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I think the question really is, why do we glorify people at all? I know that the type of people you mention exist, but I hold them in no high regard. What causes people to admire and even worship others? Why donβt we as a species realize that we all meet the same end, and what causes people to believe that we somehow transcend the inevitable extinction of our species?
Answer these questions, and perhaps you answer your own.
But Alexander the Great literally has the Great in his name.
Not in every culture/language. It's like knighthood, people are going to call a knight "sir" even if they are at odds with the British.
Julius Ceasar wasn't so bad. Parenti's book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome is an interesting read, looking at his assassination as a reaction from the ruling class who felt threatened by his reformist policies that benefited the lower classes.
In general though we do seem to value the lives and experiences of people in even recent history as lesser. I don't know why, it's a good question.
I think you have to ignore large parts of his legacy to consider a genocidal warlord like Caesar "not so bad".
Pursuing the agenda of the populares may have made him less domestically odious than some of his fellow patricians from the optimates, but he was still a member of the ruling class monopolizing power in his person. On top of the whole brutal genocidal warlord thing.
George 'W'...