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By the time of his death in 323 BC, Alexander the Great had added the Persian Empire to Macedon's European territories, thus controlling most of the world as known to the ancient Greeks. In Chapter 1, David J. Lonsdale examines Alexander's campaigns from the early conflicts in Greece and the Balkans through his conquests in Persia, his expedition into India and his eventual return to Babylon. Alexander at times applied non‐military instruments of what we today would refer to as grand strategy, showing sensitivity to religious, cultural, and societal factors, and at other times acted with brute force, slaughtering inhabitants, or selling them into slavery. He proved himself successful in set‐piece battles as well as irregular warfare, often engaging the enemy indirectly and with inferior numbers. In the end, his success depended on his ability to combine the tactical, operational, and strategic and grand strategic levels of war.

Chapter 2 shows that Philip’s Macedonian peace served as a framework for his own military alliance, the League of Corinth. Philip reorganized all the other Greek alliances in the name of freedom, posing as the protector of freedom for individual cities in Greece. Having inherited this system, Alexander (the Great) started a new trend, using “freedom” and “autonomy” to define the status of individual Greek cities in return for their loyalty to him. This chapter also examines the development of particular aspects of the status of Greeks cities during Alexander’s reign, which would survive into the Hellenistic and Roman periods. My examination shows that neither the obligation of the city to pay tribute (with or without other contributions) nor its obligation to accept a garrison was relevant to its status as a “free” and “autonomous” city.

This chapter examines Sikandar (1941), an Indian film about Alexander the Great, and situates it within broader contexts of colonialism and nationalism. It considers how cinema's engagement with the historical past provides responses to political pressures, through such devices as narrative, representational strategy, and the use of tradition. In evaluating the film about Alexander (directed by Sohrab Modi and starring Prithviraj Kapoor as Sikandar), the chapter considers the broader socio‐political contexts in which the film was made, and also locate it within Indian historical writing on the ancient Greeks. The choice of Alexander was not entirely arbitrary, and the Macedonian figure offered Indian intellectuals a vehicle through which they could speak about specific contemporary issues raised by anti‐colonial struggles and aspirations to nationhood.

This chapter argues that Alexander the Great's kingship of Asia, as proclaimed in 331 BC, did not mean, as is often thought, the Persian kingship, but was a unique creation of Alexander himself. In addition, Alexander's Persian innovations after the death of Darius in 330 were not primarily designed, as is widely believed, to establish Alexander as Great King, but rather were meant to reform Alexander's kingship by addition of the Persian component, and to establish Alexander, ultimately, as an absolute monarch. According to Plutarch, by Alexander's conquest of Darius at Gaugamela in October 331, the empire of Persia was thought to be completely destroyed, and a few days later, at the nearby village of Arbela, Alexander was proclaimed ‘King of Asia’. Although Plutarch is the only source to provide this information, it is accepted by virtually all historians as historical. Only Franz Altheim and Paul Goukowsky are known to have rejected it.

Few events are as important and contentious as the demographic effect resulting from Alexander's conquests. It is accepted that Macedonia was far weaker by the end of the 3rd century than had been the case under Philip and Alexander, but what caused the debilitation has been intensely disputed. One theory is that Alexander's demands for reinforcements, in particular the demands he made between 334 BC and 330 BC, drained the military resources of Macedonia and were ultimately responsible for her decline over the following century. This chapter explores the question concerning the strength of Alexander's army at the time of his death, along with the military situation between 323 BC and 319 BC, when Macedonian reserves were stretched to the full. The impact of the campaigns of those years, which were arguably more destructive — for Macedon — than the entire reign of Alexander, is discussed.

One of the more intriguing documents in the extant corpus of ancient literature on Alexander the Great of Macedon and his death is Liber de Morte, a fictitious account of his last days and will, which was originally appended to a late Latin history known as the Metz Epitome. References to such a document are found in two major historical sources. Quintus Curtius, the Roman historian, claims that an alleged testament of the king had purported to distribute his empire amongst his generals, but he emphatically rejects the validity of its existence and the tradition. According to Diodorus Siculus, Alexander admired the Rhodians so much that he deposited his will with them. Historically, this seems unlikely in view of Alexander's treatment of the island; he had installed a garrison on it and at his death the Rhodians removed their Macedonian overlords.

The winter of 317/16 BC witnessed what is arguably the most momentous campaign in the entire period after the death of Alexander the Great. Two massive coalition armies led by Eumenes and Antigonus the One-Eyed manoeuvred delicately and skilfully in the desolate terrain of central Iran, and the two great battles they fought were recorded by a participant (Hieronymus of Cardia) who was an intimate both of Eumenes and the Antigonids. That account was used by Diodorus, and his narrative of the campaign is one of the most detailed and colourful in his entire encyclopaedic history. This chapter revisits the campaign in Iran and addresses some of the critical issues which determined the strategy and outcome.

In 335 BC Alexander of Macedon laid siege to the city of Thebes, which was in revolt, and razed it to the ground. Contrast the treatment of Thebes with that of Plataea. After his victory at Gaugamela in 331, Alexander ordered the rebuilding of Plataea, which had been destroyed by Thebes in 373, because of her services to Greece in 479 BC. Thus, Alexander destroyed one famous Greek city and rebuilt another. Alexander's motive in destroying Thebes was to deter future revolts. The razing of Thebes and the restoration of Plataea were part and parcel of the same policy, and that policy was panhellenic. This chapter discusses panhellenism as an ideology during the time of Alexander the Great, some of his actions that relate to a panhellenist programme, and panhellenism after the burning of Persepolis.

This chapter examines the Alexander–Caesar, and in particular Plutarch's interpretation of Alexander's victory over the Persian king Darius III and Julius Caesar's victory over his Roman political rivals, especially Pompey. It argues that Plutarch equates self-control with kingly behaviour and that, in general, he assumes that successful leadership in war and in politics depends on ethical behaviour. It demonstrates that Plutarch has adopted Xenophon's depiction of Cyrus I from the Cyropaedia as a model for his moderate, kingly, and victorious Alexander. The chapter further demonstrates how Plutarch connects Alexander's less successful later years with a corresponding lapse in resistance to luxury and sexual activity. Turning to the Caesar, it concludes by arguing that Plutarch has also applied the example of a moderate Alexander to Caesar, despite Caesar's well-established reputation for sexual extravagance.

No previous event in Macedonian history was anything like as turbulant as the Babylon Settlement. There had been succession crises aplenty, but all had been significantly different. Reigning kings left living sons. They may have been immature boys (like Archelaus' son, Orestes), but at least they were there — there was a plethora of males of the Argead house. So problems arose from an oversupply of potential kings. What is more, the succession to the throne was played out within the boundaries of Macedon, in the traditional heartland of the kingdom. Alexander himself came to power in the old capital of Aegae, with the entire nobility around him and the armed forces united in Macedonia. His accession may have been bloody, but the circumstances did not favour a protracted crisis. Rivals and potential rivals who were close at hand were quickly eliminated, and he was able to achieve recognition in Macedon and stamp his authority on the League of Corinth within a matter of weeks.

This chapter examines how fantastic tales about Alexander's life and adventures after he had conquered the “known world,” were current soon after his death. Very possibly these were to some degree modelled on the early epic and heroic legends in Greek literature. The new stories seem to find their origin mainly in Ptolemaic Egypt, which is hardly surprising given Alexander's associations there in life and death. Such documents provide writers and artists with a corpus of tales about the mystic east which were to echo in later centuries through the works of Marco Polo, the stories of Sinbad the Sailor, and Sir John de Mandeville's record of imaginary journeys in the east, and much else.

This chapter discusses Alexander's early reign and his dealings with the Greeks before he headed for Asia in 334. It also discusses what Demosthenes was up to during Alexander's reign, when he played a largely inactive role in public life, as well as the abortive war of Agis III of Sparta in 331–330 against Macedonian rule.

The period after the reign of Alexander the Great is generally regarded as a depressing anticlimax. It was characterized by destabilisation and virtual anarchy, as the great king's marshals fought for the empire which he had allegedly left to the strongest of them. The army which he had led into Asia was dissipated in a sequence of futile civil wars, and the elite Macedonian troops were progressively reduced by combat, much of it against fellow Macedonians. Out of the conflict emerged a number of kingdoms, created by the ambitions of individual satraps, which gradually coalesced into hereditary dynasties.

Alexander the Great, in one known case, believed in a conspiracy that did not exist, on the part of supporters of Cleitus. Anyone accused of suspecting conspiracies on the part of Alexander, where some do not see them, can only reply that, like the Emperor Domitian, Alexander has only himself to blame if we approach his claims, as transmitted by court historiography, with some suspicion. The war between Alexander of Macedon and Darius III of Persia and the continuation of Alexander's campaign is marked by a series of conspiracies, allegations of conspiracy, and attempts to anticipate conspiracy. Alexander was involved in the conspiracy that led to the death of Philip II. This chapter also discusses the conspiracy against Philotas and whether Dimnus was involved in the plot to kill him, as well as conspiracies by Macedonians against Alexander.

After the death of Alexander the Great of Macedon, a series of monuments depicting him hunting a lion along with one or more companions began to appear on the Greek mainland. In Asia during that time, lions were symbols of kingship. This chapter discusses the history, meaning, and purpose of lion hunts in relation to the Successors' power struggles in the last decades of the 4th century. It argues that the lion-hunt iconography was borrowed from the east to emphasise the participants' intimacy with the king and that it was used by the Successors in their propaganda war to confer legitimacy on their aspirations to rule Alexander's empire. The echo of Alexander's royal hunts, especially of the Vergina fresco with shades of Dionysus, lingers in the hunting iconography. The controversy surrounding Hephaestion's funeral pyre, described by Diodorus, is also discussed.

This chapter shows that the broad claim that the King commissioned the translation is credible when set against the background of his ambitious cultural imperialism. In the early days of Alexandria, the legacy of Alexander the Great kept alive curiosity about other cultures. Aristotelians amassed and catalogued information, and the Jews and Judaism were within their purview. For the King, too, Judaea and the Jews were a part of his empire which demanded attention. As for the Jews of Alexandria, they tied themselves into the Ptolemaic project at an early date, and they showed striking prescience in their ready adaptation to Alexandria's dynamic recreation of the heritage of Athens by their immediate acceptance of the Bible translation. This represents a prompt acceptance of the indispensability of operating in the colonial language, the common Greek (koine) of the age. But the community also appreciated the value of standing back from that project and not forgetting Jerusalem.

This chapter examines how Renaissance scholars and artists were taken with Alexander, and were not altogether dependent on the Romances. For instance, the thirteenth-century Catholic saint Albertus Magnus somehow knew of Alexander's discovery of the caladrius, a white bird that could foretell the future and whether the sick would survive. In the mid-fifteenth century, the Portuguese Vasco da Lucena translated Quintus Curtius' Deeds of Alexander. Moreover, the Renaissance artists had behind them a rich tradition of mediaeval illustration of Alexander, but they had their own preferences, for artistic or sometimes political purposes, and some episodes proved to be especially favoured. These include attempts to depict whole stories as a sequence of scenes as well as in the well-known episodes.

This chapter explores how Alexander seems to have been ignored as a subject for the movies until after the Second World War, but he was soon on the stage, as in Terence Rattigan's Adventure Story (1949). Soon after, a full-length film, Alexander the Great, was shot in Spain in 1955, starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. Alexander has also been a subject for children's films. Maya the Bee was a German book by Waldemar Bousels of 1912. As for novels, Louis Couperus (Dutch, 1863–1923) wrote an Iskander. De roman van Alexander de Grate. Meanwhile, the novels The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams and Sunset Oasis by Baha Taher deals with an Alexander buried at Siwa.

Alexander the Great of Macedonia reigned as king from the time he was twenty, had conquered most of the world he knew to exist by the time he was thirty, came to be seen as a living god, and then died before he was thirty-three. Everything about Alexander evoked awe among his contemporaries and still does so today. Alexander began with a lightning Balkan campaign that made believers of many who lacked confidence in the untested king. Alexander's exalted status as the son of a god found immediate approval in Egypt, of course, and in some cities of Asia Minor. The chapters in this book undertake an investigation of one of the most mysterious artifacts ever associated with Alexander the Great and seek to shed light on where, how, when, and why it was made, and what this might tell about Alexander himself.