best biography of alexander the great reddit

Best Books Hub

Reviews of The Best Books on Every Subject

20 Best Books on Alexander The Great (2022 Review)

September 19, 2020 by James Wilson

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning when you click the links and make a purchase, I receive a commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about Alexander The Great including some of his past experiences and skill as a leader, there are a number of excellent books to start your research. In this article, were going to detail some of the best books that you can get your hands on about Alexander The Great. Be sure to check out these books to further your knowledge of one of the most important historical figures the world has ever known.

What are the Best Alexander The Great Books to read?

The number of books that we surveyed study Alexander The Great from a number of different perspectives. You can learn more about the way that he was as a tactician, his history as well as gain insight into his lifestyle. It is possible that you may not know much on the details of Alexander The Great and some of his upbringing, these books can help to fill in some of the blanks on his lifestyle and help you understand what made him into the man he became.

Best Alexander The Great Books: Our Top 20 Picks

Here are some of the best Alexander The Great books that you can consider to expand your knowledge on the subject:

1. The Storm Before the Storm

The Storm before the storm is a story about the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic. Written by Mike Duncan who serves as the author and narrator for the audio book, this novel explores some of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization through the Roman Republic.

With its founding throughout 509 B.C.E., the Republic system was a cooperative government but a series of peaceful transfers. The early stages of this government in 133 to 80 BC was a tale of bloody battles and serves as a stark warning of a grim political climate. Learning more about the beginning and the end of the Roman Republic means studying great figures like Alexander The Great who is covered in this novel.

• Authors : Mike Duncan (Author)
• Publisher : PublicAffairs; 1st Edition (October 24, 2017)
• Pages : 352 pages

2. The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

The virtues of war is a novel on Alexander The Great produced by Stephen press field. This examination of Alexander The Great examines his life as a soldier and the way that he was able to expand his leadership through his knowledge of working as a soldier.

This is a true story of survivorship including his many battles and the brutal assassination of his father. With details on some of the hardships that Alexander faced, we can see the motivations that drove him to conquer new lands. The Virtues war even insiders look on the lifestyle of Alexander as a soldier. As told from a close perspective, this is the journey of Alexander from soldier to a leader of men. This book can provide some unique perspective on his career and the way he developed.

• Authors : Steven Pressfield (Author)
• Publisher : Broadway; 1st edition (October 19, 2004)
• Pages : 368 pages

3. Alexander the Great

Philip Freeman created his own authoritative biography on Alexander The Great that was written for a general audience. Taking a twist on his first traditional biography on Alexander The Great, this biography explores more the impact that Alexander The Great had on history as well as the shaping of a civilization.

With his image found on Greek coins as far east as Afghanistan, the reach of Alexander The Great was mighty and this novel explains more on that reach and what made his 32 year lifespan so powerful. This general audience interpretation of Alexander the great works as a direct timeline of his various accomplishments and helps to showcase some of the changes that he was able to make in government and as a conqueror. Discover how he rose to power and how he was able to affect change across the world.

• Authors : Philip Freeman (Author)
• Publisher : Simon & Schuster (October 18, 2011)
• Pages : 416 pages

4. Alexander the Great

This Alexander The Great book by Philip Freeman studies the inquisitive mind that would serve Alexander The Great throughout his rule over Greece and throughout each of his military campaigns. As a boy that was born into a royal family in Macedonia, we can learn more about his upbringing in this novel as well as its how his inquiring mind was able to plan conquests throughout Egypt and the world.

Philip Freeman included an audio version of this novel as narrated by Michael page and it is one of the best unabridged biographies and memoirs on Alexander The Great. If you have ever been curious to find out more about the mind and inner workings of Alexander the Great, this is a book that you should highly consider as a starting point.

• Publisher : Simon & Schuster; First Edition (January 4, 2011)

5. Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire

Ghost Throne by Alexander The Great is a look into the bloody fight over his empire and the way that he died at just the age of 32. Within empire that stretched from the Adriatic Sea all the way to modern-day India, the Bloody Empire focuses in on the many aspects of Alexander The Great that have been previously unknown.

Managing his infant son, working with a mentally damaged half brother and dealing with the assassination of his father were all challenges he faced in his lifestyle. James Romm examines more than the Empires under Alexander but also the general himself. This book is a perfect perspective surrounding the empires that Alexander formed and the way that he faced challenges as he pushed further into his career.

• Authors : James Romm (Author)
• Publisher : Vintage; Illustrated Edition (November 13, 2012)

6. Alexander the Great

Alexander The Great by Robin Lane Fox is a fearless and intense look at the adventure and conquest that Alexander The Great would have taken on threat his vast empire expansion. Detailing his road to expansion up until his death in 323 B.C.E. at 32, we discover how Alexander The Great was able to expand an empire into 2,000,000 mi.² from Greece to India.

Learn more about his leadership style as well as the 18 new cities that he founded. This book details more on the cities that Alexander shaped and not so much on the man himself. The book is an expiration of the way that he expanded his empire and the various cities that he formed. If you have ever been curious as to what it would be like to live in a world dominated by conquerors or live in a city as conquered by Alexander the great, this is an excellent book to pick up.

• Authors : Robin Lane Fox (Author)
• Publisher : Penguin; Tie-In ed. Edition (October 5, 2004)
• Pages : 592 pages

7. The Nature of Alexander

The nature of Alexander is a book by Mary Renault that expands upon her acclaimed biographical research on Alexander The Great. As the previous author of fire from heaven and a Persian boy, Renault expands on her knowledge of Alexander to continue showcasing a life behind the battles and leadership.

This is a true psychological rendering of the man that was and a completely unique perspective on Alexander The Great. This perspective examines more on the mind of the leader rather than his deeds.

• Authors : Mary Renault (Author)
• Publisher : Pantheon; Illustrated Edition (November 12, 1979)
• Pages : 276 pages

8. The Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great’s Empire (Ancient Warfare and Civilization)

Dividing the spoils is a novel about Alexander The Great empire including experts on ancient warfare and civilization. Created by Robin Waterfield, this book goes into details on the empire stretching conqueror that was Alexander The Great.

Following his footsteps including the years of war and adventure, we are able to see the path that Alexander The Great took to reach his status of glory. With an in-depth look on the many schemes and tactics that were used to help him rise to power, this is a unique look at what Alexander The Great would have to go to in order to spread his reach. This in-depth academic look dives deeper into how Alexander formed ancient civilizations and how he was able to so quickly conquer. If you are interested in seeing a window into the life of a conquering general, this is an excellent book to consider.

• Authors : Robin Waterfield (Author)
• Publisher : Oxford University Press; Illustrated Edition (November 1, 2012)
• Pages : 304 pages

9. Alexander the Great

Alexander The Great is a book published by Demi and designed for young readers. With a series of illustrative photos inside there are details of Alexander The Great conquering of India as well as his ongoing supremacy.

Alexander’s policies are explored here as well as some of the history of conquering these lands. His full life is detailed over the course of this book and a chronicling of the 12 years that he spent conquering new lands. This is an excellent way to gain perspective on this ancient leader as well as explore some of the ancient teachings of leadership that Alexander The Great had to offer. This is the perfect option for many young readers with its hearty illustrations and easy to read paragraph styles.

• Authors : Demi (Author)
• Publisher : Two Lions; Illustrated Edition (September 1, 2010)
• Pages : 64 pages

10. Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army

Donald W Engels create his own first edition examination of the logistics of the Macedonian army. There’ve been multiple studies into the battle formations and tactics is used by Alexander The Great but this archaeological work as completed by the University of California examines Alexander’s strategic decisions as well as the many options that were opened Alexander The Great throughout his battle plans. Choosing a perspective of examination on what brought this ancient army to life explores battle tactics in a creative new way.

If you are seeking a more in-depth academic view of the logistics associated with commanding an army, this is a book to consider. The way that it portrays tactics and the in-depth research that was completed for this book can help you to see more into the military mind of Alexander the great and the various ways that he would’ve been responsible for managing his army.

• Authors : Donald W. Engels (Author)
• Publisher : University of California Press; First Edition (December 29, 1980)
• Pages : 208 pages

11. The Campaigns of Alexander (Penguin Classics)

The campaigns of Alexander in Penguin Classics is a book that was authored by Arrian and edited by J.R. Hamilton. The original work was produced 400 years after Alexander’s death with a detail of the campaigns of Alexander.

This is one of the most reliable accounts of the achievements of Alexander through Arrians own experiences which were translated and recorded. This is a complete work detailing the campaigns through India, Babylon and Egypt. Gain an unprecedented look at Alexander as a charismatic leader and unparalleled conqueror. This remains one of the best authorities on the many campaigns and details surrounding the expansion of Alexander the great’s empire.

• Authors : Arrian (Author), J. R. Hamilton (Editor, Introduction), Aubrey de Sélincourt (Translator)
• Publisher : Penguin Classics; Revised Edition (October 28, 1976)
• Pages : 432 pages

12. Alexander the Great: A Life From Beginning to End (Military Biographies Book 2)

Alexander The Great a life from beginning to end is a novel from hourly history that includes a complete military biography of the history of Alexander The Great. The goal of this novel is to ensure that you can gain the quick history of Alexander The Great and his many compliments in a condensed format. Available in audio and Kindle format, this is a direct look into the early life of Alexander The Great as well as the struggles that he faced at the end of his life.

If you are interested in accessing a quick knowledge of Alexander the great and learning in a condensed format, this is an excellent starting point for your journey into discovering Alexander the great.

• Authors : Hourly History (Author)
• Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (November 16, 2017)
• Pages : 44 pages

13. Who Was Alexander the Great?

Kathryn Waterfield and Robin Waterfield created this historical book for kids to learn about one of the most interesting conquerors that ever lived. This is an excellent perspective for young readers to learn more about Alexander as a child and how he was able to learn and thrive as a leader.

The book includes interesting thoughts on leadership as well as the message for Alexander The Great and his supporters. As an easy-to-read biography, this is a tale that is appropriate for many young readers to understand the life and times of Alexander The Great. As a book that is suitable for young readers, this is one of the best introductions to the historical figure for younger historians.

• Authors : Kathryn Waterfield (Author), Robin Waterfield (Author), Who HQ (Author), Andrew Thomson (Illustrator)
• Publisher : Penguin Workshop; Illustrated Edition (June 7, 2016)
• Pages : 112 pages

14. The Generalship Of Alexander The Great

The generalship of Alexander The Great is a novel produced by JFC Fuller. This novel details the extensive life and livelihood of one of the greatest conquerors to ever live. Alexander The Great commander army of no more than 40,000 men and was able to conduct a revolutionary war effort.

In this novel, we can learn more about the nature of his governing style as well as the full extent of his ever stretching Empire. As a masterpiece on the career and military genius about Xander the great, this novel could be an excellent way to gain perspective into the past ofAlexander The Great and his efforts as a conqueror.

• Authors : J. F. C. Fuller (Author)
• Publisher : Da Capo Press (February 5, 2004)

15. Alexander the Great: His Life and His Mysterious Death

It’s been over two millennia since Alexander The Great built an empire and painted a portrait of a skilled magisterial leader.

In this novel from Anthony Everitt, we learn more about the man himself throughout his life as well as the nature of his mysterious death. As he passed away just the age of 33, the empire that he created and the science and exploration that he furthered was truly something magnificent. He continued to glorify war and committed acts of remarkable cruelty but his death remains a mystery. Some suggested that his death was covered up and he was killed by his own men, others suggest that he was felled by a fever and died of natural causes. The explanation of his death is completed quite thoroughly in this novel and is well worth an expiration to understand the nature of the time and his legacy. If you have ever wondered about the life and mysterious death of Alexander the great, this is a wonderful option to pick up to solve the mystery.

• Authors : Anthony Everitt (Author)
• Publisher : Random House; Illustrated Edition (August 27, 2019)
• Pages : 496 pages

16. Alexander the Great: Student of Aristotle, Descendant of Heroes

Alexander The Great student of Aristotle is an examination from the in60Learning team. With a complete examination into his education in a way that he was able to gain his undefeated status, we take a look at his life through the 13 years of extreme conquering and expansion as well as in the early stages before he was in the army. His parents and tutors always raised him with the idea that he had something extra to prove and this was a mindset that he continued long into his life of accomplishments.

With more details on his early life and upbringing, we can gain an appreciation of how Alexander was prepared to be one of the finest warriors and generals that the world has ever knowon.

• Authors : in60Learning (Author)
• Publisher : Independently published (February 1, 2018)
• Pages : 39 pages

17. Alexander the Great

Thomas R Martin publishes a unique perspective on the story of an ancient life with Alexander The Great. This novel explains where Alexander The Great truly earned it’s title and some of the most important aspects of his best that led to his legacy.

Learning more about what motivated him, how he succeeded and how he was able to assert judgment in difficult times are all covered in this perspective on his life. This is a true perspective that looks deep into the legacy of Alexander The Great as well as some of the driving factors that caused his need for expansion. We often hear about the details of his expansion but rarely seek definition on the reasons for his legacy and the need for his expansion. This is what makes this book so unique.

• Authors : Thomas R. Martin (Author)
• Publisher : Cambridge University Press (November 15, 2012)

18. Alexander the Great: Lessons from History’s Undefeated General (World Generals Series)

The story of Alexander The Great would suggest that the Oracle of Delphi once told him that he was invincible. In lessons from history undefeated general from Bille Yenne, we learn just how close to invincible Alexander The Great was. As the son of King Philip the second of Macedonia, Alexander The Great had a number of excellent teachers including his education from Aristotle and his command of the wing of his father’s army. By the time he was a teenager he had risen to the ranks of an astute commander.

Learning more about his past and his empire, we can see just how Alexander The Great has become one of history’s most amazing undefeated generals. This book takes a deep dive into political strategy and his command. With insights into his education and the various strategies that he used, this is a book that showcases the many ways he was able to rise to power and continue success.

• Authors : Bill Yenne (Author)
• Publisher : St. Martin’s Press; Illustrated Edition (April 13, 2010)
• Pages : 224 pages

19. Alexander The Great: Selections From Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, And Quintus Curtius

Alexander The Great selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch and Quintus Curtius is a collection of relevant sections from four ancient writers who were responsible for chronicling the life and accomplishments of Alexander The Great. These are some of the closest firsthand accounts of Alexander The Great’s rise to power, his historical impact as well as his conquest of Asia. This is one of the most detailed and accurate historical examples of Alexander The Great’s conquests.

The book is also filled with a series of important additions like timelines, maps, glossaries and more. All of the data in this book has been translated and produced from experts from ancient texts and it is one of the best historical accounts of the deeds of Alexander The Great.

• Authors : Arrian (Author), Diodorus Siculus (Author), Plutarch (Author), Quintus Curtius Rufus (Author), Pamela Mensch (Editor), James S. Romm (Editor)
• Publisher : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.; paperback / softback Edition (March 15, 2005)

20. Leadership & Strategy: Lessons From Alexander The Great

Leadership and strategy is a book that is written by Leonardo P. Martino and it serves as a quintessential guide from a business perspective on lessons from Alexander The Great.

As an unmatched leader for nearly 2000 years, Alexander has some of the greatest demonstrations of leadership and strength from any modern leader. His behaviors and traits have become increasingly more relevant for the modern business world and this could be a book that could teach you some of the most important aspects of Alexander The Great that you could adopt into your own lifestyle. If you have ever been curious about the nature of Alexander the Great and adopting some of his own leadership strategies into your life, this could be an excellent novel to consider.

• Authors : Leandro P. Martino (Author)
• Publisher : BookSurge Publishing (February 14, 2008)
• Pages : 273 pages

Choosing the Best Alexander The Great Books

If you are interested in learning more about Alexander The Great, any of these top books can be the perfect starting point.  There is a wealth of knowledge that you can draw from on this subject with first-hand accounts from ancient historians all the way to modern historical looks at Alexander The Great. Whether you’re curious in the mysterious cause of his death or in the lifestyle that Alexander The Great lived, these are some excellent ways that you can start your research and gain a newfound perspective on Alexander The Great.

Subscribe To Email List

FREE Great Book Recommendations

Don't Miss Out On Books You Must Read

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to c. 500 AD)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2024
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2024
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2024
• Best Kids' Books of 2024
• Mystery & Crime
• Travel Writing
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Make Your Own List

Nonfiction Books » History Books » Historical Figures

The best books on alexander the great, recommended by hugh bowden.

Alexander the Great: A Very Short Introduction by Hugh Bowden

Alexander the Great never lost a battle and established an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent. From the earliest times, historians have argued about the nature of his achievements and what his failings were, both as a man and as a political leader. Here, Hugh Bowden , professor of ancient history at King's College London, chooses five books to help you understand the controversies, the man behind the legends, and why the legends have taken the forms they have.

Interview by Benedict King

Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica by Arrian

The History of Alexander by Quintus Curtius Rufus

The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire by Pierre Briant

The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period by Amélie Kuhrt

Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault

1 Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica by Arrian

2 the history of alexander by quintus curtius rufus, 3 the first european: a history of alexander in the age of empire by pierre briant, 4 the persian empire: a corpus of sources from the achaemenid period by amélie kuhrt, 5 fire from heaven by mary renault.

B efore we get to the books, please could you tell us about Alexander the Great’s background. What was it that led him to go out and conquer the known world?

That suggests that the huge contrast between Greece on one hand and Persia on the other, which is what Greek historians tended to focus on, and which modern scholars also often assume to be the case, wasn’t there quite so much in reality. Alexander would have been more familiar with the kind of things that went on further east.

Let’s explore how the books you’ve chosen shed light on this venture, starting with Arrian’s Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica . I think this was written in the second century AD. What sources did he use and why did he write this book?

Arrian, very helpfully, does tell us who he was getting his facts from. He relies principally on two authors. One is Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who becomes Ptolemy I, the first Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt. The other is a Greek called Aristobulus. Both of them accompanied Alexander on his campaigns.

Both of them probably wrote their accounts many decades after Alexander’s death, possibly 40 or 50 years after Alexander’s death, a generation or so later. It’s also worth saying that, although Ptolemy was there at all the battles, he probably often didn’t know what was going on. I think there’s good reason to suppose that Ptolemy actually used other histories to write his own, even though he was an eyewitness. Alexander had an official historian, or someone who is referred to as an official historian, called Callisthenes, who was later arrested, accused of plotting against Alexander and died in captivity. It may be that for the bits where Callisthenes got to before he stopped writing Ptolemy was able to use his account.

So Arrian is using these two figures. The important thing is that they were contemporaries of Alexander and they’re either using their own memory or supplementing their memory with what other contemporaries wrote. Arrian has slightly implausible explanations as to why you should trust them. He says you should trust Ptolemy’s account because Ptolemy is a king and kings don’t lie.

“I think that the modern tendency to point out how bad Alexander was probably misses the point of what historians should be doing”

A third writer on Alexander, who I didn’t choose, is Plutarch, who wrote the life of Alexander the Great round about AD 100, so a little bit before Arrian. In one or two places in his book, he mentions episodes, and lists all the historians who report the event and those who denied it happened. The most obvious one of these is when the queen of the Amazons visits Alexander. Arrian and Ptolemy both deny this happened, but others, including some who were contemporaries of Alexander, people who were there, are listed as having told this story. So, we do clearly have people, even in Alexander’s time or within living memory of Alexander, telling implausible stories about him. Arrian chooses those who don’t do that.

The other thing to say is that Arrian has probably got a particular reader in mind, and that reader is the Emperor Hadrian. Arrian knew Hadrian. Arrian was made a consul and that would have been a decision of Hadrian. Hadrian inherited an empire from his predecessor, Trajan, that reached into Mesopotamia, that included a lot the territory in which Alexander had fought. One of Hadrian’s first acts was to withdraw from the region east of the Euphrates River—so he was abandoning places Alexander had once controlled.

Part of what Arrian is doing in his book is suggesting that there were things that Alexander the Great did that were good, but there were also things Alexander did which weren’t necessarily a good idea for a wise ruler to follow. So Arrian is using Alexander as a model for how to be a king: setting up his bad points as things to avoid and his good points as things to follow.

One other important thing about Arrian is that he’s from a Greek background. He’s from a town in western Anatolia, but he’s very much a figure of Greek literature. He sat at the feet of a famous philosopher, Epictetus, and recorded his work. He wants to present Alexander in a positive light as a Greek, as a sign of how great the Greeks were in the past. This is a ‘look what the Greeks have done for us’ kind of presentation, or ‘look how glorious the ancestors of the Greeks were.’

Is he focused entirely on their military conquests or does he have a broader point to make about Greek culture?

It’s not solely about Alexander’s conquests, although his skill as a general is mentioned a lot. There are stories about Alexander’s interest in culture, sometimes suspiciously so because, for example, Arrian is not particularly keen to suggest that Alexander adopted Persian clothes, but Alexander did adopt Persian clothes and some Persian court practices. Arrian is ambivalent about these, so he does present these aspects in a bad way to some extent, but at the end he says, ‘well, he was only doing it to be a better ruler.’ Broadly speaking, Arrian wants to suggest that most of the time Alexander is moderate and it’s only occasionally that he is excessive. At the very end there’s a sort of obituary of Alexander where he sums things up and he says, amongst other things that, according to Aristobulus, Alexander only ever drank moderately. So Arrian was trying to play down the stories of Alexander getting drunk and doing things in a drunken fury, although even he shows that this happened from time to time.

So, it’s a picture of Alexander as a good character, more perhaps than Alexander as a bearer of Greek culture. But that Greekness is there in Arrian, minimising the extent to which Alexander was working within an Achaemenid Persian set up.

And is it a good read?

Let’s move on to Quintus Curtius Rufus. This book was a bit earlier, I think, and a bit more negative in its picture of Alexander the Great. Is that fair?

That’s right. We don’t know for certain when Curtius wrote, or indeed who he was. There are two possibilities: either he wrote under the emperor Vespasian in the 70s or, possibly, he wrote earlier under Claudius in the first half of the first century AD. He wrote in Latin and he was probably a senator in Rome.

The other problem we have with Curtius is that, unfortunately, the first two of the ten books of his history are missing. That’s a pity, because it means we don’t have his account of the early stages of Alexander the Great’s career. But, more significantly, it means we don’t have his introduction and we don’t have his conclusion either because there are also bits missing later on. In the beginning, in his prologue, he may well have said something about who his sources were and what his aims were in writing, but we’ve lost that.

He’s using a different source from Arrian. Scholars generally believe, although Curtius never mentions it, that he is using the work of a man called Cleitarchus who was probably writing in Alexandria in Egypt, probably about the same time as Ptolemy. But Cleitarchus was someone who had not campaigned with Alexander. So Cleitarchus is getting all this information second-hand, and it’s generally thought that Cleitarchus is more interested in fantastic stories than Plutarch and Aristobulus.

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount .

It’s worth saying some of these descriptions of non-Greek activity seem to be more plausible and more likely to be accurate than the alternatives. It may well be, for example, that Cleitarchus understood more about Egyptian religious rituals. All the historians give a description of Alexander visiting an oracle in the Libyan desert. The process Curtius describes sounds much more like what actually happened in Egypt than, for example, the story Arrian relates, which we know is very close to what Callisthenes said, and which is probably also what Ptolemy said, which tends to present the oracle much more like a Greek oracle.

So Cleitarchus is probably in some areas, particularly in relation to non-Greek practices, more reliable than the others.

But the other thing to say is that Curtius is writing as a Roman, a Roman senator, in a period when Roman senators were still coming to terms with autocracy. And, if he’s writing under Claudius, he’s writing in the wake of Caligula’s reign and, if he’s writing under Vespasian, then in the wake of Nero’s reign. Either way, he’s writing soon after the reign of a particularly unpopular and unsuccessful emperor with a very bad reputation, and he seems to be presenting, in the book, some of the faults of Alexander the Great as the kind of faults Caligula and Nero were accused of—arrogance, autocracy, tyranny, lack of freedom, a lack of respect for the aristocracy.

“The Macedonian monarchy was modelled, to some extent, on Persian practices or the practices of other monarchies that emulated Persia”

It’s also worth saying that Curtius is very down on the Greeks. He makes a distinction between Macedonians and Greeks and on the whole the Macedonians are mostly okay, but the Greeks are the real trouble. The Macedonian soldiery come across as sort of proto-Romans and the Greeks come across as these very problematic, wily, untrustworthy figures. I think, for Curtius, the extent to which Alexander is more Greek, and therefore less Macedonian, lies at the root of what causes him to go wrong. Curtius’ book is not short on stories about Alexander and, whereas Arrian talks about Alexander the Great’s self-restraint, Curtius keeps on talking about how he loses control of his appetites. For example, after Alexander’s first battle against Darius at Issus, Alexander captures the Persian camp followers, including all the royal household, Darius’ wife and daughters, and also Darius’ harem of 365 concubines, which gave him a different person to sleep with every day of the year. Curtius implies in his book that Alexander the Great took the harem over but says that maybe Alexander didn’t use it as frequently as Darius. Arrian doesn’t mention this at all.

He is also very keen to emphasise Alexander’s reliance on superstition, again in contrast to Arrian. Arrian has Alexander trusting a wise Greek soothsayer, called Aristander. When Alexander starts trusting the Babylonian astrologer/priests who are an important part of Babylonian royal and religious life, Curtius sees this as an indication that Alexander is succumbing to foreign superstition. He is keen to emphasise how often Alexander relies on these things and, because the Romans have a different approach to divination, Curtius is more scornful of all the divination Alexander uses and much more prepared to think that it is all trickery and fakery.

Was that kind of divination being used by contemporary Roman emperors?

Now to Pierre Briant’s The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire . This book is about Alexander the Great’s reception in the Enlightenment, isn’t it?

Just to join the gap, the first two books we were looking at are the earliest surviving, or some of the earliest surviving, narratives about Alexander the Great, even though they were written centuries after his time. In the medieval period people didn’t read the Greek texts, Greek wasn’t a language used in western Europe. Maybe Curtius was read a bit, but the dominant stories told about Alexander came from The Alexander Romance . It’s difficult to know how to describe this because it’s an evolving story that starts in Greek in the 3rd century BC, probably. We come across it in a manuscript that dates from the third century AD in Greek, but it’s translated into lots of other languages including Latin and Persian. Ultimately it goes on spreading into the modern period, so you have Scottish Alexander texts, you even have Icelandic stories about Alexander. And this is a story full of fantasy, it’s imaginative and not strict history.

And then in the Enlightenment period you start to get a return to interest in the Greek texts and in a more scientifically historical study of Alexander and this coincides with the periods of European overseas expansion. You have people writing about Alexander in the light of what French Kings like Louis XIV are doing and other European countries embarked on overseas expansion. A series of ideas about Alexander develops. Then, there’s this big change of direction after the American war of independence, with the British and French focusing more on India and indeed Persia and the growth of Russian power to the north, leaving Persia and Afghanistan as the borderlands between Russian interests and British interests.

You’ve also got, at the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon invading Egypt and the French getting this strong brief interest in Egypt before the British move in. So, at the very end of the 18th century and in the early 19th century the modern battles of empire are taking place in the territories where Alexander had fought, and Alexander’s empire becomes an interesting model for people thinking about their world. Alexander the Great is interpreted in the light of contemporary imperial and colonial ideas and that’s what Briant talks about in this book.

The book was originally written in French and published in France and there’s quite a strong French focus to it, although when the English translation was prepared, this was balanced slightly differently. You have emphases on Alexander as a kind of scholar-King, Alexander as an advocate of trade and the creation of a commercial empire. You also have an interest in Afghanistan as this borderland between British India on the one hand and Russia on the other, and people becoming fascinated by what Alexander did in Afghanistan—where he went, and finding the places that he went to. Alexander gets tied to ideas related to the Great Game, the world of espionage between the British Empire and Russia in the second half of the 19th century.

Briant chooses to end the book talking about German interest in Alexander the Great. This is interesting, because at the time when the reunification of Germany was happening under Bismarck, you have Johann Droysen writing a history of Philip and then of Alexander. Droysen sees Philip as a Bismarck-like figure, uniting the Greeks in the way that Bismarck united the Germans, so these multiple small states are brought together in a useful empire as preparation for Alexander’s imperial achievements.

A lot of modern scholarship has tended to go back to Droysen, and what Briant does is tell the story before Droysen. If you read any modern book about Alexander the Great, although they will say that they’re going back to Arrian and Curtius and the other two or three ancient narratives, their approach is schooled by this tradition of how you write about Alexander that comes to us from Droysen. But before then you have all these other writers—French, English, Scottish—who start to create in their books this 18th- and 19th-century version of Alexander the Great that is, in many ways, the lens through which everyone who writes a biography of Alexander has tended to look.

Louis XIV and Napoleon both to some extent consciously modelled themselves on Alexander, but was there hostility to him it that era, with the widespread reluctance in the Enlightenment to glorify war?

Tell us about Amélie Kuhrt’s The Persian Empire: A Collection of Sources from the Achaemenid Period . Are any of the sources that are gathered in this book closer in time to Alexander the Great than Arrian or Curtius?

The first thing to say is that if we want to get away from the tradition of writing about Alexander the Great that Briant describes in his book, we need to take the Persian evidence seriously and to understand better the empire in which he worked and to recognise that—going back to what I said at the start—it’s not straightforwardly Western Alexander conquers Eastern Persia. It’s Alexander coming from a monarchical tradition that has been influenced by Persia. He moves in and he essentially seizes control of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and he adapts it to his purposes. The other thing to mention is the myth—and again the ancient writers like Arrian, Curtius and others are to some extent the source of this—that Persia was weak, divided, feeble and ripe for conquest. But if we look at the Persian evidence it’s much less clear that it’s as simple as that.

So, the point about Kuhrt’s very very large book is that it gives us a better picture of what Persia was like. I should say, I was torn between suggesting this and suggesting Pierre Briant’s From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire , but I thought I’d already chosen Briant’s The First European and, actually, going back to the ancient evidence is important.

“In the Enlightenment period you start to get a return to interest in the Greek texts and in a more scientifically historical study of Alexander”

The problem we have is that actually evidence about the Persian Empire mainly comes from the sixth and first half of the fifth centuries BC. The major buildings that survive, the inscriptions and other documents, of which there are quite a lot, are mostly from the early period, in particular from the time of Darius and Xerxes. By the time you get to Alexander’s period, for whatever reason, there are fewer inscriptions, or at least fewer surviving. There’s less information about what’s going on. We do have some documents written on leather in the Aramaic language from Bactria—the area of modern Afghanistan—that date from Alexander’s period and that fit in with other stuff that that’s in Kuhrt, but we have relatively little specifically about the empire under Alexander.

What Kuhrt provides us with is a clear idea of how the Empire functioned because, broadly speaking, it carried on much the same throughout the fifth and fourth centuries. Some of the material Kurt includes are Greek reports of Persia, so it’s not all Persian documents. It does include contemporary-ish Greek sources. So, we are reliant to some extent, even when we go back to the sources, on Greek perceptions of Persia. But the whole does allow us to see the Persian Empire as an efficient, well-run state with considerable resources and a highly developed organisation. It’s something that, by defeating Darius, Alexander is able to adopt and take over. And what makes it possible for him to run Persia for the brief time that he does before his death is his maintenance of Persian governmental structures and—what was controversial to people like Arrian and Curtius—his adoption of some of the practices of how to be an Achaemenid King and how he related to the Persian hierarchy by adopting these practices.

Some of the extreme practices that the Greek authors described Alexander taking up, for example getting people to prostrate themselves in front of him, are clearly a misunderstanding of Persian practice. So again, it’s useful to have documentation about the Persian Empire from earlier periods, images of what proskynesis , which Arrian thinks means prostration, actually involves. Descriptions of the practice from Herodotus, writing in the 5th century show that, as far as he was concerned, proskynesis wasn’t about prostration. So, we have these sources which help us to get a more accurate impression of what the Empire that Alexander conquered was like, written by people who were not anxious to sell a particular picture of Alexander.

You say he took over the machinery of the Persian Empire. Was he accepted by the Persians after he defeated them in battle? I mean, did the elite accept him as their monarch or did he face perpetual problems on that front?

‘Both’ is the answer. There was quite a lot of acceptance, but there was resistance, too. After the battle of Gaugamela, which was Alexander’s second and final defeat of Darius, Darius fled to Afghanistan to regroup. There he was assassinated by one of his generals, who then took the throne under the name of Artaxerxes, until he himself was subsequently captured by other Persians. Later on, after campaigning in the Indus Valley, Alexander comes back and finds that, in one or two places, the people he appointed as provincial governors have been replaced and that some of the people who have replaced them are setting themselves up as Persian King. So, there was clearly resistance, but this is from members of the elite trying to re-establish or increase their own status, rather than there being general unpopularity. Probably, for most people in the Empire, it made relatively little difference who was king.

In other parts of his Empire—Egypt, for example—there seems to be no evidence of any problem with having a non-Egyptian king. They’d had that before. Alexander is presented in Egyptian temple sculptures as looking exactly like a traditional Egyptian pharaoh. Similarly, in Babylon the scholar-priests very much start operating their system to work for Alexander. So, broadly speaking, it was possible for him to slot into this new role. Inevitably there were ambitious Persians who didn’t accept it and who wanted to take power for themselves, but I think that that’s better seen as a question of individuals rather than there being a groundswell of opposition to him.

You mentioned that sources directly related to Alexander the Great are quite thin on the ground, but is the picture that the Persian sources paint of him in this book reasonably consistent with what we learn from Greek and Latin sources? Is there anything that’s radically different?

We have no actual Persian information about him. We do have some Babylonian evidence.

There’s a reasonable amount of material and it very much presents him as a typical king of Babylon. So, he’s supposed to do the rituals and they look after him in the same way that they would look after any other king. I think the answer is that, where we do have indigenous sources, which is Babylon and Egypt in particular, he comes across very much as in the mould of how a Babylonian or Egyptian king should behave. In that sense, there is a difference because this—as I was suggesting earlier—is something that the Greek and Roman sources tend to downplay. For example, there are some stories of Persians or Babylonians behaving weirdly when Alexander does something, which are probably either accidental or deliberate misreadings of more typical Babylonian or Persian practice.

Let’s move on to the final book, which is Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven: A Novel of Alexander the Great. She’s a 20th century novelist. Tell us a bit about why you chose this.

There are quite a lot of novels about Alexander and I think that, of them all, Mary Renault’s is the most readable and the most entertaining. It’s the first of what’s called the Alexander Trilogy , although it’s a slightly odd trilogy and the third volume, Funeral Games takes place after Alexander’s death.

Mary Renault really knew her sources. She really understands the material. She has another particular interest and that’s in homosexuality. So, both in Fire from Heaven and in the second volume The Persian Boy , there’s quite a lot of focus on Alexander and male lovers. In Fire from Heaven , this is Hephaestion who, historically, probably wasn’t significant in Alexander’s life until much later, but who was at the Macedonian court. So what Renault is doing is plausible.

The reason I chose Fire from Heaven rather than The Persian Boy was partly because this is the only book I’ve chosen that depicts Alexander’s childhood. One of the other ancient sources, Plutarch, does have accounts of it and, to a significant extent, this is based on that, although Renault does much more with the material. There’s a wonderful episode when Athenian ambassadors come to Macedon and she presents a negative picture of Demosthenes, who in subsequent periods became that last hero of Greek freedom, a symbol of democracy fighting monarchy. Mary Renault’s Demosthenes is this rather unpleasant, badly spoken Greek and his rival, Aeschines, comes across as a much nicer figure and I think this is a more realistic reading of the two historical figures.

The other thing I’d say—and this sort of takes us back to Arrian—is that what authors in antiquity were doing when they wrote about Alexander was essentially telling a good story. This would include writing speeches for figures in their histories. They would base it as much as possible on the evidence. So Arrian uses Ptolemy and Aristobulus, but they would want to make it more readable and in a higher style, more impressive altogether. And that’s essentially what historical novelists do. So, although this is presented as a novel, it is, in a sense, as useful as Arrian in terms of it being a way of getting us to think about Alexander. Arrian has an agenda and Mary Renault has an agenda. Arrian is using sources and Mary Renault is using sources. Mary Renault is more similar to Arrian than most of the history books written about Alexander. They’ve both got this same interest in telling a good story and getting you to react to Alexander in a particular way.

What is the story that the book tells of Alexander the Great’s youth? What does she tell us about his formation?

She is giving us a picture of his relationship with his parents, the extent to which from an early age, he is engaged in Macedonian politics, but also—and this is where she is her most inventive—this particular interest in his relationships with his young companions, his friends and, in particular, this love story between him and Hephaestion with whom he grew up and for whom, when he died, Alexander is said to have organised extremely lavish funeral celebrations. So, it’s about his development as a character and he comes across as an attractive figure, clever and interesting, again, in contrast to a lot of a lot of modern scholarship. Modern accounts of Alexander tend to be rather negative about him, to emphasise his cruelty and tyranny. These days Curtius, with his emphasis on Alexander’s negative aspects, is a lot more fashionable than Arrian. Mary Renault is much more positive.

I think that the modern tendency to point out how bad Alexander was probably misses the point of what historians should be doing. I think it presents a way of looking at Alexander that is unhelpful. Mary Renault’s novel is possibly slightly innocent, but overall presents him as this loveable figure, I suppose, but in a serious way.

One final question, which leads on from that. Do you think Alexander would have seen himself as a success or did he die a disappointed man?

Well, he died young, from a fever while still planning his next campaign. But, I think he would have seen himself as successful. He won every battle he fought, he had successfully taken over the entire Persian Empire. Again, to be controversial, there is the story that when he reached the river Hyphasis his troops forced him to turn back and prevented him from conquering India. I share the view of those scholars who think that this is probably a myth, that Alexander never really intended to go further. He probably did want to cross the Hyphasis but was prevented by bad omens, but he would not have travelled far to the east of the river. He did march down the eastern side of the Indus when he marched down the Indus Valley and that was effectively the boundary of the Achaemenid Empire. He did get the rulers on the far side of the Indus to support him. So, I think his eastern campaign was an unmitigated success, apart from his own injuries. He had to deal with a certain amount of insurrection when he got back, but basically if his target was to take territory from the Persian king, he ended up taking the whole of the empire of the Persians and replacing the Achaemenid dynasty; so that, I think, was a success and he would have recognised it as a success.

He was probably planning to move into Arabia next. He might, had he lived longer, have campaigned further west, but essentially, I think he would have seen himself as having been successful. At the end of the Indus campaign, he has some medals struck in silver, large coins which are called decadrachms, 10 drachma pieces, and they show, on one side, Alexander on horseback fighting a man on an elephant, which is a depiction of one of his battles in India. And, on the other side, Alexander holding a thunderbolt and being crowned by a flying figure of Victory, holding a wreath over his head.

So that’s a symbol of Alexander: victorious, unconquered—a word that sources often use about him. And not only unconquered but, by holding a thunderbolt, equivalent to a god. That image presented of him as the unconquered god was not megalomaniacal, not thinking that he is immortal or anything, but recognising that he has these achievements which are huge, and that only gods and heroes, like Heracles, have ever approached. I think that image is probably how he would have thought about himself at the end of his reign.

February 14, 2020

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Hugh Bowden

Hugh Bowden is Professor of Ancient History at King's College London, where he has taught a wide range of topics to generations of students for over 30 years. His books include Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy , Mystery Cults in the Ancient World and Alexander the Great: A Very Short Introduction .

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander

Server costs fundraiser 2024.

"Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander" by Paul Cartledge offers a detailed yet accessible exploration of the legendary figure's life and legacy. The author's expertise and engaging storytelling provide fresh insights into Alexander the Great's conquests and their historical significance. This book is recommended for scholars and general readers alike.

Alexander the Great 's profound impact on Roman culture is undeniable, particularly when considering the fusion of Greco-Oriental influences during the Hellenistic era, which permeated Rome and, subsequently, Western Europe . His conquests paved the way for cultural diffusion and laid the groundwork for religious and imperial ideologies. His ideological legacies include figures like Pompey and Caesar . The territories Alexander the Great once controlled formed the foundation of Rome's eastern dominion, often considered the culturally and economically richer half of the empire .

However, understanding Alexander himself proves challenging due to conflicting ancient sources and continuous reinterpretations throughout history, often reflecting the agendas of interpreters.

In Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander , Paul Cartledge offers a captivating and comprehensive new examination of Alexander the Great. With his trademark storytelling prowess, Cartledge, chair of Cambridge University's Classics Department, guides readers through the life and conquests of Alexander with precise detail and an engaging narrative that balances discussion on Alexander's achievements with acknowledgment of places where we lack historical evidence.

Cartledge challenges prevailing notions about Alexander's motivations, particularly regarding Alexander's aim of spreading Hellenism. Cartledge argues that while Alexander was indeed attached to Hellenism, his driving force was personal glory and conquest . This nuanced perspective adds depth to our understanding of Alexander, presenting him as a complex figure driven by ambition and a thirst for success.

Central to Cartledge's exploration is Alexander's military genius. Through detailed chronicles of Alexander's battles with the Persians, Tyrians, and Babylonians, Cartledge highlights the young leader's strategic brilliance and innovative tactics. He demonstrates how Alexander's love of hunting served as a metaphor for his approach to warfare , as he adapted hunting strategies such as the surprise attack to achieve military success. This analysis sheds light on Alexander's mindset and sheds new light on his military achievements.

The book is enriched by many appendixes, including a glossary and an extensive bibliography, which enhance the reader's understanding and provide valuable resources for further exploration. Cartledge's skillful storytelling brings history to life, making the ancient world feel vivid and immediate. His vivid descriptions and storytelling make for an absorbing read that will appeal to both scholars and general readers alike.

Overall, Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander is a masterful biography that offers fresh insights into the life and legacy of one of history's most iconic figures. With its diligent research, engaging narrative, and nuanced analysis, this book is sure to become a definitive work on Alexander the Great for years to come. Whether the audience is a seasoned scholar or a casual reader with an interest in ancient Greece , this book is a must-read.

Buy This Book

About the reviewer.

Related Content

The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Caesar As Dictator: His Impact on the City of Rome

The Maccabean Revolt

Cite this work.

Panagi, K. (2024, April 15). Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander . World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/review/403/alexander-the-great-a-new-life-of-alexander/

Chicago Style

Panagi, Katerina. " Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified April 15, 2024. https://www.worldhistory.org/review/403/alexander-the-great-a-new-life-of-alexander/.

Panagi, Katerina. " Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander ." World History Encyclopedia . World History Encyclopedia, 15 Apr 2024. Web. 09 Sep 2024.

Alexander the Great: all you need to know about the empire builder and military genius

Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BC), better known as Alexander the Great, created one of the largest empires of the ancient world in little over a decade. But how much do you know about the military commander?

• Share on facebook
• Share on twitter
• Share on whatsapp
• Email to a friend

In this comprehensive guide to Alexander the Great, Spencer Day presents 17 moments that explain why Alexander was such force to be reckoned with, Jeremy Pound reveals Alexander's early life and considers his role as an empire builder, Professor Paul Cartledge considers his personality and semi-mythic status, plus Jennifer Macaire shares six surprising facts about his life and legend.

Follow the links below to jump to the highlights in each section:

Who is Alexander the Great?

What made alexander the great such a brilliant military leader.

• What were Alexander the Great's greatest battles?
• How did Alexander the Great build such a formidable empire?
• Did Alexander the Great think he was a god?
• How we know what Alexander the Great looked like? Plus 5 more fascinating facts

What is Alexander the Great's legacy?

Alexander III of Macedon, known to most as Alexander the Great, inherited his kingdom (in modern-day Greece) at the age of 20, following the assassination of his father, Philip II, in 336 BC.

After suppressing his enemies on home soil, Alexander moved quickly to reassert Macedonian power in Greece and to conquer the Persian empire, achieving victories across the Persian territories of Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt without suffering a single defeat.

The next eight years of campaigning saw him create an empire that stretched across three continents and covered around two million square miles – south into Egypt and as far east as the Indian Punjab.

More like this

He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of history’s most successful military commanders – but died in his prime at Babylon in June 323 BC, just before his 33rd birthday.

Alternate history: what if Alexander the Great had lived longer?

Alexander the Great: the big questions answered

Paul Cartledege, AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, gives us his take on Alexander the Great...

He combined immense personal charisma and bravery (he often led his troops from the front). Plus he had a priceless ability to identify the key moment in a battle and act decisively to ensure he won that moment.

Where does Alexander the Great stand in the pantheon of great commanders?

Up there in Division 1, with Napoleon and Genghis Khan . He won the four key battles of his great campaign: at Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela and, for me the most impressive, Hydaspes. While Darius III of Persia commanded a motley crew of multi-ethnic forces, at Hydaspes Raja Porus led largely Indian ethnic forces fighting on their own terrain for their own terrain. And, of course, they had elephants!

What was Alexander the Great’s greatest failing as a leader?

One criticism is that he didn’t invest enough time and energy in the peaceful administration of his diverse empire. One symptom is that, at his death in 323 BC, he had three wives but no male heir yet born. In addition, he was too impetuous, too prone to believe alleged conspiracies against his life and too trusting in subordinates who let him down.

Was Alexander the Great gay?

As he had sex with both males and females, he was what we’d call bisexual. He married three times and sired at least two sons, one legitimate (born to his first wife, Roxana, after his death). Possibly his closest and warmest personal relationship was with a man – his near-contemporary Hephaestion, a noble Macedonian who, like him, was taught by Aristotle.

A brief history of sex and sexuality in Ancient Greece

Paul Chrystal explores the many layers of sex and sexuality in various Greek societies – from prostitution to pillow talk...

What motivated Alexander the Great to undertake his extraordinary campaign in the east?

It probably never occurred to him not to carry on where his father had been forced to leave off. Probably, too, his Greek-style education and his love of Homer’s writings gave him the notion of trying to emulate his boyhood hero, Achilles (the mythical Trojan War was, after all, a battle between Greeks and Orientals).

Did Alexander the Great truly believe he was a god?

Without doubt he believed he was descended literally from more than one god, and he almost certainly demanded to be worshipped by his subjects as if he were himself a living god. Was he a megalomaniac? Yes, inevitably. No one but a megalomaniac could possibly have conceived, let alone pulled off, his greatest feats.

Alexander the Great: his life in 17 moments

Alexander the great's empire.

How did a young king from Macedon inspire his modest army to conquer a domain that spanned the ancient world? Writer Jeremy Pound reveals the secrets behind the man – and his downfall

When, on 1 October 331 BC, Alexander III of Macedon faced the massed Persian forces of Darius III at Gaugamela, the outcome should have been a foregone conclusion. Comprising 34,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry, Alexander’s Greek army was by no means small – but Darius commanded a mighty cavalry numbering 34,000 and, it is reckoned, more than 200,000 infantry. What’s more, the hot and dusty plain – in what is now northern Iraq – was home turf for the Persians. Alexander’s men, in contrast, had been on the march for over three years and were over a thousand miles from home.

In fact, the battle was indeed a rout – but not in the expected way. It was the Persians who were crushed, not the numerically inferior Greeks. We will never know the exact figures, but it’s believed that around 50,000 Persians were killed in the battle, compared with just 1,000 or so Greeks. With his vast forces in disarray, Darius fled. He survived – for now – but his reign was effectively finished, as was the once-great Persian empire, which had stretched from Libya in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. The way now lay open for Alexander to press on eastwards and establish his own empire. At just 25, he was the most powerful man in the world – the Great, indeed.

Brilliant military tactician, savvy politician, courageous and accomplished fighter – in terms of leadership skills, Alexander had the lot. Nor did it hurt to be the son of a king who had already set in motion the most significant shift in power in Greek history.

Peloponnesian War : Athens fights Sparta

Read about another major shift in power – the 5th century BC Peloponnesian War between the Delian and Peloponnesian Leagues. Here's why the war began, who won and how, and why it prompted a reshaping of the Hellenic world...

Alexander the Great's early life and reign

Alexander was born in July 356 BC to King Philip II of Macedon – by all accounts a thoroughly unpleasant man, but also a mightily effective leader. In the space of just a few years, Philip transformed his state from a small, peripheral kingdom in northern Greece into an unstoppable war machine. In 339 BC, he won a crushing victory over Athens and its allies at Chaeronea, ensuring that Macedon effectively ruled all Greece.

Alexander won his spurs fighting alongside his father, earning plaudits for his bravery at Chaeronea, but would himself soon have the opportunity to rule. Suspiciously soon, in fact – it’s been suggested by some historians that Alexander might have been behind the assassination of Philip II in 336 BC, killed by one of his own bodyguards at a family wedding.

• Timeline: the evolution of ancient empires

By fair means or foul, at the age of 20, Alexander III became ruler of Greece – and the ruthlessness he displayed in cementing that position bore all the hallmarks of his father. He put down unrest in the north of his kingdom with brutal speed and, when Thebes rashly declared independence from Macedonia, his reprisal was savage: the city was burnt to the ground, its people either slaughtered or sold into slavery.

But Alexander was not merely ruthless. He was also bright enough to know that brute force alone would not keep the diverse collection of states under his power in check. If his study of history had taught him anything – and, with the philosopher and scientist Aristotle as his teacher, he would certainly have been well schooled – it would have been that nothing unites states and their people more than having a reviled common enemy. In 490 BC and 480 BC, the Greeks, who had been fighting among themselves, had joined forces to repel invasions by the Persians under Darius I and Xerxes I.

Now, a century and a half later, Alexander saw an opportunity to turn the tables, and planned a united Greek invasion of Persia.

The expedition that began in spring 334 BC, when Alexander’s forces set off from the Greek mainland, would change the course of history. It was not just his military victories against the odds that defy belief, but also his achievements in overcoming daunting geographical obstacles – from vast African deserts to the precipitous mountain trails of the Hindu Kush in the western Himalaya – in a journey that would eventually cover about 20,000 miles over the course of 11 years.

The initial impetus and rallying call for the expedition may have been that long-held grudge against the Persians, but Alexander also had an ulterior motive: he was determined to reach the end of the Earth and the great ocean that he believed lay beyond. Certainly, no one could accuse him of a lack of ambition.

Early conquests

Alexander’s all-conquering tour began when he crossed into Asia Minor (Anatolia, today part of Turkey) before heading down the eastern Mediterranean coast through Syria into Egypt, looping back towards the Red Sea then continuing eastward through Assyria – where he triumphed at Gaugamela – Mesopotamia, Persia and Bactria, and through the Hindu Kush to the Indus River. If those ancient names seem unfamiliar, look in a modern atlas and tally the list of countries his army traversed to get an idea of the enormity of the achievement: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, India.

Alexander’s forces triumphed in a succession of major battles, not all of them as quick and decisive as Gaugamela. The crucial Mediterranean port city of Tyre (now in Lebanon) was conquered only after a siege that lasted seven months. Cities galore were founded en route, from Alexandria in Egypt (today, the country’s second biggest city) to Alexandria Eschate (‘Alexandria the Farthest’) in Tajikistan and Alexandria Bucephalus, named for the Macedonian’s beloved horse, in what’s now the Pakistani Punjab.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World : what happened to them?

As the pinnacle of antiquity’s ability in engineering, architecture and artistic beauty, the seven wonders of the ancient world still cast their shadow over human endeavour today. And one of them was in Alexandria...

Not everyone met Alexander’s army with stern resistance. Many welcomed their conqueror with open arms and, often, lavish gifts. All, however, soon became part of an empire of unprecedented scope – covering over two million square miles, it linked East with West for the first time in history. Enclaves of Greek culture persist in remote areas of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent even today, legacies of the Macedonian’s exploits over two millennia ago. No figure from ancient history continues to loom so large in the literature and culture of so many different peoples – in many he is deified, in many others he is utterly reviled.

But how did he do it? How did Alexander inspire and maintain allegiance and endurance in his troops as he led them on an expedition that, at times, must have seemed not just ambitious but downright deluded?

Providing the military brains behind unlikely victories such as that at Gaugamela helped – everyone likes to be on the side of a winner, particularly one who is seemingly invincible. Nor was Alexander the sort of general to monitor success from afar. Various sources depict him fighting courageously on the frontline.

Alexander knew all about the effectiveness of what today is dubbed ‘shock and awe’. The shock was simple enough – if you crossed him, he was merciless. Alexander’s path across Asia was a bloody one, strewn with the bodies not just of enemies but also of former friends whom he came to mistrust, and even the likes of doctors and priests whom he believed had let him down. The awe, meanwhile, came from creating an aura of one directed from above, encouraging the belief that his rise towards global domination was preordained. To that end, he employed tactics designed to convince all around him of his credentials.

The Greeks were a suspicious and religious bunch, so Alexander made a point of consulting oracles – which would inevitably confirm that his actions enjoyed divine approval; he even undertook a perilous eight-day trek across the desert to the oracle at Siwa in Egypt. And Alexander’s propagandist Callisthenes was invariably there to elaborate, enhance and disseminate the news far and wide. Much of the success of the Alexander ‘myth’ is down to the handiwork of Callisthenes – an exceptional spin doctor – from the famous account of loosening the Gordian Knot to the touching tales of Alexander’s bond with Bucephalus . Many people were led to believe that Alexander was, indeed, a god.

End of the road

Eventually, though, even the most successful conqueror meets his nemesis. Alexander’s came in the form of the River Ganges. By 326 BC, long years on the road and battle losses – not to mention tropical diseases and venomous snakes – had taken their toll on his troops. Faced with the prospect of crossing a threemile- wide torrent, only to face more of the same tribulations on the other side, Alexander’s army refused. The great adventure was over.

The return journey from the subcontinent was not pretty. The weary Greeks saw their numbers depleted first by flash floods and then, cruelly, a horrendous drought. As for their leader, his once razor-sharp mind became increasingly erratic. He drank more: 24-hour binges became a familiar part of his routine – followed, of course, by a couple of days of hangover. Unsurprisingly, plots against him began to simmer.

In autumn 324 BC, Alexander’s closest companion (and, some claim, lover) Hephaestion died – possibly of typhus fever or typhoid exacerbated by heavy alcohol consumption. Devastated, Alexander declined rapidly. He reached Babylon in spring 323 BC, and in June took to his sick bed. His condition worsened and within days he was dead, aged just 32. Was it a fever that killed him, or had his liver simply given up? Perhaps he was poisoned?

He was, after all, not short of enemies. Alexander the Great never made it home to Macedon. But then he never intended to. As the greatest military leader in ancient history, he left a monumental legacy: his vast Asian empire.

Alexander the Great: personality and godliness

Historian Paul Cartledge looks into the personality of the 4th-century BC military genius to discover what drove him to create a huge empire covering three continents...

Alexander the Great had no low opinion of himself. That’s not surprising given that the 4th-century BC ruler had conquered most of the known world before he had even reached the age of 30. Nevertheless, he appears to have been aware of the value of self-promotion, so besides his armies of soldiers he employed a small army of writers and artists to project the image of himself that he wanted to disseminate to the world at large.

Hardly anything of those original writings survives today, unfortunately – though we do have the works of ancient Greek and Roman historians and biographers such as Curtius Rufus, Arrian and Plutarch who themselves had access to the lost texts by Ptolemy, Aristoboulus, Nearchus and others. On the other hand, large numbers of portrait coins and medallions and sculptures do survive intact, some contemporary or near-contemporary, so that we have a very good idea of the impression Alexander wished to create for his many hundreds of thousands of subjects scattered from what is today Greece (including Macedonia) in the west, as far east as what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.

One thing is very striking about all these various images. They all aim to elevate Alexander not only above the common herd of ordinary men, but above the status of the merely mortal altogether: to the status of a semi divine hero or even a god. Scholars argue as to whether Alexander sent down a formal decree from Babylon (in Iraq), one of his several capitals, actually ordering his subjects to worship him as a god.

But there is no question but that he was indeed worshipped as a living god, by Greeks as well as by Orientals, and there is every likelihood that Alexander wanted to be so worshipped. This was not unprecedented, because Alexander’s father Philip had already been granted divine worship as a living god. And anything Philip could do, Alexander could do better; it’s arguable that rivalry with his father was one of the biggest psychological motivating forces in all Alexander’s major projects, and one of the most powerful influences on his personality.

Who influenced Alexander the Great?

Philip II was, according to one contemporary historian, the most remarkable man Europe had produced. He raised his kingdom of Macedon from a small player on the Greek scene to the major protagonist and arbiter of the Greek world. A man of violent temper and ferocious ambition, Philip fell out with Alexander’s mother Olympias (a Greek princess) quite early on. Alexander perhaps therefore became something of a mummy’s boy – not in the sense that he was ever a timid, coddled wimp, but in the sense that his powerfully ambitious mother saw Alexander as a key weapon in her struggle with Philip, and the instrument whereby she could become not just another of Philip’s seven wives, but queen mother, mother of the heir apparent and eventually mother of the Macedonian king.

Alexander, who admired Philip but also envied his achievements, was probably happy to go along with her – perhaps even to the extent of conniving with her at Philip’s public assassination at Aegae in 336. However, Alexander did once quip that the highly-strung Olympias made him pay a high rent for the nine months she had housed him in her womb.

Apart from his parents, there were two great influences on his life from boyhood. One was the great Thessalian stallion Bucephalas, whom Alexander himself tamed and from whom he was pretty much inseparable from at least his early teens until the death of the great horse, aged about 30, in Pakistan in 326. So moved was Alexander by his loss that he actually named one of his new city foundations after him, in the Indus valley.

The other was Alexander’s boyhood comrade Hephaestion. He came from an elite Macedonian family, and was among the close group of comrades who had the privilege of being taught with Alexander by the philosopher Aristotle at Mieza, to the west of the Macedonian capital of Pella. Hephaestion was a bit older, and a bit taller, than Alexander, and it is probable that at some stage their relationship was more than platonic.

Yet for Alexander sexual gratification was apparently not that important. “Sex and sleep” he is said to have remarked, “are the only two things that remind me I’m mortal”. Or, as his best surviving historian Arrian (a Greek from Asia Minor writing in the second century AD) put it, warfare and military exploits gave Alexander the sort of thrill that others derived from sexual conquest. Not that Alexander was a monk; he is said to have had sex even with a mythical Amazon queen, and to have fathered a child with his beautiful Sogdian bride Roxane (from what is today Uzbekistan). He allegedly had affairs with the Persian wife of a dangerous Greek opponent fighting on the Persian side, and a liaison with a Persian eunuch.

What’s striking is that his preferred sexual partners were mainly Oriental rather than Greek or Macedonian. Philip is said to have fought his wars by marriages, that is by concluding diplomatic marriage alliances as a way to secure a victory, or as an alternative to fighting in order to decide the issue of territorial control. Alexander preferred to settle disputes by fighting, on the whole. However, even he took three wives, the other two besides Roxane both being Persian princesses.

• What was pederasty in ancient Greece?

Alexander the Great away from the battlefield

When Alexander was not fighting, there was nothing he loved to do more, for relaxation, than hunt. Big game hunting, that is – wild boar and lions; not child’s play quarries like hares or doves. In Macedon there were two tests of manhood: killing a wild boar and killing a man in battle. Alexander had passed both of those by the time he was sixteen, besides hunting the wild mountain lions and sharp-eyed lynxes that still abounded in the western Macedonian upland country. Bucephalas served Alexander no less faithfully as his hunting mount than as his number one warhorse. When the going got tough on campaign (as it did in Iran, Afghanistan and central Asia after he had defeated Great King Darius III of Persia and taken his crown) a reward for any success was a day’s hunting in a game park. In one of these hunting sprees near modern Samarkand, no fewer than 4,000 animals were allegedly slaughtered. It is the same dedicated hunter’s mentality that made Alexander ruthless in pursuit of all his goals.

Historians have argued since antiquity over what might have been Alexander’s ultimate goal, had he not died prematurely (and probably of a malarial or typhoid fever rather than by an assassin’s poison-bearing hand) at Babylon in 323 aged just 32. One theory takes us back to our starting point, to his self-projection as more than merely mortal. Certainly, he was religious, even superstitious, a trait he seems to have inherited or at any rate could easily have learned from his mother.

How did Alexander the Great die?

He relied especially heavily on the guidance of his personal diviner, Aristander, a Greek from Telmissus in what is now southwestern Turkey. Aristander’s interpretation of portents such as the behaviour of birds could mean life or death for Alexander’s supposed friends no less than his sworn enemies. Consultation of oracular shrines was a fixed part of Alexander’s routine. Apollo’s seat at Delphi in central Greece was hardly out of his way in 336, and the priestess there was made to prophesy that he would be invincible.

But the trip to the oasis of Siwa in Egypt’s western desert in 332, a dangerous journey over several hundred waterless and dust ridden kilometres, was a different proposition. Alexander gravely announced that the oracle’s presiding deity Ammon, whom the Greeks often identified with their Zeus, had promised him his heart’s desire. But what that was has to be inferred from his subsequent behaviour. It was something to do with the truth about his origins; the oracle seems to have confirmed Alexander in his belief that he had been born the son of a god, rather than a mortal.

Not all his closest companions were as enamoured as he was of the notion that Philip was just Alexander’s “so-called father”. Nor did they all follow Hephaestion’s lead in paying to Alexander the kind of public adoration that they thought was appropriate only for a true Olympian divinity. Persians too had not been in the habit of recognising their Great King as a living god but had seen him rather as the vicar on earth of the great god of light Ahura Mazda. Some of Alexander’s Oriental subjects, on the other hand, such as the Egyptians, would have thought less of him as their king if he had not been the recipient of divine worship. So, as well as being one of the major drivers of his personality, Alexander’s intimations of godhead could easily have been one of the major causes of dissension at the heart of his mixed Greek-Oriental court.

Posterity has generally been more kind to Alexander, variously venerating or indeed worshipping him as a saint as well as a wonder-working holy man and military hero. Within the sphere of recent critical scholarship, however, a distinct note of hostility can be detected, influenced perhaps by contemporary experience of bloodshed in regions such as Afghanistan and Iraq that Alexander himself once traversed. Those scholars who see Alexander as little but a natural-born killer might bear in mind the words of the American poet Robert Lowell, in his poem The Death of Alexander : "No one was like him. Terrible were his crimes – but if you wish to blackguard the Great King, think how mean, obscure, and dull you are, your labors lowly and your merits less..."

6 things you (probably) didn’t know about Alexander the Great

Author Jennifer Macaire shares six surprising facts about the Macedonian conqueror...

Alexander played polo

Legend has it that when Alexander the Great was about to invade Persia in 334 BC, the Persian king Darius III sent him a polo mallet and ball. It’s thought that this gesture was either inviting the Macedonian to a game, or he was suggesting that Alexander should “stick to games and avoid war”. Whatever the intention, Alexander is said to have replied: “I am the stick and the ball is the Earth” – before going on to conquer Persia.

Polo, one of the oldest sports in the world, likely originated somewhere in Central Asia. Mounted nomads played a version of polo that was part sport, part training for war, with as many as 100 men on a side. If its origins are obscure, there is ample evidence of the game’s regal place in the history of Asia: the game followed the nomads’ migration to Persia sometime between 600 BC and 100 AD and the Persians adopted polo as their national sport, where it was played by nobles and soldiers alike.

Some stories say Alexander the Great spent time with the Persian royal family when he was young, accompanying his father on diplomatic missions. Alexander most likely saw polo games on his many forays into Persia, and perhaps even played the “sport of kings”.

He may have gone underwater in a diving bell

Almost immediately after his death in 323 BC, legends began to spread about Alexander the Great’s exploits and life which, over the centuries, became increasingly fantastic as well as allegorical. Collectively, this tradition is called the Alexander Romance and the stories feature such episodes as Alexander ascending through the air to paradise; journeying to the bottom of the sea in a glass bubble; and voyaging through the “Land of Darkness” in search of the “Fountain of Youth”.

Writing attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle references a diving bell, describing a cauldron forced straight down into water, thus keeping the air within it. In fact, it’s possible that Alexander the Great saw, or was perhaps even in , a glass diving bell. There are stories about him visiting the bottom of the ocean in a glass ball during his famous siege of Tyre (Lebanon), where it is said Alexander used divers to remove underwater obstacles from the harbour, and that the divers used crude glass diving bells. These may very well be just legends, but it is conceivable that Alexander, who was curious to learn about everything, had a go in a glass diving bell himself.

We almost certainly know what he looked like

The Azara herm is a Roman copy of a bust of Alexander the Great that was almost certainly made by the Greek sculptor Lysippus. According to the Greek writer Plutarch, Alexander made Lysippus his ‘official’ portrait artist during his reign. Thanks to its original inscription, this figure can be definitely identified as Alexander the Great, son of Philip II of Macedon.

Since the Azara herm is a Roman copy made centuries after Alexander’s death, it is likely not as precise as the original. The bust was unearthed in 1779 during an excavation at Tivoli, Italy, organised by Joseph Nicolas Azara (1730–1804), the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See (and, later, to France). Azara presented the sculpture to Napoleon Bonaparteas a diplomatic gift. Today it resides in the Louvre museum in Paris.

For a time, this was the only known portrait of Alexander the Great, and it is generally regarded as the surviving portrait that looks the most like him.

Much of Plutarch's famous writings about Alexander the Great can be considered fiction

The Greek writer Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives, his series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, in pairs: his famous biography of Alexander is paired with Julius Caesar.

However, Plutarch’s reliability as a biographer is questionable. He lived 400 years after Alexander the Great and contemporary writings were scarce. Plutarch was also Greek and the Greeks saw Alexander as an “upstart barbarian”: firstly, because of historic snobbery (anyone non-Greek was considered a “barbarian”); and secondly, because the Greeks still resented the Macedonians who, under Alexander’s father, had conquered Greece through battles and diplomacy.

Plutarch begins his biography by saying he’s not writing “history”, but rather “a life story”, because, he goes on to explain, it’s better to get to know a person from his character and his jokes than from endless battles fought and won. He pretends to glorify Alexander beyond reason, writing: “On his father’s side, he was descended from Hercules”. However, since Alexander himself had claimed the title of “son of Zeus”, Plutarch was definitely trying to take him down a peg.

Nevertheless, Plutarch’s biography does include some fascinating titbits of information, such as his claim that the battle of Gaugamela (the decisive battle Alexander the Great fought against Persia in 331 BC) was fought during an eclipse. He also describes how Alexander the Great spent the night before the battle in his tent with his diviner, Aristander, performing certain mysterious ceremonies and sacrificing to the god Fear .

Alexander's the Great's favourite military tactic was the phalanx

The phalanx – a rectangular mass military formation made up of closely ranked troops – was a formidable fighting machine. The spears used by soldiers in a phalanx were long – sometimes as long as five metres – and made of sharpened wood or metal-tipped wood. The tactic was perfected by Alexander’s father, Philip, who first learned of it after observing Greek armies.

According to the Greek historian Arrian’s Anabasis written in the second century AD: “Alexander drew up his army in such a way that the depth of the phalanx was 120 men; and […] he ordered them to preserve silence, in order to receive the word of command quickly.”

Macedonian author Polyaenus (in Stratagemata, also in the second century AD) says that Alexander spitefully made his men who had not fought bravely enough in battle wear the so-called hemithorakion – a half armour system that only covered the front part of the body. This punitive experiment made sure that the soldiers wouldn’t turn their backs on the enemy.

However, in reality the soldiers in a phalanx would actually not require much armour – coordinated, fast movement was what made the phalanx so effective. Polyaenus describes the Macedonian infantrymen of the phalanx as being armed with helmets ( kranos ); light shields ( pelte ); greaves ( knemides ) and a long pike ( sarissa ) – notice that armour is conspicuously missing from this list.

But while Alexander the Great led one of the most successful armies of all time, surprisingly little is understood about the main type of body armour that both he and many of his men wore – the linothorax – as there are no surviving examples. The linothorax was a type of body armour created by laminating together layers of linen. It wrapped around the torso and tied over the shoulder with two flaps. The most famous image of this kind of body armour is the Alexander Mosaic: a celebrated ancient mosaic which was found in the largest house in Pompeii – the House of the Faun – and depicts Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Persian king Darius.

When his friend Hephaestion, Alexander held a hugely expensive funeral

Hephaestion was a member of Alexander’s personal bodyguard and a general in his army. He was also Alexander’s best friend, right-hand man, and some say his lover as well. When he died suddenly in Ecbatana from unknown causes, Alexander wrote to the Oracle at Siwa in Egypt and asked if Hephaestion should be honoured as a god or a hero. The Oracle replied that he should be honoured as a hero, and so Alexander went all out for a mausoleum/funeral pyre designed to impress.

The Library of History , compiled by Diodorus Siculus, includes several accounts of the funeral pyre, of which there were seven levels – each level more lavishly decorated than the last.

Perched upon the bottom layer of 240 golden prows of ships and held up by palm tree trunks, Siculus says, there were: “Torches fifteen cubits high with golden wreaths about their handles. At their flaming ends perched eagles with outspread wings looking downward, while about their bases were serpents looking up at the eagles, […] a multitude of wild animals being pursued by hunters, […] a centauromachy rendered in gold, while the fifth [level] showed lions and bulls alternating, also in gold. The next higher level was covered with Macedonian and Persian arms, testifying to the prowess of the one people and to the defeats of the other. On top of all stood Sirens, hollowed out and able to conceal within them persons who sang a lament in mourning for the dead. The total height of the pyre was more than one hundred and thirty cubits.”

A cubit is an ancient measurement of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the longest finger, so it varies. But the pyre, as described here, could have been more than 50 metres high. Alexander the Great plundered the treasuries of all his cities to pay for the monument – it has been estimated to have cost the modern equivalent of two billion dollars.

Alexander the Great had made his seat of government in Babylon, the capital of Babylonia (the alluvial plain between the Euphrates and Tigris), and he wanted to hold the funeral ceremony within the walls of the city. However, the monument was so huge that Alexander had to break down one of the city’s walls to get it inside. He then set the monument on fire, cremating the general’s body along with the magnificent pyre.

Spencer Day examines how Alexander left his mark on the lands he conquered...

According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great founded 70 towns and cities, including at least 16 that he modestly named Alexandria.

For centuries, historians and military strategists alike have extolled Alexander’s genius as a soldier, and rightly so. But, for all that, perhaps his greatest impact on human history derives not from his brilliance as a commander but as a supreme cultural ambassador.

Alexander didn’t simply wipe cities from the face of the Earth, before moving on to the next target – not all the time anyway. Instead, he left colonies of fellow Macedonians to administer conquered population centres, and they went about disseminating Greek methods of expression and thinking.

As a result, peoples from modern-day Turkey through Asia Minor all the way to India played Greek sports, watched Greek theatre, mimicked Greek art and adopted Greek scientific practices. In many cases, they continued to do so for centuries.

The cities of Ai Khanum in what is now Afghanistan and Philoteris in Egypt may have been separated by some 3,000 miles but they both boasted Greek gymnasiums. Ai Khanum was also home to an Acropolis, a theatre and library – a direct consequence of Alexander’s extraordinary conquests.

Alexander’s incursion into India was brief and bloody, but its impact on the subcontinent’s culture was significant. It inspired the anthropomorphic representation of the Buddha in Indian sculpture and the appearance of Greek mythological figures, including Herakles, in Buddhist literature. It may even lie behind Indian astrologers’ adoption of the signs of the zodiac.

It seems that Alexander’s cultural impact may even have spread beyond the borders of his massive empire, perhaps seeping into China. The theorem of Pythagoras reached the Chinese within decades of Alexander’s death, and it’s thought that the Terracotta Army may have been influenced by Greek models.

But perhaps Alexander’s most enduring cultural legacy was the fact that, for a thousand years, Greek became the ‘lingua franca’ of the near east. As a result, when the Christian New Testament was first recorded, it was written down in Greek, the very language that Alexander had himself spoken hundreds of years earlier.

This article is curated from content first published by HistoryExtra, BBC History Revealed and BBC History Magazine

STUDENT OFFER - Get access to our Collector's Edition when you try 5 issues for £5

Sign up for the weekly HistoryExtra newsletter

Sign up to receive our newsletter!

By entering your details, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and privacy policy . You can unsubscribe at any time.

Student offer - 5 issues for £5

+ Access to a trove of study aides

USA Subscription offer!

Save 76% on the shop price when you subscribe today - Get 13 issues for just $45 + FREE access to HistoryExtra.com

HistoryExtra podcast

Listen to the latest episodes now

Alexander the Great Top Ten Booklist

Creating a top ten list for books on Alexander the Great is not easy, since few ancient historical figures have been written about as much. Everything from his complex personality and his sexual life to his military and logistical tactics have been analyzed by historians. Alexander, simply put, stands out as unique among ancient historical figures for having so much detailed assessment made on his life and times. Although few primary sources exist from the time of Alexander, we know a lot about him from late Antiquity sources.

Top Ten Books

Naiden, F.S. Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great . Oxford, Oxford Univesity Press. Most accounts of Alexander the Great essentially ignored the reality that he was, in addition to soldier and leader, he was also a religious figure. As information of Alexander's campaign in the Near East has come to light over the past 30 years, the religious aspects of his conquests have become clearer. Naiden's work fundamentally shifts the narrative of Alexander's life as a soldier, priest and even god.

Cartledge, Paul (2004). Alexander the Great (1st ed) . (Overlook Press, 2004) Paul Cartledge is one of the foremost experts on Ancient Greece. His book focuses on Alexander's ambition and his military campaigns.

Freeman, Philip. (2011). Alexander the Great . New York: Simon & Schuster. Considered today to be the easy reading and more captivating historical presentation on one of history's great figures. Freeman uses his strong presentation skills to grip the audience to know more about Alexander.

Arrian, Mensch, P., & Romm, J. S. (2010). The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander . Anabasis Alexandrous: a new translation (1st ed). New York: Pantheon Books. One of the battlefield books. This exposes in detail the 12 odd years of campaigning that Alexander took to conquer much of the known world.

Briant, Pierre (2010). Alexander the Great and his Empire: A Short Introduction . Princeton: Princeton University Press. One of the best books out there. It looks at the complex influences and history. More than the West dominating the East, Briant shows Alexander learned much from his enemies and that changed the world.

Martin, T. R., & Blackwell, C. W. (2013). Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Another book that looks at the complexities of Alexander and the totality of his humanity, from warrior to deep thinker.

Engels, D. W. (2007). Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Nachdr.). Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press. This is a great book for those interested in military warfare. An army wins through its stomach and supplies and this book explains how Alexander conquered this unseen enemy.

Related DailyHistory.org Articles

Admin and Maltaweel

Advertisement

7 Reasons Alexander the Great Was, Well, Great

• Share Content on Facebook
• Share Content on LinkedIn
• Share Content on Flipboard
• Share Content on Reddit
• Share Content via Email

When Alexander III of Macedon died in Babylon at just 32 years old, he ruled a territory that spanned three continents and covered nearly 2 million square miles (5 million square kilometers). Not only was he the king of his native Macedonia, but he was also ruler of the Greeks, the king of Persia and even an Egyptian pharaoh .

So, did he deserve the title Alexander the Great? Absolutely.

"It's hard to imagine another human being whose personal choices had an impact on more people's lives for many centuries than Alexander," says historian Elizabeth Carney, an Alexander scholar from Clemson University in South Carolina.

"Because of the decisions Alexander made, hundreds of thousands of people died, any number of political entities disappeared or were replaced. And perhaps most importantly, he helped launch this vast cultural enterprise that combined aspects of the Greek and Macedonian world with aspects of the various worlds he conquered."

With that in mind, here are some other big things about him.

• Aristotle Was His High School Teacher
• His Father Was Pretty Great Too
• Alexander Knew How to Crush a Rebellion
• He Stomped the Persian Empire
• He Was a Globalist
• Alexandria Became the Intellectual Capital of the World
• He May Have Been the World's First Action Hero

1. Aristotle Was His High School Teacher

OK, there was no such thing as high school in the fourth century B.C.E., but young Alexander was famously tutored from the ages of 14 to 16 by none other than Aristotle , one of the fathers of Western philosophy and arguably the greatest intellectual mind of Ancient Greece.

Aristotle would have been around 40 years old when he was hired by Alexander's powerful father Phillip II as a court philosopher. Aristotle, a student of Plato, wasn't yet a philosophical superstar and would have taught the prince science and math in addition to literature and philosophy.

What exactly was Aristotle's influence on the man Alexander would become? Historians can only guess. One clue is that Alexander loved the works of Homer and is rumored to have slept with a copy of "The Iliad." And Alexander didn't forget his geography lessons when he marched his army across the known world.

"Great advances in science, especially in geographical knowledge, were made as a result of Alexander's campaigns," wrote Michael Tierney in a 1942 study of Alexander and Aristotle , "and that they were possible is unquestionably due to Aristotle."

But both Tierney and Carney are unconvinced that Aristotle's political teachings on good government and good citizens shaped the way that Alexander operated as a leader.

"Is Alexander's political thinking affected by Aristotle?" asks Carney. "I would tend to say not at all."

2. His Father Was Pretty Great Too

The Kingdom of Macedonia was a political backwater before Alexander's father Phillip turned it into a military superpower. Tired of being pushed around by Greek city-states like Athens and Thebes, Phillip transformed the ragtag Macedonian army into a well-oiled fighting machine.

The pride of the Macedonian military was its well-trained cavalry and an unbreakable infantry formation called the Macedonian phalanx . Armed with elongated hunting spears called sarissas — 18-foot (5.5-meter) wooden poles with iron tips — Phillip's infantry would march in tight formations of eight men across and 16 deep. Each row would lower its spears in succession, impaling charging armies and horses.

When 20-year-old Alexander took the throne after Phillip was assassinated in 336 B.C.E., he inherited his father's army that had already crushed Macedonia's rivals on the Greek mainland and was rolling toward Persia.

Phillip is best remembered as the father of Alexander the Great, but Alexander may never have achieved his greatness if not for Phillip's huge head start. Historians still struggle to figure out who deserves the most credit for Macedonia's dominance.

"Rarely in history does somebody so able and famous have an equally able and famous successor," says Carney. "It makes it very hard to draw a line."

3. Alexander Knew How to Crush a Rebellion

After Phillip's death, several towns and territories under Macedonian control tried to break free. While young Alexander was busy getting the northern kingdoms of Thrace and Illyria back in line, the Greek leaders of Thebes heard a rumor that Alexander had actually been killed in battle.

No such luck. When Alexander received word that the Macedonian garrison in Thebes was under attack, he and his army flew to the fight, supposedly covering 300 miles (482 kilometers) in just 12 days . In the ensuing Battle of Thebes, Alexander decided to send a clear message. Anyone who crosses Macedonia will not only be defeated, but obliterated.

According to the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily , 6,000 Theban soldiers and citizens were killed and 30,000 captured before the city was burned to the ground. He wrote:

The tactics were cruel, but the message was received. Alexander was the undisputed new ruler of the Greeks.

4. He Stomped the Persian Empire

The Persian Empire had ruled the Mediterranean for two centuries when Alexander marched his 50,000-man army across the Hellespont to face King Darius III, who reportedly commanded a total Persian army of more than 2.5 million men .

The pivotal battle came near the Persian town of Gaugamela, where Darius had the land flattened and cleared to give advantage to his horse-drawn chariots. The Persians numbered 250,000 at Gaugamela, a seemingly insurmountable five-to-one advantage over the Macedonians, but Darius ended up playing right into Alexander's hand.

In what's known as a "pawn sacrifice," Alexander sent in thousands of troops to draw Darius' resources to the right flank. The sacrificed troops were able to distract Darius long enough for Alexander to launch a cavalry attack through a weak link in the center of the Persian line. Darius turned and fled as the famed Macedonian cavalry, led by Alexander, steamrolled through the Persian defenses.

After Darius was murdered by one of his cousins (and his head presented to Alexander), Alexander was crowned the new king of all of Persia, extending the Macedonian empire from modern-day Israel through Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

5. He Was a Globalist

Alexander's conquests, not only of the Persian Empire, but also Egypt and parts of India, launched the Hellenistic period, during which elements of Greek culture and politics were spread throughout the vast Macedonian Empire.

Alexander wasn't a Greek nationalist, intent on imposing Greek customs on every land he conquered. Instead, he folded foreign customs and religious beliefs into the fabric of his growing empire, winning the loyalty of his newly conquered subjects. The result was a Greek-speaking network of trade and military power that ruled the Mediterannean and Near East for three centuries.

6. Alexandria Became the Intellectual Capital of the World

Alexander founded more than 70 cities during his eight-year, 11,000-mile (17,703-kilometer) march throughout the Middle and Near East, but none compared to the grandeur that was Alexandria in Egypt.

Although Alexander chose the spot for the coastal city that bore his name, he didn't design it nor live long enough to see it flourish. After Alexander's death, the Macedonian Empire was chopped into three and ruled by each of his generals. Egypt fell under the control of Ptolemy and became known as the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

The Ptolemies spoke Macedonian Greek and filled Alexandria with Greek-style public buildings, including the famous library, which once held an estimated 700,000 scrolls , the greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world.

The brilliant Greek mathematicians Euclid and Eratosthenes called Alexandria home, and the Ptolemaic navy commanded a huge fleet that pushed Alexandria's discoveries out into the wider world.

When Alexander died suddenly in Babylon from a fever at just 32 years old, the Ptolemies intercepted his funeral procession on the way back to Macedonia and built a glass sarcophagus in Alexandria where subjects could pay tribute to Alexander's mummy for centuries.

7. He May Have Been the World's First Action Hero

Alexander's heroics were written up in a series of fictionalized adventure stories called the " Alexander Romance ", some of which date back to within a century of his death in 323 B.C.E.. Medieval versions are chock-full of sexy escapades, narrow escapes and colorful illustrations.

Next to the Bible and Quran, it's argued that the "Alexander Romance" traveled further and was translated into more languages than any other ancient collection of stories.

Fourteenth-century texts include the tale of Alexander exploring the ocean depths using a diving bell . But when Alexander settles on the ocean floor, his mistress double-crosses him, eloping with her lover and leaving him stranded in the deep.

For Carney, the popularity of the "Alexander Romance" reflects the enduring allure of this world-changing figure.

"Alexander grabbed people's imagination," says Carney. "That he was so young; that he wasn't defeated in a major battle; that things happened so quickly; he was such a risk taker and he went to all these places that seemed exotic."

Alexander's mother, Olympias, deserves credit for his rise to greatness, too. Greek historians report that she had several rival heirs to the throne murdered after Phillip's death.

Alexander The Great FAQ

How long did alexander the great rule, why was alexander the great called “the great”, what did alexander the great die of, how far did alexander the great's empire reach, how did alexander the great’s father die.

Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article:

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

by Philip Freeman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 2011

A worthy addition to the seemingly endless flood of books on Alexander, including, recently, Paul Cartledge’s literate...

Historian Freeman (Classics/Luther Coll.; Julius Caesar , 2008, etc.) presents an accessible biography of the young Macedonian king.

The author’s love for his subject infuses this footnote-free narrative with an unfussy breeziness, and readers are sure to come away from Alexander’s story with an essential grasp of the details and understanding of his character. Freeman portrays the Macedonian people as having a shared language and culture distinct from Greek—to the Greeks’ scorn but Macedonians’ pride. Alexander’s father was the “genius” on whom his son was able to establish his later empire, and the author wisely devotes some initial pages to Philips’s masterly diplomacy, radical restructuring of his army and training of engineers. From his father, Alexander learned the importance of building alliances in the Greek world by marriage and immersion in the local religions. Conceived from his union with the strange, snake-loving daughter of the kingdom of Epirus, Olympias, Alexander was his father’s pride—winning the magnificent but unmanageable horse Bucephalus out of cunning and bravery—as well as his scourge, demonstrating a troubling hubris. However, “the bull [was] ready for slaughter,” as the oracle at Delphi proclaimed to the unknowing Philip, and when he was felled by a dagger, Alexander, at age 20, was swift to consolidate his own power. He won the loyalty of his troops, thanks to his moving rhetoric gained under his Greek tutors, and embarked on quelling rebellion among the Greek cities. His crossing of the Danube, a feat accomplished only Darius of Persia, amazed and inspired his men. From the destruction of Thebes through campaigns into Mesopotamia, Egypt and even India, Alexander was propelled over the next decade, driven by oracles, omens and what Freeman calls pothos , or longing, before he died, possibly by poisoning, still dreaming of his expedition into Arabia. In a readable, nonacademic narrative, the author capably sketches the powerful legacy of Alexander in spreading the culture of Greece that has proved the foundation for Western civilization.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4165-9280-8

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | ANCIENT | GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

Share your opinion of this book

More by Philip Freeman

BOOK REVIEW

by Philip Freeman

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

More by Elie Wiesel

by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Google Rating

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990). 

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-42850-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

More by Jon Krakauer

by Jon Krakauer

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction & Top Questions

Beginnings of the Persian expedition

Asia minor and the battle of issus, conquest of the mediterranean coast and egypt, campaign eastward to central asia, invasion of india, consolidation of the empire.

Why is Alexander the Great famous?

What was alexander the great’s childhood like, how did alexander the great die, what was alexander the great like.

• What is imperialism in history?

Get the Reddit app

This subreddit is for fans of Audible, the online audiobook service. We welcome any discussions of Audible including discussion of audiobooks and sales.

Best book about Alexander the Great?

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue