Alexander the Great vs Julius Caesar

Who were Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar?

Alexander the Great was born at Pella in Macedon in 356 BC, son of King Philip II and Olympias. From about 343 BC Aristotle tutored him. He became king at 20, after Philip's murder in 336 BC. Two years later he crossed into Asia with an army of roughly 40,000 by ancient estimates and in eleven years defeated the Persian king Darius III, took Egypt, founded Alexandria, crossed Iran and Central Asia and reached the Punjab. His troops refused to go further at the river Hyphasis (the Beas) in 326 BC. He died at Babylon in June 323 BC, aged 32, of a fever whose cause is still argued over.

Gaius Julius Caesar was born in Rome in July 100 BC. His career began slowly: priesthoods, legal cases, offices, debts. He was 40 when he became consul in 59 BC and in his early forties when he began the conquest of Gaul, which took until 50 BC. In January 49 BC he crossed the Rubicon and fought a civil war across Italy, Greece, Egypt, Africa and Spain. Named dictator for life early in 44 BC, he was assassinated by senators on 15 March 44 BC, three days before he was due to leave on a campaign against Parthia.

Alexander vs Caesar: the comparison table

Did Julius Caesar weep at a statue of Alexander?

This is the most famous link between them, and it comes in two different versions, both written about 150 years after Caesar's death.

• Suetonius (Life of the Deified Julius, chapter 7, about AD 121): as a junior official (quaestor) in Further Spain, in 69 BC, Caesar saw a statue of Alexander in the temple of Hercules at Gades (Cádiz). He sighed, impatient that he had done nothing memorable at an age when Alexander had already conquered the world, and asked to leave his post to seek greater opportunities in Rome.
• Plutarch (Life of Caesar, chapter 11, about AD 100): when Caesar was governor in Spain, in 61 BC, he was reading about Alexander and sat silent for a long time, then wept. Asked why, he said Alexander at his age had ruled so many peoples, while he had achieved nothing brilliant.

The versions disagree on the date (69 or 61 BC), the trigger (a statue or a book) and the reaction (a sigh or tears). The historian Cassius Dio, writing later still, places a similar story at Gades. Nobody who recorded it was there. Treat it as legend that may hold a real feeling: Caesar was 31 in 69 BC, and Alexander died at 32.

What is solid is that Romans constantly measured their generals against Alexander. Pompey took the name Magnus, “the Great”, in imitation. Plutarch built his Parallel Lives in pairs, and paired Alexander with Caesar. Caesar's heir Augustus visited Alexander's tomb in Alexandria in 30 BC, according to Suetonius (Augustus 18).

Where they were alike

• Speed. Both moved armies faster than their enemies expected. Caesar's report of his five-day war at Zela in 47 BC, which Suetonius says he summed up as “I came, I saw, I conquered”, is the classic boast.
• Leading from the front. Arrian describes Alexander wounded repeatedly, most badly at the Malli town in India. Caesar, by his own account, grabbed a shield and went into the front line when his army wavered against the Nervii in 57 BC.
• Using mercy and terror together. Alexander spared some cities and destroyed others: Thebes in 335 BC, Tyre in 332 BC. Caesar praised his own clemency toward Romans but treated some Gallic peoples with great brutality.
• Bonds with their soldiers. Both could talk a mutinous army round, Alexander at Opis in 324 BC, Caesar with his Tenth Legion in 47 BC.

Where they differed

Their position. Alexander was a hereditary king with an army that was his own from the start. Caesar was a citizen of a republic; to command, he had to win elections, borrow money, form alliances and finally break the law at the Rubicon.

Their aims. Alexander kept going east: after Persia, India, and at his death he was planning a campaign into Arabia. Caesar's conquests served politics at home. Gaul gave him wealth, an army loyal to him and fame in Rome.

Their governing. Alexander tried to join Macedonians and Persians: he adopted Persian dress at court, tried to make Greeks bow to him (and gave up when they refused), and held mass weddings at Susa in 324 BC. Caesar reformed Rome itself: the calendar, debt laws, citizenship for many provincials, colonies for veterans.

Their voice. Alexander's own words survive only as others reported them. Caesar wrote his own story, in a clear third-person style meant to persuade readers in Rome. When you compare them, remember you are comparing a man described by later admirers and critics with a man who described himself.

The cost to others should be part of any comparison. Alexander's campaigns killed many thousands across Asia, and his army sold captured populations into slavery. Plutarch claims Caesar's Gallic wars left a million dead and a million enslaved. That figure cannot be checked, but it shows how ancient writers judged the scale.

Questions to ask Alexander and Caesar

1. Alexander: what did Aristotle teach you that you used on campaign?
2. Alexander: why did you keep going after Darius was dead?
3. Alexander: what did you feel when your army refused to cross the Hyphasis?
4. Alexander: why did you want Greeks and Macedonians to bow to you?
5. Caesar: did you really weep over Alexander, and was it a statue or a book?
6. Caesar: was conquering Gaul about Rome's safety or your career?
7. Caesar: why did you write about yourself in the third person?
8. Both: what makes a good commander, and what would you say to each other?

On Yuga you can ask both by voice. Alexander and Caesar are AI recreations built from the ancient sources, and they can be wrong. A good answer from Caesar about Gades should admit that the story comes in two versions. For your work, cite Arrian, Plutarch and Suetonius by chapter, and Caesar's own Commentaries.

Which one for your project?

Pick Alexander for a project on the spread of Greek culture into Asia, Egypt and India, on leadership and its limits, or on how we know about someone whose own words are lost. See questions to ask Alexander the Great.

Pick Caesar for a project on the fall of the Roman Republic, war writing as propaganda, or a political career told through primary sources. See questions to ask Julius Caesar and Julius Caesar vs Augustus.

Pick both for a debate about what “greatness” means: Alexander conquered more, Caesar changed his own state more. Our list of military strategists in history adds other candidates.