Alexander the Great: the Hunt For a New Past

by Paul Cartledge

Alexander's legacy has had a major impact on military tacticians, scholars, statesmen, adventurers, authors, and filmmakers. Cartledge brilliantly evokes Alexander's remarkable political and military accomplishments, cutting through the myths to show why he was such a great leader. He explores our endless fascination with Alexander and gives us insight into his charismatic leadership, his capacity for brutality, and his sophisticated grasp of international politics. Alexander the Great is an engaging portrait of a fascinating man, and a welcome balance to the myths, legends, and often skewed history that have obscured the real Alexander.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Greece, Audiobook, Historical

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Paul Anthony Cartledge is the 1st A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University, having previously held a personal chair in Greek History at Cambridge. He was educated at St Paul's School & New College, Oxford where he took his 1st degree & completed his doctoral thesis in Spartan archaeology in 1975 under Prof. Sir John Boardman. After a period at the University of Warwick he moved in 10/79 to Cambridge University where he's a fellow of Clare College.
He's a world expert on Athens & Sparta in the Classical Age & has been described as a Laconophile. He was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series The Greeks & the Channel 4 series The Spartans, presented by Bettany Hughes. He's also a holder of the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour & an Honorary Citizen of modern Sparta. Besides the Leventis Professorship, he holds a visiting Global Distinguished Professorship at New York University, funded by the Greek Parliament.

Reviews

[T.R. Preston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since Alexander is my favourite historical figure in all of human history, I enjoyed this immensely. I do take issue with the structure of this book however. It goes all over the place. The timeline of events jumps back and forth in a very strange fashion.

I was almost tempted to give this book four stars instead of five due to this feature, but I was convinced to bestow it with five for two reasons. The first is that it is, of course, a book about Alexander, and therefore my personal bias swiftly takes over. The second reason is that this book does not shy away from Alexander's almost absurdly passionate and blatantly beyond the realm of platonic relationship with Hephaestion. Nor does this book neglect to mention the homosexual influence within Greek culture, literature, and art. There is a very annoying trend among modern conservatives where they like to pretend that Ancient Greece was not, in fact, widely accepting of homosexual behavior. Turns out generations of scholars' observations were just mistranslations, and they actually all hated male on male love with a passion. Imagine that. We read the signs all wrong for hundreds of years of in depth study. Whew. We dodged a bullet on that one, eh lads?

Give me a break. The evidence is insurmountable, but faux intellectuals within the modern conservative sphere like to plug their ears and shake their heads like children. The erasure of homosexual culture throughout history has reached the point of becoming worrying to me. Idiocy is rampant.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate the way this book is organized and I dislike all of the repetition. I blame both of these problems on the fact he reworked and rewrote a bunch of lectures.

There is some very excellent salty commentary, though, and the supplementary materials in the back are A+.

[Fred Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my second attempt at a book about ATG. The first was Robin Lane Fox’s, which I found difficult to get into. This one was better, but I am stopping at page 168. It’s time for me to admit that I’m not interested in ATG although I feel like I should be. The sources of information about him are unclear. He lived a short time and won battles and took territories. But it does not appear that he was a great thinker like Napoleon or Caesar. I just can’t get into him and I am not persuaded that he was Great. Oh well. Moving on ...

[Debbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came away learning more about Alexander the Great as well as his father, Phillip but I did not find either one to be particularly heroic. I realize that you do not conquer the world by being likable but the author brings both men's cruelty and vindictiveness front and center. I appreciate pulling aside the curtain and looking at both men with open eyes but there were many times when I wanted to just give up on this book about awful people. It was also annoying that the author kept circling back to the same ideas and information.

[Dennis McCrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review forthcoming.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexander the Great was born in 356 BC and the famed Aristotle became his tutor, teaching him medicine, philosophy, morals, religion, logic, and art. Plato and Demosthenes were contemporaries of Alexander. He was finally empowered at age twenty, when his famous warrior dad (and political and military master of Greece) Philip II of Macedon (who was about to attack Persia) was assassinated. Alexander becomes king and then he forces his father’s League of Corinth to affirm his status. He identified with Achilles. Philip had been well-read and conversed in Greek and knew its literature. The Macedonian monarchy was an autocracy with both Philip and Alexander. “Right down to the end of the fifth century BCE, Macedon had remained something of a backwater – economically, politically, culturally, and so militarily.” Philip and then Alexander changed all that, for a bit.

Thebes had in its army in 378 BC the famed Sacred Band, which consisted of “150 pairs of homosexual lovers.” Not much is said about their fighting ability, but I imagine they had the best decorated tents on the battlefield. Alexander destroys Thebes after it challenges his authority calling him a tyrant and despot. The torching of Thebes in 335 BC (approved by the League of Corinth) was to set an example to other mainland city-states about opposing him. At the time inter-state relations were determined by power and force. Then he went off to fight more battles and by twenty-six he was master of the Persian Empire (defeating Darius III in 331 BC), and dead by age thirty-three after only twelve short years of rule. But by then he had conquered from Greece, Egypt, Babylonia, Iran to Pakistan. Strangely more Greeks had fought against him than for him (before Gaugamela in late 331 BC).

Alexander mistrusted Greek loyalty because he was Macedonian. For many Greeks, Persians and even Macedonians were barbarians. He sent back plunder taken by Xerxes to the Greek mainland to curry favor with Greeks. It had taken a long time for Darius III to get his army together because the Persian Empire was “far-flung and so multi-ethnic.” Strangely Darius in the end, fled his own battlefield leaving behind “his own mother, a wife, and two of his unmarried daughters.” In the words of Monty Python, “When danger reared its ugly head, he quickly turned his tail and fled.” The Battle of Gaugamela was Alexander’s greatest battle, and it finishes off the Persian Empire from western Iran westward. Alexander also cuts the famed Gordian knot in 333 BC. He was welcomed in Egypt and Babylonia as a savior because he was religiously tolerant, at least more so than the ruling Achaemenids had been. He “spread Hellenism so far and wide, that he made it virtually irreversible”. He had the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek at Egyptian Alexandria.

Alexander’s greatest asset had been his own men, the Macedonian army he had inherited from Philip. His men’s morale being kept up often determined his actions on the battlefield. But his first defeat came at the hands of his own men, when they decided he had gone too far for them after a decade of fighting and he had to turn around, and so he cut a path to the mouth of the Indus (south of modern-day Karachi, Pakistan). “They in effect, mutinied.” However, while returning and crossing the Gedrosian desert, supplies ran out causing thousands of his troops and their women to die from heat and thirst. When he finally returned to Iran, he found his appointees were corrupt, inefficient and disloyal; soon he died.

He had enjoyed “butchering wild animals” in his spare time, “passionately addicted” to chasing and killing defenseless animals especially Asian lions. He was an early member of PUTA; People for the Unethical Treatment of Animals. Strangely the cities he created all celebrated Greek and not Macedonian culture. Asiatic Greeks venerated Alexander as a God. In 327 BC he recruited more than 30,000 young Iranians to be taught Greek. However, Zoroastrians in Iran still hate Alexander for his torching the main ceremonial place of the Achaemenids in 330 BC. Alexander wasn’t into sex but instead was “monumentally pious, verging on the superstitious.”

In the end, it’s not hard to see Alexander as other historians, like Roderick Beaton, have seen him – as a sociopath. I was glad to finally read about him after a lifetime of shamefully knowing almost nothing about him. This was a good book about the man who conquered more land than anyone else in history, who turned Macedonia from a cultural backwater, into Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” and then a few centuries later back into a cultural backwater again.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent enough biography, well written and very readable, though I didn't learn anything new - not surprising, given that this is more of an introduction to the subject and thus somewhat sparse in detail. Due to the author's habit of meandering back and forth through time and venturing off on tangents whenever the mood seems to strike the whole thing seems somewhat disorganized, and frequent repetition of some facts doesn't help.

[Pop · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bit off a little too much with this one. I finally gave up on it. It was pure torture. I’m sure there are some who would disagree with me, but midway through I was bored and tired with the author and Alexander The Great. I would have been better off by listening to a podcast on Alexander.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexander the Great was the son of King Phillip of Macedonia who lived and ruled longer. Alexander only lived to 32. But he finished the project (war) his father had started keeping the Persians away from Europe.
Alexander went to Egypt. He thought he was a god. Of course it wasn’t a monotheistic society.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the goodreads blurb states, Cartledge is one of the leading experts on ancient Greece. He provides an accessible, not-to-anachronistic biography of one of history's most interesting men. I don't know what the other reviewers are referring to. This book was meant to be an introduction to Alexander the Great. So, of course it's not a detailed discussion. Finishing this book will make you more conversant on Alexander's life and times than probably 95% of the people you meet at the water cooler (unless it's the water cooler in the faculty lounge for the Ancient History dept.!).

Cartledge presents every stage of Alexander's life (as well as the milieu he was born into), and each stage is bound up with fascinating political, social, personal, familial, and psychological energies that contributed to one of history's most enigmatic, and megalomaniacal figures.

Besides the normal factoids and answering historical curiosity, as a Christian my eye is out for other things. One thing that impressed upon me is how respected the historicity of Alexander the Great is, and how this is based off (the best) sources who wrote hundreds of years after Alexander lived. But then I turn around and read other books which undermine the historicity of Jesus Christ, who is much later than Alexander, and who is attested to in print less than a decade or two after his death. But such is "objective" non-Christian scholarship, I suppose.

Cartledge's discussion of the extent of Alexander’s Hellenism is very interesting. I'm inclined to agree with Cartledge that Alexander was not a pro-Hellenistic king. This touchy subject is host to varying interpretations. Why did Alexander don Persian royal regalia, rather than the traditional Macedonian garb, if he were standing in the Hellenistic line? A line that considered Persians et. al. to be "barbarians." Why did more Greeks fight against Alexander than for Alexander? Why did Alexander never return to Macedon after he left on the pan-Hellenic campaign to overthrow Darius III and the Persian empire? Why didn't he use the Athenian Navy or hardly any forces from the League of Corinth? Why did so many Greeks join Athens in the revolt against Macedon shortly after Alexander's death?

But, on the other hand, why did Alexander show so much respect for Greek culture? Why did he send back to Susa the statues stolen by the Persians? Why did he stage athletic contests borrowed from the Greek model when he was in India? And why did he keep the Iliad by his bedside? Lastly, why was the most important city he founded, Alexandria, so Greek in culture? Why did he spare the poet Pindar's house when he burned the Greek city that tried to stage revolt to the ground? Was this showing respect for Greek culture? Or was this sugar coating? Ever the politician? Cartledge says the truth might be somewhere in the middle. Most of all, Alexander was in love with his quest for world domination. Perhaps a bastardization of his teacher's (Aristotle) view of a unified Greece? If this was achieved, then world domination would be acheived. But, Aristotle would not have wanted Alexander to mix so much with the "barbarians."

Also interesting is the question as to who assassinated Philip, Alexander's father. Alexander was not there. And those who murdered Philip were caught. And they never indicted Alexander, though they didn't have much time. But, Alexander had the most to gain. And, it was possible that Alexander believed Philip was trying to get rid of Alexander. Bring in another heir. An heir whose mother was pure-bred. Philip had banned Alexander at the time. He had taken steps to dissolve his alliance with the "Pella Five." Alexander also had the murderers put to death almost immediately, and those who put them to death rose to great power within Alexander's empire. Cartledge doesn't think there's a case for Alexander's guilt that proves his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But, he thinks a very good and appealing case can be made for the Alexander theory. But, maybe “Alexander was just lucky.” It "just happened at the right time."

Alexander also probably had homosexual relations. He even seemed to mimic his affair after Achilles and Patroclus'. It was not uncommon, though, for Greek men to have homosexual relations, especially when they were young. Some fighting forces were even made entirely of homosexual lovers. Better unity. Alexander also had women too. But, his sex life was minor compared to what most men in his position would have done. It was said that Alexander did to empires what most kings did to women.

And he did destroy empires, kingdoms, and peoples. He was relentless in his pursuit of world domination. It is said that his only defeat was when his own men refused to keep marching on. They would not follow him through India and beyond. They were tired of the combat, pain, and the glory. And in regards to warfare, Cartledge offers unique information on Ptolemy. Those who have read histories of philosophies will remember him. But most of those histories don’t relate that he cut of the nose and ears of the man who killed Darius III, Bessus. Alexander ran a brutal regime and even adopted Persian practices for putting people to death, like Bessus. Perhaps to show that he was now the Great King of Persia, like Darius, Xerxes, etc., before him.

Alexander died of fever in Babylon on June 10, 323. But some think this was an assassination too. Perhaps he was poisoned by low levels of strychnine. And the fate of his corpse is "one of the great unsolved mysteries of the ancient world." (No mention of Moses' corpse, or Jesus' for that matter!)

Back to Alexander's "Greekness," it is incontestable that he spread Hellenism far and wide. (The details of Alexander’s relationship with his own Macedon, Greece, and the “pan-Hellenistic campaigns,” was fascinating, to be sure.) Now, what is interesting to me, as a Christian who views history as the progression of God's redemptive plan, is how many times Cartledge (and his sources) mentions that Alexander was "lucky." There were many things that could and would have hampered his present-day status, but he was "lucky." As a Christian, who reads history in light of providence, my answer for Alexander's success was found on page 217:

"The dissemination of Greek culture in visual and verbal forms to non-Greeks had, of course, been going on for centuries and had recently been given a further boost by Philip [note: Philip was Alexander's father]. But Alexander so speeded up the process, and spread Hellenism so far and wide, that he made it virtually irreversible. It was ultimately thanks to him that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek at Egyptian Alexandria, and that St. Paul, a Hellenized Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, wrote in koine, Common Greek, to convert the city-dwelling Gentiles of the Eastern Roman Empire to his new religion of Christianity."

Despite the swipes at Christianity (as if it was Paul's invented religion), and the very debatable point as to Paul's Hellenism, for Cartledge and other historians this is just so much interesting factoid that is due to the "luck" of a non-purposive, chance universe where things "just happen." To the Christian, who views history as having a purpose, this is a wonderful display of God's providence in redemptive history.

Alexander was, ultimately, not so much a Great King, as he was a mere tool in God's hand. Not so much "Alexander the Great," as "Alexander the Tool." :-)

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of the impenetrability in assessing Alexander has always been the nature of the existing sources. Given that he was even in his lifetime almost a mythic figure, it is both weird and exasperating that no current narratives of his life have survived. These had been written by his generals and confidants, by his admiral, and a court supervisor. Alexander even had a court historian, Callisthenes.

Nor is this shortage corrected by a profusion of surviving documents. The inscriptional evidence is barely extensive.

Despite Alexander’s epithet, “the Great”—a title likely given to him soon after his death, even though our first surviving reference comes from the Roman comedic playwright Plautus — his continuing eminence, his conquests spread over two million square miles, his victories in every battle where he was present, and his responsibility in creating the Hellenistic Age, his magnitude has been much challenged in current scholarly literature.

While some might still call Alexander “the Pretty Good,” many more would hail him as “the-downright-awful.”

The likely invented declaration by the Delphic Oracle that Alexander was unconquerable was in fact proven correct as he went from one victory to another. Where his father had complicatedness besieging rather small cities, Alexander, in 335, captured the city of Thebes within days of his entrance on the scene, and, later, fell the cities of Miletus and Halicarnasus in 334, and Tyre and Gaza in 332.

An army assembled from the forces of the Persian satraps in Asia Minor was vanquished at the Granicus River in 334; at Issus in Cilicia, where, although greatly outnumbered, Alexander defeated the Great King of Persia himself in battle in 333, and again with a measure of conclusiveness at Gaugamela in 331.

He marched unopposed into Egypt in 332, into Babylonia in 331, and was welcomed enthusiastically by both the Egyptians and the Babylonians as a liberator. Indeed, his entrance into Babylon was likely, looking at Alexander’s expedition as a whole, his acme.

The present book is vaguely based on lecture courses, the author has given at Cambridge during the past decades, aimed predominantly at undergraduate students reading for either the Classical or the Historical Tripos.

At the very outset the author observes: ‘There is really no need for any special justification, let alone apology, for a new history of Alexander. He is one of those very few genuinely iconic figures, who have both remade the world they knew and constantly inspire us to remake our own worlds, both personal and more global. What is needed, then, and I have aimed to provide, is a book that does full justice to Alexander’s extraordinary achievement, while at the same time respecting the limits of the evidence and of the historian’s craft. I have attempted to address that achievement both in its own terms (including some tentative probing into Alexander’s deep psyche) and in terms of its subsequent impact – which continues to this day, when Alexander is still prayed in aid by fishermen in Greece, cursed as a ‘thief’ in Iran, and worshipped as a saint in the Coptic Church of Egypt.

It must also be a book with a distinctive interpretative approach, and mine is indicated in the book’s subtitle: ‘The Hunt for a New Past’….’

After the two preliminary chapters, the author has aimed to merge sequential chronological narration with comprehensively systematic surveys of a number of major themes of Alexander’s career.

A detailed Timeline right at the start of the book is intended to assist convey the flow of events. All dates are BCE (Before the Common Era), unless otherwise specified.

The closing chapter explores Alexander’s manifold legacies, from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the present day.

An Appendix discovers the limits set by the obtainable source materials to any attempted rebuilding of how it in fact was in Alexander’s day.

The Appendix also explores in greater detail than usual two vital questions:

1) How exactly did Callisthenes, Alexander’s official historial, die in 327, and,

2) What did actually happen at the oracle at Siwah in 332.

The modern-day narrative sources, as ever, do not survive as such, and the available reports of at least the main authors all tell different stories. This actually does matter, because these were issues over which Alexander himself quite surely took great care to control the flow of information, and one of the many paradoxes of his career is that, despite or because of that concern, the facts are so often murky and controversial.

For reasons given here, too, various sorts of material objects lie at the very kernel of this historical enterprise. The illustrations of these objects are thus not simply an optional extra but a key component of the history – any history – of Alexander. They have been selected with a view to combining the familiar with the unfamiliar, the spectacular with the ordinary, the decorative with the documentary.

The book concludes with a series of technical aids: a Table of Achaemenid Kings, a Dramatis Personae (register of prominent individuals), a Glossary (including place names, and a Bibliography).

The authors and works referred to in the text can typically be found listed in the relevant chapter’s suggestions for further reading in the Bibliography.

Some of the suggestions are aimed more particularly at the scholar than the general reader but general readers, too, will confidently find abundance here to encourage them further.

Grab a copy if you choose.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to get inside the head of a person who lived 2300 years ago, particularly when that person looms as large as Alexander the Great. And Paul Cartledge's informative overview doesn't really try to do that. I didn't walk away from this book with a great sense of who Alexander was as a person: how he felt after his battles, what he was afraid of, who he trusted with his secrets -- and a lot of that is simply impossible to know. I'd rather have a trusted historian like Cartledge walk me through the evidence than get too deeply entwined with fabulous speculation.

From time to time I was frustrated that the book wasn't always a chronological account. It's more thematically organized, which has its advantages but adds to the feeling that this isn't really a visceral narrative of Alexander's story. But all that being said, it's a good bird's-eye look at the life, campaigns, and character of one of history's most famous young dead people. It's a book written at an arm's length (and 2300 years distance) from its subject.

And it's a good reminder that you can subdue Greece, conquer the world, march into India, cross unfathomable deserts, glimpse the end of the world... and you might still be worried that your dad isn't proud of you

[aforestofbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was just amazing! I'm so glad I took a course on Alexander - I've learned so much that I feel like I know Alexander on a personal level! I loved analyzing the different sources and learning military tactics and politics, as well as learning more about Persian and Macedonian history! Highly recommend!

[Melia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a great start to breaking down the timelines and facts of Alexander's life, but do be aware that this is closer to a military history than a biography of Alexander himself. Even the chapters "Alexander the Man" and "Alexander the God" talk more about his victories and accomplishments than his personal life. Granted, I am aware that we certainly know MORE about his military successes, so there's more reading material, but it still left me wanting.

Cartledge characterizes Alexander as prudent, strategic, and he explains most of his decisions that might have spoken to eccentricity as having political explanations. He contrasts the noteworthy "Alexander Romance" sharply, giving a fairly objective view.

I will say that I sometimes found his writing Anglo centric, making British monarchs his main point of comparison, characterizing Alexander's forays into Asian and Persian culture as foreign excapades, etc. He also sometimes references to pagan beliefs as surely unfamiliar and strange to readers. He also seems more willing to accept that Alexander had a complexly repressed Oedipus complex and trauma around the female body than to simply suggest that Alexander might have just been gay.

[Myles Gerber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda boring at times but also kinda interesting? History is not my thing dude. But I read this for class and liked the class (and also the book) occasionally sooo this feels worthy of three stars. Lotta gay sex. love me some ancient yaoi.

[Rick Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, Paul Cartledge is one of the world’s foremost experts on ancient Greece, and is an extremely careful and scholarly writer. As such, I knew before I even began that this book would be great. This book is not actually a biography of Alexander the Great in the traditional sense of the word. Rather, it is an introduction to the historiography of Alexander the Great. I made sure this summer to read a narrative biography of Alexander so that I would be prepared to read this book, and I’m glad I did. Cartledge assumes that the reader already knows the story of Alexander the Great, and spends his time dealing with the thorny issues that arise from conflicting sources and the seemingly self-contradictory character or many of Alexander’s actions.

Chapters are devoted to Alexander’s interactions with his fellow Macedonians, with the other Greeks, and with the Persians. His relationships, campaigns and policies are dissected in order to understand why he did the things he did. Cartledge always offers the various dominant theories concerning the various subjects and interacts with the scholarship of each. Near the end of the book, Cartledge shifts to the numerous legends that have sprung up around Alexander over the years and even reviews some historical fiction novels about Alexander, giving his take on the accuracy of each one.

One other thing that must be mentioned is that this book has an amazing bibliography. Cartledge lists all of the published primary sources, all of the major overviews of Alexander’s life and career, and the specific sources that relate to each chapter of the book. In addition, he reviews each source individually to give the reader a good idea of what to read or buy in order to systematically conquer the daunting amount of material out there. This is an excellent introduction and resource for further study.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thematically organized, but a bit repetitive. Judicious assessments of evidence, but little historiography.

[Zandt McCue · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book so much. It has ruined my life. This is one of those cases where the quest for knowledge truly hurts someone but not because of anything to do with Alexander the Great but rather the fact that Paul Cartledge 'wrote' a horrible biography.

An example is when Chapter 2 starts with Alexander's birth. Awesome, let's get to it. Then when I end up at Chapter 3....it starts with Alexander's birth. Again. This isn't a biography where you begin and then follow Alexander's life and learn about him and more importantly find out why he's such a legend. I came into this knowing virtually nothing about Alexander and wanting to find out about my namesake. No, I've learned just about nothing from this except the same five or so things repeated over and over again. How many times do I need to read that Alexander killed Cleitus the Black? Fun fact for all of you, I learned more about Alexander killing Cleitus in the two minutes it took me to go to Wikipedia to find out how to spell his name properly than it did at ANY point during the numerous times the event is mentioned in the book. Therein lies the problem. Paul takes a handful of events and keeps bringing them up, but we don't actually experience them. Instead, it's like a list he keeps referring to. And now that I word it that way I realize that the truth is that this is similar to a long High School essay. He's constantly referencing other books and citing past and future chapters. The more I think about what I just read, the more I'm physically in pain.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

His dad was Philip of Macedon, so when Alexander was a teenager his 1:1 teacher was none other then Aristotle himself. Hard to beat that to get a good education. Alexander appeared to prefer men and boys sexually; as did many Greek and Macedonian men. There were no boundaries around gay sexual preferences in the culture of the day. Some of the most ferocious warriors were overtly gay men fighting together--one particularly famous one comprised of 150 gay male couples. When Alexander first saw the stallion Bucephalus, he named him [head of an ox in Persian] and had to have him --and rode him in many battles thereafter. Alexander always fought all battles with his men, so they worshipped him. The downside was that he was wounded and nearly killed many times but miraculously recovered until he died of unknown causes at a young age. His armies had spear-bearing phalanxes in groups of 250 warriors carrying spears 20 feet long in several rows such that when the first row was challenged or tired, the next took over. In one battle, these formations took out an army of over 100 trained battle elephants--the tanks of the day. Whew.

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A salty commentary but nonetheless excellent introduction into the exploits of one of the most interesting men this world has ever seen. My only gripe with this is that it addresses the topic of Alexander in the form of themes rather than chronologically and thus suffers from some repetition and is somewhat confusing in the beginning but I got over it. The appendix which addresses most of the sources we have for information about Alexander is excellent and important as we ironically have so little to go on to understand the man that had hellenized the east and quite possibly ruled most of the known world at a time.
I would call this unbiased because it doesn't attempt to disguise Alexander's frank savagery or mistakes, it attempts to address his achievements in a way that truly displays where he as an individual, a general and a solider succeeded and where a lot of other factors came together and the stars aligned for him. It dissects his frankly patriarchal rule and attempts to understand how and why he chose to undertake a policy of orientalization rather than have everyone follow his pagan Greek religion. And it doesn't attempt to romanticize his clearly politically motivated heterosexual marriages in an attempt to cover up his homosexuality. Great book. very accessible. Highly recommend.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love Cartledge and the way he dances around stating his own opinion while still painting a very clear picture. The battle set ups are BORING but do bring a very fun twist to the narrative of his life. Dude was defo fruity, don’t know why his self comparison to ACHILLES AND PATROCLUS didn’t tip us off. Also iconic naming a city after ur horse.

[Jose Marquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente libro que documenta diferentes etapas y aspectos de Alejandro, no solo en su época sino la repercusión de su vida y gestas en épocas posteriores.

[Brian Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well behaved twnks rarely make history

[ry. online]

Why you have to go and do Callisthenes like that, bruh?

[Evander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been sitting on my shelves for years since it was my sister's from her Classics degree. I was pleased it at least mentioned bisexuality on the back so I thought, Oh, it's actually going to cover Alexander's and Hephaestion's relationship properly... Not quite so. I'm guessing it's rather fair to assume that the author is not queer. He at least acknowledges that Alexander and Hephaestion in all likelihood did have a sexual relationship, but limits it somewhat to their adolescence as was not rare in classical Greece. He explains that there wasn't the stigma of more recent eras against queer relationships and mentions the Theban Sacred Band (a military unit of 150 pairs of male lovers) but then goes on to say Hephaestion would hardly have wanted "to boast" that he was Alexander's "catamite". At some point he gives more credence to Freudian rubbish than queerness and says it's "more plausible" that Alexander either had a repressed Oedipal complex or sexual attraction to horses than that he was a "preferred homosexual"! He also validly talks about the likelihood or possibility that some of Alexander's marriages were politically and diplomatically motivated rather than from love and how he seemed to "abjure heterosex" but still will not countenance the possibility that Alexander was queer (possibly bisexual if not gay as we now use the terms)! He talks about how by Alexander's time, Achilles and Patroclus were virtually unanimously regarded as lovers even if Homer wasn't necessarily explicit about it, but makes excuses for Alexander referring to himself and Hephaestion as Achilles and Patroclus and makes it any other reason except them being lovers.

Allocishet authors more generally have this get-out where they say "We can't apply modern labels to historical people" but then they also say "We can't call [historical person] [gay/bi/queer/trans etc.] if they didn't use that word explicitly for themselves". Well, they can't use the terms if the modern terms didn't exist, but that's not to say we haven't always existed. Funnily enough they're happy enough to stick to the idea that these people are all allo, cis and/or het without any evidence in that direction.

Otherwise, I found that the thematic nature of the book worked well for some aspects but it was a bit frustrating to have details repeated over and over in different chapters.

[Fernando Torres · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitivamente no es un libro que me haya matado, la traducción estuvo pésima, pero las fuentes bibliográficas estuvieron densas dando a conocer un excelente libro para un historiador en potencia o para alguien que quiera adentrarse al mundo político y humanístico de Alejandro y de la Epoca. Puedo decir después de haberlo terminado que me demore muuuuucho tiempo tratando de terminarlo y es cuando quiero decir que entre menos me guste mas me demorare en leerlo, tengo muchos por leer y ahora es lo que quiero hacer. Este libro me deja gran enseñanza histórica del periodo aquemenida, griego y Macedonio, sus costumbres, organización política, enemigos, neutrales y aliados, es un libro denso y complicado de leer dado a la traducción y a hechos historicos que no los tengo totalmente claros, por esta razón el autor facilita un glosario y indice de personajes al reverso. Mi capitulo favorito fue lo que nos dejo Alejandro y acerca de sus viajes hasta el imperio Indo y es super interesante en algunas partes porque ya hay momentos tediosos y monótonos. De igual manera finalizo diciendo que lo recomiendo para aquellos que quieran adentrarse a este mundo antes de cristo y lo que nos dejo un joven como nosotros un legado tan grande y un cambio de cultura cuando el solo tenia 29 años! y su legado perdura después de 2000 años!! definitivamente aparte de ser de buenas dado a escaparse de la muerte muchas veces, conquisto lo que nadie mas pudo, grande Alejandro.

[Annabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a bit more about Alexander, where he went, his interactions with the Greeks and what they thought of him, what he was trying to do with his Empire. It wasn’t a great book, it didn’t really capture the imagination. There was a lot of repetition, and the great battles weren’t really described. Maybe the Mary Renault books referenced here would have been a better place to start.

There were a few interesting points, that the Greeks didn’t really like him, that more Greeks fought against than with him, that he never trusted Athens and so beat the Persian navy on land, that it was his own army who mutinied and halted his ever onwards march for domination. Following the mutiny he then got very angry with his army, took out that frustration by killing a whole bunch of the native Indians and then forced his army to trek through the desert killing a whole bunch on the way.

[Brian Olinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dull and grinding read.....

Every so often I go to the library and randomly pull a book from the shelf. I have had mostly great success with this in the past, learning about people and things I would have never previously read.

Unfortunately, my luck crashed into a wall at full speed. This book was the pits. Even though relatively short, it was work to get through. I learned almost nothing about Alexander, the time or the place.

Great writers bring history alive. Mr. Cartledge buries history. It felt as unfamiliar as something from thousands of years ago would be.

If you see this book, run in the other direction shrieking and flailing your arms!

[Colin Baumgartner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was poorly structured and so repetitive as to make it hard to read. The book is not chronological and the strange sections (Alexander in Persia, Alexander the General, Alexander and Greece) don’t even necessarily stay true to the headers. I often had the strange feeling I’d already looked at a sentence before (because I actually had in three previous chapters).

All of this aside, there clearly is a great deal of scholarly knowledge behind the book. If only the book had been approached as a book and not simply transcribed from old lecture notes...

[Harry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author is obviously very knowledgeable on Alexander the Great, and the book is very well researched. However, the manner in which the author chose to organize it was quite frustrating to me. The chapters are laid out by topic rather than chronological order. While this is appropriate for some subjects, I personally found it irritating, as it leads to a lot of meandering and repetition. This made it difficult for me to immerse myself in the story the way I have with other books of this genre (Scipio Africanus by Liddell Hart comes to mind). I won’t be reading anything else by this author.