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I just finished a Biography on Alexander the Great (Titled: Alexander the Great, The Hunt for a New Past. by Paul Cartledge), which I found to be very good beca
by Herodotus38 11y ago
I just finished a Biography on Alexander the Great (Titled: Alexander the Great, The Hunt for a New Past. by Paul Cartledge), which I found to be very good because the author delves into the various sources of information on Alexander, which I found to be surprisingly scant as much has been lost and much has been handed down to us second hand in summarized form (such as through Plutarch). Alexander had his own personal biographer (who accompanied him on his campaign), Callisthenes put to death.
A great quote from the book:
"The situation we are faced with can be summed up roughly as followes. Inspired by the example of Theopompus and his pioneering Philippica (a history of Greece written around the career of Philip II of Macedon, Alexander's father), more than twenty contemporaries wrote histories or other kinds of work on Alexander. Not one of these histories survives in the original. Of the many letters ascribed to Alexander, just one extract of one of them has a better than average claim to being genuine. The earliest surviving connected narrative account of Alexander's campaigns was composed in the first century BCE, some three hundred years after the events it relates; it is, besides, only incompletely preserved. Thus the sole connected narrative to have survived complete is a third century CE epitome, or abrigment, of a first-century BCE work in Latin by a Romanized Gaul. Finally, what is generally today accounted the best of the more or less completely surviving histories of Alexander was written by a Greek philosopher-statesman in the second century CE, probably during the reigh of the philhellinic emperor Hadrian. In short, 'it is as if the history of Tudor England could only be recovered from Macaulay's essays and the histories of Hume the philospher' (Robin Lane Fox)."
I'll admit, being an American I don't quite grasp the full context of that quote but you can get the gist. Basically, I wouldn't take this letter for actually being true (which the title rightly states as being apocryphal) and rather read take it in its own context of someone, probably a much later Arabic (edit: or Persian) writer using the story of Alexander as a means of conveying their thoughts.
- rmc 11y agoIt's fascinating how little documents we have of people who were incredibly famous and powerful while they lived. Often, some claim that Jesus of Nazareth didn't exist because we have no documented evidence of him from his lifetime. But Alexander was viewed (in his time) as conquring the whole world, and we still don't have written evidence from his life.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago> as conquring the whole world Unless it's a matter of speech, he conquered about 3.5% of the world's land mass and about a third of the (estimated) population, neither of which put you in the top 3 and couldn't be considered the 'whole world' either. By land mass it's not even in the top 20 largest empires ever. He was unique not for the greatest empire but rather for being so primely responsible for the massive empire he did create and in doing it all in about 12 years, the British empire for example by comparison has no single persons who were so primely responsible with many leaders emerging over hundreds of years, combined with his personal role in battles, all of which ending in victory, makes him the stuff of legends.
- StuffMaster 11y agoHe conquered the "known world", I believe is how it goes.
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoWell he factually didn't even from the perspective of 'his known world', Alexander both turned back from on campaign, and had planned another campaign he didn't live to initiate. But regardless it strikes me as a pretty ridiculous claim to make, (especially today) when an estimated 70% of the world population lived in places (they obviously know) that weren't conquered by Alexander. After all there is no 'the' known world. You can find many millions of people who have not a clue of the world beyond a few miles away and you'll thereby find many different people who each rule their known world.
- rmc 11y agoYes it is a manner of speech. My full quote was: "Alexander was viewed (in his time) as conquring the whole world".
- protomyth 11y agoIts also interesting the mindset of some of the documents. We have a distinctly European view of Genghis Khan which might be more 'look at the devil' than reality or what was said in the home grown documents.