats, moreover, the Great King even abandoned his mother, wife, and children to the victorious Macedonian king.

Secondly, Heckel believes that Alexander "staged" the mutiny of his men at the river Hyphasis, in the heart of northern India, to allow a "face-saving" end to years of increasingly brutal and difficult campaigning. This conclusion is truly "heretical," as Heckel himself admits. It is also dead wrong. Although Alexander the Great was not nearly the "war-lover" as many earlier historians have concluded, it is doubtful that the Macedonian king would have shirked a challenge, the conquest of all of India, especially at the height of his battlefield success. In fact, upon his return to Babylon in 323 BC, Alexander immediately began planning the conquest of Arabia, North Africa, and even Southern Europe! He clearly lived for "glory," which, in the ancient world, could only be achieved in success at war. Overall, however, Waldemar Heckel's "The Conquest of Alexander the Great" is a sober and sensible analysis of the military campaigns of one of history's greatest generals -- if not the greatest.

I purchased this book for my english literature class. This book was in great condition and was as described in the listing.

Waldemar Heckel presents a concise, readable introductory history of Alexander the Great's Asiatic campaign in which his primary aim seems to be to reconstruct the tactical approaches taken in battle by Alexander and his generals as well as providing the broad arch of his career. This is pointedly not a biography of Alexander, and I cannot agree with other reviews that it presents an overly cynical view of Alexander.

It presents very little view on Alexander at all, actually, with almost no psychological motives being assigned to the great general. And Waldemar Heckel is very clear that he finds Alexander to be a great general, and in invoking "his times" Heckel does wish to defend Alexander from comparison with modern tyrants such as Hitler, finding such comparisons unjust. As another review notes, Heckel often draws parallels to modern times, something he pointed acknowledges in the preface as being imprecise but hopes that it may make some of the events "more accessible." He apologizes for this if he fails.

Because of the focus just on Alexander's campaigns and the specific battles Heckel chooses to address there is much left out. We do not learn of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Darius by his treacherous relatives for example. We learn little about how other historical or cultural events actually affected the campaign. As such, this is certainly not a text that elaborates on the "times of Alexander" and in now way can be taken as anything but a very restricted military history.

Heckel's reconstructions of the battles are interesting and rely heavily on his diagrams of battle formations; they are not described with any artistry, which is forgivable. However, as a military history I did find some essential elements lacking. For example, in his description of the Battle of Gaugamela he does not provide numbers for the size of Darius's army in the text, relegating it to an appendix. Arrian's hyperbolic claims about this engagement suggest that Darius's army numbered more than a million to Alexander's 48,000, and he also asserts 100 of Alexander's men where slain while 300,000 of the enemy where killed "and more than were killed were captured." (In the Anabasis of Alexander: The Battle of Gaugamela (Book III, 7-16)). Most historians have been estimating anywhere between 50-100,000. It would have been helpful to know if more contemporary scholarship had shined any light on this question, but here Heckel merely lists the ancient sources estimates of 245,000 to 1,100,000 Persian troops. He gives no indication that even these numbers are denied by most contemporary historians nor does he suggest if the number is closer to a million or a quarter of that--important details if one is to understand the magnitude of the success or what the tactical diagram he gives us actually translates into in terms of a battle between opposing forces.

It should also be noted that this is a very short book. With a rather long appendix and an index, numerous maps and diagrams and a timeline line, the remaining text is less than 120 pages of large print. Phillip Freeman's recent publication Alexander the Great runs to nearly 400 pages of text. English's book Sieges of Alexander the Great runs the length of this one and only focuses on his sieges. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge Heckel's work for what it is--a introductory text to the military campaign of Alexander, neither comprehensive, overly scholarly, nor a biography. For those looking to just get their feet wet with Alexander history, this is a good place to start but one still has much to learn not only about Alexander but about "his times and conquests" as well.

Try as I may, I could not finish this book. Everytime I came across something good or great that Alexander did, the author would provide (maybe) one or two sentences. If it happened to be something not so good, the author provided paragraphs.

I got the feeling that the only reason he wrote the book was to (in a passive aggressive manner) attack the authors with which he disagrees.

I found the battle narratives to be rather uninspiring. What happened at the battle of Issus takes up barely two pages when you look at it. Gaugamela takes a little more than two.

The author tells us in his preface that "it is important to consider Alexander and his military achievement in the context of his times." Why he fails miserably to consider the context of the times for Darius is inexplicable. He apologizes for Darius when he tells us about Darius running away from his army he was only living to fight another day ---by comparing him to Douglas MacArthur in 1942! Running from the scene of battle in those times was the ultimate expression of cowardice. It is the very reason why he ended up being murdered by those he led.

I can go on, but I won't.

Leave it to say that I recommend not buying this book. Maybe his other books are better.

Why is Alexander great? Is it by ancient acclaim only or did he really acomplish something in the world to justify the title? Heckel attempts to answer this in a very brief study (152 pages of text). The book has some very good points: 1) its brevity, 2)its prose style and readability, 3) eighteen pages of notes, 4) a very readable typeface, all of which contribute to the numer of stars assigned. The price is too high, but if you are acquainted with Cambridge University Press this will not surprise you.

On the positive side, besides the easy flowing prose of the author, he offers interesting explanations of the successes and failures of "the Great." The author seems undecided about Alexander's pushes across the globe; "He lived for war, loved its hardhips and adventures even more than victory itself, . . . his faith in himself was boundless, and his power of self-deception unlimited (page 120)." Is this the cause of his greatness? We seem never to learn why he was so wonderfully great. The Macedonian court is compared to that of Charlemagne (page 110), we are reminded on page 179 of the sightseers at the Battle of Bull Run in the American Civil War (he chose this instance probably because it was reported by William Russel), the author points out the inefficiency of Charles V in Peru quoting William Prescott's History of Peru (page 135). After a while the reader may wonder if the author is trying to cover up his lack of knowledge on Alexander by his referals to other times in history. It is easier to imagine how Homer fits into the book than to picture Hitler in a work on Alexander the Great.

For its intended purpose this book is a failure. Spend your time and money elsewhere.