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  sources was consistently hostile towards Alexander.

  Third, one should note how historical interpretations have changed

  over recent decades. In the period immediately after World War II the

  immense influence of W.W. Tarn’s book (1948) gave Alexander the image

  of a benign propagator of the Western civilization and the brotherhood of

  the various peoples within one empire. The work of another great scholar

  from that period, F. Schachermeyr (1973), gave us the heroic image of this

  great Macedonian and it is not surprising that the first edition of his

  monumental biography (1947) is entitled Ingenium und Macht. However,

  scholars subscribing to this traditional view of Alexander (e.g. Hammond

  or Lane Fox) are now very much a minority among historians. The tragic

  consequences of 20th-century militarism and totalitarianism, a gradual

  departure from European colonialism and the mission of taking up ‘the

  white man’s burden’ as well as from the traditional world outlook in the

  postmodern era inevitably led to a revision or even deconstruction of

  Alexander the Great’s character. The process of diminishing Alexander’s

  greatness has been continuing since the 1950s. A decisive blow to the

  predominance of Tarn’s image of Alexander was delivered by E. Badian

  (1960, 1964), for whom the Macedonian prefigured the 20th-century

  dictators Stalin and Hitler, being preoccupied with organising large-scale

  purges and surrounded by the ‘loneliness of power’. The next step in the

  new trend was to reject the notion that Alexander was motivated by any

  grand ideas or non-military objectives. Today’s chief proponents of this

  minimalist view, represented above all by P. Green, A.B. Bosworth and I.

  Worthington, have reduced Alexander’s life to purely a matter of military

  history. Excluding his talents as a commander (although sometimes

  questioned too), Alexander has now all too frequently been depicted as a

  megalomaniac, alcoholic (most vividly: O’Brien 1992; more balanced:

  Kets de Vries, 2004), tyrant and hothead who for no profound reason laid

  xii

  Preface

  waste to the local cultures of Europe, Asia and Africa and thus, as it is

  sometimes asserted, is to be blamed for radical Islam’s hatred of the West

  (Prevas, 2004). Such extreme views may only be expressed if one treats

  sources very selectively, and that surely indicates that the pendulum of

  reaction against the over idealisation of the great Macedonian has swung

  too far in the opposite direction (Holt, 1999a; Briant, 2002). Nonetheless, I

  believe, that without either idealizing or deconstructing Alexander, his

  times may be reassessed from a non-military perspective. For instance in

  the light of recent research of 4th-century Greek society it is worthwhile to

  consider the reasons why Macedonian policies succeeded or failed on

  either side of the Aegean Sea. The last quarter century’s breakthroughs in

  research into Achaemenid Persia in fact demand that the effectiveness of

  Alexander’s policies in the various countries of the Persian Empire be

  reviewed in terms of his attitude towards Achaemenid tradition and

  cultural conflicts during his campaign in the East. Although for a long

  time yet to come no doubt no one will dare formulate any grand theories

  the way Tarn did, there is now enough room to make careful

  generalisations and sum up the historical discussions of the last few

  decades.

  This book presents the story of Alexander strictly on the basis of

  ancient sources. In the footnotes I have endeavoured to refer to all primary

  and most secondary ancient sources. On the other hand, for all effort to

  synthesise modern scholarship in this book, no attempt has been made to

  cite all modern literature concerning Alexander and his epoch. The sheer

  volume of such works would make the task quite unfeasible and, from the

  point of view of most readers, both tedious and unnecessary. Those

  specifically interested in historiography concerning Alexander the Great

  can refer to specialist literature dealing with this subject (e.g. Seibert,

  1972). Footnotes in this book may serve to inform the reader of the most

  important historical discussions of recent decades. The names of ancient

  authors and the titles of their works are quoted using the abbreviations also

  applied in the Oxford Latin Dictionary and Liddell, Scott, Jones’ Greek-

  English Lexicon. The titles of periodicals are abbreviated according to

  L’Année Philologique. When ancient times are discussed in this book,

  unless otherwise stated, all given dates are BC/ BCE.

  Finally, I have the pleasant task of thanking all the people and

  institutions without whose help this book would never have been

  published. The several years of research and especially the enquiries made

  in the libraries of Vienna and Oxford were possible thanks to generous

  grants from the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research and the

  Lanckoroński Foundation as well as the hospitality of St John’s College

  Alexander the Great

  xiii

  Oxford within the Oxford Colleges Hospitality Scheme and on other

  occasions. I am grateful to the University of Wrocław for financing my

  trips to Turkey and Iran for the purposes of seeing for myself the

  topographic problems Alexander’s expedition must have encountered. The

  English version of this book is based on the Polish edition of 2007, with

  numerous improvements and corrections. The translation was produced by

  Witold Zbirochowski-Kościa, whose careful attention to details, linguistic

  skills and patience I would like to acknowledge in this place. It could be

  made thanks to a grant from the Foundation for Polish Science which had

  also supported the Polish edition of my book. I have presented various

  research problems at conferences in Rzeszów, Barcelona, Kraków and

  Wrocław as well as historical society meetings and seminars in Wrocław,

  Warsaw, Toruń, Liverpool, Taipei, Delhi, and Delphi. I would like to

  thank those, too many to name here, who provided insightful and

  frequently critical comments during the discussions that followed my

  lectures. Some mistakes I have been able to correct thanks to talks with

  many scholars. Among those I am particularly grateful to, are: Prof.

  Fergus Millar, late Prof. Józef Wolski, Prof. Ewa Wipszycka-Bravo, Prof.

  John Davies, late Prof. Tadeusz Kotula, Prof. Alicja Szastyńska-Siemion,

  Prof. Maurice Sarte, Prof. Christopher Tuplin, Prof. Leszek Mrozewicz,

  Prof. Andrzej Łoś, Dr. Zofia Archibald, Dr. John Ma, Dr. Gościwit

  Malinowski, Nicholas Purcell and Robin Lane Fox. But I dedicate my

  most heartfelt thanks to my wife, Małgorzata MoŜdŜyńska-Nawotka, who

  has over the years provided the unstinting support that allowed me to

  research and write this book.

  CHAPTER I:

  CHILDHOOD, FAMILY, MACEDONIA

  1. Birth of Alexander

  In Antiquity people believed that the birth of someone destined to be great

  was accompanied by signs, portents and strange happenings. Alexander’s

  biographer, Plutarch, states that his mother, Olympias, dreamt of a fieryr />
  thunderbolt that had entered her body, whereas his father, Philip II,

  envisioned in his dream a seal on his wife’s body in the shape of a lion,

  which allegedly foretold the extraordinary ‘lion-like’ nature of his son.

  Another persistently repeated tale has Philip seeing in a dream on the night

  of consumption Olympias having sexual intercourse with a giant serpent,

  presumably an incarnation of the god Ammon from the Siwah Oasis in the

  Libyan Desert. According to a much later legend, emerging no doubt after

  Alexander’s visit to Siwa, Philip was then told by the Apollo Oracle at

  Delphi to henceforth offer sacrifices to Ammon and was also told a

  prophecy that he would lose the eye with which he had seen the deity lying

  next to Olympias.1 Such tales could emerge from the traditional view that

  Olympias had in her native Epirus engaged in mysterious Orphic rituals,

  which were much feared by the Greeks, and an important element of this

  practice was the breeding of serpents in her home.2 The belief that

  Alexander was conceived by the god Ammon did not mean in the opinions

  of contemporaries that he was not the son of Philip. After all, they knew

  the myth of Alexander’s forebear Heracles, who was the son of Alcmene

  but also of the god Zeus. At various stages in his career, Alexander

  himself sometimes boasted that he was the son of Philip and at other times

  allowed people to believe that he was conceived by the god Ammon.3

  1 Ephor., FGrH, 70 F217; Plu., Alex., 2-3; Paus., 4.14.7; Luc., Alex., 7; Just., 11.11.3, 12.16; It. Alex., 12; see Baynham, 1998, p. 149; Hamilton, 1999, pp. 4-6.

  For an alternative version of the legend, but one still maintaining the notion of

  divine conception and lion shaped seal, see: Ps.-Callisth., 1.4-8.

  2 Cic. Div., 2.135: Plu., Alex., 2.9; see Lane Fox, 1973, pp. 44-45.

  3 Ogden, 1999, pp. 27-28.

  2

  Chapter I

  The Greek authors, always eager to synchronize historic events, state

  that Alexander was born the same night one of the Seven Wonders of the

  World, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, was burnt down by Herostratus

  in the desire of immortalizing his name. The goddess was too busy

  assisting Olympias in the birth of Alexander to protect her own temple

  from destruction. Iranian magi living next to the temple lamented, for they

  foresaw that what had happened that night would bring great misfortune to

  Asia, which meant the Kingdom of Persia.4 Plutarch reports an anecdote

  that Philip, while laying siege to the town of Potidaea, in one day received

  news that his army commander Parmenion had routed the Illyrians, that his

  race-horse had won a race at the Olympic Games, and that his wife had

  given birth to Alexander. We know nothing more about the battle with the

  Illyrians and therefore have no means of establishing the date. There is an

  image on Philip II’s coins of a cloaked rider with a Macedonian hat

  ( kausia) on his head commemorating an Olympic victory, though we

  cannot be certain whether they refer to an individual horse race or a

  chariot race. Far more significant is that fact that this was almost certainly

  the first ever Macedonian victory at the Olympic Games. Although

  Herodotus does in fact report an earlier success at the time of Philip’s

  predecessor Alexander I, this was possibly just a propaganda ploy

  invented by the Macedonian court, for this king’s name has not been

  preserved on the list of Olympic victories. Philip’s Olympic success

  probably occurred on 26th July 356, whereas Alexander was born on the

  sixth day of the Athenian month Hekatombaion, called Loos in

  Macedonia, which according to modern calculations would have most

  probably been either 19th or 20th July 356.5

  2. Macedonia

  Alexander’s fatherland was situated to the north of Thessaly with borders

  that have not been precisely defined but most certainly did not resemble

  the borders of today’s Macedonian state (FYROM)6 and were much closer

  4 Hegesias, ap. Plu., Alex., 35-36 ( FGrH, 142 F3); Timae., ap. Cic., N.D. , 2.69; Cic., Div. , 1.47; Plu., Alex. , 2.7. Burning of Artemisium by Herostratus: Str., 14.22.1; Solinus, 183.23. Magi in Ephesus: Str., 14.1.23. See Briant 1996, p. 875;

  Shabazi 2003, pp. 7-14. Asia as the Persian empire: Nawotka 2004.

  5 Plu., Alex. , 3.5-8; Plu., mor. , 105a; Just., 12.16.6. Brown 1977, pp. 76-77; Badian 1982, p. 38; Bosworth 1988, p. 19; Hammond 1992, pp. 356-357; Hamilton 1999,

  pp. 7-9. Alexander I at the Olympic Games: Hdt., 5.23; but see Borza 1982, pp. 8-

  13; Thompson 1982, p. 113.

  6 On fluidity of the name Macedonia see: Czamańska, Szulc 2002.

  Childhood, Family, Macedonia

  3

  to the borders of today’s Greek province of Macedonia. The fluidity of

  Macedonia’s borders even in Antiquity means that from the political

  history point of view it is most convenient to define the borders as the

  circumference of those territories ruled by Macedonian kings excluding

  the conquered areas of Greece, Thrace and Asia. During the reigns of

  Philip II and Alexander the kingdom was divided into two: Lower

  Macedonia in the east and Upper Macedonia in the southwest. At the start

  of his reign Philip II only had control of Lower Macedonia, which was

  indeed the cradle of the Argead dynasty.

  Upper Macedonia is a mountainous region stretching from the Emathia

  Plain to the Pindos Mountains and including the catchment area of the

  river Haliakmon as well as the upper reaches of the river Axios (Vardar).

  Almost the entire region (90%) is over 500 m above sea level, whereas

  50% is above 1,500 m. In that part of the Balkan Peninsula the main

  mountain ranges run longitudinally. The Haliakmon Valley is situated

  between two such ranges, those of the Pindos Mountains and the southern

  ranges of the Dinaric Alps (Peristeri, Vitsi, Vourinos). In Antiquity Upper

  Macedonia was divided into several smaller states and in the Haliakmon

  Valley itself there were: Orestis in the north, Tymphaeaa to the south and

  Elimeia to the east of Tymphaea. The remaining Upper Macedonia states

  were situated further east and separated from Lower Macedonia by the

  Vermion range, namely: Palagonia in the north and Lyncestis and Eordaia

  in the south. Upper Macedonia was ethnically mixed. Apart from the

  Macedonian tribes such as the Elimeians and Lyncestis, there were tribes

  more closely related to the Greek Molossians of Epirus, such as the

  Orestians. Illyrian elements have also been traced among the inhabitants of

  this part of Macedonia. The ethnic diversity of Upper Macedonia is

  considered an important factor accounting for its looser ties with the

  central authorities in Lower Macedonia. The Upper Macedonia tribes were

  ruled by their own dynasties, the most important of which was the

  Lyncestis’ royal family, the Bacchiads once expelled from Corinth by the

  tyrant Cypselus. Relations between the Argeads and the ruling families of

  Upper Macedonia were frequently marked by mutual distrust and political

  rivalry. If we add to that the basic weakness of the Lower Macedonia

  government, it is hardly surprising that before Philip ascended to power,

  bonds between the Argead kingdom
and the Upper Macedonia states were

  at best loose.7

  Lower Macedonia was situated by the Thermaic Gulf, in an alluvial

  valley where the silt had accumulated from the rivers Haliakmon, Axios,

  7 Errington 1990, chapter i; Billows 1994, p. 3.

  4

  Chapter I

  Ludias and Gallikos. It was surrounded by mountain ridges (Paiko, Voras,

  Vermion and Pieria) and the Pieria plain at the foot of Mount Olympus.

  One has to remember that in the 4th century BC the shore of the Thermaic

  Gulf was some 30 km further inland than it is today and thanks to the river

  Ludias seafaring ships could sail up to the port of Pella, the capital of

  Philip and Alexander’s kingdom. A large part of low-lying Emathia

  situated above that river was in Antiquity a barren uninhabitable

  marshland. The area was not drained until the 1920s, and no traces of

  earlier permanent human settlement have been found there. Attempts to

  drain these marshes during Philip’s reign were doomed to fail because

  contemporary technical knowledge was quite inadequate to deal with the

  sheer scale of the task. Worse still, the predominance of marshland in parts

  of Lower Macedonia resulted in malaria epidemics that affected not only

  the local population but also agricultural output. Settlements were

  concentrated on terraces on the sides of the bordering mountains. On the

  south side of the lower course of the Haliakmon and to the south of the

  Emathia, close to today’s village of Vergina, lay the first Agread capital –

  Aegae. The fertile and well irrigated parts of Macedonia allowed for the

  growing of crops and rearing of cattle. In the 4th century many Macedonians

  were still engaged in herding, taking cattle up in the mountains in the

  summer and then taking the herds down to lower lying areas for the

  winter. We also know that wine was produced, though on account of its

  cooler climate outside of the seacoast there were no olive trees, so typical

  for the Mediterranean zone. At least 1/3 of ancient Macedonia was

  covered with forests and all wood collected from these forests belonged to