What do alexander and caesar have in common?

Plutarch, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Plutarch answers

I paired them because their lives rhyme, and I said at the outset how I mean to read such lives: I am writing biography, not history, and a casual remark or jest will often show the man better than the bloodiest battle.¹ So I look for the likeness in the small things. The first is the same hunger, and I give it in Caesar's own words and tears.

In Spain, reading the history of Alexander, he fell into long thought and wept, and when his friends asked why, he said it was a matter for sorrow that Alexander was king of so many nations at so early an age, while he himself had as yet done nothing of note.² The man who would rather be first in a village than second at Rome was measuring himself against the Macedonian.²

That is a rivalry across three centuries, and it tells you more of Caesar than a campaign would. The second is daring joined to speed. Caesar struck Pharnakes at Zela and reported it to Amantius in three words, "I came, I saw, I conquered," a brevity the Roman tongue gives its full effect.³ At Alexandria he swam from a sunken boat with the enemy's missiles about him and held his papers above the water in one hand while he swam with the other.⁴

Such men do not wait for fortune; they leap into the sea. The third is the temper they bring to the captured and the governed. Caesar, after his Spanish victories, settled the quarrels of debtors and creditors by a fair division of income and left the province with a good name and a fortune, his soldiers enriched and saluting him Imperator.⁵

Yet the same Caesar was blamed for the greed and drunkenness of his lieutenants, and he knew it and was compelled to employ such men in his service.⁶ The last likeness lies in what follows them. When Alexander died, his generals began to fight one another at once, and Perdikkas sheltered his power under a half-witted nominal king while Roxana murdered Statira and her sister and threw them down a well.⁷

Great ambition leaves a house in ruins behind it, and the fall of one is the rehearsal for the fall of the other. I set them side by side so that the reader may see what such a soul is made of, and what it costs.

Sources

1. I am writing biography, not history; and often a man's most brilliant actions prove nothing as to his true character, while some trifling incident, some casual remark or jest, will throw more light upon what manner of man he was than the bloodiest battle

   Lives Vol 3

2. Don't you think it is a matter for sorrow, that Alexander was king of so many nations at such an early age, and I have as yet done nothing of note?

   Lives Vol 3

3. In reporting to one of his friends at Rome, Amantius, the celerity and rapidity of this battle, he wrote only three words: 'I came, I saw, I conquered.'

   Lives Vol 3

4. holding the papers above the water with one hand, he swam with the other; but the boat was sunk immediately.

   Lives Vol 3

5. he retired from the province with the acquisition of a large fortune, having enriched his soldiers also by his campaigns and been saluted by them Imperator.

   Lives Vol 3

6. He also bore the blame of the madness of Dolabella, the covetousness of Amantius, and the drunkenness of Antonius

   Lives Vol 3

7. as Alexander's generals began to fight one another immediately after his death, his body lay for many days unheeded

   Lives Vol 3