Ancients Behaving Badly (2009–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Alexander the Great - full transcript

NARRATOR: Alexander III of Macedon, his
legend gives him the name Alexander the Great.

But he could also be known as

Alexander the Annihilator.

Anyone that gets in his way

will be crushed.

He will annihilate them.

Alexander considered himself
a god. His admirers thought him a

military genius.

His enemies called him the devil.

In the East he's villain.

His name in the East is



Iskander, and he's Iskander the

Killer, Iskander the Bringer of

Death, Iskander the Destroyer of Cities.

He's the boogeyman.

Investigators will put

Alexander's life under a

microscope with a range of

scientific tests.

They'll show how he used the

weapons of mass destruction of

his day to defeat his enemies.

And a psychiatrist will analyze
the character of Alexander to

uncover what drove him in his

quest for world domination



and what led him to the

massacre of thousands, all to

reveal how he stacks up against

other Ancients Behaving Badly.

NARRATOR: At age 16,
Alexander wins his first battle.

By 20 he is king of Macedon.

By 30 he has conquered the known world.

Alexander the Great is clearly

a tyrant in a hurry, operating

outside the normal rules of morality.

But what motivates him to do so

is less than clear.

I'll be looking to see
whether Alexander was a military

genius, whether he was

pathologically self-obsessed or

merely a psychopathic killer.

Psychiatrist David Mallott

will examine key aspects of

Alexander's character and

position him on a unique

Behaving Badly Psychograph to

reveal how he measures up

against other tyrants from

history from Caligula and

Genghis Khan to Napoleon.

There's no shortage of horror
stories. He not only destroys cities and

slaughters soldiers, he also

massacres innocent women and children.

If you were on the wrong side

of Alexander, it would be one of

the most damaging experiences you ever had.

He leads his army on a

forced march across a desert,

and 25,000 die.

He kills his close friend in a

drunken rage.

He crucifies 2,000 men who dare

to stand against him.

And he may have assisted in the

murder of his own father.

It's a devastating rap sheet. But
the historical record is clouded.

Ancient sources
present different Alexanders,

charismatic general, living god,

megalomaniac, psychotic killer.

Almost all of the record is based on a
text called the Deeds of Alexander, written

during his life by his personal historian.

This first-hand account has now

been lost, but it was available

to ancient historians who used

it as a source.

And each put their own slant on

Alexander's character.

Plutarch presents Alexander

as a charismatic leader,

bringing civilization to the barbarians.

Curtius presents a darker tale,

of a young, idealistic

conqueror that becomes a

delusional dictator.

The point is it's difficult to

understand who Alexander was,

because they're writing 400

years after the fact.

The hunt for the real

Alexander begins in his childhood.

He's born in 356 BC in the city
of Pella in Macedon, straddling

parts of what is now Greece,

Macedonia and Bulgaria.

His father, King Philip II of Macedon, is
a great warrior, but has a serious drinking

problem.

He's often absent on military

campaigns, leaving behind his

seven wives and many children.

There's even a rumor that

Alexander is illegitimate.

But Alexander does follow his

father's career path as a

formidable warrior.

Under his father's coanmmd,

Alexander's first military

success occurs when he's only 16.

His mother, Olympias, is

hot-tempered, impulsive and

prepared to do whatever it

takes to ensure that the next

king of Macedon is her boy, Alexander.

He's definitely a mama's boy.

Up until the day of his death,

Alexander is writing,

corresponding with his mother.

And it's true that Alexander was

very similar to his father.

They're both kings, they're

both great military leaders,

but it's his mother he was closest to.

For psychiatrist David

Mallott, it's a no-brainer.

The root of Alexander's bad

behavior lies with his parents.

Alexander is going to look up
to his father as a great military hero.

Nevertheless, Alexander's father is absent.

However, Alexander's mother is

on the scene.

Alexander's mother is telling

him, "You're special.

You're meant to do great things."

Real-life drama convulses the royal family
when inside the theater at Vergina, King

Philip is assassinated by one

of his own bodyguards, Pausanias.

(Crowd cheering) >>
According to some of the

sources, Aristotle and Diodorus,

this is an open-and-shut case.

Pausanias single-handedly

murdered Philip of Macedon here

in the theater.

The person who has most to

gain from the murder is

20-year-old Alexander.

Alexander himself never got on with with
his father. They had an extraordinarily

rocky father-son relationship,

not only because of worries

about him being illegitimate,

not only because of power play

between these two individuals.

And so we have to ask

ourselves, "Did Alexander have a

role to play in his own father's murder?"

The story goes that

Olympias is worried that one of

Alexander's half-brothers and

his cousin are being groomed

for the throne instead of him.

Olympias and Alexander had

good reason to wish Philip ill.

And it was not long after that

Philip was assassinated.

The one person who knows the

truth about who's really behind

Philip's assassination is the

murderer himself, Pausanias.

But he's killed by Alexander's

henchmen before he can talk.

The subsequent behavior of

both Alexander and his mother is

suspicious.

Hardly the grieving widow, she

honors her husband's killer by

placing a crown on Pausanias'

corpse.

Alexander does the opposite.

Though he hated his father, he

plays the grief-stricken young

man by stacking gold inside his

father's tomb, more gold than

any Macedonian king before him.

It seems mother and son are

playing all angles.

The opulence of this tomb,

its magnificence, I think

may also be part of a case

to think that Alexander had

more than just a hand in his

father's murder.

Alexander was trying to cover up

his own guilt and the suspicion

that he might have been involved

in his father's death.

But Alexander is not

convinced that's he's in line

for the throne.

Soon murder was again in the air.

His half-brother dead and

Olympias, Alexander's mother,

took care of Philip's last bride

and their male child.

Alexander had the throne of

Macedon all to himself.

Almost immediately, the

20-year-old rookie king is put to the test.

The city of Thebes rebels

against Alexander and Macedonian rule.

They consider Macedon an

inferior nation of northern barbarians.

Alexander marches on the city,

which is protected by walls up to 8' thick.

No one had ever broken through

these massive defenses.

Greek sieges in the 4th century

BC essential consisted of

armies throwing stones at each

other, using increasingly more

sophisticated launching platforms.

Thebes had catapults shooting

stone balls, but Alexander

escalates by using a relatively

new invention, the ballista, a

kind of bunker-busting siege

engine replicated here by

ancient-weapons experts.

So you have arms in the

configuration or shape of a

crossbow, except that instead of

one flexing spring, you have

two stiff arms that do not bend.

And they're suspended in a cord

bundle, which is pre-tensioned,

and then it's twisted.

And that stores a lot of energy.

They set the tension and

angle to fire a projectile at

the van 300' away, the minimum

distance that would put

Alexander's army out of range

of Thebes' catapults.

But Alexander needs more than one
direct hit. He needs many in the same place

to weaken the 8'-thick walls.

In the first attempt, the

projectile falls short by 50'.

Still keeping the distance at

300', the experts change the

firing angle and increase the

tension by pulling the

ammunition further back.

Oh, a direct hit. >> This proves that
Alexander's men could have operated the

ballista from beyond the firing

range of the enemy's catapults.

Got some good shots off. We
got a couple of solid hits in here.

I think this was certainly our

best shot here, and it really,

really demonstrates the

destructive power of this in

that we bent the entire side of the van.

This could do a tremendous

amount of damage.

Alexander's weapon makes it

possible for him to smash

through the walls of Thebes,

ending forever the protection

cities had behind thick stone walls.

From this point onwards,

there was nowhere to run, there

was nowhere that was safe from

Alexander's army.

More than 6,000 people in

Thebes are slaughtered.

A once great city is brought

down by a young man just out of his teens.

Don't be fooled by the heroic image.

Behind the boyish good looks,

Alexander is basically Saddam Hussein.

One minute he's your best mate,

the next minute, he's cutting

your head off.

So when the city of Thebes

rebels, he doesn't just punish

it, he destroys it.

He's basically saying to all the other Greek
cities out there, "Cross me at your peril."

And you know what?

It works.

In Thebes, 30,000 survivors,

including women and children

are sold into slavery.

Alexander has terrified the

rest of Greece into submission.

They'll never rebel against

Alexander again.

Now he's ready to terrify the known world.

NARRATOR: Alexander the Great, at just 20
years of age, has crushed the rebel city of

Thebes.

Now he plans a military

campaign not even his father ever achieved.

He's about to take on the

mighty Persian Empire.

The beachhead for Alexander's
great invasion is the city of

Troy, scene of legendary

battles between Greeks and Trojans.

For Alexander, it's a pilgrimage.
He's been raised on stories of

fabled Greek warriors and most

of all the superhero Achilles.

Alexander wanted to be another Achilles.

This was his role model.

Achilles' mother had told

Achilles he had a choice in

life: he could either die old

and be forgotten, or die young

and be remembered forever.

Alexander, as he came here to

Troy, had made his choice.

Alexander has good reason to feel
close to Achilles and believe he too is

supernaturally gifted.

It's all his mom's doing.

Alexander's very ambitious
mother enables him to feel

special, tells him that he's

going to do great things.

In fact, she may have told him

that he was descended from the gods.

This is reinforced by his

tutors, who give him the

nickname Achilles, the greatest

Greek warrior of all.

Now that he's paid his dues to his hero,
Alexander heads for Persia, longstanding

enemies of the Ancient Greeks.

Here, on the banks of the river

Granicus, he confronts the

forces of King Darius III.

IBEJI: With Philip out of
the way, Alexander inherits the

conquest of Persia, and he

justifies this as a punishment

for the Persians' desecrating

the Greek temples during the Persian War.

It's a crusade, if you like, a

war of vengeance against an

ancient act of terror

perpetrated more than a century ago.

And of course it's just an excuse.

Alexander storms into Turkey and

encounters a Persian army sent

to stop him here on the banks of

the River Granicus.

And this is the first time that
Alexander wins in typical style.

Three thousand are surrounded and cut down.

It's a bloody massacre.

Two thousand more surrender, but

they are sold into slavery by

Alexander as a kind of warning

not to cross him.

It's a stunning victory.

According to the sources,

Alexander loses fewer than 200

troops and gives strength to

his claim to be the new Achilles.

The Persians are on the

defensive, and Turkey now

belongs to Alexander.

IBEJI: Once he's secured

Turkey, he doesn't do the

obvious strategic thing.

He doesn't race east to secure

the ports of the eastern

Mediterranean before the

Persians can reinforce them.

Instead, he diverts north into

this place called Gordium.

That seems really bizarre

unless you know the legend of

the Gordian Knot.

SCOTT: The story went that in

the palace of the former kings

of Phrygia, there was a knot

that tied an oxcart to a pin in the ground.

And this knot was impenetrable.

For centuries, no one had been

able to undo it.

And the story went that the

person who could would be lord

of all of Asia.

Alexander couldn't resist the

temptation to try his hand at

this, the ultimate test.

He came to Gordium, he stood in

front of the knot, but instead

of trying to untie it like

everyone else had done, he

simply took out his sword and

slashed straight through the knot.

This was a very Alexander-type

solution, going straight for the

jugular of the matter,

preferably with a weapon in his hand.

He left Gordium with a prophecy

well behind him that he would be

lord of all of Asia.

Alexander is conquering

countries in the ancient world

like a tourist checks off

fabled destinations on a schedule.

And Alexander creates his own

legend as he goes that "I

play by my own rules.

Untying knots, that's for the

little people."

It's like cheating your way

into Harvard, only later you

tell everybody, it's legitimate.

You just found a novel way.

Alexander needs continued

evidence that he is special, almost divine.

Alexander is successful at

spinning his own legend.

The image of him as a handsome

hero built like a god has

survived to this day.

This true physical appearance

may not have been so godlike.

One theory has him suffering

from a deformity of the spine

called scoliosis, because so

many of his statues have him

looking off to one side.

Ancient sources also wrote that

he was 4" shorter than an

average man's height, then 5'7"

tall.

But what Alexander possesses

more than height or even looks

is enormous self-confidence.

His mother's hero-worship

helped as does his

self-proclaimed divine destiny.

Together, these attributes will

take him to the edge of the

world and back again.

NARRATOR: 332 BC, Alexander the Great has
beaten the Persians in what is modern-day

Turkey.

He's now seeking his next conquest.

He targets the fortified city

of Tyre on an island half a

mile off the coast of present-day Lebanon.

Attacking the island
of Tyre amounts to suicide.

This is a city that can't be beat.

You have to approach it by ship

and attack these massive walls, impossible.

But just like he proved with

Gordium's magic knot,

"impossible" isn't a word that

Alexander accepts.

Alexander changes the rules. He extends the
roadway from the mainland to the island, so the

island is no longer isolated.

It's now part of the coast.

The causeway allows

Alexander to unleash his

fearsome ballistas.

They pound the city into

submission, and the aftermath is horrific.

Alexander loots the city,

slaughters 8,000 citizens and

crucifies 2,000 enemy soldiers

on this very beach.

Alexander's brutality, raping

women and killing all the

prisoners, sends shockwaves

through all of Asia.

And that psychological shock and

fear prompt many cities to

immediately open up their gates

and submit to Alexander rather

than face defeat and slaughter.

The message is clear: do not

mess with Alexander.

For Alexander, Tyre is

further confirmation of his

god-like destiny.

Asia now belongs to him, just

like the prophecy said.

Alexander continues
to believe he is special.

Whenever anybody resists him, he

takes it as a personal affront.

He not only defeats them, he

massacres them.

This also serves as an example

to the rest of the world.

After three years of

fighting, Alexander's empire

covers a 250,000 square miles,

five times the size of modern-day Greece.

And he's just 23 years old.

Next on his hit list, Egypt.

Ruled by Persia, Egyptians
welcome Alexander as a liberator.

Freed from Persian control,

they crown him pharaoh.

For Alexander, Egypt holds a

special attraction.

He takes a select group of men on a
mysterious quest to a distant desert oasis.

If Alexander and his men run out of water,
they're finished. It's 1,000-km round trip

through the middle of the desert.

If a sandstorm blows up, then

the track that even the local

guides rely up on here will be

lost, and Alexander and his men

will be lost forever in a sea of sand.

So whatever there is at the

oasis at Siwa, Alexander must

have felt that it was worth that risk.

It's a sacred site on

Alexander's to-do list, the

Oracle of Amun at Siwa Oasis.

As for any desert traveler,
it must have been the most

uplifting and magical moment

for Alexander to have the

endless sands of the desert

replaced by the blue water and

the green of the palm trees of the oasis.

Alexander's not here for
sightseeing. He's here for answers.

The oracle is a place where the

ancients consult their gods via

the resident priest.

First Alexander decides to kill

any rumors that he might have

been involved in his father's murder.

He asks the priest whether the

guilty have been punished.

The priest says, "Yes, they have."

Case closed.

If we think back to

Alexander's own possible

involvement in his father's

murder and the need to

constantly rid himself of that

accusation in the public eye,

then his journey all the way

here to Siwa to ask about this

question starts to make a lot more sense.

Alexander has another question
for the gods. Will he conquer the entire

world?

He gets his answer in garbled Greek.

SCOTT: The priest is said to

have come out and tried to say

to him in Greek, "Oh, pie dion,"

"Oh, dear son."

But his Greek wasn't very good,

and so instead, he came out

with, "Oh, pie dios," son of a god.

Alexander left Siwa not just

a man, but believing that he was

a god himself.

Alexander hears what he

wants to hear and believes what

he wants to believe.

His ego knows no limits.

The incident in the temple

must have been music to his ears.

It fed his narcissism, that

grandiose sense of self-importance.

Alexander has a need to be

special and unique.

He's already done great things,

but he wants to amplify this

view of being unique to the

world around him.

Now Alexander is convinced he's a god.

The oracle just said so.

It's time to try out his new

powers on the old enemy.

In the same year as Alexander

had gone to the oracle at Siwa,

he comes face to face once again

with the Persian king Darius in

battle at a place called Gaugamela.

The word is that King Darius

has gathered an army of 250,000

men, five times as many as Alexander has.

But Alexander is not fazed.

He relishes the opportunity to

do battle with his enemy for the

kinship of Asia and to settle

the question once and for all.

In October, 331 BC, the showdown between
Alexander and the Persians occurs at

Gaugamela, today's northern Iraq.

The story goes that although outnumbered
5-1, Alexander maneuvers his small force with

uncanny skill.

And he personally leads his

crack cavalry to punch a hole

through the enemy lines at the

critical moment.

In addition to a keen mind for military
tactics, Alexander succeeds by combining his

cavalry skill with infantry

armed with a simple piece of weaponry.

His Macedonian infantry is

armed with the sarissa, a

razor-sharp spear 18' long.

His men face the enemy using

phalanx formation.

Our team will test the success

of the sarissa in the phalanx formation.

In such a grouping, the long

spears carried by every man,

even the guys four rows back,

become effective weapons.

This has a distinct advantage

over the style of leaving the

fighting to the men in the

front rank, one row at a time.

Now this is actually quite
a fair contest, because the only

one who would be engaging them

would be the front man, whereas

they've got whole rows of guys

with their spears near me, all

my buddies have got spears like this.

But I have to get past each one

at a time, but you can see I'm against...

It's like a hedgehog, really.

Such a tactic gives Alexander a
way to even out the odds for his greatly

outnumbered army.

The experts also want to test a

controversial theory that the

tight formation of sarissas

could deflect arrow fire.

Hay bales, representing the

Macedonian solders, are

arranged behind the protection

of a forest of sarissas.

But will it actually work?

It does seem the the arrows are

being deflected.

You hear that rattle when it

hits a sarissa.

Only a close inspection will

tell for sure.

This is one dead Macedonian right
here. >> Some arrows were deflected,

but 80% got through.

The theory of Alexander's

impenetrable spear wall does

not stand up to scrutiny.

But Alexander's military
genius is real enough.

The Macedonian army was

without a doubt the best of its time.

Nothing else comes close.

With Alexander at its head, it

never lost a battle.

Military academies still study his tactics
today. The Pentagon even released a

monograph with an entire chapter

devoted to the tactics of Alexander.

After the battle of

Gaugamela, Persian resistance collapses.

Alexander is the uncontested

ruler of Persia.

Alexander is without doubt, the

most powerful man in the world,

but the power has gone to his head.

Ultimately, he'll pay the price

for his arrogance.

NARRATOR: Alexander
the Great, having been constantly

on campaign for five years,

rules the most extensive empire

the world has ever seen.

He is only 25 years old.

Having crushed the Persians, he

enters Babylon in triumph.

The city ran out to greet him.

Priests and officials went to meet him.

His way was strewn with flowers.

They offered him gifts.

They delivered the city, the

citadel and the treasury into his hands.

And soon enough, the Babylonians

would also crown Alexander "King

of the Universe."

Not satisfied, Alexander marches on to
Persepolis, where the Persian kings keep their

treasure.

He plunders 180,000 talents of

gold and silver, the equivalent

of $4.1 billion today.

Alexander is a conqueror on a roll.

But like his father before him,

he drinks too much.

And like his father, he's an ugly drunk.

During one of Alexander's night-time
binges in Persepolis, one of the Greeks

shouts, "Let's burn down the

Palace of Darius!"

Alexander, in his state of

drunken euphoria, agrees.

And that night, the Greek

soldiers burned the palace of Persepolis.

Alexander himself throws the

first torch, and then watches

as one of the most beautiful

buildings of the ancient world

goes up in smoke.

Alexander had to give his men

something to celebrate their victory.

And after all this was a

campaign of vengeance against the Persians.

But in the cold light of day, as

the ashes settled on Persepolis,

perhaps Alexander started to

regret his slightly euphoric decision.

For many of Alexander's loyal soldiers,
the big adventure starts to lose its

appeal.

After five years of

campaigning, they're tired and homesick.

They're strangers in a strange

land, surrounded by foreign customs.

Even worse, Alexander begins to

adopt some of these alien

customs, and his men don't like it.

Alexander beings to
enroll the Persians in his army.

He begins to invite them to his

court, and then he does the unthinkable.

He starts to go native.

He adopts their customs.

He adopts their dress.

And for the Macedonian soldier,

this is entirely unacceptable.

They didn't come here to become Persian.

They came to conquer.

Alexander is going to have

two reactions to the taking of Persia.

First, it's going to validate

his view that he's one of the

great leaders of the world.

On the other hand, the grumbling

in the ranks of his men is going

to enrage him.

It's an insult to his narcissism.

Alexander still likes to model
himself on the legendary warrior Achilles.

And just as Achilles did,

Alexander has a long-term male

partner, Hephaestion, part

of the inner circle who

feed Alexander's sense of self-importance.

Alexander really cultivates

the cult of personality like never before.

Just like today we have

dictators promoting the cult of

themselves, Lenin or Stalin,

Saddam Hussein, Alexander

promotes images of himself on

statuary and coins.

He becomes ubiquitous.

He's really building this sense

of he's greater than humans.

One of the other way I which Alexander stamped
his authority onto his empire, was by founding

and then naming cities after

himself, the most famous of

which is Alexandria.

Yet by one count, Alexander
may not have named not just one

city, but as many as 57 cites

after himself, and another after his horse.

And another one perhaps even after his dog.

What this underlines is a

similar type of behavior that

alters the dictators of Europe

during the 20th century used.

It underlines a need, not just

to stamp an authority onto the

landscape, but a desire and a

belief in oneself to stamp

one's legend onto history for all time.

And the way to make history is to keep
winning battles and expanding the empire.

The troops may want to go home,

but Alexander won't let them.

He needs constant reinforcement

of his desire for fame and glory.

Alexander wants to conquer

the world because he needs to be

special, the most powerful

person in the world.

He's now so oblivious to

those around him that he takes

a Persian bride, unaware of how

much it offends his soldiers.

Now, marrying a foreign

bride, a Persian princess, is

great politics for the Persians,

but it outrages the troops.

He is ruining his reputation

with the Macedonians.

To make matters worse,

Alexander orders his men,

whenever in his presence, to

perform proskynesis, the act of

prostrating oneself in obedience.

To the Greeks it is an honor

reserved only for the gods.

If Alexander knows about the

discontent, he shows no sign of caring.

Soon an assassination plot is in the wind.

SCOTT: A man called Philotas

and his father, Parmenio, were

accused of trying to assassinate Alexander.

It was a serious charge.

But the reason Alexander took

it so seriously was that

not long before, Philotas had

bragged to Alexander that all

his success in military

campaigns was not due to his own

genius but to that of Parmenio,

his general, Philotas' father.

It was this insult to Alex's

ability and success that made

Alexander perhaps take the

conspiracy theory so seriously.

Alexander decides to dispose

of this little problem quickly.

He didn't wait for a trial to

be conducted.

He sent assassins to have

Philotas and Parmenio murdered.

♪

Parmenion has been Alexander's
loyal lieutenant for many years.

Alexander's ability to coldly

murder him shows Alexander's

underlying psychopathic behavior.

But it's just the beginning.

Other assassins are lurking in the wings.

Just two years later, the

same thing happened.

A friend of Alexander

overstepped the mark, was soon

accused of trying to kill

Alexander, and instead found himself dead.

Alexander grows increasingly

more paranoid.

The great one is starting to lose it.

Alexander turns to the bottle again,
with devastating consequences.

In yet another drinking bout

with this companions, Alexander

turns the conversation to his

father, Philip.

Alexander laments the fact that

Philip never recognized him for

his achievements.

Cleitus, one of Alexander's

generals, steps in and

complains, "You have disowned your father!

You say that you are the son of a god!

And Philip anyways is a better

general than you ever would be!"

Enraged, Alexander steps up,

grabs his spear and runs through

Cleitus, killing him instantly.

According to the sources,

Alexander is filled with remorse.

He attempts to kill himself

with a spear and has to be restrained.

ARYA: Cleitus was one of

Alexander's oldest friends.

Contemplating suicide and

withdrawing to this tent for

three days could have just been

a clever dramatization,

something to satisfy the troops,

but this seems to be something that's felt.

There's regret.

This is a crime of passion, an

exasperation brought about by intoxication.

Now the assassination plots

come fast and furiously.

Alexander's world is

unraveling, and his grip on

power is slipping through his hands.

NARRATOR: Things are getting tough
for Alexander. Tensions continue to rise in

his troops and his relentless

progress eastward slows to a crawl.

By the time Alexander reaches

the border of India, his empire

is 9,000 miles across.

He resorts to massacring whole

town garrisons, reneging on

promises that they will survive

if they surrender.

Alexander wants to keep pushing east, but
after an epic battle at the Hydaspes River, his

troops finally rebel.

Alexander's men a tired,
tired of being away from their

homes and families for more than

eight years.

They are also increasingly fed

up with Alexander's dictatorial

style of leadership, so much

like that of the Persian king,

which he had replaced.

And on that note, they had come

into Asia to avenge the Persian

king's wrongs that the had done to Macedon.

They had now done that.

So what were they still doing

here, except for adding to

Alexander's own empire and

getting nothing for themselves in return?

IBEJI: It's become pretty

obvious to Alexander's men that

he's never going to stop.

He's just going to keep on going

until there's no more world to conquer.

And that was never part of the deal.

But of course this creates a

huge problem for Alexander,

because he can't be seen to back

down in the face of his men.

But at the same time, he can't

keep going without the support

of his men, and he knows it.

Alexander's commanders finally devise
a plan to end the continuous campaigns.

They pretend they receive a

divine omen ordering them to

stop fighting and head home.

This is a fascinating psychologic event.

The army's tired.

They want to go home.

Alexander wants to press on and

conquer the world.

They need a mechanism that will

both preserve the army and not

injure Alexander's narcissism.

The divine omen is the perfect

face-saving device.

Alexander agrees to turn
back, but he doesn't make it easy.

Instead of following a route

along the coast, he insists on

going west along the Gedrosian

Desert in what is now southern Iran.

It is one of the most

forbidding places on earth,

scorching heat and chin-deep sand.

There's no enough water, and soon no food.

The men eat their own horses

and continue on foot.

SCOTT: Why should Alexander

choose to cross this

inhospitable desert, especially

when he could have simply put

his men on ships and sailed them

most of the way home?

Now, some say it's because he

wanted to punish his men for

having refused to follow him any

further east.

His men paid for their lack of

loyalty with their lives.

Twenty-five thousand men,

more than 3/4 of Alexander's

force, died in the desert.

By the time he returns to

Persia, Alexander is a far harsher ruler.

He accuses some governors of

crimes in his absence and has

them executed.

Mutinous soldiers are rounded

up and put to death.

And when his closest friend,

Hephaestion, dies of a fever in

324 BC, Alexander lashes out in

all directions, blaming the

innocent for his friend's death.

The doctor who wasn't able to

save Hephaestion's life is

executed on Alexander's orders.

Local youths are slaughtered

over the man's body, and

Hephaestion is now worshipped as a hero.

All this builds a picture of

Alexander as a man who has gone

beyond what is expected as the

norm in Greek society, both in

terms of his relationships with

men and in terms of how he is

expected to behave as king.

Alexander never recovers

from his friend's death.

In Babylon, he uncorks the wine

bottle one last time.

ARYA: After yet another night of binge
drinking, Alexander complains of severe stomach

pains.

He's then hit with a fever that

rages for 12 days.

It is only eight months

since Alexander's closest

friend died, with almost

identical symptoms.

According to historian Arrian,

Alexander slowly loses the use

of his legs and is confined to bed.

He then loses the use of

his arms and the ability to

speak, symptoms which point to

what doctors call ascending paralysis.

Just a few days short of his

33rd birthday, in 323 BC, the

greatest conqueror the world

has ever known dies.

Emergency-room physician Rahim Valani has
narrowed down the cause of Alexander's death.

The most obvious candidate for

the fatal illness is malaria.

We know that malaria was
endemic at that time, and we

know that Alexander traveled to

many different countries and

could have contracted malaria at

any point in any one of these

regions that were endemic to malaria.

In this particular instance,

malaria, I don't think, is the

culprit that caused Alexander's death.

Despite what seemed like

symptoms of malaria, Dr. Valani

now believes there's a more

likely explanation.

What I would conclude is Alexander died
from typhoid fever, given his symptoms that

fit classically with this presentation.

Somebody may not have washed

their hands properly or may have

contaminated the food or

the water, and he may have

picked it up from that place.

In this particular situation,

typhoid fever is associated with

an ascending paralysis.

What happens with the bacteria

is it gets into the bloodstream

and causes an overwhelming sepsis response.

As your blood vessels dilate,

you lose your blood pressure,

you become comatose and you die

from the infection itself.

It is said that on his death

bed, when asked, "Who should

the empire pass to?" Alexander

says, "To the strongest."

Alexander marched over half the

circumference of the Earth.

Along the way, he never lost a

battle, and he stacked up a

huge body count.

He became a blood-thirsty

megalomaniac who believed himself a god.

He murdered loyal companions

and may well have had a hand in

his own father's assassination.

So where does such behavior
put him on a psychological

scale of tyrants?

Was he a psychopathic,

thrill-seeking killer like Caligula?

Or a cold, goal-driven killer

like Genghis Khan?

Alexander has a pattern of excessive and
needless cruelty without remorse, so he has some

features of a psychopathic

killer; however, he's not all

about bloodlust.

Much of the violence is very goal-directed.

That makes Alexander a
little of both, goal-directed with a

touch of the psychopath.

And there's another key factor:

his narcissism.

MALLOTT: Alexander scores

very highly on a narcissism scale.

His need to be special,

his need for the world to know

that he's special, his need to

be connected to the gods, all

show that he's a narcissist.

So who in history shares

similar character traits with Alexander?

MALLOTT: Alexander reminds me

of Napoleon, the military commander.

They both pursue their own

aims; they both want to conquer

the world; they both can't get

enough glory; and, they both

believe they are right.

Driven by obsessive

self-belief, Alexander built

the greatest empire the world

had ever seen.

Though he had a cruel streak a

mile wide, his personal

biographer made sure he was

remembered for his military prowess.

That's why over 2,000 years

later, he's still known as

Alexander the Great.

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