How accurate is Manfredi's work?

[Eleni]

Hi I'm new here and I see you all have quite a knowledge on the history of Alexander the Great. I would like to know How accurate is the story Manfredi tells in his "Alexandros" trilogy regarding Leptine (or Leptina)?- the woman from an unknown land that later ends up as his "servant" and lover. I never heard of such person before - Thanks a lot.Eleni

[susan]

Hello Eleni
Welcome to the forum.
The character of Leptine is entirely fictional - there is no such person in any historical record.RegardsSusan

[dean]

Hello and welcome to the forum,I think that in general Manfredi's work is very accurate- there are several invented characters such as Leptine and Eumolpo- a spy working for Alexander.The historical data is not bad at all.
He includes the siege at Gaza and Alexander's emulation of Achilles, dragging Batis around the fort of suspect authenticity.Also one thing that made me think was Peritas- in Alexandros, young Alexander receives the dog as a present from Alexander of Epirus, Olympias' brother as a child and then the dog dies in India some 20 years later- but apart from the odd mistake here and there it is quite good.His style is the biggest problem and can't be compared to Mary Renault who is in completely another league. Well, that is my opinion anyway- no disrespect to Manfredi(maybe it is the translation that is not all that great)Best regards,
Dean.

[Eleni.]

I knew I never heard about that character before. And yes I also thought about the "Peritas" issue.
Thank you for your replies. Eleni

[jorgios]

it has alot of dramatized historical accuracy, which is good but for some reason i found myself getting extremley bored through the second half of book 2.it also contains so many cheesy lines that i cant bear to read much. such as alexander being able to tell that barsine's childlren were the son of memnon because they had green eyes "like a greek" as if a persian could never have green eyes? are we actually supposed to believe this? manfredi might need a writing workshop to find out better ways to make his dramatic literary mechanisms work!

[Bill Giannakos.]

dear Jorge i have to let you know that Alexandros said that because Macedonians have green eyes.

[yiannis]

If I may intervene, Alexander never said that! Manfredi put the words in his mouth in his book ;-)Btw, where did you hear that Macedonians green eyes?
People are looking for sources on their looks for ages!

[Bill Giannakos]

I have to let you know Ioanni that a lot of books here in greece are talking about the genetical code of ancient Macedonians and Spartians.And if you read them you will see that the spartians and macedonians had green eyes in a large majority.And today if you look the macedonians you will see the green eyes i refered too.

[marcus]

That's rather turned the original point on its head. The 'silliness' of the comment in the book is that it presupposes that *only* Greeks (and in the book it says Greeks, not Macedonians, anyway, but that's neither here nor there) have green eyes; which therefore supposes that no Persian has green eyes.All the bestMArcus

[jorgios]

also: alexander was talking about the sons of Memnon, who were not macedonian but Rhodian!

[marcus]

Yeah, good point Jorgios.Marcus