Posterity has justly selected the epithet “great” as most fitting to be coupled with Alexander’s name, and he has this honor for more than one reason. It is perhaps less contested than in the case of any other of the world’s leading personalities, Charles the Great alone excepted, for Charles, like Alexander, introduced a new age of the world’s history. Great as were the successes of Alexander, they constitute less of a claim on the personal admiration of posterity than his knightly qualities as a warrior, and the charm and impetuosity of youth. His great victories were won between the years of twenty-one and twenty-five. In the space of thirteen years there are crowded together events and achievements that would exalt the longest life of the greatest man. His sudden and premature death did him a kind of poetic justice, because his temperament cannot be coupled consistently with the characteristics of old age or even with the middle period of man’s life. His body and his brain had been under a tremendous pressure, which even a strong constitution could not resist. It was this restive youthfulness that spurred him on to adventures which were purposeless when looked at from the point of view of the mature statesman, such as the expedition to India, an uncalculated move not to be understood except as due to the stimulus of an explorer’s curiosity and the desire to accomplish a feat unheard of before. The impulsiveness and emotionalism of Alexander in combination with his military genius produced results unprecedented in history. His career is that of a Homeric hero on a larger stage. It is not surprising that his conquests almost defy criticism and make a personal estimate seem artificial. He did so much that it apparently makes little difference what he was, for his actions speak for themselves, and they tell their tale like a fairy story, without any need of analysis. It is obviously unfair to look for constructive statesmanship in a career so short, when almost every month was occupied with military campaigns either planned or in execution. When his life was ended, Alexander was still a young man with a fresh and vigorous intelligence, open to new impressions. It is hazardous to infer (as Grote does) that he would have spent his life in acts of military aggression or that he would have sunk to the position of an Oriental despot, little differing from the Persian kings to whose title he succeeded. It is safer to put aside these pessimistic historic prognostics of what might have been, and to recognize that Alexander, provided he kept his mental powers undulled by drink, would have remained a Greek and not become a Hun or a Vandal.