Alexander the Great in Current Scholarship

History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Blackwell Oxford, History HICO © 1478-0542 March 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x 606 9 0 Europe 992??? Alexander 81??? 20092009 Compass The UK Publishing theAuthor Great inJournal Ltd CurrentCompilation Scholarship © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Alexander the Great in Current Scholarship Edward M. Anson* University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Abstract

Interest in Alexander the Great has never flagged from the time of his death until the present day. The bibliography of Alexander the Great continues to grow at near exponential rates. He was a commander of outstanding ability whose legacy was a world forever changed. However, plagued by a dearth of contemporary sources, scholars still debate his goals, his methods, and his true legacy. Did he envision and work towards a world where the races would be fused into one? Or was he an insatiable conqueror whose values were those of a Genghis Khan or a Tamarlane? Was his empire built on expediency or was it an attempt at a new world order under an absolute monarch. Finally, did Alexander order his own deification, and was this the result of practical administrative and political calculations, or was it the consequence of growing megalomaniacy. All of these interpretations have modern scholarly adherents, although some have come to dominate most current scholarship.

Despite Alexander’s fame, his conquest of over two million square miles, his victories in every battle where he was present, the fact that his conquests led to a new age, given most recent scholarship on Alexander III of Macedonia, the title, ‘the Great’, might be considered overly flattering. While his fame endures, a majority of current historians follow Brian Bosworth’s assessment put forth in his 1996 book Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph.1 ‘The price of Alexander’s sovereignty was killing on a gigantic scale, and killing is unfortunately the perpetual backcloth of his regime’.2 J. M. O’Brien, in Alexander the Great: The Invisible Enemy, portrays the conqueror as a chronic alcoholic,3 and most recently Ian Worthington has rhetorically asked, ‘Was the wastage in human lives, the incalculable damage to foreign peoples, institutions, livelihoods, and lands, . . . worth it?’4 Professor Worthington’s answer is that it was not. Alexander is just not the man he used to be. So strong have the condemnations become that historian Frank Holt has warned that this ‘new extreme orthodoxy . . . runs counter to the interests of historical accuracy’.5 Prior to the late 1950s, when Ernst Badian began to challenge the then prevailing view of Alexander,6 that commander was seen as a civilizing force for the entire Near East. Alexander the Great, proclaimed the quintessential © 2009 The Author Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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Greek, brought Hellenic civilization to the East,7 and in the view of Gustav Droysen paved the way for the success of Christianity.8 In 1933, William Woodthorpe Tarn presented a version of Alexander in which the conqueror was not simply great, but incredibly great. [Alexander] did aspire to be the harmonizer and reconciler of the world . . . he did have the intention of uniting the peoples of his empire in fellowship and concord and making them of one mind together.9

While these views of Alexander are generally challenged today, they do still have their adherents. Nicholas Hammond describes Alexander ‘as a visionary’ who ruled ‘to benefit mankind’.10 What is generally accepted is again in the words of Tarn that ‘[Alexander] was one of the supreme fertilizing forces of history. He lifted the civilized world out of one groove and set it in another’.11 As part of the ongoing reassessment of Alexander, emphasis today is placed on his Macedonian heritage, and especially in the last few decades Macedonian studies have flourished,12 abetted by the discovery of the Royal Tombs in Vergina in 1977–78,13 and also by current events in the Balkans.14 Macedonian archaeology has consequently become an increasingly active and important source of information on this Macedonian background. Perhaps, the most significant change in Alexander studies over the last thirty years has been the emphasis on the role played by Alexander’s, until recently, far less heralded father.15 Philip II had turned a northern, culturally backward area of the Greek peninsula, from a fragmented land of powerful aristocratic land-owners and poverty-stricken serfs into a unified nation state with cities and a large free population. He had transformed the Macedonian army from a force far inferior to the armies of the southern Greek city-states into the best fighting force in the Western world, and had created a dominating Macedonian infantry where there had only been light infantry before. And finally he had used this new Macedonia to make himself the master of most of the Greek peninsula. His legacy to Alexander was the army and the nucleus of the officer corps with which Alexander would conquer the East and a federation of Greek states answering to first Philip’s and subsequently Alexander’s leadership.16 It was even Philip’s plan to invade the Persian Empire, but his assassination in 336 b.c. had made this another of his legacies to his son Alexander.17 Part of the difficulty in assessing Alexander has always been the nature of the surviving sources.18 Given that he was even in his lifetime almost a mythic figure, it is both peculiar and frustrating that no contemporary narratives of his life have survived. These had been written by his generals and confidants, by his admiral, court supervisor, etc. Nor is this deficiency corrected by an abundance of surviving documents. The inscriptional evidence is hardly substantial.19 All of our earliest surviving narrative sources date from the Roman period, centuries after the conqueror’s death.20 While these sources are based on the earlier accounts, they are © 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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neither clear in the attribution of their sources nor are they mere ciphers of the earlier works. Much recent scholarship has focused on the importance of understanding the milieu, purposes, and style of these surviving historians.21 As John Atkinson writes, we must ‘consider the writers’ aspirations, their treatment of fashionable motifs and current issues, and the limits of their originality’.22 This emphasis suggests that any attempt to discover the ‘real’ Alexander may ultimately be impossible.23 Indeed, Alexander the myth began almost as soon as he died, and the examination of the legend of Alexander has become a major field of study. The legend entered the Middle Ages in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Hebrew, and Persian versions, and survives in the national literatures of roughly eighty countries.24 At least in the world of legend Alexander never suffered an eclipse or diminution of grandeur. This body of material associated with the ‘Alexander Romance’, is thought to have begun its life, perhaps, as early as in the generation after the conqueror’s death. Despite the caveats placed on any true assessment of Alexander, much study today has gone into attempting to gauge what Alexander’s ‘real’ aims were. Was he an insatiable conqueror only stopped in his quest for world domination by his wearied troops’ refusal to continue,25 or were there limits to his territorial ambitions? While current scholarship has tended to emphasize the former,26 recently a more limited view has been put forward at least with respect to Asia. Philip Spann and Waldemar Heckel have argued that Alexander did not desire to proceed further into India, and that the famous ‘mutiny’ on the Hyphasis, where Alexander’s troops refused to go on and forced Alexander to return from India, may in reality have been an event staged by Alexander himself.27 Alexander, having secured his eastern borders through his alliance with Porus, the defeated Indian prince and now ally, wished to turn his attention to the West: Sicily, Italy, and, perhaps the entire western Mediterranean basin. In the ‘last plans’ of Alexander, found in the first century b.c. author Diodorus, Alexander ‘proposed to build a thousand warships . . . for a campaign against the Carthaginians and the others who live along the coast of Libya and Iberia’ (Book 18.4.4).28 Alexander’s conception of kingship and his administration of his conquests have also come under recent scrutiny. Alexander had two traditional models to draw from in ruling his conquests: Macedonia and Persia. With respect to the former there is division over whether this tradition was autocratic,29 or marginally democratic.30 Complicating the picture is that Alexander was eclectic in his administration.31 To the Greeks of Europe he was Hegemon (leader) of the League of Corinth, the federation of Greek states created by his father Philip; he was king of Macedonia, and with each new conquest the list of his titles grew. With his conquest of Egypt he became Pharaoh to the inhabitants, in Babylon, King of Babylonia,32 and in the eyes of many the Great King of Persia.33 In 1986, Nicholas Hammond claimed that Alexander despite these many © 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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possible titles saw himself as ‘King of Asia’.34 Alexander by this view wished to create a new autocracy, not an imitation of any that had come before. This view now has come to dominate recent scholarship to the point where most scholars investigating Alexander’s imperial administration seek to find the constituent parts and symbols of his new regime. While panhellenic propaganda emphasized the superiority of Greeks and their civilization and the inferiority of all other peoples, Alexander wished to use the full resources of his new domains. He had incorporated Asiatic units in his military forces, added Asiatics trained in Macedonian fighting techniques, and even associated Persians in the ranks of his Macedonian elite cavalry and in his inner circle. Further, Asiatics had been given administrative positions in his new order. This has led many commentators to believe that Alexander wished to create a ‘fused’ ruling class. In the words of Nicholas Hammond, ‘The policy of cooperating with Asians and of treating them as equals was essential for Alexander and became a sine qua non with the expansion of the Kingdom of Asia’.35 It is often argued in this context that this fusion was restricted to Persians, Macedonians, and Greeks.36 Certainly by maintaining many of the basic financial and imperial structures of the Persian Empire Alexander could more easily control his new Asiatic holdings. Such continuation would eliminate or lessen any residual Persian resentment. It is argued that if all that changed was the name of the ruler and the Persian aristocracy kept their status, there would be little resistance to the new king.37 However, any attempt to placate the Asiatics ran the risk of offending his Macedonians. He had used the hostility between the Macedonians/Greeks and the Persians in his quest to acquire the Persian Empire. Once acquired, he needed to reverse policy and encourage cooperation between the respective groups. Alexander’s use of propaganda has received increased scrutiny in recent times. Following his father’s lead, Alexander at first presented the invasion of the Persian Empire as a panhellenic crusade and himself as both King of Macedonia and as Hegemon of the League of Corinth.38 The League recognized the leadership of the Macedonian king, but also the autonomy of the Greek member states. The Greek orator/philosopher Isocrates had long preached Greek unification and a war of revenge against Persia. First Philip and then Alexander had presented the war to their constituencies as a national crusade. Indeed, much has been written about the purported efforts of Alexander to produce for his contemporaries and posterity an image of himself. In the words of Elizabeth Carney, ‘Alexander himself [was] a man determined to have both his contemporaries and posterity see him as he chose to be seen, as he willed himself to be’.39 He had brought along on the expedition his own personal historian, Callisthenes, to record his exploits, and Alexander even had his own portrait artists. In Ephesus he sat for the famous painter Apelles of Cos, and Lysippus of Sicyon was Alexander’s personal sculptor.40 Apelles’s portrait depicted Alexander holding a thunderbolt, the emblem of Zeus. The implications © 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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lend themselves to one of the most fascinating debates surrounding Alexander: his possible claim of divinity. While controversial, the importance of the topic is beyond dispute. As Ernst Badian proclaims, ‘The deification of Alexander marks an epoch: the beginning of centuries of ruler cult that only came to an end with the total victory of monotheist religion’.41 In 332, Alexander journeyed into the Libyan desert to consult an oracle. This journey, connected with other incidents during his lifetime, has been interpreted as Alexander’s quest to become a god manifest.42 This was a status not generally recognized in the Greek world and clearly not Persian, where the king was not viewed as divine. Among those who believe that Alexander did wish to be so recognized, the question becomes one of motivation. Was it a political move to bring a certain order and uniformity to his role as King of Asia, i.e., political motives,43 or was it far more personal, as claimed by Brian Bosworth. ‘He was son of Zeus and a god in his own right, having proved himself by unique and superhuman achievements’.44 Complicating the entire issue is the complexity of Greek religion when it comes in particular to the semi-divine. There is little controversy that Alexander was proclaimed the ‘Son of Zeus Ammon’.45 Ammon was originally an Egyptian god who became identified with the Greek god Zeus and had an oracle out in the Libyan desert oasis of Siwah. This oracle was honored by the Greeks on a par with those at Delphi and Dodona.46 Calling oneself the son of a god in the Greek world, however, did not necessarily mean one was divine. Achilles and Heracles were both the sons of one divine and one mortal parent, and they were both consequently mortal. It is, therefore, claimed by some historians that in claiming to be the son of Ammon or Zeus, all Alexander ‘sought in life was recognition of the magnitude of [his] achievements and the acknowledgement of [his] special relationship with the gods’.47 But it is also claimed that Alexander’s flirtation with divinity did not stop with being the acknowledged son of Zeus. In 324 b.c., Alexander may have directly or indirectly requested that the Greeks worship him as a living god.48 W. W. Tarn argued that Alexander did order his deification in 324 b.c., not through any personal belief in his divinity, but rather that it put him above the law of nations.49 Lowell Edmunds, more generally, notes that the request ‘was a way of reminding the Greeks of the authority of the man who had promulgated the decree for the return of the exiles’.50 Others see all claims of semi-divine or divine status as signs of Alexander’s increasing megalomania.51 Yet, Alexander was apparently deeply religious,52 and Bosworth argues that a belief in divinity would not be irrational given ‘its mythological underpinning’ and ‘the most impressive career of conquest that the ancient world witnessed’.53 The historical interest in Alexander has never faltered from the time of his death and even with new approaches and insights, Alexander after more than two millennia remains as enigmatic as ever. This may indeed be © 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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part of his charm. While his reputation as a brilliant military commander and, whether intentionally or otherwise, as the initiator of a new age, remain intact, his true goals and his personality remain as elusive as ever. Short Biography Edward M. Anson has authored or edited five books, most recently Eumenes of Cardia: A Greek Among Macedonians (Leiden/Boston, MA/ Tokyo: E. J. Brill, 2004), and more than thirty articles in journals, including Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, The Journal of Cuneiform Studies, The Journal of the American Oriental Society, Classical Philology, Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, and The American Journal of Philology; and has contributed assorted book chapters. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and is currently Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Notes * Correspondence address: Department of History, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 South University Avenue, Little Rock, Arkansas USA 72212. Email: [email protected]. 1

A. B. Bosworth, Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Ibid., 30. 3 J. M. O’Brien, Alexander the Great: The Invisible Enemy (New York, NY/London: Routledge, 1992). J. R. Hamilton, Alexander the Great (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974), 165, states ‘That Alexander was a drunkard devoid of self-control is, of course, a figment of the rhetorical and philosophic imagination, an unwarranted generalization’. 4 I. Worthington, ‘How “Great” was Alexander?’, Ancient History Bulletin, 13 (1999): 52. In his 2004 book, Alexander the Great: Man and God (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2004), 303, Worthington asks, ‘Alexander the Great or Alexander the Accursed: how do you like your Alexander?’. 5 F. Holt, ‘Alexander the Great Today: In the Interests of Historical Accuracy?’, Ancient History Bulletin, 13 (1999): 117. 6 E. Badian, ‘Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind’, Historia, 7 (1958): 425–44. 7 For example, U. Wilcken, Alexander the Great, trans. C. Richards (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1967). 8 G. Droysen, Geschichte des Hellenismus, Teil 1: Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1877), 4. 9 Tarn, ‘Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind’, 27; Alexander the Great, Vol. 2, Sources and Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 399–449. 10 N. G. L. Hammond, The Genius of Alexander the Great (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 201. 11 W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 1:145. For a balanced view of Alexander, between the extremes, see Hamilton, Alexander the Great, 159–66. 12 See N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Macedonia, Vol. 1, Historical Geography and Prehistory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Hammond and G. T. Griffith, A History of Macedonia, Vol. 2, 550–336 B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); Hammond, The Macedonian State: The Origins, Institutions and History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); R. M. Errington, A History of Macedonia, trans. C. Errington (Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA/Oxford: University of California Press, 1990); E. N. Borza, In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); M. B. Hatzopoulos, Macedonian Institutions under the Kings, 2 vols. (Paris/Athens: Diffusion de Boccard, 1996). In addition, Elizabeth Carney has reexamined the role of women in Macedonia, Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (Norman, OK: University 2

© 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Alexander the Great in Current Scholarship 987 of Oklahoma Press, 2000); Carney, Olympias: The Mother of Alexander the Great (London/New York, NY: Routledge, 2006). 13 M. Andronicos, Vergina: The Royal Tombs and the Ancient City (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1984). 14 With the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the emergence of a new state officially recognized in 1993 by the United Nations as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), the legacy of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia became an issue of contention between the new Republic and the nation of Greece. 15 For example, J. R. Ellis, Philip II and Macedonian Imperialism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976); G. Cawkwell, Philip of Macedon (London/Boston, MA: Faber & Faber, 1978); G. Wirth, Philipp II Geschichte Makedoniens. Band 1 (Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln/Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1985); N. G. L. Hammond, Philip of Macedon (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); I. Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 16 See W. Heckel, The Marshals of Alexander’s Empire (London/New York, NY: Routledge, 1992), 3; E. M. Anson, ‘Philip II and the Creation of the Pezetairoi’, in P. Wheatley and R. Hannah (eds), Alexander in the Antipodes (Claremont, CA: Regina Press, forthcoming 2009); Anson, ‘The Hypaspists: Macedonia’s Professional Citizen-Soldiers’, Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, 34 (1985): 246–8; Anson, Eumenes of Cardia: A Greek among Macedonians (Boston, MA/Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004), 225–31. 17 E. A. Fredricksmeyer, ‘On the Final Aims of Philip II’, in W. L. Adams and E. N. Borza (eds), Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Macedonian Heritage (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982), 85–98, believes that Philip planned to replace the Great King of the Persian Empire, deify himself, and establish an absolute monarchy over the lands of his conquest. 18 For a concise summary of the sources, see E. Baynham, ‘The Ancient Evidence for Alexander the Great’, J. Roisman (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Alexander the Great (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003), 3–29. 19 A. J. Heisserer, Alexander the Great and the Greeks of Asia Minor (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980); M. N. Tod, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, Vol. 2, From 403 to 323 B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), nos. 183–203; Hatzopoulos, Macedonian Institutions under the Kings, 2: nos. viia, viib. 20 These are in approximate chronological order: Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History; Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander of Macedon, Plutarch, The Life of Alexander; Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus; Lucius Flavius Arrianus (Arrian), The Anabasis of Alexander. With exception of Justin, translations of these works are available in Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press) and Penguin Classics editions. An excellent translation of Justin can be found in J. C. Yardley (trans.), Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1994). 21 For example, see J. R. Hamilton, Plutarch: Alexander, A Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); A. B. Bosworth, A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander, Vol. 1, Books I–III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Vol. 2, Books IV–V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); E. J. Baynham, Alexander the Great: The Unique History of Quintus Curtius (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998); E. Carney, ‘Artifice and Alexander History’, in A. B. Bosworth and E. J. Baynham (eds), Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (Oxford/New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 263–85. 22 J. Atkinson, ‘Originality and its Limits in the Alexander Sources of the Early Empire’, in A. B. Bosworth and E. J. Baynham (eds), Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 307. 23 While arguably the foremost currently practicing scholar of Alexander has called such an attempt ‘undesirable’ and ‘impossible to achieve’, A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge/New York, NY/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1988), xi, such biographies exist in abundance. Since 1990: C. G. Thomas, Alexander the Great in his World ( London: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); W. L. Adams, Alexander the Great: The Legacy of a Conqueror (New York, NY: Pearson/Longman, 2005); P. Cartledge, Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past ( New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2005); J. Lendering, Alexander de Grote. De ondergang van het Perzische rijk (Amsterdam: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2005); O’Brien, Alexander the Great; Worthington, Alexander the Great. Additionally, Waldemar Heckel has produced two very useful and informative handbooks for the study of Alexander: © 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

988 Alexander the Great in Current Scholarship Marshals of Alexander’s Empire and Who’s Who in the Age of Alexander the Great (Malden, MA/ Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). 24 Richard Stoneman’s Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend, published in 2008 by Yale University Press, investigates the vast body of literature associated with this mythical Alexander. Stoneman’s work contains an excellent bibliography of the sources and of secondary scholarship as well. 25 This is a theme presented in our sources. Arrian (Anabasis of Alexander 28.2) describes Alexander as ‘zealous for honor’ and ‘insatiable of glory alone’. Plutarch in his Life of Alexander (5.5–6) comments that Alexander did not desire wealth and luxury, but ‘virtue and fame’. A darker side to this theme is presented in Justin’s Epitome of Pompeius Trogus and in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander the Great of Macedon. Justin’s work describes Alexander as ‘visionary’ (9.8.13), prone to anger and drunkenness (9.8.14–15), feared not loved (9.8.17). Curtius (3.12.18–20) portrays Alexander as a monarch corrupted by his good fortune. Yet, Justin (9.8.11) believes that with respect to Alexander the good more than offset the faults, and Curtius (10.5.26) that Alexander’s faults were due to ‘fortune or his youth’. 26 P. A. Brunt, ‘The Aims of Alexander’, Greece and Rome, 12 (1965): 205–15; Hamilton, Alexander the Great, 154–8; Bosworth, Alexander and the East, esp. 166–85; Worthington, Alexander the Great, 215–16. 27 Philip Spann, ‘Alexander at the Beas: Fox in a Lion’s Skin’, in F. B. Titchener and R. F. Moorton, Jr. (eds), The Eye Expanded. Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 62–74; W. Heckel, ‘Alexander the Great and the “Limits of the Civilised World”’, in Heckel and L. A. Tritle (eds), Crossroads of History. The Age of Alexander (Claremond, CA: Regina Books, 2003), 147–74; Heckel, The Conquests of Alexander the Great (Cambridge/New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 122–5. 28 The ‘last plans’ are generally accepted by modern scholars. For example, Hamilton, Alexander the Great, 157–8; Bosworth, Alexander and the East, 164–5. E. Badian, ‘A King’s Notebooks’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 72 (1968): 183–204, suggests that while the gist of the ‘last plans’ is authentic the details may have been elaborated after Alexander’s death. 29 See E. M. Anson, ‘Macedonian Judicial Assemblies’, Classical Philology, 103 (2008): 135–49; Anson, ‘Macedonia’s Alleged Constitutionalism’, Classical Journal, 80 (1985): 303–16. 30 Hammond and Griffith, History of Macedonia, 2:160–2. D. Kienast, Philipp II von Makedonien und das Reich der Achamieniden (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1973), 248–9, claimed that Macedonian kingship was changed into its more autocratic form during the reign of Philip II. 31 While dated, the most complete examination of the details of Alexander’s provincial administration remains, E. Badian, ‘The Administration of the Empire’, Greece and Rome, 12 (1965): 166–82; cf. Badian, ‘Alexander the Great and the Greeks of Asia’, in Badian (ed.), Ancient Society and Institutions: Studies presented to Victor Ehrenberg on his 75th Birthday (New York, NY: Barnes and Noble, 1967), 37–69. 32 There is debate if Alexander was ever formally enthroned in either Egypt or Babylon. In favor see, E. Fredricksmeyer, ‘Alexander and the Kingship of Asia’, in A. B. Bosworth and E. J. Baynham (eds), Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 145–7; E. M. Anson, ‘Alexander and Siwah’, The Ancient World, 34 (2003): 127; opposed, E. Badian, ‘Alexander the Great between Two Thrones and Heaven: Variations on an Old Theme’, in A. Small (ed.), Subject and Ruler: The Cult of the Ruling Power in Classical Antiquity, Papers Presented at a Conference Held in the University of Alberta on April 13–15, 1994, to Celebrate the 65th Anniversary of Duncan Fishwick (Journal of Roman Archaeology), Ann Arbor, MI, 1996, 14. 33 F. Schachermeyr, Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichkeit und seines Wirkens (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973), 277; A. B. Bosworth, ‘Alexander and the Iranians’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 100 (1980): 5; L. de Blois and R. J. van der Spek, Einführung in die Alte Welt, trans. A. Vervelde (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1994), 100. 34 N. G. L. Hammond, ‘The Kingdom of Asia and the Persian Throne’, Antichthon, 20 (1986): 73–85; cf. F. A. Fredricksmeyer, ‘Alexander the Great and the Kingship of Asia’, 136–66. 35 Hammond , Genius of Alexander the Great, 187. 36 Hamilton, Alexander the Great, 163; Thomas, Alexander the Great in his World, 220. 37 P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. P. T. Daniels (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbruns, 2002), 569. © 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Alexander the Great in Current Scholarship 989 38 Some have argued that Alexander’s ‘panhellenism’ propaganda ended with his victory at Gaugamela and his dismissal of the allied contingents (Brunt, ‘Aims of Alexander’, 203). M. B. Hatzopoulos, ‘Alexandre en Perse: La Revanche et l’empire’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 116 (1997): 41–52, states that Alexander regarded panhellenism as more than propaganda and that he intended to return to Greece and Macedonia after his burning of the Persian capital in Persepolis. 39 Carney, ‘Artifice and Alexander History’, 285. Most recently Giuseppe Squillace, Basileis e tyrannoi: Filippo II e Alessandro Magno tra opposizione e consenso (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2004) has surveyed the subject, and F. W. Holt, Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005) has concentrated on one aspect of this personal propaganda. 40 E. Schwarzenberg, ‘The Portraiture of Alexander’, in E. Badian (ed.), Alexandre le Grand. Image et réalité. Entretiens Hardt, XXII (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1976), 223–67. 41 E. Badian, The Deification of Alexander the Great: Protocol of the Twenty-First Colloquy (Berkeley, CA: The Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1976), 3. 42 Ibid., 15–17; Bosworth, Alexander and the East, 282–90; N. G. L. Hammond and F. W. Walbank, A History of Macedonia, Vol. 3, 336–167 B.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 82; E. A. Fredricksmeyer, ‘Alexander’s Religion and Divinity’, in J. Roisman (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Alexander the Great (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003) 270–8. 43 Despite Bosworth’s hope ‘that the “rational” Alexander is defunct’ with respect to Alexander’s belief that he was a god (A. B. Bosworth, ‘Alexander, Euripides, and Dionysos: The Motivation for Apothesis’, in R. W. Wallace and E. M. Harris (eds), Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History, 360–146 B.C., in Honor of E. Badian (Norman, OK/London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 140), this claim is at least partially still maintained in the literature. For example, see Heckel, Conquests of Alexander the Great, 148; K. M. T. Atkinson, ‘Demosthenes, Alexander, and Asebeia’, Athenaeum, 51 (1973): 310–35. 44 Bosworth, Alexander and the East, 103, 130–1. 45 A. B. Bosworth, ‘Alexander and Ammon’, in K. H. Kinzl (ed.), Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in Ancient History and Prehistory. Studies Presented to Fritz Schachermeyer on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday (Berlin/New York, NY: Walter de Gruyter, 1977), 51–75; Badian, ‘Alexander the Great between Two Thrones and Heaven’, 11–26; G. L. Cawkwell, ‘The Deification of Alexander the Great: A Note’, in I. Worthington (ed.), Ventures in Greek History: Essays in Honour of N. G. L. Hammond (Oxford/New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994), 293–306; Anson, ‘Alexander and Siwah’, 117–30. 46 H. W. Parke, Greek Oracles (London: Hutchinson, 1967); Parke, The Oracles of Zeus: Dodona, Olympia, Ammon (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967). 47 Anson, ‘Alexander and Siwah’, 124; cf. Badian, ‘Alexander the Great between Two Thrones and Heaven’, 13. 48 Atkinson, ‘Demosthenes, Alexander, and Asebeia’, 331–5; E. A. Fredricksmeyer, ‘Alexander, Zeus Ammon, and the Conquest of Asia’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 121 (1991): 213. 49 Tarn, Alexander the Great, 2:347–73. Cawkwell, ‘Deification of Alexander the Great’, 293– 306, argues that Alexander never requested deification of the Greek states, but rather they spontaneously moved to divine recognition. 50 L. Edmunds, ‘The Religiosity of Alexander the Great’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 12 (1971): 381; cf. Heckel, Conquests of Alexander the Great, 147–8. 51 For example, Worthington, Alexander the Great, 282–3. 52 Edmunds, ‘Religiosity of Alexander the Great’, 363–91; Hammond, Genius of Alexander the Great, 199–200; Fredricksmeyer, ‘Alexander’s Religion and Divinity’, 253–70. 53 Bosworth, Alexander and the East, 140–57.

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© 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd