Alexander The Great In Current Scholarship

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History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x
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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

982 Alexander the Great in Current Scholarship
© 2009 The Author History Compass 7/3 (2009): 981–992, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00606.x
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 back-
ground. 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

Alexander the Great in Current Scholarship 983
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

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

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

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: emanson@ualr.edu.
1
A. B. Bosworth, Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
2
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: Frie-
drich 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 Macedo-
nia, 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

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:

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.

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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