If Alexander and Julius Caesar were contemporaries and they fought, who would win out?

Caesar

Caesar would've known about Alexander's military tactics better than modern historians due to better sources, so he could plan in advance.

These are known as the Wars of the Diadochi, and yes, they were extensively draining and fracturing to the vast territories of Alexander's empire. But after the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, the conflicts over all the territories outside of Macedon itself ceased. What resulted was the Seleucid Empire which ruled over Persia, Mesopotamia and the Levant, and the Ptolemaic dynasty which ruled over Egypt. Both of which lasted for over 250 years. There were other territories won as well, but I think those were the main two.

My point is, though Alexander's empire faded out because of the wars, it was still succeeded by extremely powerful political and military entities after it was gone. And like another user said, none of this reflects on Alexander's actual capabilities as a leader and general, since all this happened AFTER he was dead.

And Rome didn't?

Couldn't the same be said in reverse?

very well, i would argue that the roman military has seen some shit till cesar and therfore would result in a more adaptable force to change strategy and adapt to alexander tactics.
not organized and enduring turmoil, and lasted more

Alejandro would've known about Caesar's military tactics?

Well, the OP says they're contemporaries in this scenario, so I assume that means these two would have faced off with a relatively similar amount of knowledge on each other.

Oooohkay

I half paid attention to that. Then it really is up to several other factors like weather, terrain, army spirit and supplies, etc. etc.

Alexander would try to get Julius to stuff his boipucci, so I'd assume Caesar.

Caesar was raised and educated as a military officer and presumably studied Alexanders' and many other successful generals' tactics.

In addition, Roman cohorts were a direct evolution of maniples, which in turn were meant to overcome the Greek styled warfare that dominated the mediterranean, it's flexibility is unmatched by anything Alexander could throw at them.

Caesar was more than capable of defeating competent cavalry.

The companions aren't going to do shit. Roman infantry is toll well armed and motivated to be easily broken the way Persians and their levies were.

Actually heavy cavalry is what usually beat the Romans

Caesar would be able to take him out easily. He had a wider array of tactics and an army dedicated and competent enough to do it.

No, it isn't, and it usually fucking failed. Fuck off with your pop history bullshit.

Nonsense, heavy cavalry is useless against heavy infantry, the Romans got BTFO by /light/ cavalry (horse archers).

The Sassanids relied on heavy cavalry and were a match to the Romans.

The same applies to the Parthians, who additionally used a lot of archery cavalry.

To a lesser degree, it also applies to the Seleukids, which mostly relied on their phalanx and later their syntagmata, but their cataphracts, companion cavalry and war elephants played an important role, although the elephants were ineffective against the Romans.

>The Sassanids relied on heavy cavalry

Nope, they relied on horse archers, ie, LIGHT cavalry.

There were cataphracts, clibanarii and simply horse archers.

Clibanarii were both heavily armoured lancers and archers.

Only the cataphracts didn't use bows, but there were a lot of them.

Guess which wing of their army they /didn't/ send in against the Romans? I'll give you a clue: It's the cataphracts.

Unfair comparison.

Alexander was known for being a superb general

Caesar on the other hand was the far better politician/statesman.

Caesar

-better eco
-better defensive position with easier access to the seas and its trade routes
-superior military organisation
-more hierarchical centralised society supportive of military
-soldiers more guaranteed paid, greater reliance between command & action
-greater technology, military and economy
-greater leadership
-possibly ceterus parabus worser artillery but overshadowed completely by next point
-far superior logistics, routing, adaptive mobilisation for all possibly weighted scenarios that may play out
-greater access to capital and finance raising for extended tenures
-harder more diverse, less inbred, genes/genetic diversity specifically off the point of a continual warfare scenario to complete obliteration of one or the other
Julii in general a stronger house with greater spread of roots and subsequent alligence and mercenary raising. Greater business greater house.

Oh and better generals

The line between cataphracts and clibanarii is blurry, and actually even the cataphracts needed skirmishers as an essential part of their tactics: to give enemies the choice between closing the formation and losing a lot of troops towards arrow volleys from the skirmishers, or to loose the formation and make it open to a heavy cavalry charge.

Also, cataphracts could easily beat Roman cavalry, which is needed to keep the skirmishing horse archers at bay.

In fact, cataphracts were used against the Romans, e.g. in the Battle of Carrhae.

You could argue that Alexander was a better general, but Caesar ad access to far, FAR better resources, some that have already been pointed out. The key difference would lie in their armies, of which Rome has the advantage in the their infantry, since the Legion were simply too good of a tactical formation for the Phalanx to really penetrate.

Depends on what kind of force Caesar had. Dude was a tactical genius and could make his fighting force 3x more effective than it should be.

Alexander was at a major advantage most of the time, whereas Caesar had to fight against the odds fairly often, and he mostly succeeded.
Caesar > Alexander > Scipio
They are all excellent commanders, but I'd give the edge slightly to Caesar, as much as I love Alexander.

The Romans already beat the shit out of the hellenistic meme armies way before Caesar.

Caesar with his professional 1st century BC post-Marian legions would wipe the floor with 4th century BC memelord Alexander

Caesar conquered Egypt and the Roman Republic. Alexander conquering the known world is a meme. He already had plans for more conquests and just like Caesar's they were never fulfilled.

>The Romans already beat the shit out of the hellenistic meme armies way before Caesar.
But also way after Alexander.

It's not gonna be any less backwards and ineffective being from another 150 years back in time.

The issue is that Rome was fighting against the Phalanx for a long time in the early republic and were exceptionally skilled at defeating it even before the Marian reforms when they made the manipular system better. The maneuverability alone would have made Alexander uneasy.

>Alexander was at a major advantage most of the time

>implying Alexander would still be using the same tactics and formations 150 years later

HORSE ARCHERS
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you dip

And he did it in 12 years. Alexander was king of the world at the same age Caesar was still a lowly senator

Well now we're pulling hairs. Are we putting Alexander with his full army straight from the time he was around and pitting him against Caesar and his legions or are we putting Alexander in Caesars age as a Roman?

It gets a bit easier when your father made you an army, conquered Greece before you and the "known world" was all under an at most mediocre leader with an unstable empire.

The subject is already a silly level of speculative, if we actually try to imagine Caesar in Alexander's period or vice versa it just becomes ridiculous. At least if we try to look at the real people and armies that actually existed we have something real to speculate based off of.

That wasn't against the actual Macedonian Empire, though. Macedonia was little more than a provincial kingdom by that point, far eclipsed by the Seleucids and Ptolemies.

Mate, if you want to play that game then Caesar's father was a senator of the Republic, which itself had Carthage, Greece and most of Spain under its territory by the time he was born.

What level of philhellenic alexanderboo retard are you on to think that having a senator (though he had other titles/honors as well), who was also on the losing side politically at the time, for a father is greater than literally inheriting a kingdom that was already on conquest road as well as a victorious army?

Yes but caesar had the foresight to empower octavian upon his death ensuring, to a degree, some stability; something which alexander neglected

What kind of retard are you that you miss my point? Caesar wasn't some self-made man who came up from nothing to rise to his position. He also was given advantages. The Republic was already the dominant power in the Mediterranean when he was born. He had a plethora of resources available to him when he was a commander.

Of course he wasn't. But he wasn't remotely in the same position as Alexander. It's ridiculous to try and compare the number of years they accomplished their achievements in.

Well, I wasn't the user who made that claim. The only point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter how they came up if we're comparing them as actual military leaders.

Sure I can agree with that.

Provincial kingdom is pushing it and I don't know why would mention the Seleucids considering that they, under their own 'great', were also soundly beaten by the Romans but that's besides the point. It represents one of the numerous battles where the Macedonian phalanx was ineffective and Roman army came out victorious. It's not impossible that under Alexander's leadership the Macedonian style armies would have performed significantly better, but the track was looking pretty bad by the time of Caesar.

I don't know if I have to point it out but it's generally (with exceptions) pretty unfair to pick someone up, move them 300 years into the future and expect them to perform well compared to people in that time, especially in the context of war.

I'd give it to Caesar no contest.
1)Romans are the best in the world at tearing apart a pike phalanx.
2)romans are the best in the world at a)holding firm against heavy cavalry and b)having reserves to counter hammer and anvil attempts

Caesar would likely win in the same way he beat Pompeii: wait for the hammer, respond with reserves, and then use the superior maneuverability of the cohorts to move around and surround the phalanx. Alexander's companions wouldn't be able to effortlessly break roman cohorts like they did to the lightly-armored eastern spear infantry, and a small break in a roman line isn't going to cause a mass route like it would to a Persian army because the Romans have reserves to fill the gaps, all of Caesar's battles involve brilliant use of reserves and an uncanny ability to turn a losing battle into a fanatical fight to the death that then turned into a triumphant advance.

Alexander would hold all the cards but Caesar has all the right pieces to deal with anything the Macedonians could throw at him. Alexander would take the initiative and Caesar would absorb it and turn the momentum back at alexander.

Maniples were deployed in a checkerboard formation, The cohort or not. They may have been descended from the maniples but they were not maniples.

The fact that Caesar studied Alexander's tactics put Caesar at too much of an advantage in this battle. It's not really a fair comparison.

>Caesar conquered Gaul.
And Egypt. And parts of Spain. And Rome, for that matter.

Taking nothing away from Alexander, give Gaius his due.

Not sure what OP means by them being contemporaries, but if you give Caesar the advantage of his knowledge of a more advanced strategery and how to form and use a more advanced army, he kicks ass, just like the legions always kicked the phalanx's ass.

We'd have a much better idea about this if ol/ Jules had completed his planned war with Parthia. As it is, cowards knifed him before we found out what he could do against a big eastern army.

Of course, that was a big eastern army several centuries more advanced than what Al had.

If the latter, the question becomes to "iffy" to be meaningfully discussed. We have no idea how well Alexander would be able to general armies radically different from what he in fact generalled brilliantly -- and to go the other direction, we have no idea how Caesar would have fared generaling comparatively primitive armies of Alexander's day.
If somehow a "Final Countdown" situation put each man, as he was, into conflict, Caesar has the advantage, having more advanced armies to work with, or at least having more advanced knowledge of how to form and lead an army.

>Yes but caesar had the foresight to empower octavian upon his death ensuring, to a degree, some stability

Caesar fan, but this is nonsense. Caesar in no way made Octavius any sort of heir to his position -- non of Caesar's offices or powers were heritable in any way. Octavius was heir to his name, fortune (which Antonius withheld for at least a time) and to some extnet his client list.

As it turns out, Octavius was the kind of person to capitalize on his adoption, and the wealth, clout and influence that it handed him -- but even there, he was extraordinarily lucky as well, to emerge as the least man standing after a new round of civil wars against older and more experienced generals.

Adopting Octavius as the new Gaius Julius Caesar was not meant to, nor did it, make him leader of the state or ensure any sort of stability -- the young Caesar did not bring stability, he brought new rounds of war with the Assassins, with Sextus Pompeius and with Antonius.

His political skills THEN brought stability as he transformed himself form Caesar the warlord to Augustus the Princeps, in a form totally different from the ruling hand of Caesar the Dictator.

Give Caesar the Dictator credit for spotting potential in the young Octavian, but don't make him prescient.

>Caesar would likely win in the same way he beat Pompeii: wait for the hammer, respond with reserves, and then use the superior maneuverability of the cohorts to move around and surround the phalanx.

Pompeius was general of a phalanx?

(Pompeii is a city, by the way, Pompey is the Anglicization of "Pompeius. Pedantic impulses now sated...)

he basically formed up his line as a phalanx during the battle, a "phalanx" doesn't necessarily mean pike phalanx. The same tactics apply really, only difference being that Caesar likely wouldn't charge the pikes head on and do what the Romans did against the seleucids and just sort of keep their distance and attention, so alexander would never have the opportunity to "hold" the Romans with the anvil, meaning the hammer can be picked apart by itself. If you don't think Caesar would have done this you're an idiot, because Caesar was well read on how roman armies defeated pike phalanx armies.

As far as spelling, who gives a fuck

not him, but at Pharsalus Pompey's field maneuver was directly in the tradition pioneered by Alexander the Great: the host holds down the infantry, the cavalry assaults the flank.

It's the strategy Alexander used time and time again to smash the ill-organized hordes of Persian light infantry. Caesar countered it by holding infantry in reserve to out-flank the flankers, and cavalry never does well in a drawn out slog against infantry.

>Alexander was at a major advantage most of the time

>Alexander was at a major
advantage most of the time

>Alexander was at a major advantage most of the time

WE

What books would you recommend on Augustus, his life, rule and anything in between?

Alexander is like Messi where as Caesar is like CR7.

>Alexander was at a major advantage most of the time

I guess being massively outnumbered in every single major field battle he fought was a major advantage.

just google shit. Find out for yourself. Dont ask to be spoonfed everything, you have the sum totality of human knowledge available at your fingertips. Quit being a fucking jackball and use it.

Didn't Alexander function like more of a morale and inspiration boost for his troops? Always in the front lines of his battles, fighting and risking his life constantly and basically not really commanding his army, while his competent generals did most of the strategical and tactical work from the backlines?

Alexander got as far as he did because he had three things none of his opponents had. A well trained Greek army, as contrasted to uncoordinated bunches of Greek mercs and random multilingual badly armed and badly commanded Persian armies. A couple really good generals, like Seleucus and Ptolemy for instance, who won his battles for him. And the fact that Alexander's very presence inspired his troops a lot - his courage, fearlessness and charisma were a huge boost to their morale. Besides he was smart enough to treat many cities on the way with respect and benevolence, causing them to support him instead of opposing him. Like Jerusalem or Babylon for instance.

What Alexander did was very impressive indeed, but very many things for years before aligned perfectly for it to work. He wasn't that much of a superb general as it is thought.

Alexander conquered a declining empire

>That entire post

>The Sassanids relied on heavy cavalry and were a match to the Romans.
The romans sacked their capital multiple times. The reverse iss not true.

Men with a saddle blanket and curiass are not comparable to fucking catahpracts with actual saddles.