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There is a novel by SF author Melissa Scott, called A Choice of Destinies , which posits that ATG turns back from Baktria (no India) in order to deal with rebellion in Greece, and then invades Italy. Godawful cover, but it's actually pretty good as alternate history. Some of the changes to history a...

Short answer. Yes.

Beth is the leading scholar on Olympias, hands-down.

I want to echo the difficulty in nailing down what motivated Alexander. A number of articles have been published on this, with oftentimes divergent conclusions. Ada Cohen wrote about Alexander and Homeric views, Brunt's article was already named, Ernst Badian wrote on ATG and the Loneliness of Power...

We have the Chaldean Astronomical Diaries, but they were using fairly simple tools to map the movements of planets (and stars). Ephimerides (where the planets were located on any given day) was their chief interest. They did not need even primitive telescopes; they were using much simpler instrument...

"This was not an age of Robert's Rules of Order."

Best line about the court ever, Sikander. I will have to steal it when teaching my Alexander class (with proper attribution, of course.)

What I think is one of the more problematic issues for historians is the tendency to regard people's personalities as somewhat rigid, rather than flexible in response to changing situations. This is what (in psych) is called "actor-observer bias." In short, "actor-observer bias" ...

Way back in the '70s, Gene Borza wrote an article on the revolt called "The End of Agis's Revolt," but I'm sure there's something more recent. Alas, it's not something I've spent a lot of time reading about, but if the ancient sources mention it, it may be in Gene's article. Sometimes, tho...

Exactly, Peter can do very rigorous history. As noted, he gave me the best edit I've had to date. Our quibbles were mostly on how to present ancient sources. That said, he is *also* a master of essay writing. His The Shadow of the Parthenon & Classical Bearings are among his best work. Like Eric...

This sounds like something out of the Alexander Romance.

Alexander did not have a telescope of any kind. Aristotle did have some magnifying glasses, but that's about it.

Sean -- I sorta wish more academic publishers *did* that. And it's one reason I prefer to 1) transliterate Greek words and 2) provide translations of Greek (or Latin). I remember BEING an "really interested outsider" and how frustrating it was when the author of the article provided no tra...

I am somewhat familiar with Alexander fanfiction as a result of researching the "Cult of Hephaistion" article. I did unofficial surveys for it, and quite a few of the respondents wrote Alexander fanfic, or read it. What struck me is that a number of the authors were fairly well-read (and d...

The ball story, like a lot of anecdotes, is false, created later during the Imperial period.

What Sean says is exactly correct about historicals. By contrast, the LBGTQ market is very large (although historicals don't necessarily fare well there), and Romance is the bread-and-butter of publishing. Riptide is taking a chance on me, and I'm grateful. I like to think of the novel as an LGBTQ-f...

Sean -- Actually Peter Green wrote a couple, one on Sappho and another on Alcibiades (which I personally prefer to the Pressfield novel). I keep telling Beth (Carney) she needs to write one on Olympias after she retires. :-) Also, Judith Tarr is a medievalist (PhD from Yale) who writes historical f...

N.B., these conferences are not always open to the public. Before anybody shows up, you should contact Dr. Pownell . It's not intentionally exclusive, but conference venues often have to be paid for, etc. They're not free. I've run conferences before, and trust me, there's a lot of money involved in...