Alexander the Great is perhaps the most fascinating and enigmatic man in all of history. Any thorough study of his life is likely to yield a highly confused portrait of this great conqueror and king. It has been said that he overshadowed the age in which he lived more than any man before or since. There is little agreement among scholars about the character and motivation of Alexander. To some, he is perceived as a blood-thirsty megalomaniac who should be ranked in the annals of history with Stalin and Hitler, while to others he is a visionary devoted to harmony among races and a united world. Many see him as a man motivated by a need to explore the world while others are convinced that he was only out to plunder the riches of the east. Much of this confusion can be traced to the oldest available sources of information we have about Alexander. None of these sources are primary, but some of them were written by authors with access to primary resources. These main sources were written by Arrian, Plutarch, Justin, Diodorus and Curtius. The works about Alexander which have been written relying upon these sources are understandably inconsistent with one another, because these oldest sources are themselves inconsistent. Out of the multitudinous works which have been written based on these sources and their progeny have been born three different portrayals of Alexander the Great. The first and second characterizations of Alexander are much alike. The first asserts that Alexander was always a terrible person, while the second asserts that he was a good man and leader until he had crossed into the east, where he became power-mad and corrupt. The third portrayal has Alexander as a saint who was only conquering the known world so that he could unify it into a peacefully-coexisting brotherhood built on cultural tolerance. All three of these schools of thought point to many of the same defining moments in Alexander's life to prove their respective beliefs about the King. Despite this rampant confusion, there are certain aspects of Alexander's life which are generally accepted as fact in nearly all of the accounts of his life. These facts are not very telling about his nature but it is necessary for them to be included for context in any study of Alexander's life.
Alexander the Great was born in 356 B.C. in the month of July to the King and Queen of Macedon. His father Philip was busily turning Macedonia into a real power in the world through constant and sustained warfare. Philip was ruthless and tough and extremely successful in his undertakings. Some suggest that his great success left Alexander with a need to do even greater things just to prove his self-worth. Alexander's mother was Olympias. She was the orphaned daughter of a former king of neighboring Epirus and was married to Philip at a very young age. She is said to have been quite beautiful but also possessed of a terrible temper and wilfulness which, when coupled with her great intelligence, made her difficult for Philip to live with. She and Philip were at war with each other for most of Alexander's childhood. these are the types of basic facts that are accepted by most historians about the parents of Alexander the Great. All other information about them seems to be subject to various and sundry interpretations despite the fact that it is all based on the same basic information.
Alexander developed quite a few long-term friendships, but the one which seems to be generally regarded as the longest-lasting and most important is his life-long friendship with Hephaestion. The friendship probably began in early childhood and ended with Hephaestion's death of illness a few months before Alexander's. At Hephaestion's death, Alexander became quite mad with grief. During life the two had portrayed themselves as Achilles (Alexander) and Patrochus (Hephaestion), and it is generally accepted that this was a genuine and deeply-felt friendship. This about all of their relationship which is accepted by most sources. The rest of it is, as always, subject to diverse interpretations.
Alexander had many tutors in his childhood and youth, but of them all, three names occur again and again: Aristotle, Leonidas and Lysimachus. Both Leonidas and Lysimachus were from areas close to Olympias' home and Leonidas was also her kinsman. Leonidas was stern and controlling, and was in the habit of searching Alexander's things to insure that Olympias had not smuggled any luxuries to her son. Lysimachus was quite a different sort of man. He was much beloved of Alexander and liked to call himself Phoenix to Alexander's Achilles. Once while on an expedition in Arabia, Alexander risked his life to save the feeble old Lysimachus, who had insisted on following Alexander on the mission. Aristotle is almost universally considered to be the most important of the three. He was chosen by Philip to tutor Alexander and some other youths who were sons of Macedonian nobles and Alexander's contemporaries and friends (including Hephaestion). These are some of the facts which most accounts of Alexander accept about his tutors. Almost everything else seems to be subject to the interpretation of the respective author.
At the age of sixteen, Alexander was appointed Regent while his father was waging war in Thrace. Alexander took the opportunity to subdue a rebelling people called Maedi and founded a small colony which he named Alexandropolis. Alexander was then made a general for further war in Thrace and his time with Aristotle was at an end. Alexander continued in this new career of acting as regent when required and as an important general in his father's army. At the decisive battle at Chaeronea, Alexander was instrumental in the Macedonian defeat of the Theban Sacred Band which had never before been beaten.
A disastrous turn of events occurred when Philip took a girl younger than Alexander for his new wife and the girl's uncle made a toast hoping for a "legitimate", full-blooded Macedonian heir for Philip's throne. Alexander reacted with fury and a split between Philip and Alexander occurred which sent Alexander racing with his friends and mother across the border into Epirus. Alexander left his mother in the royal house of Epirus and sped on to Illyria to foment rebellion against his father. The rift was bridged and Alexander returned home and was present for the marriage of his sister to their uncle, the King of Epirus. Philip fell to the assassin's blade at the wedding festivities and Alexander became King of Macedon at age twenty.
Alexander soon took his army and crossed into Asia Minor in search of conquest in 334 B.C. He immediately won the important battle of Granicus. Alexander went on to conquer all of the Persian empire and beyond over the next eleven years. His career did not end until his premature death in Babylon at age thirty-three. Over this span, he waged and won some of the most impressive victories known to history. He also attempted (for whatever reasons) to unite the world of the Greeks with that of the Persians.
It is indeed terribly frustrating that almost every aspect (no matter how seemingly insignificant) of Alexander the Great's life is subject to such widely varying interpretations with very different conclusions. Any study of Alexander forces the researcher to sift through multitudinous accounts and choose those which seem most plausible. Unfortunately, this is exactly the same procedure that most Alexander-scholars have been following for hundreds of years, and it has only led to the creation of more and more variations of the story.
The greatest problems in an examination of Alexander the Great are the early sources of information about him and the different interpretations to which these sources have lent themselves. There are five historians from antiquity whose works on Alexander are still in existence. They are Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus, Justin, and Curtius. These writers lived and produced their works hundreds of years after Alexander's death. However, it is upon these works that we must rely because all of the many accounts of Alexander's life which were written by his contemporaries and associates have been lost to us forever.
Of all of these five, it is Arrian whose account is generally considered the best and most reliable. Arrian was an official of the Roman empire when he wrote his account of Alexander around 250 A.D. Arrian is the only one of the five who included the names of his sources and his reasons for choosing to rely upon them. Arrian's main sources were the memoirs written by Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals, and the writings of Aristobulos, a Greek architect who travelled with Alexander and worked closely with him over many years. He also used works of Nearchus, who was Alexander's admiral and life-long friend. Ptolemy and Aristobulos wrote their accounts independently of each other and in response to their growing dissatisfaction over the slanted, anti-Alexander stories which were being encouraged and created by Cassander in Macedonia (who had usurped the throne and had had Alexander's mother, wife, and son murdered), as well as the Athenian educational establishment. Arrian's writings are clear and straightforward and rely upon these very reputable primary sources which have, themselves, been lost to us. In fact, Arrian's writings on Alexander are considered to be of such superior quality that they are the ones against which the works of the other four authors are measured by serious historians.
Of the four remaining authors, it is Plutarch who is to be preferred. However, his works are also to be used with caution. Plutarch wrote in the first century A.D. and relied on such suspect sources as letters which were supposedly written by Alexander but which, in fact, were not. Plutarch also revised his earlier work on Alexander to portray Alexander as having deteriorated later in life, which shows that he had come under the influence of the anti-Alexander propaganda. Therefore, it is necessary to be aware that Plutarch is not an unimpeachable source. He was, in fact, "...a ragbag of a biographer" who didn't like leaving out a good story or distinguishing between primary and secondary sources.
The writings of Curtius, Diodorus, and Justin are of dubious worth. All of these authors relied upon suspect sources for their works on Alexander despite the fact that good primary sources were still available to them. Justin's main source was a shadowy man named Trogus who had no love for Alexander. Diodorus and Curtius are, respectively, the earliest writers on Alexander, having written their accounts in the first century A.D. However, their works are riddled with inaccuracies and folk tales. Each seems to have relied a great deal on another writer whose works are largely lost to us and who was named Cleitarchus. This man was thought to have been a contemporary of Alexander and a reliable source for many years, but writers such as Cicero and Strabo believed him to be dishonest. Much of the writings about Alexander that were based on the works of Cleitarchus are no longer deemed reliable by most historians.
A consideration of the five extant ancient historians of Alexander the Great makes it quite clear that there is a tremendous amount of inconsistency in the writings about this great conqueror. It is from this confusion that all of the modern histories of Alexander have been drawn. It is no wonder that a figure about which there is such undying fascination would be subject to a new interpretation based on this same information innumerable times over the course of history. This constant re-evaluation of the same data has yielded three main portrayals of this enigmatic man.
Since the time of Alexander's death in 323 B.C., the king has been portrayed variously as a murderous, rapacious, narcissistic megalomaniac, or as a charismatic, humanistic missionary determined to unify the races of the known world. A third common representation of Alexander's character is that he was a good person full of promise initially, but became a corrupt, power-mad tyrant once he had crossed into the Mid-East and tasted of the riches he found there.
The depiction of Alexander as being unrelentingly awful was begun almost immediately upon his death. The Athenian educational establishment had no love for him and Cassander, his regent's son and successor, was his life-long enemy. Together they began a very effective campaign of character assassination against the dead Alexander. This portrayal proved to be quite popular and it has continued into the present day. One of the most recent volumes written with a decidedly negative view of Alexander is that of Peter Green's Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography. However, this book also demonstrates how far from the strictly anti-Alexander propaganda of the past modern historians have moved. It is not an indictment of the conqueror as much as it is an effort to discover the real Alexander as opposed to the near-saint described by W.W. Tarn in his groundbreaking work Alexander the Great.
W. W. Tarn began a new era of Alexander-scholarship. His work was among the first of the modern historians to re-evaluate Alexander in an effort to find the real man hidden beneath all of the propaganda and fable. His Alexander the Great lead the way in the "re-discovery" of Alexander. His work in this field has been extremely influential and helped give rise to some of the best and most thorough of the modern histories of Alexander the Great. However, despite his enormous contribution to modern Alexander-scholarship, Tarn really seems to have gone too far. He became something of an apologist, and made excuses for actions of Alexander for which Alexander himself would have been unlikely to see the need.
The final most popular depiction of Alexander is that of the good and warm-hearted king who becomes a corrupted, despotic, "oriental" tyrant. He is seen as developing into a megalomaniac who insists on godhood and casually murders good friends. This depiction shows him as an alcoholic with attacks of paranoia and depression. He is also said to have been ridiculously superstitious in his later years.
These are the three most common depictions of the character of Alexander the Great. Interestingly, each of the three schools of thought often point to many of the same episodes of Alexander's life as proof for their respective representations of the man. An exploration of several of these defining moments is necessary to illustrate this phenomenon.
One such episode is the execution of Philotas and the subsequent assassination of Philotas' father, the general Parmenion. The circumstances, briefly, were thus: a plot against Alexander's life was hatched by a few obscure personages in Alexander's court. One young man's lover was among the would-be assassins, and attempted to recruit him for the deed. This young man flew in terror to his elder brother and they went to tell Philotas. Philotas was (as far as Alexander know) a lifelong friend and an officer in the Macedonian army. Philotas told the brothers that he would tell Alexander of the threat to him so that he could take action. However, he did no such thing despite having had many opportunities to do so over the next two days. Finally, the brothers had become almost frantic, and burst in on Alexander's bath on the second night to tell him everything - including Philotas' lack of action. Alexander brought Philotas up on charges of treason and the Macedonian army convicted him and sentenced him to death. This left Alexander with a terrible dilemma: Parmenion was the general who was defending the army's lines of communication and he was also Alexander's second-in-command. Because of the absolute reality of the Macedonian blood-feud (which would require Parmenion to try to kill Alexander over Philotas' death), it was a practical necessity that Alexander have Parmenion killed, and it is unlikely that his fellow Macedonians would have faulted him for doing just that. In addition to this is the fact that Parmenion himself was implicated in the assassination plot. Despite all of this, Alexander still gave Parmenion anther chance at life. He sent a forged letter in Philotas' name which indicated that the plot was going well. Upon reading this forgery, Parmenion made obvious displays of pleasure, at which time he was set-upon by the messengers and killed. In the writings of the anti-Alexander set, this entire incident is described as a gratuitous display of violence and brutality by Alexander against old and trustworthy friends. It is actually suggested that Philotas just didn't tell Alexander about the plot due to laziness or the belief that it was just (in the words of Peter Green) "Another homosexual quarrel, with the usual bitchy accusations: obviously nothing in it." That this was a malicious act against innocent men is unlikely. Alexander was very loyal to old friends throughout his life, and he never brought such accusations against any of his other officers. Another point which refutes the arguments of the anti-Alexander set on this subject is the fact that Alexander never seems to have felt any regret over his decision to execute Parmenion. This is odd in light of the fact that Alexander displayed a "bitter shame" over any actions he believed he had committed unjustly. Therefore, it stands to reason that the king felt entirely justified in his actions by the guilt of Philotas and his father Parmenion.
Another defining moment that has been used to serve as an example in the arguments of all three of the schools of thought on Alexander is the murder of Cleitus the Black. Cleitus was the brother of Alexander's old nurse and one of the two commanders of the Companion Cavalry. He was one of the old-guard who had fought under Philip and who had known Alexander his whole life. At a banquet just before Cleitus was to be sent to become governor of Bacteria, disaster struck. All of the sources agree on the bare-bones of the story as follows: on the Macedonian feast-day for Dionysus, Alexander had a feast in honor of Castor and Pollux. At this feast, everyone overindulged in wine and the gathering became quite drunk. Tempers were roused when some comments were made making fun of some of the old Macedonian commanders who had not managed to successfully take a city without Alexander's direct assistance. Cleitus became infuriated and began shouting at Alexander about his "oriental ways" and reminding him of how he (Cleitus) had saved his life at the battle of Granicus. Cleitus went on to say that Alexander was carried to success by his Macedonian troops through no contribution of his (Alexander's) own, and that Philip had been a much greater man than Alexander. The King broke into a fury and threw an apple at Cleitus. Ptolemy pulled Cleitus from the room while several officers physically restrained Alexander. Unfortunately, Cleitus came back with a final insult and Alexander broke loose, grabbed a spear, and stabbed Cleitus through the heart. Cleitus fell dead at Alexander's feet and the king would have killed himself with the same spear if he had not been restrained from doing so by his officers and friends.
Those who see Alexander as always having been a brutal, self-serving egomaniac and those who believe he degenerated into such a person after his success in the mid-east often point to this event as evidence for their views. This truly brutal act is held up as an example of how he had become arbitrary in his exercise of power. Alexander's taking to his bed in a misery of self-revulsion for three days and refusing all food, drink, or comfort is seen as some sort of clever and contrived ploy to gain the army's sympathy and forgiveness for this murder so that the officers could not mutiny.(56) However, this argument, while plausible in the face of such a brutal act, is not wholly convincing. In light of what is known of Alexander's character, it is not really surprising that he should suffer so terribly for having committed such a cruel and ignoble act. Cleitus was an old friend and kinsman and a brother of Alexander's beloved old nurse. When one adds to this the fact that both of the nurse's sons had died in battle under Alexander, it becomes quite clear why he would suffer so for this awful crime of passion. In addition, as Robin Lane Fox points out in his Alexander the Great: A Biography, it would have been foolish for Alexander to retire to his tent for three days if he really believed his officers would plot against him for the murder.
This is a truly tragic moment in the history of Alexander. He committed an awful act for which he never forgave himself. For three days, Alexander lay in bed hearing from his army (which posthumously convicted Cleitus of treason) and listening to the rationalizations of his philosophers and the pronouncement of the priest of Dionysus that the god had possessed Alexander with madness to punish him for a slight on his feast day. Only after three days of these constant petitions and persuasions did Alexander finally rouse himself to begin living again. A review of this incident reveals a man who was capable of making horrendous mistakes when inebriated and in the heat of anger. It clearly shows that Alexander was not a saint as some seem to want to believe him, but it does not in any way demonstrate that he was a power-mad tyrant given to casual murder. It was a terribly unfortunate incident which could have happened to many another person under the same setting. Had Alexander truly been a murderous tyrant, it seems clear that he would have been in a position to leave the ground littered with the bodies of his companions. The case of Cleitus is used so often as an indictment of Alexander precisely because it was such an unusually vicious act for Alexander. It was the exception rather than the norm.
A third such episode involved Callisthenes, a great-nephew of Aristotle and one of Alexander's historians. Callisthenes travelled with the army on campaign and compiled an account of the events as they went. These accounts included ridiculous claims such as that the waves along the Pamphylian coast bowed down and worshipped Alexander as he passed. This in itself was somewhat irritating to Alexander, but he paid it little attention. However, Callisthenes' arrogance continued to grow and he loudly made the claim that Alexander would not gain glory from his own actions, but, rather, from the writings he, Callisthenes, made about the king. Callisthenes also went about camp making comments about the valor of tyrannicides and other inflammatory comments. Callisthenes then went on to undermine Alexander's attempt to gently introduce a form of the practice of proskynesis (the eastern custom of ritual prostration before the Great King) by accusing Alexander of asking to be worshipped as a god; this was quite untrue at this time. After so many displays of his growing conceit and antagonism towards Alexander, it was not difficult for Alexander and his officers to believe the accusers of Callisthenes when they implicated him in their plot to assassinate Alexander. The would-be assassins were six of the royal squires who were responsible for, among other duties, guarding the king while he slept. There were about 50 squires and their shifts rotated nightly. On the night for which the assassination was planned, the assassins were foiled by the king's staying up late over wine and conversation. Because of Alexander's courtesy to them when he found them "loyally" awaiting him even though it was already morning, one of the plotters defected and the plot became known to Ptolemy. As the squires were tortured (a common practice of the time), they implicated Callisthenes by claiming that he had encouraged them in their plot.
How and why the plot developed is still debated. It is often said that it was born entirely out of the dissatisfaction of one squire, Hermolaus (a devoted pupil of Callisthenes). The school of thought which considers Alexander nearly perfect puts forth a simple motive for the plot. It is said that Hermolaus recruited his lover and four other squires for the assassination because of his humiliating disciplining by the king after a hunting incident. Callisthenes is seen as "throwing fuel on the fire" with his remarks to Hermolaus about the glory of tyrannicide. This seems a rather shaky motive for adolescent regicide. Those who wish to portray Alexander as a tyrant (either as a lifelong trait or one acquired in Asia) postulate that this humiliation was only the catalyst and that these squires were actually responding to their horror over Alexander's tyranny, arrogance, alcoholism, and the murders of Philotas, Parmenion, and Cleitus. However, there is another view which takes into account some additional information and shows a compelling motive. Robin Lane Fox points out that Hermolaus' father had been demoted from a high position in the cavalry a month or so before the assassination plot was hatched. Furthermore, one of the other would-be assassins had seen his father, the former Satrap of Syria, removed from his position without having it replaced by another command. All of the others had had similar experiences and this, coupled with the public humiliation of their friend Hermolaus and the imprudent words of Callisthenes, created a situation where such a plot was hatched. This final explanation certainly seems most plausible.
This leaves us with the question of Callisthenes' involvement in the plot. The boys implicated him in their confessions, after which they were found guilty by the Macedonian army and stoned to death. It seems certain that Alexander and his officers were convinced of his guilt. Callisthenes had often shown his ill-will towards Alexander ever since the king had begun to adopt some ways of the conquered rather than just ruthlessly subjugating them. this was an affront to all of Callisthenes' beliefs about Greek superiority, and he was not quiet about his dissatisfaction. The incident ended with Callisthenes' death. However, how this occurred is disputed. It is agreed that he was arrested and probably tortured for a confession. Many say he was then put to death. Others state that Callisthenes could not be tried by the Macedonians because he was Greek and so he was carried around in chains with the army until he died of disease seven months after his arrest.
Whatever the form Callisthenes' death took, he certainly got his revenge. His death brought the rage of the Athenian educational establishment down upon Alexander. The friends of Callisthenes were unaware of all the facts of the case and their resentment was to do great damage to Alexander's reputation over time. Alexander had "...embittered the most influential body of opinion-formers in his world." This one incident in Alexander;s career was perhaps the most damaging he had ever faced. The spewing of rage which it brought forth from the Athenian intelligentsia did enormous damage to Alexander's image, especially after his Athenian detractors joined forces with the murderous Cassander in the year after Alexander's untimely death in 323 B.C.
Alexander the Great is one of history's greatest and most enduring enigmas. Every action he took for which there is some surviving account has been evaluated and then re-evaluated innumerable times. Despite a wealth of research and writings which have had him as a subject, there is still no definitive account of the man's nature and motivations. Much of the confusion can be traced to the earliest sources and their many inadequacies. To this must be added the hostile and inaccurate accounts which were churned out by the embittered Athenian educational establishment for many years after Alexander's death.
All of these conflicting accounts of Alexander lent themselves to the creation of any sort of characterization of the man that an author desired. However, upon a careful review of many accounts of the conqueror's life, the evidence does not overwhelmingly support any of the three main characterizations. The two portrayals of Alexander as a butcher and megalomaniac are, indeed, the least compelling upon review. It is also unlikely in view of the research that Alexander was at all a saintly personage. However, this picture of Alexander does seem to have at least some greater merit than the other two. It is clear after a thorough study of the evidence that Alexander the Great shall remain a mystery (a fascinating one) for a very long time.
Works Consulted (please note that footnotes have been removed to reduce the temptation for others to present this work as their own in a classroom):
Abbott, Jacob. Makers of History. Volume 7, Pyrrhus. Akron, Ohio: The Werner Company, no date of publication.
Arrian. The Campaigns of Alexander. Translated by Aubrey De Selincourt. New York: Dorset Press, 1986.
Fox, Robin Lane. Alexander the Great. London: Futura Publications Limited, 1978.
Fox, Robin Lane. The Search for Alexander. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Co., 1980.
Green, Peter. Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography. 2nd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1991.
Griffith, G. T., ed. Alexander the Great: The Main Problems. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966.
Hammond, N. G. L. Three Historians of Alexander the Great: The So- called Vulgate Authors, Diodorus, Justin and Curtius. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Holt, Frank L., "Alexander the Great's Little Star", History Today, Vol. 38 (1988): 31-39.
Lamb, Harold. Alexander of Macedon: The Journey to World's End. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1946.
Makaronas, Ch. J., "Pella: Capital of Ancient Macedonia", Scientific American Special Issue: Ancient Cities (1994): 58-65.
Milton, Joyce. Sunrise of Power: Ancient Egypt, Alexander and the World of Hellenism. Boston, Massachusetts: Boston Publishing Company, 1986.
Renault, Mary. The Nature of Alexander. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. (my personal favorite)
Robinson, Charles Alexander Jr. The History of Alexander the Great: Volumn I. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University, 1953.
Samuel, Alan E., "Philip and Alexander as Kings: Macedonian Monarchy and Merovingian Parallels", American Historical Review, Vol. 93 (1988): 1270-1286.
Savill, Agnes. Alexander the Great and His Time. New York: Dorset Press, 1990.
Snyder, John W. Alexander the Great. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1966.
Stark, Freya. Alexander's Path: from Caria to Cilicia. London: John Murray Publishers, 1958.
Tarn, W. W. Alexander the Great. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948; reprint, Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1956.
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