The King's Shadow

By Matt Hartley

What ancient history can teach us in the age of computers

When I was five, my dad bought a computer game called Age of Empires. The box featured an ominous Greek warrior, his face obscured in the shadow of his helmet — his sword poised to strike. Behind him armies battled, Mediterranean waves slapped a trireme, and on the horizon stood the pyramids of Egypt. Before the CD even went into the computer, I was hooked.

Dad bought the game at the urging of a college classmate who my brothers and I had never met and only knew from a distance as “Mr. Milner” — a mysterious figure from my father’s West Point days who now lived in Georgia (wherever that was). We didn’t know much about Mr. Milner, only that he played Age of Empires like a god.

The objective of the game was to manage a civilization, raise an army, and destroy the forces of the opposing player. You started in the Stone Ages with a few villagers, established an economy, and worked your way up to the Roman Empire or equivalent civilization all while scouting and fighting your opponent. It was like 21st century chess and success required a deft combination of micromanagement, rapid decision, and strategic planning. Dad was terrible.

Each weekend, we huddled around his computer and watched Milner’s centurions slaughter my father’s cave men while we laughed hysterically in the background. This reoccurring beatdown was as certain as the arrival of Christmas. But then dad, the competitor that he is, discovered cheat codes. In a riotous plot twist of history, cars firing bazookas soon littered the ancient battlefields of the Fertile Crescent.

In addition to multiplayer, the game had missions that simulated famous historical campaigns like Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps and Rome’s rise to power. Each playable civilization included a detailed writeup of its history, and I developed a fascination with the ancient world.

This interest carried into school and I began reading the subject in my free time. In college, most of my friends spent their freshmen year exploring different subjects that might translate to a strong job, but I naturally gravitated towards history.

In the Marine Corps, my degree was an asset. Historical anecdotes from ancient warfare resonated in a minor way with modern tactics and strategy, and in major ways with the psychological aspects of combat. Most of my battalion commanders were students of history and enjoyed discussing the subject at length. But these alignments ended with the military. As I started transitioning to civilian life, I began to regret my degree.

Most jobs I applied for were looking for technical backgrounds — engineering, computer science, and math majors were in high demand. Even the liberal arts-oriented roles called for journalism, communications, or English degrees, but history was never listed. In interviews, I danced around my history major, sometimes making light of it, at other times weakly trying to justify its value while my interviewer’s eyes glazed over.

I was struck with the alarming thought that I had wasted my college education. How could knowing hoplite formations or the phases of the Peloponnesian War help me in the world of computers?

Then in 2018, I was invited to attend a work breakfast where Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Paul Selva spoke on the state of national security. 30 young professionals ate ham and egg sandwiches in an intimate conference room while General Selva pontificated on America’s challenges, near-peer adversaries, and the state of the Department of Defense. At the end of his talk, one of the attendees asked, “What do you think the greatest threat to the U.S. is?” I thought the question was a bit simplistic, Russia or China seemed the obvious response, maybe the broader threat of cyberattacks if he wanted to be creative, but he gave a more profound answer, “Apathy.”

After a few years reflecting on his response, it has dawned on me that in our Age of Comfort, historical competency is the antidote to apathy. History gives us the perspective to expect change, prepare for it, and understand why it occurs. It demonstrates the impact of human leadership — particular moments of agency that led to one culture’s ascension and another’s collapse. It forces us to think carefully about our moment in time, and in doing so, it encourages personal initiative and accountability.

In this vein, I believe the period of antiquity is instructive. A time when prominent leaders, like Alexander the Great, seemed to shape the course of history through their strength of will. Like our own times, it was an age of change. An age of conflict. An age of empires.

January 2024

Issue 17.

Imagine you’re Alexander.

You grow up the beneficiary of an elite education where Aristotle is hand-picked as your tutor. From a young age you’re taught to fight and lead in battle by Macedon’s professional warrior class, and you’re raised among a premier cadre of youth selected to push and test your abilities.

At the age of 16 you’re thrust into combat for the first time. A year later you’re given a major command alongside your father, King Philip II, in a campaign for supremacy over the Greek peninsula. In the pinnacle battle of Chaeronea, you lead the decisive cavalry charge that breaks the enemy lines and watch proudly as your father ascends over the Greek world as hegemon.

Then imagine regicide.

Your world is upended when Philip II is killed by his bodyguard, and suddenly you’re thrust into a precarious position as ruler at the age of 20. The Greek cities rebel suspecting weakness while rival Macedonian political factions scheme in the shadows.

But you respond like lightning.

In a rapid campaign you destroy your domestic rivals, secure your frontiers, then move to eradicate Thebes. When the preeminent polis refuses to bow the knee, you lay siege to their city, breach their perimeter, then execute every male and enslave all remaining women and children.

The brutality is unprecedented, but the example produces instantaneous submission and loyalty from the other Greek city-states. You need their resources because this is only the beginning.

Driven by a relentless will to conquer, you lead an army of 40,000 hardened Macedonian veterans and Greek hoplites into Persia. Over the next ten years, you win battles where the odds feature an opposing force with 100,000 more men than your own army. And again and again, you lead the defining charge which shifts the tide of the battle and wins you the Persian empire.

In Egypt, you’re declared a god. In Babylon, you’re hailed as emperor. In India, you defeat monstrous elephants and animals previously known only in your imagination. Victory after victory follows you, as you amass more and more territory and power. It’s only the refusal of your army, exhausted after years of fighting, that forces you to turn back.

You accomplish all of this by the age of 32. There’s no man on Earth who holds the power and wealth that you do.

So yes, imagine you’re Alexander. And then you die.

Alexander

By the age of 30, Alexander the Great amassed control over 3,000 miles stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River Valley. No other military figure in history has directly conquered more territory.

Unlike Napoleon, Patton, or even Julius Caesar, Alexander fought at the front of his army, inserting himself into combat to such a degree that it’s a wonder he didn’t end up with a spear through his skull. During his Persian campaign, his Macedonians were outnumbered by a 3:1 ratio in each of their major battles and faced significant terrain disadvantages where their opponent held elevated defensive positions on the opposite sides of rivers. None of this was enough to deter Alexander. Rather than delay engagement for more favorable terms, he repeatedly led decisive cavalry charges into the teeth of the enemy’s defenses, targeting their spiritual center of gravity — their will to fight.

His impact still echoes today. The reason the New Testament was written in Greek and not Hebrew or Persian was because of Alexander’s conquest. The proliferation of Hellenistic culture and philosophy brought on by his invasion influenced not only our major monotheistic religions, but also the philosophies that have come to define western thinking over the last two millenniums. There are even modern tribes in Afghanistan that can trace their lineage back to the Greek invasion. How did he succeed at such scale and against such adversity?

I believe his success boils down to a simple, though hard to execute, truth: those who cultivate and focus their mind hold a tremendous advantage over their competitors. Other kings throughout antiquity had resources, wealth, and armies greater than the Macedonians. Yet none matched Alexander’s accomplishments. The difference was his mindset.

Guided by Aristotle, Alexander concentrated his attention on the heroic stories of Greek mythology, even memorizing the entire Iliad. Fueled by these powerful tales, he modeled his life and his army after Homer’s epic — often reenacting famous moments of Achilles' narrative and engaging in a spiritual competition with the character throughout his life. The result was an army that fought with confidence, decisiveness, and an aggressiveness capable of overwhelming opponents of far greater numerical strength.

It’s hard for the modern mind to appreciate the impact the Homeric myths had on Alexander. In an age without TV or computers, these stories were more than entertainment, they shaped the mental lens through which the Greeks viewed and interpreted the world. Historian J. E. Lendon writes, “Alexander felt he had ‘a rivalry for honor [with Achilles] from the time of his youth.’ This was not merely an eccentricity without consequence: Macedon’s relationship with Homer in all its ramifications made Alexander’s army the most fearsome the Greeks had known.” This mentality not only drove him to lead his forces where no Greek had gone before, but also gave him the confidence to rapidly make decisions in battle that broke the weaker, Persian will.

Alexander and his unbeatable army didn’t materialize out of thin air. They were the product of a culture that combined the strength of Greek intellectualism with the Macedonian’s warrior ethos. The kingdom of Macedon was small, occupying a tiny region north of Greece yet the strength of their culture enabled exponential gains.

The practical implication of all this is to examine the state of our own culture’s mental paradigms. Like the Greeks, I’d argue historically it’s been a source of strength for the United States. The genius of our constitution and the structure of our government was made possible because of the strong mental foundation the founders had, rooted in the philosophies of Juedo-Christian thought and reason of the Enlightenment that defined and acknowledged natural rights, enabling the design of a government that both recognized and protected them.

This mentality has resulted in a culture that both cares for victims and encourages personal initiative and accountability. We often articulate this primacy of the individual through the concept of the American Dream — that everyone in our country has the opportunity through hard work and initiative, to make it. And while the tenants of this idea are not without flaws, it’s led to a culture of immense innovation and prosperity.

But recently, I fear our mental paradigms are rapidly declining along two fronts. The first, is best characterized in Alan Bloom’s book, The Closing of The American Mind. Bloom explains that over the past several decades, the concept of “openness” has been elevated as the supreme virtue at the expense of reason. He writes, “[Openness] pays no attention to natural rights or the historical origins of our regime, which are now thought to have been essentially flawed and regressive…It is open to all kinds of men, all kinds of life-styles, all ideologies. There is no enemy other than the man who is not open to everything.” Openness denies that one culture is better than another. And as Bloom goes on to argue, it makes the pursuit of reason, shared goals, and vision of the public good impossible, for if openness is the supreme virtue, who defines what the public good is?

The second area of decline is our increasing addiction to digital technology, which is quickly destroying our ability to focus for extended periods of time. As history shows, change in our country is certain. But what type of change we experience will be dictated by the quality of people our culture produces. The Greek’s Homeric culture enabled warriors of courage and initiative. The mental fabric of a TikTok culture will enable…what exactly? Alexander had the benefit of growing up long before the invention of TV, the internet, and the cell phone. We don’t. And we must recognize that each day we are in grave peril of having our behavior suggested to us by the digital nudges around us. Just like the Persians, despite all of our geographic and natural resource advantages, refusing to course correct might result in getting our collective ass kicked.

Mindset

Imagine you’re Perdicass.

For over thirty years, you’ve lived and fought by the side of Alexander the Great. And after two decades of conquests led by your enigmatic king, you now find he’s mortal after all. He lies in bed pale as a ghost, sweat on his brow, gasping his final breaths.

He’s called you, and his inner circle, to his royal tent to discuss the greatest unsettled issue of his impending death — succession. His children are too young to take the throne and a steward must be named. You huddle with the others around his frail body, anxiously awaiting his decree.

Finally, someone musters the courage to ask, “My king, who should inherit your empire?”

You hear ragged breathing. Then his last words, “The strongest.”

* * *

In the days preceding his death, Alexander gave you his signet ring. You use this symbolic authority to establish an initial governing arrangement with your fellow generals.

It lasts a day.

Meleager, a disgruntled infantry captain, catches wind of this decision and leads a revolt against you. To save your life, you’re forced to negotiate a new arrangement where four guardians are appointed over Alexander’s heirs. This appeases Meleager, and disperses the revolt. With the danger subsided, you immediately accuse him of treason and have him publicly executed.

Welcome to the new post-Alexander status quo.

In the weeks that follow, the empire is divided among the remaining Diadochi. As the lead successor, you rule from Babylon, the royal capital of the empire. Ptolemey, your chief rival, takes Egypt, and old-man Antipater remains regent over your homeland of Macedon. A tenuous peace ensues — all while you scheme in the background.

In a dark alliance with Alexandria’s Bactrian widow Rhoxane, you arrange for the murder of two Persian princesses to eliminate potential claimants to the throne — your first move to consolidate power.

Next, you direct an extravagant procession to escort the body of Alexander back to Macedon for a royal burial. It’s a symbolic move that communicates your status as top dog. But then, in a shocking turn of events, the convoy is attacked and the body of Alexander is hijacked by Ptolemy’s forces. Enraged, you declare war on your rival and the remaining successors take sides. The first war of the Diadochi has begun.

Immediately, you lead the royal army into Egypt to the Nile Delta — it’s the type of decisive response Alexander would approve of. The opposite side of the river is controlled by Ptolemy’s forces, and you order your army to execute a series of crossings. It’s a catastrophe, your army is repeatedly deterred, and in your final attempt you lose 2,000 men.

That night, you’re stabbed to death in your tent by a mutiny led by officers Seleucus, Peithon, and Antigenes. Your peers then spend the next 40 years killing each other in an attempt to prove they are in fact the strongest.

The Diadochi – “Successors”

The aftermath of Alexander the Great’s life makes the political intrigue of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” feel like an episode of Sesame Street.

First Perdicass tried to take power. Then Eumenes. Then Antigonus. Each successor attempted to become the next Alexander and each only succeeded in further deteriorating the once unstoppable force that crossed the Hellespont into Asia. For some twenty years the Diadochi fought together as part of the deadliest army the world had ever seen. Then their unity fractured. Why? Well, in part because of Alexander.

The great irony of Alexander is that many of the attributes that led to the rise of the Greeks also resulted in their decline. His declaration that his conquests should go “to the strongest” was indicative of how he led his subordinates: fostering rivalries, playing favorites, and at times, humiliating or killing his generals to ensure he remained in control.

Within this construct, it was only through the force of his legendary will that he could unite his army of alphas making him critical to the sustainability of his empire. Yet in establishing this culture, the conqueror’s achievements were set to expire. For all his exploits and military prowess, Alexander’s leadership failures quickly played out in the aftermath of his reign.

The work of philosopher Rene Girard illuminates the psychology surrounding this rapid collapse. Girard’s theory of mimesis holds that human beings are creatures of imitation. We find examples to mimic and in doing so, are shaped in the image of our model. But the problem, Girard highlights, is that through this process, humans come to desire the same objects as their imitators, which leads to envy, then competition, then ultimately, violence. Anyone who has an older sibling, parent, or neighbor for that matter can relate to this jealousy and subsequent struggle. This perpetual cycle of imitation and war eventually threatens the existence of communities.

The Diadochi too, mimicked their leader. Rather than peacefully govern their assigned territories and collaborate to strengthen the Greek realm, they worked to undermine each other’s position and assert their own influence. Perdiccas executed Alexander’s heirs to eliminate claims to the throne. Ptolemy stole Alexander’s body to gain a valuable propaganda asset that could further his reputation. Selecues betrayed Perdiccas in exchange for a promotion. Each were decisive actions for control Alexander would have made.

Historian Robin Waterfield notes this period in Greek history marked a distinct shift in the Hellenistic mind from a communal perspective to an individual one. Each successor was no longer fighting for the collective gain of Macedon but rather the expansion of their personal influence. In Waterfield’s words, “At one time or another, all the Successors tried to emulate their dead leader and conquer the entirety of the empire, but none of them succeeded.” The result was the immediate fracturing of their territory into smaller satellite kingdoms, years of civil war, and ultimately, the collapse of the Greek realm to outside invaders.

For all the reasons noted, Alexander was an unprecedented leader, achieving more in his brief life than arguably anyone in history. There’s lessons to be learned from his success. But in the end, the legacy of his life is found in the aftermath of his death. For the Greeks, that turned out to be blood, ashes, and chaos.

Leadership

Five years ago, I sat in that conference room 30 stories above the Potomac, stunned at the profundity of General Selva’s observation that apathy was our greatest threat. Not the nuclear warheads aimed at our continent, the maniac sitting in North Korea, or the terrorists' scheming attacks but rather our cultural sleepiness and naïve belief that prosperity and comfort are just inherent qualities of being an American. Then, he looked us in the eye and asked, “How many of you voted in your local elections?” I hadn’t.

General Selva was essentially stabbing a finger into my chest and saying, “Oh, you’re concerned about the state of our country? Maybe you should look in the mirror.” You won’t hear that on the campaign trail today — that you, not the government, are responsible for the state of things. He was highlighting that the leaders we promote throughout our society, formally through voting, informally through our attention, and indirectly through our inactivity, is the number one factor for the longevity and health of our nation.

The life and legacy of Alexander the Great validates this truth.

The imperative is to think carefully about our cultural soil, and the crop of people it will produce. The Macedonian’s valued heroic action and their harvest was a warrior culture that delivered outsized results on the battlefield but ultimately devolved into endless competition. We must take the good from the Greeks, leave the bad, and graft the best from history into our own culture.

To do that, we must consider and acknowledge what is good. We must reject the irrationality of “openness” and wake from our digital malaise to carefully evaluate and voice the ideals, character, and principles we want to pursue as a society.

History gives us the knowledge to produce such a posture. And while our government will continue to encourage kids to prioritize STEM degrees as our nation competes in the AI arms race, I’d argue if we want to truly be that city on the hill, we might want to study a little history too.

Matt Hartley is the co-editor of

The Hart & The Cur

In our digital age, math and the hard sciences often rule the day. Is there still value studying history and more generally, the liberal arts? Respond to this piece by email to matt@thehartandthecur.com with the subject line starting "Letter:". We'll publish the best responses in our Letters to the Editor.