How many times a day do you think about Alexander the Great?

There are those who, on any given day, think of Alexander the Great more times than they can imagine. His empire covered 4,800 kilometers, from Athens to India—but what is surprising is not just the vastness, it is the speed: in just ten years, a Macedonian boy redrew the maps of the world. It is usually said that his military genius is the measure of his greatness. But stop for a moment: why does his name still trigger something inside us today, more than two thousand years later? And why, of all the figures in history, is it precisely Alexander who comes up at dinner, among friends or strangers? The easy answer is the myth of the conqueror: young, charismatic, brilliant. But the truth is more slippery. Edmund Richardson, biographer and archaeologist, tells of how Alexander was also ruthless. He was not only the founder of new "Alexandrias"—between six and seventeen cities bear his name, depending on who is counting—but also a man who did not hesitate to eliminate anyone who stood in the way of his plans, including childhood friends. Yet his allure never fades: each generation reinvents him, cites him, discusses him. Richardson himself, grappling with the ruins of Central Asia, found traces of people who, centuries after his death, still told stories about him, as if he had just passed by. Once, in an Afghan village, an old man told him: “Here, Alexander is still alive. He's just sleeping." The story of Alexander is also the story of those who tell it. Ancient historians lied, exaggerated, and turned him into a legend to serve their agendas. Today, the debate bounces between those who celebrate him as a visionary and those who see him only as a bloodthirsty tyrant. But the question Richardson poses is this: perhaps true greatness lies not in what he did, but in the way he continues to inhabit our minds. What if thinking about Alexander so often says more about us than about him? There is another angle that usually no one considers: most of the cities that bear his name are now small, forgotten, sometimes almost invisible. His empire has vanished, but his myth is more enduring than any wall or statue. In the end, Alexander's greatness lies not only in the miles he conquered or the battles he won, but in his strange immortality in popular culture. If you want a phrase to use: Alexander's real conquest is that of collective memory. If this story has sparked something in you, you can press I'm In on Lara Notes: it's the gesture that says "this idea now belongs to me." And if in a few days you find yourself telling friends that some "Alexandrias" are now forgotten villages, on Lara Notes you can tag those who were there with Shared Offline—so that conversation remains, not just in your memory. This was from The Economist and saves you 6 minutes of reading.