184 Alexander continued the march south: Curtius 5.1; Arrian Anabasis 3.16.
186 Babylon: Herodotus 1.179–200; Curtius 5.1; Arrian Anabasis 3.16; Strabo 16.1.5; Diodorus Siculus 17.64
187 Hammurabi: Pritchard 163–180.
188 He gave strict orders to his men: Kuhrt 1.447.
189 dining requirements: Polyaenus 4.3.32.
190 Chaldeans: Strabo 16.1.6; Plutarch Alexander 57; Hesiod Theogony. The Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish is found in many translations, including Pritchard 60–72.
192 the biblical patriarch Abraham: Genesis 11–12.
192 Gilgamesh: The cuneiform tablets containing The Epic of Gilgamesh have been recovered by archaeologists in the last century. One of best modern editions is that of Kovacs.
193 Susa: Curtius 5.2; Diodorus Siculus 17.65–66; Arrian Anabasis 3.16; Plutarch Alexander 36; Allen 65–72.
7. PERSEPOLIS
197 Epigraph: Christopher Marlowe Tamburlaine the Great Part I.
197 the Uxians: Arrian Anabasis 3.16; Curtius 5.3; Diodorus Siculus 17.67; Strabo 15.3.4.
199 the Persian Gates: Arrian Anabasis 3.18; Curtius 5.3–4; Diodorus Siculus 17.68: Plutarch Alexander 37.
203 a race to reach the capital: Arrian Anabasis 3.18; Diodorus Siculus 17.69; Curtius 5.5; Justin 11.14.
203 Persepolis: Diodorus Siculus 17.70–72; Curtius 5.6–7; Plutarch Alexander 37–38; Arrian Anabasis 3.18; Justin 11.14; Allen 72–81.
205 I am Darius: Kuhrt 2.488.
209 Pasargadae: Strabo 15.3.7–8; Arrian Anabasis 6.29; Plutarch Alexander 69.
210 Mortal man: Arrian Anabasis 6.29; Plutarch Alexander 69.
213 Thaïs: Diodorus Siculus 17.72; Curtius 5.7; Plutarch Alexander 38; Arrian Anabasis 3.18; Strabo 15.3.6.
214 to capture the king: Arrian Anabasis 3.19–21; Curtius 5.8.
8. BACTRIA
220 Epigraph: Arrian Anabasis 3.28.
221 But to the Macedonian army: Curtius 6.2–3; Diodorus Siculus 17.74. The paraphrase of Alexander’s speech to his men is based on the Curtius passage.
223 Hyrcania: Arrian Anabasis 3.23–25; Diodorus Siculus 17.75–77; Strabo 11.7.2; Curtius 6.4–5; Plutarch Alexander 44–46; Herodotus 1.203.
225 Lysimachus: Plutarch Alexander 46.
226 Satibarzanes: Arrian Anabasis 3.25.
227 taking on the ways of a foreign king: Diodorus 17.77; Plutarch Alexander 45; Curtius 6.6.
228 Philotas: Plutarch Alexander 48–49; Arrian 3.26–27; Curtius 6.7–7.2; Diodorus 17.79–80; Justin 12.5; Strabo 15.2.
229 Drangiana: Arrian Anabasis 3.28; Diodorus 17.81–83; Curtius 7.3.
237 Khawak Pass: Arrian Anabasis 3.28; Diodorus Siculus 17.83; Curtius 7.3. For the description of the pass, I am indebted to Lane Fox 294–297 and Wood 138–147.
238 down from the Khawak Pass: Arrian Anabasis 3.28–29; Curtius 7.4–5; Diodorus Siculus 17.83.
239 Arrian: Arrian Anabasis 3.29.
240 Branchidae: Curtius 7.5.
241 Sogdiana: Arrian Anabasis 3.30–4.7; Curtius 7.5–11.
249 some good news: Arrian Anabasis 4.7, 15; Curtius 7.10.
250 Alexander renewed his campaign: Arrian Anabasis 4.15–17; Curtius 7.10, 8.1.
252 Cleitus: Plutarch Alexander 50–52; Arrian Anabasis 4.8–9; Curtius 8.1–2; Justin 12.6; Lucian Rhetorum Praeceptor 5–6.
253 Euripides: Euripides Andromache 693–700.
256 When the end came for Spitamenes: Curtius 8.2–4; Arrian Anabasis 4.17–18.
256 immodicus amor: Curtius 8.3.2.
258 the Sogdian Rock: Arrian Anabasis 4.18–21; Curtius 7.11, 8.4.
9. INDIA
261 Epigraph: Herodotus 3.98.
261 thirty thousand native youths: Arrian Anabasis 7.6; Curtius 8.5; Diodorus Siculus 17.108; Plutarch Alexander 71.
262 proskynesis: Plutarch Alexander 53–55; Arrian Anabasis 4.10–14; Curtius 8.5–8; Justin 12.7; Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 13.556b.
262 Herodotus says: Herodotus 1.134.
263 One clever Theban envoy: Aelian Varia Historia 1.21.
263 Spartan visitors: Herodotus 7.136.
265 Alexander and his army left Bactria: Arrian Anabasis 4.22–5.4; Curtius 8.9–12; Plutarch Alexander 57–58; Diodorus Siculus 17.85–86.
269 Scylax: Herodotus 4.44.
269 Herodotus: Herodotus 3.38, 98–106, 4.40.
270 Alexander and his army crossed the Indus: Arrian Anabasis 5.3–8; Curtius 8.12–13; Diodorus Siculus 17.86. See also Wheeler 1968, 102–122.
273 the plain of the Hydaspes: Arrian Anabasis 5.8–19; Plutarch Alexander 60–61; Curtius 8.13–14; Diodorus Siculus 17.87–89; Justin 12.8.
276 “Like a king”: Plutarch Alexander 60; Arrian Anabasis 5.19.
276 invade eastern India: Arrian Anabasis 5.20–29; Diodorus Siculus 17.89–95; Plutarch Alexander 62; Curtius 9.1–3.
278 Eight years ago, the king declared: The speech is paraphrased from Arrian Anabasis 26, and Curtius 9.2.
280 twelve towering altars: Arrian Anabasis 5.29; Diodorus Siculus 17.95; Curtius 9.3; Plutarch Alexander 62; Justin 12.8.
280 The journey back to the Hydaspes: Arrian Anabasis 5.29–6.3; Diodorus Siculus 17.95–96; Curtius 9.3.
281 the voyage: Arrian Anabasis 6.4–20; Diodorus Siculus 17.96–104; Curtius 9.3–9; Plutarch Alexander 63–66.
282 his old friend Aristobulus: Lucian Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 12.
282 he had never learned to swim: Plutarch Alexander 58.
282 just like his hero Achilles: Homer Iliad 21.
285 “Alexander, brave deeds are what true men do”: Arrian Anabasis 6.13.
286 native religions: Arrian Anabasis 6.7, 16, 7.1–2; Plutarch Alexander 64–65; Diodorus Siculus 17.102–103.
287 One story tells: Arrian Anabasis 7.1.
10. BABYLON
290 Epigraph: Arrian Anabasis 7.16.
291 the march ahead through the Gedrosian desert: Arrian Anabasis 6.21–26; Diodorus Siculus 17.104–105; Curtius 9.10; Plutarch Alexander 66–67.
291 plainly stated by the historian Arrian: Arrian Anabasis 7.24.
294 They were so heartened, says Arrian: Arrian Anabasis 7.26.
294 The final leg of the journey from Paura to Persepolis: Arrian Anabasis 6.27–28, Indica 34; Plutarch Alexander 67; Diodorus Siculus 17.106–108.
296 The story of the voyage of Nearchus: Arrian Indica 19–43; Diodorus Siculus 17.106; Strabo 15.5–14.
303 future conquests: Arrian Anabasis 7.1, 16; Plutarch Alexander 68; Curtius 10.1.
304 the Phoenician voyage he had read of in Herodotus: Herodotus 4.42.
305 the satrap Abulites: Plutarch Alexander 68; Arrian Anabasis 7.4.
306 the Indian wise man Calanus: Arrian Anabasis 7.3; Plutarch Alexander 69; Diodorus Siculus 17.107.
306 a mass wedding that winter at Susa: Arrian Anabasis 7.4; Plutarch Alexander 70; Diodorus Siculus 17.108.
308 The crisis came to a head: Arrian Anabasis 7.7–12; Plutarch Alexander 71; Diodorus Siculus 17.109.
309 one of the most impassioned speeches of his life: Paraphrased from Arrian Anabasis 7.9–10.
310 Olympias, and his aging regent, Antipater: Arrian Anabasis 7.12–13, 28; Plutarch Alexander 74–75.
311 Ecbatana: Arrian Anabasis 7.14, 23; Plutarch Alexander 72; Diodorus Siculus 17.110–115; Justin 12.12.
314 Cossaeans: Arrian Anabasis 7.15, Indica 40; Plutarch Alexander 72; Diodorus Siculus 17.111.
315 As Alexander at last drew near to the walls of Babylon: Arrian Anabasis 7.16–30; Diodorus Siculus 17.112–118; Plutarch Alexander 73–77; Justin 12.13–16.
315 the Greek playwright Euripides: Arrian Anabasis 7.16.
11. TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
319 Epigraph: Arrian Anabasis 7.30.
319 rumors began to circulate that the king had been murdered: Arrian Anabasis 7.27; Diodorus Siculus 17.118; Plutarch Alexander 77.
320 There is a sad and charming story: Arrian Anabasis 7.27.
320 Alexander’s death: The events immediately following the death of Alexander are best preserved, with the usual rhetorical flourish, in Curtius 10.5–10.
325 he appears in the Koran: “The Cave” 18.82–89.
325 In the biblical book of Daniel: Daniel 7.23.
328 The Italian poet Dante: Inferno Canto 12.107.
329 “drunken juvenile thug”: Mary Beard “A Don’s Life” (timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/) July 3, 2009.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANCIENT SOURCES
The ancient sources for the life of Alexander are plentiful but problematic. Unlike Julius Caesar, whose firsthand accounts of the war in Gaul and struggle for Rome survive, Alexander wrote nothing himself that has come down to us aside from a few decrees recorded in inscriptions and fragments from a handful of possibly genuine letters quoted by later authors. Thus the search for accurate accounts of Alexander becomes very much like the quest for the historical Jesus or Socrates. As with these two famous figures from antiquity, our knowledge of Alexander is ultimately dependent on records left by those who knew him, whether friends or enemies. However, even the biographies of Alexander written during his lifetime or soon after his death disappeared from Greek and Roman libraries by late antiquity. This leaves us with only secondhand accounts penned by historians in Roman times who had access to these earlier sources.
None of this means that the search for the historical Alexander is hopeless—far from it. But we do have to be keenly aware of the problems associated with our sources. Even accounts written by those who knew and traveled with Alexander have their own agenda. Some contemporaries despised the Macedonian king and missed no opportunity to denigrate him as a murderous drunkard craving eternal glory at any cost. Others portrayed him as a noble and kindly soul, the paradigm of a just ruler. Like every modern historian, each ancient biographer was deeply influenced by the circumstances in which he wrote and by his own prejudices.
The ancient sources on Alexander begin with Callisthenes, the nephew of Aristotle and native of the Greek city of Olynthus, a town destroyed by Alexander’s father, Philip. Alexander chose Callisthenes to accompany him on his expedition and send back flattering reports of his heroic exploits to the Greeks. Callisthenes undoubtedly harbored much ill will toward the royal house of Macedonia for obliterating his hometown, but he obliged Alexander with obsequious propaganda until the king had him executed. His reports were widely available, at least in part, to most of the ancient biographers of Alexander.
One of the most important early biographers of Alexander was his boyhood friend Ptolemy, son of Lagus, later the pharaoh of Egypt. Ptolemy was by Alexander’s side from the first campaigns on the Danube to the final days in Babylon. As a lifelong companion with intimate knowledge of Alexander’s life, he could hardly be a better source—except that Ptolemy had a vested interest in portraying his friend in a positive light. Writing from Alexandria in his later years, he needed a heroic and admirable Alexander to strengthen his own legitimacy as a successor and ruler of Egypt. Even so, Ptolemy was not a sycophant and was a crucial source on the details of Alexander’s military conquests for later writers, especially Arrian.
Another eyewitness to Alexander’s journey was the Greek engineer Aristobulus. He accompanied Alexander on his expedition and was responsible for numerous projects, such as the restoration of the tomb of Cyrus. His account of Alexander is uniformly positive, often to a suspicious degree. He may be forgiven his selective memory somewhat as he was in his eighties when he composed his history. Many stories of Alexander’s chivalry, such as his treatment of the women in the Persian royal household, come originally from the pen of Aristobulus. He was not a soldier, but had a keen eye for geography and natural science, which is evident in Arrian’s and Strabo’s borrowings from his text.
Nearchus of Crete was another childhood friend of Alexander’s who accompanied him on his campaign. He is an essential source for later writers on Alexander’s campaigns in India, and the best source for his own voyage as admiral of the fleet returning from the Indus to Persia.
Other firsthand accounts of Alexander’s campaigns survived in ancient times, but their subject matter ranges from dubious anecdotes to scandalous rumors. The Greek Onesicritus was a pupil of the cynic philosopher Diogenes and helmsman on the fleet returning from India. He wrote a highly flattering account of Alexander as a philosopher-king, while his descriptions of India and the Brahmans were much used by later historians. Chares, from the Greek island of Lesbos, served as court chamberlain to Alexander in his final years. His gossipy memoir of life behind the throne took up ten books and was used by several later biographers, especially his descriptions of the proskynesis controversy and the mass marriage at Susa. A pamphlet by Ephippus, also of Olynthus, preserved several lurid tales of luxury quoted by Athenaeus. The otherwise unknown Nicobule wrote in the same vein. Medius of Thessaly is best remembered as the host of the Babylonian dinner at which Alexander’s fatal decline began. He later wrote a flattering account of Alexander, perhaps to deflect charges that he had poisoned the king. Polyclitus, another Thessalian, may also have accompanied Alexander’s expedition because he offers detailed geographical data quoted by Strabo. The remaining eyewitnesses who wrote of Alexander’s campaign are known only by name or in brief fragments.
Other contemporary records such as the logbooks of the expedition, the personal notebooks of Alexander, and the letters of the Macedonian leader quoted frequently by Plutarch are of questionable value at best. Some of the letters may be genuine, but others are later creations, as are the alleged logbooks and probably the notebooks as well.
One early record of Alexander comes not from an eyewitness but from someone too young to accompany the expedition to Asia. Cleitarchus was the son of the Greek historian Dinon, who wrote a history of Persia known for its sensationalism. His son continued the family tradition with an action-packed thriller on Alexander’s conquests. Written just a few years after the king’s death, this multivolume work was widely read in the Greek and Roman world. Cleitarchus was able to study official accounts of the expedition during his research in Athens and Alexandria, but could also draw on the oral tradition from interviews with returning veterans to gain multiple perspectives of battles and other key events.
All these earliest sources on the life of Alexander are now lost. What we do possess are the works of later historians who used them and passed their information down to us in part. One group of historians, known in modern times as the vulgate tradition, used Cleitarchus as its primary source but supplemented his work with other authors. Diodorus of Sicily wrote a forty-volume history of the world up until his lifetime in the first century B.C., which presents Alexander as a model king. Drawing on the same tradition, Diodorus’ contemporary Trogus of Gaul, whose work survives only in an epitome by the third-century Latin writer Justin, more often condemns Alexander as a bloody tyrant. The Roman historian Curtius, who probably wrote during the reign of the Roman emperor Claudius, similarly criticizes Alexander in a highly rhetorical history full of invented speeches.
The biographer Plutarch also drew on the vulgate tradition, but read widely from other sources as well. He was born in the middle of the first century A.D. in the Greek town of Chaeronea, the very place Alexander’s father Philip won his decisive battle against the Greeks. As he himself admits, his aim was not to write a historical biography but rather a morally instructive life story for readers. He is generally positive in his view of Alexander, but can be critical as well. Plutarch preserves our only detailed account of Alexander’s early years.
Pride of place among Alexander’s biographers, however, belongs to Arrian of Bithynia. He was born in the late first century A.D. and was educated by the famous Stoic teacher Epictetus and preserved the high moral teachings of his master in a handbook known as the Enchiridion. But Arrian was no academic recluse. He held high political office and served in the Roman army as a field commander in battles across Asia Minor. His history of A
lexander is not perfect by any means, but it offers a detailed and balanced picture of a remarkable man marred by very human flaws. Arrian’s primary sources were Ptolemy and Aristobulus.
Many other Greek and Latin writers from the ancient world also mention Alexander. Strabo refers to him frequently in his Geography, while Athenaeus quotes many passages from lost authors in the course of his grand dinner party of philosophers. Non-Greek sources are rare, but there are a few native references to Alexander, such as Babylonian astronomical records.
The remaining ancient evidence for Alexander is more tangible. We possess a number of valuable inscriptions from Greece and elsewhere recording decrees issued by the king or accounts of his activities. Coins issued by Alexander as payment and propaganda survive from the Mediterranean to India. Archaeology as well has revealed fascinating details about Alexander and his world. Excavations in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and of course the dazzling discoveries from the royal Macedonian tombs at Vergina in northern Greece have brought to life the world of Alexander like nothing else.
MODERN SOURCES
Readers wishing to explore the modern literature on Alexander have a vast array of book and articles available to them—but be aware that there are as many Alexanders as there are those who write about him.
Political circumstances have influenced modern scholars as much as ancient authors. The work of W. W. Tarn, written during the waning days of the British Empire, remains important, though his overly positive assessment of Alexander finds little favor among scholars today. Most recent writers on Alexander provide a more mixed picture of his character, though I have read few modern scholars who seriously question his military genius.
For a general introduction, I highly recommend Paul Cartledge’s Alexander the Great, a learned and wonderfully readable collection of studies on different stages of Alexander’s life. For a gripping and insightful biography there is none better than Alexander the Great by Robin Lane Fox. Along with Fox, Peter Green’s darker portrait in Alexander of Macedon should be on everyone’s reading list. If you want to follow Alexander’s arduous path from Greece to India and back to Babylon, you should read Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, preferably while you watch the companion PBS video.
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