亚历山大大帝，与玛丽·比尔德

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大家好，我是汤姆·霍兰德。我与伟大的玛丽·比尔德合作，为大家带来四集节目，探讨我们共同认定的古代史上最具标志性的四大主题。今天我们要讲的是亚历山大大帝。以下是该集的一段简短摘录：无人能与他比肩。

Hello, everyone. It's Tom Holland here, and I have teamed up with the great Mary Beard to bring you four episodes on what we together have decided are the four most iconic themes in ancient history. And today, we are looking at Alexander the Great. Here's a short extract of that episode. No one was like him.

他的罪行骇人听闻。但若你想诋毁这位伟大的君王，先想想自己是何等平庸、卑微又无趣。你的劳作低微，功绩更是不值一提。这是美国伟大诗人罗伯特·洛威尔对亚历山大大帝的评价，他正是本集的主题。我正在与伟大的玛丽·比尔德对话。玛丽，我猜你会同意罗伯特·洛威尔的观点——亚历山大的那些，我们姑且不称之为罪行，但他确实双手沾满鲜血。

Terrible were his crimes. But if you wish to blackguard the great king, think how mean, obscure, and dull you are. Your labors lowly and your merits less. That was the great American poet Robert Lowell talking about Alexander the Great, who is the theme of today's episode, I'm in conversation with the great Mary Beard. And Mary, I assume you would agree with with Robert Lowell that that Alexander's well, I mean, let's not call them crimes, but, I mean, he spilled a lot of blood.

他是个杀戮者。但你是否也认同，他在某种意义上几乎是个神话人物？他的形象恐怖而强大，某种程度上超越了凡人的界限。

He's a a killer of men. But would you also acknowledge a sense that he is, I mean, almost a figure of myth? It's kind of terrifying and potent in a way beyond the the mortal norm.

我正想说，我觉得你写那段话就是为了惹恼我，汤姆，真的。

I was gonna say that I thought you wrote that out just to annoy me, Tom, really.

哦，算是吧。我想让你进入这个话题的氛围。

Oh, kind of. I wanted to get you in the mood for this.

你无法否认亚历山大大帝值得研究，因为有太多人模仿他。他已成为一个神话般的形象，不仅仅是在西方文明中，

You can't deny that Alexander the Great is worth looking at because so many people have, so many people have copied him. He's become such a, mythic figure, not just in Western civilization,

但实际上在世界范围内。令人惊叹的是，他在《古兰经》中也有出现。

but actually throughout the world. Well, he appears in the Quran amazingly.

是啊。所以我原本想表现得嗤之以鼻——我确实很倾向于这么做，但我克制住了。那种不屑一顾地说'哦，不过是个喝醉的年轻屠夫罢了，不值一提'的态度。我认为我们确实需要同时探讨亚历山大大帝的真实历史与神话传说。

Yeah. So the idea of me being sniffy as I'm quite tempted to be, but I'm resisting it. The idea of being sniffy and saying, oh, don't, a young drunken butcher, that isn't good enough. I think we do have to press at both the truth and the myth of Alexander the Great, actually.

但你不至于像我在《余下皆历史》节目中那位尊敬的同事那样，把亚历山大大帝当作小男孩小女孩的榜样吧？他建议孩子们应该追随自己的梦想。

But you wouldn't go so far as my esteemed colleague on The Rest is History and offer Alexander the Great as a role model for little boys and girls, that he suggests that they should follow their dreams.

想到如果我们开始把亚历山大大帝当榜样，这个国家会变成什么样，我就不寒而栗。我更希望找个对合作协作有更清晰认知的人，而不是那种'我们都该像亚历山大大帝那样追逐梦想'的论调。

I dread to think of the fate of this country if we start using Alexander the Great as a role model. I'm looking for someone who's got a kind of bit clearer idea of what cooperation and collaboration might be than, you know, we're all gonna follow our dreams, like Alexander the Great, So

所以我们先讲述他的故事，然后由此展开讨论：他真配得上'伟大'吗？如何获得这个称号？其实有点像我们上期节目，关于亚历山大的传说有多少可能是真实的？但首先，亚历山大是马其顿菲利普二世的儿子，马其顿之于古典希腊，大概就像苏格兰之于英格兰的关系。

why we begin basically by telling the story and then having done that, of open up questions about, well, was he great? How did he come to be seen as great? And actually, kind of slightly like with our previous episode, to what extent are the stories that we tell about Alexander actually likely to be true? But to begin with, Alexander is born to Philip II of Macedon, which is kind of like the Scotland to the England of classical Greece.

我觉得这么说对马其顿有点抬举了。不过没错，马其顿确实位于我们所说的古希腊北部边缘地带。在菲利普二世统治之前，那里根本不值一提。转折点其实出现在亚历山大父亲统治时期。而且直到现在，关于马其顿是否属于希腊的问题仍然存在争议——回溯到古代世界也是如此。

I think that's being generous to Macedon, actually. But you're right that Macedon was on the northern margins of what we call ancient Greece. And until the reign of Philip the second, it wasn't much to write home about. So in fact, its turning point comes in the reign of Alexander's dad. And they persist in being issues right up to now, but going back to the ancient world of whether we really thought, do we really think that Macedon is part of Greece Yes.

或者不属于

Or isn't

因为关于马其顿国王是否应该被允许参加奥运会的问题一直存在争议。是的。或者

Because there's always kind of debate about whether the kings of Macedon should be allowed to compete in the Olympic Games Yeah. Or

这绝对正确。

That's that's absolutely right.

此外，早在公元前五世纪，马其顿曾是波斯帝国的一部分，而波斯是当时的超级大国，曾试图征服希腊但被击退。因此，马其顿与波斯的关系也是故事的一部分。

And also, back in the fifth century, Macedon had been a part of the Persian Empire, which is the great superpower of the day, had tried to conquer Greece and been flung back. And so the relationship of Macedon to Persia is also part of the story.

是的。所以它有点两面性。一方面关注我们所说的希腊本土，另一方面也关注波斯。直到腓力二世从他的首都佩拉开始，在外交、政治和军事上或多或少地控制了希腊世界，情况才有所改变。显然，在公元前四世纪中叶，他已经开始思考与波斯的关系。我的意思是，你必须回溯这段历史，才能理解腓力或后来的亚历山大为何要东征波斯。

Yeah. So it's kind of looking two ways. It's looking at what we would call Greece proper, and it's also looking at Persia. And it's not making any great shakes until Philip II, from his capital, a place called Pella, actually exerts more or less control, both diplomatically, politically, and militarily over the Greek world and clearly is already, and this is mid fourth century BCE, is already beginning to think about what his relationship with Persia is going to be. I mean, you have to go back here in order to understand what on earth either Philip or later Alexander is trying to do in moving east to Persia.

必须回到波斯是东方主导力量的观点，它在公元前五世纪与希腊世界发生了著名的冲突，即波斯战争。最终，那些没有投靠波斯的希腊人取得了胜利。但有一种未完成事业的感觉。显然，像腓力这样的人，在他用新获得的军事力量（这力量如何产生仍是个谜）牢牢掌控局势时，可以通过说‘我们要向波斯帝国复仇’来利用希腊世界。

Have to go back to the idea that Persia is the dominant power in the East, which clashes famously in the fifth century, clashed in what we call the Persian Wars with the Greek world. In the end, the Greeks, those that hadn't gone over to Persia, were victorious. But there is a sense that there's unfinished business. And it clearly is the case that somebody like Philip, while he's putting his thumb pretty firmly in his newfound military power quite how that arises, think a big mystery, that he can leverage the Greek world by saying, and we're going to get vengeance on the Persian empire.

或许有两个因素会鼓励希腊世界的人认为他们可以挑战波斯。首先是希腊军事人力或许能击败波斯军队的感觉。雅典人色诺芬曾记载一支希腊雇佣兵在美索不达米亚被困，却能穿越波斯帝国返回家乡的故事，这似乎令人振奋。但另一方面，希腊世界的强国——雅典、底比斯、斯巴达——不是在攻击波斯，而是在互相撕咬，或许需要一个强人来敲打他们的脑袋，说：‘来吧，伙计们，我们去攻打波斯。’

And that there are kind of two factors perhaps that would encourage someone in the Greek world to think that they could have a crack at Persia. And the first is the sense that perhaps Greek military manpower has the beating of Persian armies. So there's a famous account written by the Athenian Xenophon of a squad of Greek mercenaries who find themselves stranded in Mesopotamia and then are able to march all the way through the Persian Empire and get back home. So that seems exciting. But the other thing is a sense that rather than attacking the Persians, the great powers of the Greek world, Athens, Thebes, Sparta, are just tearing chunks out of each other, and that it needs a strong man perhaps to crack heads together and to say, come on, guys, let's go and attack the Persians.

但他没能敲打任何斯巴达人的脑袋。

And he doesn't manage to crack any Spartan heads together.

不，斯巴达人总是被遗忘

No, Spartans are always left

而底比斯难道不——

out, And aren't Thebes-

是的，所以当菲利普年轻时，底比斯确实是伟大的城邦。菲利普曾作为人质被送往那里，那里堪称希腊世界军事发展的前沿。但当菲利普成为国王后，他发展出了一套相当强大的军事体系，包括骑兵和装备超长矛的方阵兵。我相信你会喜欢讨论马其顿长矛。但关键在于，他发展的军事技术最终证明能够击败底比斯人和雅典人。

Yeah, so Thebes really, when Philip is a young man, is the great city state. Philip has gone there as a hostage And it's kind of the cutting edge of military development in the Greek world. But when Philip becomes king, he has developed quite a kind of a formidable military apparatus, cavalry, phalanxes with very, very long spears. I'm sure you'd love to talk about Macedonian spears. But I mean, it's important that that he has kind of developed military technology in a way that, as it turns out, has the beating of the Thebans and the Athenians.

马其顿人在底比斯郊外的喀罗尼亚取得大捷。当时亚历山大非常年轻，只有18岁左右，他在那里指挥骑兵。此役之后，底比斯和雅典被迫臣服于马其顿的统治。

And they win the Macedonians win a great victory, a place called Chironea outside Thebes. And this is where Alexander he's very young. He's only 18, I think, and he commands the cavalry there. And Thebes and Athens are kind of brought to submit to Macedonian overlordship.

雅典的处境比底比斯好些。底比斯遭到彻底碾压，雅典虽受辱——至少在某些人眼中如此，不过也有人乐意与腓力二世结盟。你提到的背景很有意思，这些事件都有前因：底比斯与马其顿的腓力二世素有恩怨，希腊世界与波斯帝国也有历史积怨。若不理解这些旧怨，就无法真正读懂公元前四世纪的局势。

Athens does better than Thebes. Thebes is well and truly thrashed. Athens is humiliated, or at least in the eyes of some, although there were others who were quite happy to go in with Philip the second. But I think what you say is interesting because there are backstories to all of this, that, you know, Thebes has got a history with Philip the second of Macedon. You know, the Greek world has got a history with the Persian Empire, and you can't really understand what's going on in the fourth century without seeing the old scores are being settled.

确实。

Yeah.

腓力二世基本上已征服希腊，正筹备入侵波斯帝国时遭暗杀。亚历山大继位后，我们不妨看看后世传记作家和历史学家描述的他的成长经历——众所周知，他的母亲对蛇有着特殊情结。

Philip is kind of basically, he's conquered Greece, and he's gearing up to invade the Persian empire. And then he gets assassinated. Alexander takes over and succeeds him as king. Can we just look at Alexander's upbringing as it is told by biographers and historians writing very much later. Famously, he is the son of a mother who has a thing about snakes.

奥林匹亚斯。对吧？她是腓力众多妻子中最光彩夺目的一位，与蛇有着某种宗教联系。但腓力身上有一点极不寻常——这可能解释了暗杀背后的某些原因，我们不得而知——就是他拥有多位妻子。马其顿王室实行一夫多妻制，这虽然能提供许多潜在继承人，却也滋生了大量内斗。同时奥林匹亚斯并非马其顿人，她来自伊庇鲁斯。亚历山大虽是她的儿子，但腓力后来又娶了希腊世界众多名为克利奥帕特拉的女子之一，这位

Olympias. Right? And she is the most glamorous of Philip's wives and has some kind of religious affect with snakes. But one thing that's really unusual about Philip, and it may explain something behind the assassination, we don't know, is that he has many wives Macedonian monarchy is polygamous, and that provides you with a lot of potential heirs, but it provides a lot of rivalry And at the same so Olympias is not Macedonian, she's from Epirus. And Alexander is the son, but Philip subsequently marries one of the many women in the Greek world called Cleopatra, who

所以这是个常见主题对吧？重名的人太多了。而且

So this is a theme, isn't it? Loads of people with the same name. And

这位是纯正的马其顿血统。显然在考虑继承规划时——古代世界每位君主都时刻盘算着继承问题却总搞砸——奥林匹亚斯和亚历山大开始担忧他们会被马其顿纯血统势力边缘化。

she is bona fide Macedonian. And so you've clearly got in the idea when you're thinking of succession planning, every monarch in the ancient world is always thinking of succession planning and never getting it right. It looks as if Olympias and Alexander are beginning to be worried that they're going to be sidestepped by the true blood of the Macedonian race.

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