Alexander The Great Googles Himself

Written by Oscar O’Neill, reviewed by Saskia Higgins and Mykola Babiy

Had Alexander had access to the information systems of the 21st century, there’s no doubt he would have used everything he could to give him an edge. An obvious choice for him would have been the services offered by Google, the technology company made famous by its search engine and its market dominance solidified by the line of other systems which followed. Though Alexander could have used any number of Google’s products (ranging from Google Calendar to Youtube), I’ll be focusing on his hypothetical use of Google Maps, Trends, and Translate.

Google Maps

Let’s begin with Alexander’s second battle against the Persians, which took place in southern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) when he came up against Persia’s Darius III in the Battle of Issus. Alexander and his army were headed due south, but after learning Darius was behind them (back at Issus), they turned around, eventually meeting in the middle at the mouth of the Pinarus river. Though Alexander was largely outnumbered by the Persian army (which consisted of anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 soldiers, by modern estimates (Wasson, 2011)), the geography of the area they met was to his advantage. Because there was only a short distance from the Gulf of Issus to the surrounding mountains, Alexander and his army only had to take on a small portion of Darius’ at a time (Wasson, 2011), ultimately leading to Alexander’s victory, marking the end of Persian reign.

Enter Google Maps. A 21st-century child today seeing a physical road map would look upon it as if it was an ancient relic. Google’s Maps service has completely changed the way people navigate the world today, both at home and in foreign countries. While Alexander was trekking along foreign lands, he could have used Maps and his experience at Issus to his advantage. Knowing he would be outnumbered again, perhaps he would have scoured the land he was heading towards on Google Maps, searching for conditions similar to those near the Pinarus river, where only a portion of his enemy’s army could attack at any one time.

Alternatively, in a later battle at Gaugamela, Darius had the battleground levelled ahead of Alexander’s arrival, so his horsemen and chariots could be most effective (Grant, 2012). Knowing this, Alexander could have used the topography and elevation view of Maps to identify particularly hilly or irregular areas, and drove his opposition to those locations, to his advantage.

Google Trends

Next, by the time Alexander had made considerable distance from his home of Macedon, he had conquered many cities. He was clever in his tactics to win the hearts and support of the people he now conquered, such as taking on local customs in Persia, their fashion, and their practice of proskynesis, a “court custom that involved bowing down and kissing the hand of others, depending on their rank” (History, 2020). As well as this, he also was careful not to push his own ideas and religion on them, such as in India. That said, he was still quick to “ruthlessly suppress uprisings or hesitate to viciously annihilate those who opposed him” (Mark, 2013). Keeping track of the public’s sentiment toward him across his expansive empire was thus essential to prevent uprising or mutiny.

Here, Alexander could have leveraged Google Trends, a system used to track the search volume of different words. Assuming the general public of ancient Western Asia, like us, were feverishly using Google Search and posting their well founded political opinions to social media, Alexander could have used Trends in combination with Google’s natural language processing system (Google Cloud, n.d.) to track how the people he now ruled felt about him. By analysing the popular search terms in the cities he ruled with Trends, making special note of negatively-charged affects, he could pinpoint exactly where people were discontent with their new ruler. Adding to this, he could analyse their Tweets and Facebook posts with Google’s natural language processing, again scanning and interpreting negative sentiment as they either praised or reproached their foreign leader.

This would have even been useful in his home of Macedon, where its people saw Alexander’s merging of Macedonian and Persian people and culture “as a threat to their own privileged position” (Walbank, n.d.). As well as that, his Macedonian army began to resent him for the same reason, and several began to mutiny. After Alexander “took a firm stand” however, replacing Macedonians in his army with Persians, they backed down. Alexander later “returned their titles and hosted a huge reconciliation banquet” (History, 2020) to encourage peace. Analysing this data of emotion, opinion, and sentiment in real-time would allow him to see where negativity was brewing in his empire, and send orders accordingly to counter this sentiment with pencil or sword, compassion or force, or a mix of both as was the case in his own army.

Google Translate

The expansive nature of Alexander’s empire resulted in several languages spoken across it, from his mother tongue of Macedon (either Ancient Macedonian or Attic Greek, a Greek dialect (Wikipedia, n.d.)), to Persian, and more. In order to communicate with soldiers, politicians, and the general public across ancient Western Asia, he had to employ multiple translators and interpreters, which meant paying them, transporting them with the army, and making sure they were properly fed and protected. For example, his prized horse Bucephalus was once stolen by some native Mardians (an ancient Iranian tribe), which put Alexander into a raging fury. Not being able to communicate this himself, he used a translator to let the population of the area know that he would kill them all unless his horse was returned (Gehman,1914).

Given access to Google’s suite of information systems, Alexander would have done away with all these extra costs and considerations, and employed the use of Google Translate instead. Of course, Translate in its current form does not support such dated languages as Ancient Macedonian or different Persian dialects, but I’m sure Alexander could have paid or threatened (!) the team at Google sufficiently to have them develop the functionality he required, saving him money and hassle in the long run.

Conclusion

There are many more information systems which Google has created which Alexander could have utilised. He could have built on his learning from Aristotle with Google Scholar, researched illness symptoms and cures with Google Search, or relaxed with an Ancient Greek fail compilation on Youtube. Whether any of what I’ve outlined above would have actually helped Alexander is up for debate. He was undefeated, and only stopped from (an alleged) fatal illness, so perhaps the addition of these technologies would only have resulted in “analysis paralysis” or he’d have made decisions with the new information which would end up with a worse outcome than otherwise. Alexander couldn’t have been much more successful, but regardless, I believe he would have used these systems, and perhaps he would have lost a few less soldiers in his conquest as a result.

References

Gehman, H., 1914. The Use of Interpreters by the Ten Thousand and by Alexander. The Classical Weekly, 8(2), pp.9–14.

Google Cloud, n.d. Cloud Natural Language. [online] Available at: <https://cloud.google.com/natural-language> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Grant, 2012. The Battle Of Gaugamela, 331 BCE. [online] Ancient History Encyclopedia. Available at: <https://www.ancient.eu/article/108/the-battle-of-gaugamela-331-bce/> [Accessed 15 February 2020].

History. 2020. Alexander the Great. [online] Available at: <https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/alexander-the-great> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Mark, J., 2013. Alexander the Great. [online] Ancient History Encyclopedia. Available at: <https://www.ancient.eu/Alexander_the_Great/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Walbank, F., n.d. Alexander the Great. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-the-Great> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Wasson, D., 2011. Battle of Issus. [online] Ancient History Encyclopedia. Available at: <https://www.ancient.eu/Battle_of_Issus/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Wikipedia. n.d., Ancient Macedonian language. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_language> [Accessed 15 February 2021].