Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life - Softcover

Martin, Thomas R.; Blackwell, Christopher W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521148448 ISBN 13: 9780521148443

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Everything we know about Alexander comes from ancient sources, which agree unanimously that he was extraordinary and greater than everyday mortals. From his birth into a hypercompetitive world of royal women through his training under the eyes and fists of stern soldiers and the piercing intellect of Aristotle; through friendships, rivalries, conquests and negotiations; through acts of generosity and acts of murder, this book explains who Alexander was, what motivated him, where he succeeded (in his own eyes) and where he failed, and how he believed that he earned a new “mixed” nature combining the human and the divine. This book explains what made Alexander “Great” according to the people and expectations of his time and place and rejects modern judgments asserted on the basis of an implicit moral superiority to antiquity.

About this title

About the Authors

Thomas R. Martin is the Jeremiah W. O'Connor, Jr Professor in Classics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of Ancient Greece and (with Ivy Sui-yuen) Herodotus and Sima Qian.

Christopher W. Blackwell is the Louis G. Forgione University Professor of Classics at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He is the author of In the Absence of Alexander: Harpalus and the Failure of Macedonian Authority and (with Amy Hackney Blackwell) Mythology for Dummies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521148448
• ISBN 13: 9780521148443
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208