sikander wrote:"Here we are, 2300 years after his death, talking about this guy. "
But for a benchmark, we would then also have to ask how many people are talking about
*other* historical figures, because the full count would have to take into consideration if Alexander were truly one of the "most talked about" historical figures overall..
Hi Sikander,
Well, it depends again on what your final goal is. You have to choose two main things for a comparison: the dimension and the population.
The dimension is the area of interest: territory conquered, political ability, ruthlessness, etc. Accurate measuring/defining of the dimension plays a very important role as well.
The population is the group of people/organizations/entitities that constitute the observational universe: the whole population of the world past and present, the population of kings past and present, the population of conqueror-kings past and present, the population of kings nicknamed "the great" past and present, and so on. You can choose a population as small or as big as you want.
Which one is the "correct" comparison, then? I don't know, it depends on the area you are interested.
Implicitly, your suggestion is that the dimension is "current popularity". Now, it could be difficult to measure, but you can get some proxies, like "number of results from a google search": 1.34 million for "alexander the great", 1.4 million for "julius caesar", 19.3 million for "jesus christ", etc. Of course, I am ignoring alternative spellings (just "caesar" or "jesus" or "christ" or "alexander of macedon") as well as results in languages other than English, but it is a good proxy anyway. But regardless of the numbers, the next step is to choose the population.
Your choice is "historical figures", but so vaguely defined that it is difficult to know who exactly you mean. I assume the three I googled are included in the category "historical figures", but what about the rest? Ronald Reagan? Walt Disney? John Paul II? Britney Spears? What is, in the end, the cut-off point? how do you decide that Bill Clinton is part of the population but Hugo Chavez is not?
At the end of the day, you can choose the dimension and population that you want, but I guess that a popularity contest will not help our understanding of Alexander's mind. That's why I claimed before that the relevant dimensions are the ones that define him: conqueror, general, ruler, adventurer. And given this, the candidate populations suggest themselves: other conquerors, generals, rulers and adventurers. Also, it could be good to use the population of the (alleged) role models of Alexander: Acchilles, Heracles, Cyros, Philippos.
Of course, this is just my opinion, and I don't claim it is "the" way to proceed. Other people, interested in other areas, may well be interested in other comparisons with other populations. And that's fine as well.
All the best,
Alejandro