Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction
A. B. Bosworth and E. J. Baynham
Abstract
This book collects together ten contributions by leading scholars in the field of Alexander studies that represent the most advanced scholarship in this area. They span the gamut between historical reconstruction and historiographical research and, viewed as a whole, represent a wide spectrum of methodology. This first English collection of essays on Alexander the Great of Macedon includes a comparison of the Spanish conquest of Mexico with the Macedonians in the east that examines the attitudes towards the subject peoples and the justification of conquest, an analysis of the attested conspira ... More
This book collects together ten contributions by leading scholars in the field of Alexander studies that represent the most advanced scholarship in this area. They span the gamut between historical reconstruction and historiographical research and, viewed as a whole, represent a wide spectrum of methodology. This first English collection of essays on Alexander the Great of Macedon includes a comparison of the Spanish conquest of Mexico with the Macedonians in the east that examines the attitudes towards the subject peoples and the justification of conquest, an analysis of the attested conspiracies at the Macedonian and Persian courts, and studies of panhellenic ideology and the concept of kingship. There is a radical new interpretation of the hunting fresco from Tomb II at Vergina, and a new date for the pamphlet on Alexander's last days that ends the Alexander Romance, and a re-interpretation of the bizarre portents of his death. Three chapters on historiography address the problem of interpreting Alexander's attested behaviour, the indirect source tradition used by Polybius, and the resonances of contemporary politics in the extant histories.
Keywords:
Alexander the Great,
Mexico,
panhellenic ideology,
kingship,
Macedon,
conspiracies,
Polybius,
contemporary politics,
conquest
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2000 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198152873 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198152873.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
A. B. Bosworth, editor
University of Western Australia
E. J. Baynham, editor
University of Newcastle, New South Wales
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