Was Julius Caesar inspired by Alexander the Great?

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Two of the greatest leader known to man who conquered all that they say before themselves. Julius Caesar the man who single handedly brought fear to hearts of any who dared oppose him and nearly conquered the world and Alexander the Great the man who conquered most of the known world. They are both major historical figure and brilliant tactical masterminds. Alexander and Julius are easily the most influential figures before the time of christ. Alexander the Great and Julius were both charamistac conqueror who were respects and left behind a legacy so great it is remembered thousands of years in the future. Alexander and Julius also built two of the greatest empires known to man. They also were both probably megalomaniacs and definitely had an ego problems. They also have probably some of the most notable military tactics and battles they won. They also caused massive power rifts after their deaths leading to civil wars. However, even with all of their similarities they were still two very different people in many respects. Alexander the Great was considered to be the height of the Greek Empire as he spread hellenistic influence through most of the world. He was, however he wanted to earn the local people’s trust and influence. So when he conquered an area he encouraged …show more content…
Alexander let his accomplishments go to his head and none could fill the shoes he left. Whereas Julius made sure someone could replace him and helped his people no matter what he lost. Even if he was brutal to his enemies he did it to establish a lasting glory to those he cared for. Alexander may have conquered much, but he could not hold it due to his ego. Julius also was willing to do whatever it took to secure his power and stepped on more than a few toes in the process. In the end Julius Caesar was better as he built an empire through might and secured it with such rather than trying to make peace with

Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were both very important and influential leaders. Both of these leaders were very intelligent people who knew how to lead a civilization. Learning about both of these leaders and knowing the lessons of their stories can help us improve our experience in society and it gives us an example of great leadership.

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How were Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar similar?
Did Caesar respect Alexander the Great?
Who was inspired by Alexander the Great?
Who comes first Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar?

Unlike Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar had to deal with rivals as ambitious and influential as himself; and S. Usher finds that he has left a lucid account of his rise to greatness.

S. Usher | Published in History Today Volume 15 Issue 9 September 1965

As a young man in his early thirties, Julius Caesar was appointed to a quaestorship in the province of Further Spain. In the course of his administrative duties he visited Cadiz, a city with a long tradition of Greek and Punic culture. There, in the temple of Hercules, he beheld a statue of Alexander the Great, which caused him to reflect that Alexander had conquered the whole of the known world at an age when he, Caesar, had achieved nothing of note. This thought disturbed him; but he was even more disturbed by a dream he had the following night, in which he saw himself debauching his own mother. But some obliging soothsayers interpreted it as predicting his conquest of the worJd, equating the primeval mother-figure, the Earth, with Caesar’s mother. Encouraged by this interpretation, Caesar arranged for the curtailment of his appointment in Spain and returned to Rome in order to seek a more rapid advancement of his political career.

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It is the year 69 before Christ. Gaius Julius Caesar, now more than thirty, is located in Cadiz, the ancient Gades of Punic origin.

Here, one step away from the famous Gates, where the Mediterranean flows into the ocean, the Roman wanders around the temple dedicated to Hercules, the mythical Greek hero that had advanced far and beyond.

Suddenly, Caesar stops in front of the statue of another half-god, Alexander the Great, who died at the age of not yet thirty-three, in June 323 BC.

Plutarch, in his “Parallel Lives“, and Suetonius in the “Lives of the Caesars” tell us the incident. To those who asked for the reason for his subdued weeping before the effigy of Macedonus, Caesar replied that he could not suffocate his pain. On the one hand, he saw how at 32, the same age as himself, Alexander had left, dying, a boundless empire that he had created. On the other hand, Caesar felt he had not yet completed a noteworthy undertaking.

Julius Caesar’s encounter with Alexander the Great

The stroke of the thirty-second year for the two great Ancients, Alexander and Caesar, admirable icons of that historical era, was the end of existence for the first, and the beginning of an exceptional vital path for the second.

When the son of Philip II died, he left in the greedy hands of his successors a kingdom in which the sun rose on the Indus delta and set down diving into the Adriatic. Like hungry lions in contention with a great shred of fresh meat, Perdiccas, Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and the other Macedonian generals, divided the immense empire of Alexander among themselves.

Death took the Great when all that could be conquered had been subdued: Greeks, Macedonians, Phoenicians, Syropalestinians, Egyptians, Armenians, Persians, Indians … Myriads of men and women of different races and lineages lived in relative serenity, in the shadow of the royal mantle of the Casa di Pella.

The Greekization of distant worlds (worlds that the Hellenic themselves called “barbarians”) found its main vehicle in the Alexandrian army. Thanks to the eternal exploits of the Macedonians, the overflow of the Hellenic language, customs and intellectual systems mixed with lands, also rich in history, spontaneously producing that epochal phenomenon that we call “Hellenism”.

Map of Alexander the Great’s Empire

It was not a forced imposition, where the people were compelled to assume the characteristics of the dominator (thus repudiating their own). Instead, it created by an extraordinary osmotic process of mutual assimilation, in which the habits, laws, and costumes of the winners and vanquished mixed together. Producing a new reality, this development gave way to the flourishing of the Hellenistic age.

When, at the age of 32, Alexander left earthly life in Babylon and entered the universal myth, he had already given a full display of his military genius. The battles of Granico (334 BC), Isso (333 BC) and Guagamela (331 BC) have exceptional importance within the history of mankind.

Thanks to them, and the success of Macedonian weapons, the great Persian King Darius III Codomannus, enemy par excellence of the Hellenic world, was yoked to Alexander’s cart. The glorious lineage of the Achaemenids was extinguished.

Alexander, the son of Olympias and the sublime student of Aristotle, had led the Macedonian phalanxes to victory counting an age between 22 and 25 years: a prodigy of precociousness.

No human being, as Alexander, has given the impression, in the course of his existence, of belonging more to the genus of the gods than to that of mortals… and so he was recognized as divine.

Alexander the Great

The crippled Caesar of Cadiz, in contrast, seemed at that moment to be fatally delayed on the road to imperishable glory. He was already a decade older than that young man who, at a little over twenty, had created a new world triumphing the bare and sandy plains of Asia. But at 32 years of age, Caesar was far from leading his legions into one of the great battles that would make his fame immortal. It wasn’t by forty years that he made the sword sing long and wide for the ecumene.

The Roman had not yet had the opportunity to show off his political and warlike genius. However, Fate and Fortuna would keep great things in store for him.

And so, where Alexander finished, Caesar began. Before the Roman, destiny possessed a further five decades of life, a period of time that he was able to fully exploit with a vigor, skill and mental lucidity that few other men have been able to show in the course of history.

The Triumvirate, the campaigns of Gallia and those against the Pompeians, the vicissitudes of Egypt alongside Cleopatra… the last decades of his star were certainly full of epochal events.

Caesar giving Cleopatra the throne

The time that Caesar enjoyed was relatively large: fifty-six years, of which the second half was vibrant and lived at large, all in an era in which the average expectation of a human being barely touched forty-five springs.

It was enough years for him to accomplish much of his purpose. It seems to us a pure dialectical exercise to hypothesize what else Caesar could have designed (and put into practice) if he had more time available, before the blades of the conspirators dramatically lowered the curtain on his life.

The works he performed were certainly extraordinary, and unworkable by any of his other contemporaries. Here is his imperishable greatness…and yet his work was profoundly human, linked to rational intentions and thoughts.

Alexander, on the other hand, reflects in himself the idea of the divine, and appears to us as a historical and temporal incarnation shaped by celestial forces. He is almost an unconscious executor of superior wills, indecipherable in the eyes of ordinary mortals. Pella’s young man dragged his earthly mission, driven by inexplicable motivation, unshakable dreams and boundless goals…all within a mere 32 years.

How were Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar similar?

They share many strengths; both are renowned for their rare charisma as leaders of men, their prodigious genius as military tacticians and strategists, their fierce bravery as warriors, and their single-minded drive in becoming two of the most successful conquerors the world has ever known.

Did Caesar respect Alexander the Great?

Later notable commanders such as Hannibal Barca and Julius Caesar similarly revered Alexander as a man to admire and emulate on the battlefield.

Who was inspired by Alexander the Great?

"Until the internet age, Alexander the Great was probably the most famous human being who ever lived," Cartledge wrote. "His astounding career of conquest inspired not just Caesar and Augustus but also Mark Antony, Napoleon, Hitler and other would-be world conquerors from the West."

Who comes first Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar?

Alexander was born in 356 B.C. and he became the leader of Greece at age 20. He ruled from 336 BC to 323 BC. Caesar was born in 100 BC and he became the leader of Rome at age 32. He declared himself dictator for life until he was stabbed by several Roman senators in 46 BC, just one year later.