Alexander the Great Quotes
How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.
Curtius Rufus, Quintus. History of Alexander, translated by J. C. Rolfe, vol. 2, Harvard UP, 1946, p. 263.
After the Civil War, the General, who had little money, was offered a huge sum to write his memoirs for publication. He refused.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus. This famous quotation has been echoed in virtually every language and every country of the world. However, see Ernest Hemingway for a counter view.
Attila the Hun. The Romans aided by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, fought the Huns in the only battle that Attila ever lost which he lost badly. There were 165,000 men killed in an afternoon. The Roman General, Flavius Aetius, had been a boyhood friend of Attila’s and had fought with him against the Visigoths. The Romans had Attila trapped but his old friend let him escape with just a good thrashing to his ego and army as to not upset the balance of power and tilt it in favor of the Goths. Roman foreign policy at the time was to keep all the Barbarians strong enough to fight one another so that none would be dominant but all weaker than Rome. Divide and conquer.
He had been mortally wounded in battle and asked the Duc de Bourbon to prop him up against a tree facing the enemy. Then enemy army was French also but abandoned the cause of the French King to fight with the more powerful Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. He was only going to die, but the enemy would remain traitors for ever. This was typical of the code of the Knights of which he is sometimes referred to as the Last of the Knights.
Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king (basileus) of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty. He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of 20. He spent most of his ruling years on an unprecedented military campaign through Western Asia and Northeastern Africa, and by the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of history's most successful military commanders.
