Alexander's Victory

In the late 4th century BCE, Alexander the Great embarked upon an ambitious program of military conquest that included mass marriages of his troops with Iranian women. It appears that his goal was to efface, once and for all, the perceived Europe-Asia divide and to offer, in its place, a Mediterranean oikumene. The fascinating thing about this project is that Alexander was, in many respects, doing little more than offering himself as a replacement for his august Iranian predecessor, Cyrus the Great.

In other words, the desired oikumene already existed; what it "lacked" (note that it was only the Europeans who perceived this state of affairs as a shortcoming) was Macedonian political domination and Hellenic cultural supremacy. Alexander only lived long enough to see the former plan effected; the realization of the latter plan was left to those among his successors who chose to implement it. Some attempted to do so with more enthusiasm than others--and with mixed results: cultural engineering is an uncertain business at best.

Nevertheless, over subsequent centuries, the Irano-Semitic oikumene that had been created by Cyrus the Great acquired a distinctive Hellenistic coloring. Alexander's dream was, in important respects, fulfilled. Seeds of Europe transplanted in Asian soil sprouted into sturdy flora and were woven together in a compelling tapestry throughout the Near East--with Hellenistic accents rather than deep shadings. But those accents, subtle though they may be, are to this day important ingredients of the civilizational complex that is characteristic of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Iranian plateau.

Sadly, this fact of Near Eastern cultural history has failed to satisfy subsequent generations of European colonizers of the region: generations determined that "they" must be just like "us."

And, in this fashion, Alexander's great victory is dismissed by his European heirs as an ignominious defeat. Such historical and cultural ignorance would be laughable were it not the subconscious impetus for actions that have visited so much misery upon the region.