Alexander vs Caesar

Ask who was the greatest commander of the ancient world and two names come back above all others: Alexander of Macedon, who conquered the Persian empire before he was thirty, and Julius Caesar, who conquered Gaul and then Rome itself. They fought in different worlds, more than two centuries apart, but the comparison has never stopped.¹

Head to head

Key points

• Alexander won a vast empire abroad in barely a decade and never lost a major battle.
• Caesar's greatest campaigns were the conquest of Gaul and the civil war that made him master of Rome.
• Alexander inherited a superb army and a war his father had prepared; Caesar largely built his own.
• Both were brilliant, bold and adored by their soldiers, and both died without a lasting settlement, one young, one assassinated.

Alexander: conqueror of an empire

Alexander inherited from his father Philip II a reformed Macedonian army and a plan to invade Persia. In little more than a decade he destroyed the armies of Darius III at Issus and Gaugamela, took Egypt, Babylon and Persepolis, and pushed as far as India, winning every major battle he fought. His genius was speed, boldness and the decisive cavalry stroke aimed at the enemy commander. He died at Babylon at thirty-two, his empire vast but unconsolidated, and it split among his generals within a generation.¹⁵

Caesar: the conqueror who became Rome

Caesar rose through Roman politics and made his name in the long conquest of Gaul, crowned by the siege of Alesia in 52 BC. When the Senate turned on him he crossed the Rubicon and beat Pompey in a civil war that spanned the Mediterranean, from Pharsalus in Greece to Egypt and Africa. A master of maneuver, logistics and his legions' loyalty, he became dictator of Rome, then was assassinated in 44 BC before he could settle the new order, plunging Rome into fresh civil war.¹⁶

Who lived first, and did Alexander and Caesar ever meet?

Alexander lived first, and the two never met. He was born in 356 BC and died in Babylon in June 323 BC, aged 32. Caesar was born in July 100 BC, 223 years after Alexander's death, and was killed on 15 March 44 BC, aged 55. Their births lie 256 years apart, and 279 years separate their deaths.¹⁷

The exact days are less certain than the years. Livius.org, following a Babylonian astronomical diary, dates Alexander's death to 11 June 323 BC, while the Loeb editors of Plutarch and Diodorus give 13 June and 10 June. Livius.org puts Caesar's birth on 13 July 100 BC, which fits Suetonius's statement that he died in his fifty-sixth year. By Caesar's time Alexander was a figure of books and statues, and that is exactly how Caesar met him.¹⁸

Did Caesar admire Alexander?

Yes, according to three ancient writers, who tell the story in different ways. Suetonius and Cassius Dio set it at Gades, modern Cádiz, where Caesar, then a quaestor, saw a likeness of Alexander in the temple of Hercules and lamented how little he had done. Plutarch instead has him weep over a history of Alexander.¹⁹

In Suetonius, Caesar “heaved a sigh” before the statue, impatient at having done nothing noteworthy “at a time of life when Alexander had already brought the world to his feet”, and at once asked to be released from his post to seek greater things in Rome. Cassius Dio says he “groaned aloud” at the image, and links the moment to a dream at Gades that the seers read as a promise of great power.²⁰

Plutarch moves the scene to Caesar's later governorship of Spain: reading about Alexander, he was lost in thought for a long time, then burst into tears and told his friends, “Do you not think,” he said, “it is matter for sorrow that while Alexander, at my age, was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no brilliant success?”²¹

Livius.org dates the quaestorship to 68 BC, when Caesar was 31 or 32, close to the age at which Alexander died. The Loeb editor of Plutarch, dating it to 67 BC, when he took Caesar to be 33, judged the Gades setting the more fitting one for that reason. Ancient writers kept pairing the two men. Plutarch's Parallel Lives sets his Life of Alexander beside his Life of Caesar, and Appian closed his account of Caesar's career by calling him “fittingly compared with Alexander”.²²

How many battles did Caesar lose?

Two major ones: he was thrown back from the hill town of Gergovia in Gaul in 52 BC, and Pompey broke his siege lines at Dyrrachium in 48 BC. Appian adds that his troops were also routed in Africa. Each time he went on to win the war. Alexander lost none of his four great pitched battles.²³

Suetonius counts only three setbacks in Caesar's years in Gaul: a storm that nearly wrecked his fleet off Britain, the rout of a legion at Gergovia, and an ambush on the German border in which his lieutenants Titurius and Aurunculeius were killed. In the civil wars, he adds, the issue was in doubt only twice, at Dyrrachium and at Munda in Spain in 45 BC, where Caesar believed for a moment that the battle was lost. Plutarch says that after Munda Caesar told his friends he had often fought for victory, but this time for his life. Read the rivalry behind Dyrrachium in Pompey vs Caesar.²⁴

Appian drew the contrast directly: Caesar faced the Gauls thirty times in battle, but his troops, unlike Alexander's, were not unbeaten, since they were routed at Dyrrachium and in Africa, though Caesar himself “was victorious at the end of every campaign”. Alexander's one check came at the Persian Gate in January 330 BC, where the satrap Ariobarzanes held a mountain pass until Alexander turned the position by a night march. His last great pitched battle, against Porus at the Hydaspes in 326 BC, was another victory.²⁵

Who conquered more territory?

Alexander, by a wide margin. On Rein Taagepera's estimates, Alexander's empire covered about 5.2 million km² (2.0 million mi²) when he died in 323 BC, little less than the 5.5 million km² of the Persian Empire he overthrew at its peak around 500 BC. Caesar's conquest was Gaul, roughly the area of modern France and Belgium.²⁶

Suetonius describes Caesar's Gaul as the land bounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Cévennes, the Rhine and the Rhône, with a circuit of some 3,200 Roman miles. Plutarch claims that in less than ten years there Caesar took more than 800 towns by storm and subdued 300 peoples, and Appian speaks of 400 tribes; these are round figures from ancient writers and cannot be checked. Even Rome at its height, in AD 117, covered about 5.0 million km² on the same estimates, slightly less than Alexander's empire. For how Alexander's empire measures up against later conquerors, see Napoleon vs Alexander and Genghis Khan vs Alexander.²⁷

Two kinds of greatness

The two are hard to rank because they attempted different things. Alexander was the supreme conqueror, carrying an inherited machine across a continent against a foreign empire. Caesar was the supreme all-rounder, a general who was also a politician and writer, who built his own power and turned it inward on his own state. Alexander's empire outlived him only in fragments; Caesar's heirs founded one that lasted centuries.

One conquered a world abroad; the other conquered his own.

The verdict

As a battlefield commander, Alexander comes first. He was king at 20, never lost a pitched battle, and by 32 ruled an empire of about 5.2 million km². Caesar lost two major battles, at Gergovia and Dyrrachium, but he won every war he fought, against Gallic coalitions and then against Roman armies led by the best generals of his day, and he did it while building his own power in Rome. Appian put the difference in resources plainly: Alexander inherited a kingdom firmly established by Philip, while Caesar began as a private citizen short of money. So Alexander was the greater conqueror, Caesar the more complete general and statesman.²⁸

Three caveats weigh on any ranking. The ancient accounts of both men were written long after the events, and for Gaul we depend heavily on Caesar's own commentaries. The areas are map-based estimates, and the troop and casualty figures of ancient writers are often round numbers. And the two men faced different enemies: a single Persian empire for Alexander, warlike Gallic tribes and then fellow Romans for Caesar.²⁹

Napoleon, for one, refused to choose; his maxims tell officers to read again and again the campaigns of both, alongside those of Hannibal, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederick. See how Caesar fares against Napoleon in Napoleon vs Caesar, meet both men among the greatest ancient battles and the greatest military commanders, or read their lives in our profiles of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Then see which general matches your instincts in Which Commander Are You?, or test yourself with the Roman battles quiz.³⁰ › Napoleon Bonaparte