Tears of Artemis: The Crimes of Alexander the Great (original) (raw)
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The Legacy of Alexander the Great
Early underclassman stuff. Good writing but what happened to the footnotes? This takes a look at the orgy of violence that followed Alexander the Great's death.
2022
This volume is a collection of papers that have been given at an international conference in December 2019 in Bregenz, Austria. They focus on Arrian of Nicomedia’s Anabasis Alexandrou which is our main source for the life and reign of Alexander the Great. So far, scholarship has paid only little attention to the Anabasis as literary cosmos of its own right. The various contributions critically evaluate the still extant general opinion, that Arrian deserves a distinguished status as the main source on the Macedonian conqueror since he allegedly closely followed his sources. But the first accounts of the participants in Alexander’s famous expedition have only survived as fragments and thus their literary production is more or less shrouded in mystery. Hence, the tension between Arrian’s literary creativity, propinquity to his sources, his relationship to his role-model Xenophon merits serious examination when assessing the value of his work as a historical source. The volume is the first attempt to contextualize the work of Arrian against various backdrops. This includes the reign of Alexander, the Classical and contemporary literary trends, the Second Sophistic as intellectual framework, the until yet neglected idea of "empire" as well as echoes and stimuli from the Achaemenid and Hellenistic period. The various contributions create a more complex image of Arrian as an author, his literary production and his idea of the Macedonian conqueror that helps us to gain a better understanding of this complex text and Alexander the Great as its protagonist.
Atti della Accademia Nazionale del Lincei. Rendiconti. Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche Realencyclopddie der classischen Alteriumswissemchaft, ed, Pauly, Wissowa, Kroll (Stuttgart 1893-) Revue des etudes anciennes Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse F. Schachermeyr, Alexander in Babylon und die Reichsordnung nach seinem Tode, Sitzungsberichte der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse 286.3 (Vienna 1970) L. Schober, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Bahyloniens und der Oberen Satmpien von 323-303 v.Chr.
From the mediterranean to universality? The myth of Alexander, yesterday and today
Mediterranean Historical Review, 1999
Few myths have had as widespread a diffusion among different civilizations as the legend of Alexander the Great. From its beginning during Alexander's lifetime, the myth aimed at illustrating special rights to universal sovereignty. For this very reason, it was of longlasting interest to various figures in Mediterranean history who, for political, ideological or religious motives, made claims to worldwide authority. But since Alexander had built his own image not as the hero of a conquering civilization, but as a universal figure mediating between various peoples, his myth could never be appropriated, and remains one of the transcultural bridges our time so dramatically needs.
2018
In Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance one of the main principles for the organization of the multifarious narrative material is the use of Homeric patterns for the constitution of Alexander’s biography. The protagonist combines the models of the Iliad and the Odyssey, of Achilles and Odysseus, in a unified whole. The first part of the romance is dedicated to Alexander’s wars in Greece and Asia, in accordance with the material of the Iliad; Pseudo-Callisthenes imitates many motifs from the battles, duels, and sieges of the great war epic. Alexander presents notable similarities with Achilles: divine origins and a destiny of premature death accompanied by immortal glory. The identification of the two heroes is emphasized in a central episode of the first part (1.42), when Alexander visits Troy, invokes Achilles’ spirit, and wishes for another Homer to sing his praises. The second part of the work describes Alexander’s voyages to the edges of the earth and echoes the themes of the Odyssey. Like Odysseus in Alcinous’ court, Alexander narrates himself his wonderful adventures; but this Odyssean mannerism has been adapted to the conditions of a new age. Alexander’s peregrinations take place on land, not in the sea, in accordance with the historical circumstances of the Macedonian expedition. The descriptions are given in written letters, not in oral discourse, reflecting the literary vogues of the post-Hellenistic world. Several marvellous episodes concern Alexander’s encounters with monsters and beastly populations, like so many scenes of the Odyssey (Scylla, Cyclops, Sirens). Similar to Odysseus, the Macedonian hero progressively loses many companions in these combats and endures terrible deprivations with exemplary perseverance. Alexander’s meeting with the Gymnosophists corresponds to the episode of the Lotophagi: both these communities represent a denial of human culture and sociability, an inhuman blissfulness acquired at the cost of all effort for worthwhile works. In general, the Alexander Romance inflates and multiplies the Odyssean travel legends: the Homeric hero’s adventures are reiterated and merge with one another, like the visions of a nightmare. As in the first, Iliadic part, so also in the heart of the second half Alexander is expressly compared to Odysseus, the connoisseur of many places and peoples. Throughout the narrative the Macedonian king shows Odyssean cunning and inventiveness. Above all, Alexander is dominated by an intense desire for discovery and knowledge of the remotest wonders, which often makes him ignore warnings and risks, to the detriment of his soldiers. Nonetheless, as in Odysseus’ case, Alexander’s keenness to transcend human measure has a touch of greatness and gives occasion for wonderful tales. The two major “letters of wonder” in the Alexander Romance (2.23-41 and 3.17) are similarly structured. Alexander first traverses wild and exotic regions infested with monsters and weird conditions; and he ends up in a kind of Nekyia, entering an area with prominent funeral symbolisms. In the former letter the land of the makares (the blessed dead) is covered by darkness, littered with fountains, and guarded by winged beings, like the Orphic Hades. Alexander receives a prophecy of his future from the guardians of the place, as Odysseus does from Teiresias. In the second letter the grove of the oracular trees recalls Persephone’s grove in the Odyssean land of the dead; there is again darkness, cypress-like funerary trees, and a guardian with Cerberus’ teeth. Alexander hears anew a prophecy, this time concerning his premature death. In both epistles the hero confronts his own mortality (the main theme of the Nekyia), learning of his impending end or losing the chance of eternal life. Alexander remains inconsolable before death, like Achilles’ ghost in Hades. At this point, the exemplars of Achilles and Odysseus come together. Pseudo-Callisthenes simplifies the Homeric models. The Alexander of the romance has neither Achilles’ tragic grandeur nor Odysseus’ complexity. However, these defects are counterbalanced by the broader vision of a vast new world and by a closer familiarity with the popular imaginary.
Concerning Alexander the Great: A Reconstruction of Cleitarchus
2015
The most influential account of the career of Alexander the Great was penned by Cleitarchus in the decades after Alexander's death. Most of the surviving ancient texts on Alexander were based upon his work, but every copy of the original was destroyed in antiquity. Now the entire book has been revived in an exciting reconstruction based upon an in-depth analysis of the surviving ancient works that it inspired. Here you will find Alexander revealed in a startling new light as a very human and believable individual, who drives and is then driven by a momentous cascade of events. Here you can rediscover the oldest and also the most authentic literary portrait of the king spanning all thirteen years of his reign. The persona commonly attributed to Alexander today both in the media and in literature has been overwhelmingly influenced by an account of the king’s career written almost five centuries after his death by Arrian of Nicomedia, a Roman governor of the province of Cappadocia. Arrian’s perspective on the events was just as out-of-date in his time as the perspective of someone today on the era of Shakespeare, Raleigh and Drake. Furthermore Arrian chose to compound the difficulties by censoring details of Alexander’s personal relationships and private life. Arrian’s intention was to vaunt Alexander’s credentials as an authentic Greek hero in terms that he considered would appeal to a Roman imperial audience of the second century AD, but the result to modern eyes is a rampaging, megalomaniacal automaton, whose personality and motives are not only distorted and misrepresented, but are also rendered quite incomprehensible by Arrian’s omissions. For example, modern strategists have read in Arrian that Alexander trotted his cavalry to the right in his most famous battle and have followed Arrian in interpreting this as a weird tactic to thin the enemy’s centre, although, of course, it also thinned Alexander’s own centre quite dangerously. But what Arrian has neglected to tell his readers is that Alexander had to advance that way, because he had discovered that his Persian opponents had planted an array of concealed metal spikes across the middle of the battlefield! Fortunately an antidote to Arrian’s editing survives in the form of a small group of alternative histories of Alexander’s reign whose authors (Diodorus, Curtius and the Metz Epitomiser) also wrote in the time of the Romans. However, scholars have slowly come to realise that all these writers are essentially following the History Concerning Alexander by Cleitarchus, who wrote in Alexandria a mere fifty years after Alexander’s death. Individually, the surviving texts are deeply flawed representations of their archetype. All have huge chunks missing. All abbreviate Cleitarchus, often quite severely. Furthermore, each of them wrote with a unique personal agenda, which caused them individually to emphasise different aspects and qualities of Cleitarchus’ work. Nevertheless, fortuitously, their differences tend to compensate for each other’s defects, so it has been apparent that the reconstruction of a good approximation to the original work is feasible. In contemplating this possibility, the well-known Alexander scholar, A B Bosworth wisely observed that “the exercise of reconstructing Cleitarchus is particularly arduous”. I have wrestled for a decade with the problems that Bosworth foresaw. Yet, though they were formidable, none has proved insurmountable, so I am now pleased to be able to present a finished reconstruction of Cleitarchus covering the entire scope of Alexander’s reign and campaigns. Where Arrian exudes sobriety and reserve, Cleitarchus embraces poetry and exuberance. His Alexander is far more human and therefore infinitely more credible than Arrian’s impassive manipulator of men. In particular, Cleitarchus is much clearer than Arrian regarding Alexander’s motives and attitudes. The Alexandrian explains what the Nicomedian leaves unstated: that the king was essentially seeking to emulate and even outdo the heroes and godlings that he had been taught were his direct ancestors. Cleitarchus makes transparent the extent of the inspiration that he drew from Homer and Euripides. He reveals that Alexander conceived it as his mission to achieve superhuman feats in order to show himself worthy of his putative descent from Zeus on both his mother’s side via Achilles and his father’s side via Heracles. Even more importantly, Cleitarchus also provides information on Alexander’s personal relationships, material that Arrian leaves out altogether. This enables us to glimpse the fact that it was the unstinting support that he received from some of these relationships, which was perhaps the most important facilitator in realising his immense ambitions. In summary, it is possible for us to empathise with the Alexander of Cleitarchus as an engaging and fully rounded personality in contrast to the pale remoteness of Arrian’s inscrutable sovereign.