Alexander the Great

  What do you think of Alexander the great?  I think he was a great person.   Is Alexander popular in Europe, Asia, and Africa today?

Edited by Ottoman Emperor

that he was a homo

Originally posted by azwhoopin that he was a homo

I dont want to turn it into another dumb topic of the style "Was Alexander a homosexual?" but common sense says that someone who is married three times, has two mistresses and two children cant be a homosexual. 

Originally posted by azwhoopin that he was a homo

Originally posted by Barış Yes, I was implying that. Actually he was a bisexual. But that was not an extraordinary thing in Ancient Greece. Am I wrong?

Well if this may seem as an attack please consider it as one....

Who the hell ever said Alexander was a homo or that homosexuality was any kind of norm in ancient Hellas...

Can either of you support these rediculous claims with proof???
There was a great topic in this exact channel, pertaining to homosexuality in ancient Hellas and Rome, I suggest both of you read it before you ever dare compare your ideals/way of life,  to them...

Everywhere you look there's always a homo trying to connect himself to the greatness of someone else's past...

I think he was a good general but he is overrated.

What worked most in his favour was the decadent nature and military ineptitude of the Iranian dynasty at the time and its dated army.  I believe one of Darius's Ionian generals urged him to employ a scorched earth policy and one of harassment rather than pitched battle.  Darius apparently scoffed at this idea and went about his pompus ways regardless. I think the Ionian's proposed tactics would have worked a treat and exhausted and starved the Macedonian upstart's forces into retreat.

What made him a military genius? what in particular? Apart from fielding a highly trained and effective war machine did he have going for him, and other than his huge ambition?

Edited by Zagros

Originally posted by Phallanx Everywhere you look there's always a homo trying to connect himself to the greatness of someone else's past...

Who are you addressing here?

Sorry, Alexander was a bisexual and you are going to live with that.

Originally posted by Zagros Most of which after three battles and a siege.

Chinghiz conquered even more land with one single battle... so that makes him a lousy general in your book? Besides, Alex won a dozen more battles and got throught 20 sieges... your point?

He inherited the war machine and tactics from his militaristic forebear, what in particular did he do to improve his army that had not already been done?

He inherited a well-trained phalanx, a superb cavalry and... that's it. You should know that Philip has never - not in one single battle - utilized a combined arms approach as Alex did. Philip's battles were won - bar one by the Phalanx. Alexander's battles were won by a well-calculated cavalry charge at the enemies weak point, never by the Phalanx.
Ah, btw, the single battle Philip won by a cavalry charge was Chaeronia... where Alex commanded the cavalry and engaged it without orders by his father at a moment he conceived fitting.

Also, Alex supplemented his army with missile troops (mostly mercenary Cretans and Rhodians and some Macedonians) and integrated those in the whole system, along with the rest of the allied troops he gathered.

As much would be expected from a competent and calculating general with guts, as he was, in charge of a highly trained and mobile force when faced with a vastly inferior foe.  What was the Persian defence? He hit the weak points, such as flanks with his cavalry where there were only inexperienced levy infantry and poorly directed archers, that just shows competence.

This is an understatement if I ever say one. Can't really address this, it considers as given 2500 years ago things even today 90% of the military leaders cannot perform (not perform well, perform at all).
Also: The Persian army was not "vastly inferiro" or anything near it. It was not as well equiped as Alex's and had outdated tactics and was inadequately led. But... hey, Alex equiped, designed tactics for and led his army, not some other guy!

I am not debating his status as a legend, but as a military genius - he was good, but not quite a genius IMO. Overrated definately, his fame as a general is attributible more to who he took down rather than how.

I think you just don't like him, admit it.

That is my opinion of the man, I think Caesar was superior as a general.

Alexander fought the theoretically best ancient army of the greatest empire of the antiquity. Ceasar faced a rag tag of tribal warriors, with serious problems between the tribes composing his opposition,  extremely poor leadership, ill-equipped and without any grasp of great strategy.
And you compare Alex with Caesar?

Originally posted by Phallanx Well from what ive read Socrates was a big time Homo. The word lesbian comes from the island of Lesbos an inland which was made famous(or infamous to the Byzantines because of the erocitism in her poetry) by the lesbian poet Sappho. The Spartans especially in their military practiced homosexuality freely and they even encouraged it. When a young male entered the military to become a soldier he was lifelong relationship with an older soldier or mentor.  You prove my point... you're a fine example of the ignorance that roams around the whole idea of homosexuality in ancient Hellas.. Sappho, dear vulcan had NOTHING to do with Byzantium.. she lived in the 6th cent BC besides that, we know from Ovid, Athenaios and Suidas among others, speaking of her love with Phaon. We know for a fact that she was a mother and wife that wrote "epithalamia"=  "wedding songs" that spoke, not of lesbian affairs but of the beauty of young girls that were about to become wifes and mothers themselves. But anyway, you're ignorance on the issue is once again proved by the very word/notion of "lesbians" (as in female homosexuality)... The word was first first attested in 1870. (was there a Byzantium in the 1870's) What does this tell us? That you know nothing about the topic in question and just popped in to provoke... Spend a min' to READ and LEARN a thing or two

No my dear Phallanx I wasn't trying to provoke you ( ok maybe a little ) but I was trying to tell you that homosexuality did indeed take place in ancient Hellas. That doesn't mean it was only practiced there but it seems like it was practiced MORE than in other places.

You did not understand my post about Sappho. I didn't say she lived with the Byzantines but they censored and destroyed her poetry centuries later because of the high erotic language in it.

Sure lesbian might not have existed before but there was another word that did...Sapphics.

Hmmm, well most of her books were destroyed in approx 380 under the orders of Pope Gregory Nazianzen, so, sorry but no Byzantines back then either..

Of course homosexuality existed in Hellas, just as it has existed, and will continue to exist, everywhere and at all times in human history. However, while it did exist, it was never legally sanctioned, thought to be a cultural norm, or engaged in without risk of serious punishment, including exile and death.

As I've said, it was Walter Pater (1890's a poet and tutor) he and his band of homos that originally began this fiasco of a theory in Oxford. We find them introducing a totally new "theory", in which Platonic love has nothing to do with "phyche" but is totally based on phisical attraction.
Later we find a list of wanna-be "historians" of Hellinic sexuality, see: Michel Foucault, John Boswell, John Winkler and David Halperin that were or are all HOMOS striving to make some connection between homos and Hellinism.

There are more than a few texts that prove the opposite but for some mysterious reason aren't promoted as much as they should when discussing this topic... obviously because it suits some...

Finally Sapphic isn't a name for female homosexuals nor ever was used as it, but clearly used to describe the poetry form/style presented by her and copied by many later Hellinic and Roman poets


Edited by Phallanx