A MAN WHO THOUGHT HE WAS A GOD AND A WORLD THAT THOUGHT HE WAS RIGHT

A review of Alexander the Great: Son of the Gods (2001) by Alan Fildes and Joann Fletcher

(Rating 5 of 5)

Alan Fildes and Joann Fletcher wrote this book, Alexander the Great: Son of the Gods, to tell the tale of the world's greatest conqueror. Their book is unique by the amount of space the dedicate to Alexander's time in Egypt, which they consider to be very important to his development and to his ideas on his own divinity. This book's structure and format have a very strong textbook feel to it. The chapters are subdivided into little sections and there are feature boxes that are within but excluded from the main text. The book contains a lot of incredible visuals, such as maps, images of ancient statues, medieval works of art, and present day photos of places where Alexander had been.

This work starts out as a traditional tale of Alexander, discussing the conditions of Macedonia, Greece as a whole, and the Persian Empire that long threatened Greece long before Alexander's arrival. The authors tell the story of how Alexander's dynasty got started and how his parents King Phillip and Queen Olympias came to be married. Alexander grows up between two parents who despise one another while being tutored by one of the greatest minds ever, Aristotle's.





(Alexander's parents)

Alexander becomes the King of Macedon when his father is assassinated. As King, goes to war against the Persian Empire. After defeating Darius III in battle at the battle of Issus and achieving victory at Tyre he heads south. The two authors focus a great deal on what happened to him when he was in the land of the Nile.


(The Alexander Mosaic)

“With the whole of Asia Minor now his, Alexander was free to pursue the Persians east into their own heartlands. However, knowing that would take Darius at least a year to muster a new army after his defeat at Issus, Alexander chose instead to go south to Egypt. Although often regarded by later historians as little more than an eccentric diversion, Alexander's six-month Egyptian sojourn was essential to his future plans—he required a strong coastal base for both strategic and commercial purposes. However, the founding of the city of Alexandria was not the only legacy of the young king's time in Egypt. His stay there was marked a major psychological turning point in his life, for it was in Egypt that he became convinced of his own invincibility and divinity.”(p.52)

Leaving Egypt the Pharaoh, he goes on to challenge King Darius for the rest of his empire. Defeating the King of Persia at the Battle of Gaugamela , Alexander spends the rest of his life mopping up the pieces of his newly won kingdom, stretching his empire all the way to India.


(The battle of Gaugamela)


After his death the authors give the best detailed account of break up his empire amongst his generals that I had ever read. The book also tells the tale of Alexander's tomb that for centuries was located in Alexandria. Now no one knows where it is! If it is ever found that discovery would make the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb pale by comparison. According to the authors it was how Alexander conquered and ruled that was his greatest legacy for he single handily ushered in the Hellenistic Age.


(Alexander's Macedonian Empire)

I recommend this book to anyone who would like to know more about Alexander the Great the unstoppable conqueror who saw himself as a god.

{Video is from the History Channel's Battles BC series.}

INVINCIBLE WARRIOR

A review of Tania Gergel’s Alexander the Great: the Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History’s Greatest Conqueror as Told by his Original Biographers (2004)

(Rating 4 of 5)

With an introduction by Michael Wood, who in the 1990s produced the BBC series In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, this book was assembled by Tania Gergel who took the work of three famous Alexander the Great biographers—Lucius Flavius Arrianus (Arrian), Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus—and edited them into a single narrative. All the authors are citizens of the Roman Empire writing centuries after Alexander had died, but they are closer to his time then we are to theirs.

Gergel does an excellent job of taking the best of the three works and making them into one single narrative. The story goes from Alexander’s princely boyhood to the death of the King who was ruler of the all the world that was known to him.


(Phillip, Alexander's father)

For years the Persian Empire had been the greatest threat to the freedom of Greece, the invasions of Darius I and Xerxes the Great had ended the polis or city-state of Greece and led various leagues and counter leagues transforming the culture of Greece from a free collections of city-states into the foundation for an empire. Alexander's father, Phillip, had brought Greece under the thumb of Macedon. Alexander takes the long-standing Greek conflicts, and brings a new war to Persia itself, invading and conquering the greatest power in the ancient world.


(Alexander the Great riding Bucephalus)

The Alexander portrayed in this text is a young man of brilliance and inexhaustible ambition. He is viewed as good person who kind and charitable but becomes corrupted with power and does cruel things even to his closest friends. Although the would later regret some of his actions his remorse comes only after the evil deed is done. Yet his flaws are from the same source as his strengths so it is hard to tell if he could be any other way.


(Alexander the Great)



(Alexander's road to conquest)

“Meanwhile some of the older of his companions, and Parmenion in particular, looked out over the plain between the river Niphates and the Gordyaean mountains and saw the entire plain agleam with the watch-fires of the barbarians, while from their camp there arose the confused and indistinguishable murmur of myriads of voices, like the distant roar of a vast ocean. They were filled with amazement at the sight and remarked to one another that it would be an overwhelmingly difficult task to defeat an enemy of such strength by engaging him by day. They therefore went to the king as soon as he had performed his sacrifice and tried to persuade him to attack by night, so as to conceal from his men the most terrifying element in the coming struggle, that is, the odds against them. It was then that Alexander gave them his celebrated answer, ‘I will not steal my victory.’ Some of his companions thought this an immature and empty boast on the part of a young man who was merely joking at the presence of danger. But others interpreted it as meaning that he had confidence in his present situation and that he had correctly judged the future. In other words, he was determined that if Darius were defeated, he should have no cause to summon the courage for another attempt: he was not to be allowed to blame darkness and night for his failure on this occasion, as at Issus he had blamed the narrow mountain passes and the sea. Certainly Darius would never abandon the war for lack of arms or of troops, when he could draw upon such a vast territory and such immense reserves of manpower. He would only do so when he had lost courage and become convinced of his inferiority in consequence of an unmistakable defeat suffered in broad daylight.” p.70-1

This is a great little book. I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to know more about the life of the man who conquered the world before he was thirty—literally!

{Video from the BBC Documentary In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.}

THE MAN WHO CONQUERED THE WORLD

A review of Waldemar Heckel’s The Wars of Alexander the Great: 336-323 BC (2002)
Part of Essential Histories Series #26

(Rating 5 of 5)

Alexander the Great is one of the unique figures in the history of the world. Alexander, the leader of tiny Macedonia, would take on the greatest power the world had ever seen, the Persian Empire. In time, he would be known as not only the King of Macedon and the master of Greece, but Lord of Asia, Pharaoh of Egypt, and King of Kings. Stories would be told of him for generations, inspiring all sorts of leaders such as Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

In a brief ninety-page work, Heckel tells the story how Alexander the Great conquered the entire world that was known to him. The book fills in some of the back-story dealing with the ‘relationship’ between Ancient Greece and the Persian Empire. It tells the story of Macedonia and how Alexander’s family came to rule it. It details the reign of Alexander’s father, Philip the Magician, and how he came to be the master of all Greece. Alexander’s story of conquest does not even begin until a third of the way into the book.

“What Philip’s exact aims were, in terms of territorial acquisition, are not clear. Many suppose that he would have contented himself, initially at least, with the liberation of Asia Minor. This would certainly have been in keeping with Philip’s practices in the past. From the time, that he overcame internal opposition and secured his borders against barbarian incursions, Philip expanded slowly and cautiously over a period of almost twenty years. Unlike Alexander, whose practice it was to conquer first and consolidate later—and, indeed, ‘later’ never came in some cases—Philip was content to acquire territory systematically, without overextending Macedonian power.” p.28

This particular series of books is interesting because they are in an almost textbook format with out really having a textbook feel to them. In this book, there are plenty of maps, classical paintings of events, pictures of statues, and photos of places that Alexander was at in modern times. A chapter deals with ordinary people who lived and worked while all these incredible events were going on. There are also little information boxes through out the book giving the reader a greater understanding on the topic that they are reading.

“Although Darius had again escaped from the battlefield, Gaugamela proved fatal for the Persian Empire. The Great King fled in the direction of Arbela, which he reached by midnight. Other contingents dispersed to their territories, as was the custom amongst the barbarians. Those who commanded the garrisons and guarded the treasures in the empire’s capitals made a formal surrender to Alexander. One man, Mazaeus, the Persian hero of Gaugamela, surrendered Babylon, together with the gazophylax (guardian of the treasures’), Bagophanes. Alexander entered in great ceremony the ancient city, which now publicly turned its resources over to the new king, as it were.” p.50

I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn about Alexander the Great. Since what the great king is known for is war, you do receive the complete Alexander in a very abridged form. It is a very brief but informative look into the fourth century B.C.

{Video taken from the History Channel series Decisive Battles: the episode is the Battle of Gaugamela}