How Alexander the Great Conquered Persia

[xxx]

GreenGÇÖs was the first bio I read on Alexander. I remember thinking after reading the book he didnGÇÖt have the guy correctly. Green is the easiest to read but he has a tendency to make careless statements, i.e. his famous quote on Hephaistion and his comments on homoeroticism in general. He does however, give Alexander credit as a general more than the others and he does recognize that Philip wasnGÇÖt father of the year material.There isnGÇÖt a GÇÿperfectGÇÖ biography of Alexander out there GÇô at least not yet. I do think it is critical that an author of any biography on Alexander understand what makes a man like that GÇÿtickGÇÖ and understand the ancient world and how it functioned. I havenGÇÖt read a book yet that has that kind of insight, and the modernistic views trolled out there in Alexanderland are more amusing than close to correct.But I am waiting to be pleasantly surprised someday :-)Regards,Tre

[Heinrich]

Actually a quote by Terence, Cicero, Virgil, and Pliny the Elder - in other words, a Roman proverb.HM

[luisfc1972]

marcus, with all due respect, you respect jona a little bit too much. youre immensely blind. this so called historian has you under his spell.

[luisfc1972]

it seems to me the average mortal is easily manipulated, let us name IT Marcus. no big deal. we alexandrophiles know the truth. these ITs defend this a-hole named jona who makes excuses for the fall of the persian empire, who does not acknowledge how incredible alexander was. you are immensely blind Marcus.jona writes a book and you all flock to this person like a bunch of sheep. you take jonas words as gospel only because this person got a book published. you may as well bann me now because i disagree 100% with this loser called jona. im actually surprised people as smart as you dont see how biased jona is. i dont want to be a part of an alexander forum that gives people like jona so much unearned respet. good luck to you all and good riddance to you jona.

[luisfc1972]

it seems to me the average mortal is easily manipulated, let us name IT Marcus. no big deal. we alexandrophiles know the truth. these ITs defend this a-hole named jona who makes excuses for the fall of the persian empire, who does not acknowledge how incredible alexander was. you are immensely blind Marcus.jona writes a book and you all flock to this person like a bunch of sheep. you take jonas words as gospel only because this person got a book published. you may as well bann me now because i disagree 100% with this loser called jona. im actually surprised people as smart as you dont see how biased jona is. i dont want to be a part of an alexander forum that gives people like jona so much unearned respet. good luck to you all and good riddance to you jona.

[heinrich]

This is getting silly, Luis. Have you actually read the book? I guess not, so I will write a review for pothos. Heinrich

[abm]

Hi Marcus and Tre,
of course it is a legitimate reason not to read the book if you don't know the language. What I meant was that it is not really fair to reject an opinion, while simlpy refusing to read it in its entirity and even prefering to have your eyes eaten out. If you really want to read it, i think you can give it a try with a good dictionary at hand. Dutch has enough similarities to English to do so. I've done the same thing with Italian books while not knowing Italian and of course at first it goes very slow, but now it's not really problem any more.I do think that Bosworth and Badian are more balanced than Tarn (Worthington might not be). They don't deliberatly suppress evident facts or don't try to argue them away. I would argee that the "reign of terror" is to a certain extent a misconception and of course that one should keep into mind that were no universal human rights in antiquity and that war was a "normal" phenomenon for Greeks. Thus one cannot simply blame Alexander for a genocide, but on the other hand we should not be blind to the amount of innocent victims. After all, conquering the Persian empire was certainly not necessary for Alexander.I doubt whether it is possible to understand antiquity any more than people like Bosworth and Badian do. But if you really think that's possible, why don't you write a book on Alexander yourself. It would be a lot more interesting than all those recent books on Alexander which are more or less within the same paradigm and thus not really add as much to our knowledge as one would expect from a book. I have the impression from our discussion on Cassander that your views on Antiquity and Alexander are indeed sufficiently different to make such a book at least a very interesting read.regards,abm

[xxx]

Hello again Alexander:'I do think that Bosworth and Badian are more balanced than Tarn (Worthington might not be). They don't deliberatly suppress evident facts or don't try to argue them away.'No, but they have no problem making stuff up, i.e. the plot to kill Parmenio. Some call it scholarship, I call it soap opera writing to make history 'fit' a preconceived opinion while ignoring basic facts. That's just one example.'After all, conquering the Persian empire was certainly not necessary for Alexander.'Not from Alexander's point of view. That makes all the difference. As for Jona's book, I've read enough 'evil' Alexander biographies to well fill me for another year. I do find his work on eastern sources interesting however and for that I would read the book if I ran across it. I read several Alexander bios this year and I wouldn't recommend any of them (Andrew Chugg's excepted-haven't gotten a copy of that yet and it does intrigue me). There was one very positive one by a Princeton Professor as I recall, but it was very carelessly researched. The best book I've seen come out in the last few years was a relatively ignored but lovely picture book from the Getty Trust that was rather moderate in its views.Regards,Tre

[jona]

"No, but they have no problem making stuff up, i.e. the plot to kill Parmenio."This was most eloquently put forward by Heckel, not Bosworth (see Heckel's article in *Historia* 31 [1977]). More recently, Sabine M++ller (*Massnahmen der Herrschaftssicherung*, 2003) has argued that Alexander's policy was consistently anti-aristocratic; I guess she is right and Alexander will not have regretted to strike at Parmenion.Jona

[abm]

Hi Tre,do you mean Alexander the Great. Son of the Gods, by Alan Fildes and Joann Fletcher? Could you check what the book by the princeton professor was? Thanks in advance.regards,abm

[xxx]

The plot was first proposed by Badian, 1962 if I recall correctly.It ignores a glaring fact, but I don't need to get into that.Regards,Tre

[amyntoros]

Possibly Tre meant Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness by Guy Maclean Rogers (who holds a Ph.D. in classics from Princeton University, and was Chairman of the Department of History at Wellesley College from 1997 to 2001).I scanned this book at the store and a few well-expressed comments caught my eye. I bought it along with quiet a few other books, both old and new, so I haven't had the opportunity to read it yet. However, I was told recently by someone highly knowledgeable in the field that Roger's research is inadequate and the book is full of errors.Linda Ann

[xxx]

That's the one and the judgement call is sound.