Alexander: Lord of the Dance

Battles B.C. Season 1, Episode 6
Alexander: Lord of War (2009)
Directed by David Padrusch
Written by David Padrusch

Here is how I imagine the story conference for this episode went.
EXECUTIVE #1: Me like elephants. Me no like think. Elephants big.
EXECUTIVE #2: Would you like a peanut? Peanuts are good.
EXECUTIVE #1: Me like elephants.
EXECUTIVE #2: Elephants have trunks just like cars. Ha ha. Cars are funny.
EXECUTIVE #1: Thinking hard. Me like elephants.
This is how I can make sense of the decision to demonstrate Alexander the Great’s Lord-itude of War by showcasing a battle for which the sources are the sketchiest, and which was clearly the toughest fight he ever had. Because Porus was in India and he had elephants and people like elephants.

Alexander, King of Macedon, etc....Drew Taylor
Porus, an Indian king...Daz Crawford
Porus’ Son...Dragos Berghia
Taxiles/King Ambhi, another Indian king....Alex Ojeda

Steven Weingartner (Chariots Like a Whirlwind)
Richard A. Gabriel (Distinguished Professor, Royal Military College of Canada)
David George (Director, Institute of Mediterranean Archaeology)
Mark Schwartz (Department of Anthropology, Grand Valley State University)
Matthew Gonzales (Assistant Professor of Classics, Saint Anselm College)

I think the Roman historian Livy said it best when he said that the Romans could have kicked Alexander the Great’s ass any day of the week any time of day. That’s admittedly a paraphrase. No ancient commander has a more bloated reputation than Alexander, who won most of his battles by charging head first into crowds of people who didn’t want to fight anyone and were commanded by people who had no idea what to do other than run away. It's easy to rack up victories like that. The viciousness of Alexander’s response to anyone who actually did put up a fight against him is a pretty good indicator that he really wasn’t brilliant so much as just lucky that his biggest battles were against complete berks. It still means that he won and that is usually enough to cement a reputation, but it makes for a lot of bloviating on the part of people going back trying to explain his brilliance and use it as an example of excellent command and control.
Livy was right. In most of his great battles if Alexander had been head to head with even a moderately talented commander he’d be known as Alexander the Dead. Instead, he conquered a lot of things. Did he conquer all of the known world? Well, no. Because we know for a fact that he was forced to turn back from a big chunk of world in India that he had just come to know and which he definitely didn’t subdue. He didn't even conquer all of the world that was known to him. He got turned back. So stop saying that he conquered all of the known world.

Like all popular histories of Alexander the Great this episode gets in line behind the mythmaking propaganda machine 2300 years old and still going strong. I’m not sure why anyone is still busy kissing his ass after all this time? He is definitely dead, after all. So, what is otherwise a pretty decent account of the Battle of the Jhelum, is marred by the constant refrains of “Alexander was brilliant” and “Alexander was a genius” but never “Alexander was really lucky” or “Alexander got his ass handed to him a little later and decided not to make too big a deal of it and scurried back to Babylon.” I suppose the fight against Porus is in fact worthy of an episode of Battles B.C. (at least it’s not as ridiculously conjectural as the David, Joshua and Moses episodes) but I’ll admit that after a couple of millenia Alexander fatigue has set in and there’s only so much I can take of the little narcissistic runt.

So, another mixed bag of an episode. Worth an argument or two, but can we please stop with the Alexander worship?