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This anecdote belongs to a group of stories that illustrate the reaction of Alexander before a work of art, like the one reported by Aelian (V. H. 2, 3): he tells that Alexander didn't appreciate completely his portrait by Apelles, but his horse neighed to the depicted horse. Although these anecdote...

I wish to report a book I bought recently: Miltiades B. Hatzopoulos, Ancient Macedonia, Berlin/Boston (De Gruyter) 2020. It is an outline of items in geography, history, language, customs and institutions, cults and beliefs of ancient Macedonia, concise and up to date, with bibliographical reference...

Thank you, Alexias, for your kind words. My friend had embolism five days after a surgical operation. She only should have been back home next day.

I don't understand why no one ever tought about a possible pulmonary embolism for the sudden death of Hephaestion. Even Mary Renault, herself a nurse, believed that Hephaestion died too fast. Death by peritonitis may occur within a few days indeed, but by pulmonary embolism (or even intestinal ische...

Dear Alexias, thank you for recommending this book: it's full of archaeological exaustive footnotes, all of them up to date. I read it and learnt a lot of things that I didn't know before. Very useful indeed.

Dear Pauline, thank you for posting this transcription of a bronze plaque found in Argos. In line 8-9 there is a name very interesting: Aischylos Temenidas. Was he too a true descendant of Herakles and a relative of the royal family of Macedonia?

Aischines (Against Timarchus 1, 168) as a eyewitness, described the performance of Alexander during a symposium (held in Pella in 346 B. C.), before the Greek ambassadors. He was ten years old: "...[Demosthenes] was describing the boy Alexander, telling how, at a certain banquet of ours, he pla...

According to Plutarch (Life of Alexander 29, 1-6), Alexander was very fond of tragedy, comedy and other poetic contests. When he stopped in Phoenicia - after the foundation of Alexandria and before the battle of Gaugamela - he arranged splendid spectacles of this kind. The two kings of Cyprus, Nicoc...

Alexander the Great died 2345 years ago. Someone wondered what was his single greatest moment and answered his victory at Gaugamela. But I don't think so: for me his best moments are all in his last year of life, such as his marriage at Susa together with 90 Companions and 10. 000 soldiers ; the int...

A.B. Bosworth (From Arrian to Alexander. Studies in Historical Interpretation, Oxford 1988, p. 119, n.110) stresses that Arrian had no liking for Callisthenes, because he lived in a totally different age (II A. D.) when imperial power, authority, and etiquette was well established and no one called ...

Recently I read a lot of novels about Alexander the Great (and Hephaestion), and 'Memoirs of Hephaestion', by Valeson, was one of them. But I can't tell I liked it. I liked best another novel by Sigrid SIMMS, 'Lion of Macedon. The life of Alexander the Great', (2020). It tells the whole life of Alex...

Thank you, Alexias, and your tenacious memory! I forgot completely the lecture of Mr. Robin Lane Fox that you kindly posted on pothos.org in 2013. Nevertheless I think that the paper of F. Bosch-Puche is known too little, till now. Even when I read it for the first time, ten years ago, my attention ...

Happy New Year! I'm glad to recommend this paper by Francisco Bosch-Puche: 'L' "autel" du temple d'Alexandre à Bahariya retrouvé ', BIFAO 108 (2008), pp. 29-44.(I found it in Academia.edu). The author has found again an altar and a stele of a temple excavated in 1938 in Bahariya, but misla...

I'm reading the book "Alexander the Great: a New History", by W. Heckel and L. A. Tritle, Wiley-Blackwell 2011, and I found a quote of the chapter 10, by Elizabeth D. Carney, very interesting. She writes:" Cynnane was trained to fight as a warrior (...) and would train her daughter in...

By the way, I think actually no one of our ancient sources allow us to stretch Aristion's presence at Alexander's court more than 331 b. C.