Steele Brand

But that's what he concludes with basically for that first section is Macedon's problem is that one man's greatness, its success depends on one man's greatness and the temporary favor of fortune.

And almost as an aside, he finishes it out in two relatively short paragraphs in chapter 19 about the number, the courage, and the panoply of the troops.

Now, this is what we would have wanted him to spend most of his time on, right?

As military historians or people who are building out a video game where you're going to have Alexander invade Rome or someone who's going to make a movie about a what-if would have happened or a scholar looking at a fine-tuned answer to this question.

But he does raise some really good points.

He is using his own census numbers where he talks about how many

troops that they have.

He does go into some of the details about the Roman fighting style, how they've got that hybrid heavy infantry with light infantry capabilities.

And then, so he gets into numbers.

He talks about the Romans are just as courageous as the Macedonians.

I think that's probably fair.

I think both sides can be ferocious in war.

And then he closes with fortune.

And this is another one of these questions where

It doesn't look favorably on the Macedonians because fortune has got to keep Alexander alive for a long time.

Now, one thing that I'll close with this that I think that he probably should have mentioned is he should have thought of Julius Caesar.

Fortune did not smile on the Republic with Julius Caesar.

That guy survived a lot, decades of fighting.

And it was sort of extraordinary that he did.

And that's another example of Alexander.