But theatricality was at the very heart of Alexander’s style of leadership, as perhaps it must be of any leadership style. Throughout the Alexander story, acts of theatre recur at regular intervals. Daily, of course, he had to make sacrifice to the gods; in Macedonian culture, only the king could perform that central religious act. Bizarre though it seems to us, therefore, his day began with his plunging of a blade into the living body of an animal and his uttering of prayer as the blood flowed. Before Gaugamela, uniquely in his whole kingship, he performed sacrifice in honour of Fear.
–John Keegan, The Mask of Command