[Sidenote: Grote's unfairness in accepting evidence against him.]
Thus, for example, Grote finds in Q. Curtius, a late, rhetorical, and very untrustworthy Latin historian of Alexander, theatrical details of Alexander's cruelties to the heroic defender of Gaza, or the mythical descendants of the Milesian Branchidæ who had settled in Inner Asia,--details unknown to Arrian, unknown apparently to the Athenians of the day, and fairly to be classed with the king's adventures among the Amazons or in the land beyond the Sun. Yet these stories have their distinct effect upon Grote's estimate of Alexander, whom he esteems hardly a Hellene, but a semi-barbarian conqueror, of transcendent military abilities, only desirous of making for himself a great Oriental despot-monarchy, with a better and more efficient military and civil organization, but without any preparations for higher civilization.
The estimate of Droysen is nearer the truth, but still not strictly the truth itself[158:1]. To him the Macedonian is a political as well as a military genius of the highest order, who is educated in all the views of Aristotle, who understands thoroughly that the older forms of political life are effete, that small separate States require to be united under a strong central control. He even divines that the wealth and resources of Asia require regeneration through Greek intelligence and enterprise, and therefore the 'marriage of Europe and Asia,' of which the manifest symbol was the wholesale matrimony of his officers with Persian ladies, was the real aim and goal of all his achievements. As such Alexander is more than the worthy pupil of Aristotle, and the legitimate originator of a new and striking form of civilization.
[Sidenote: Tendency to attribute calculation to genius.]
§ 65. There is, I think, a great tendency, whenever we come to estimate a great and exceptional genius, to regard him as manifesting merely a higher degree of that conscious ability called talent, or cleverness. It is much easier to understand this view of genius than to give any rational account of its spontaneity, its unconscious and unreflective inspirations, which seem to anticipate, and solve without effort, questions laboriously answered by the patient research or experiment of ordinary minds[159:1]. We talk of 'flashes of genius.' When these flashes come often enough, and affect large political questions, we have results which baffle ordinary mortals, and are easily mistaken either for random luck or acute calculation.