User:Shinydoug/sandbox

Emulation of Alexander After Caracalla concluded his campaign against the Alamanni it became evident that he was inordinately preoccupied with the Greek general and conqueror, Alexander the Great. He began openly mimicking Alexander in his personal style. In planning his invasion of the Parthian Empire, Caracalla decided to equip 16,000 men (more than three fully staffed legions) of his army as Greek phalanxes, despite the Roman army having made the Phalanx an obsolete tactical formation, centuries before. This mania for Alexander went so far in that Caracalla visited Alexandria while preparing for his Persian invasion and persecuted philosophers of the Aristotelian school based on a legend that Aristotle had poisoned Alexander. This was a sign that Caracalla was of an erratic frame of mind. But was this mania for Alexander, strange as it was, was overshadowed by subsequent events in Alexandria.