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 thirty1, 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.
| Alexander the Great | Julius Caesar | |
|---|---|---|
| Lived | 356 to 323 BC2 | 100 to 44 BC3 |
| Role | King of Macedon and conqueror | Roman general, then dictator |
| Greatest victory | Gaugamela, 331 BC | Alesia, 52 BC |
| At its height | From Greece to the edge of India | Master of Rome and its Mediterranean world |
| Battle record | Never lost a major battle | Won Gaul and the civil war; rarely beaten |
| Undoing | Died at 32; his empire split among his generals | Assassinated in 44 BC before settling the new order |
| Lasting legacy | The Hellenistic age and the model of the conqueror | The end of the Republic and the road to empire |
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 army1 and a plan to invade Persia. In little more than a decade he destroyed the armies of Darius III at4 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-two2, his empire vast but unconsolidated, and it split among his generals within a generation.
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 BC5. 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 manoeuvre, logistics and his legions' loyalty, he made himself dictator of Rome, then was assassinated in 44 BC before he could settle3 the new order, plunging Rome into fresh civil war.
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
There is no clean answer, and that is why the argument lasts. If greatness means undefeated conquest at breathtaking speed, Alexander stands alone. If it means building power from less and reshaping a state that would endure, Caesar has the edge. Meet them among the greatest ancient battles, or read their lives in our profiles of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.