Alexander is the towering hero of the classical world. His fame has grown for well over two millennia and embraces Eastern and Western cultures alike. In this book, Paul Cartledge, the distinguished scholar and historian long acknowledge as perhaps the preeminent authority on Sparta and Greece, glowingly illuminates the brief but iconic life of Alexander (356-23 BC), king of Macedon, conqueror of the Persian Empire and founder of a new world order. Cartledge's book is, above all, a hunt for a new past to counter the myths, legends, and often skewed history that have been passed down to us.
At the age of twenty, Alexander inherited the mantle of his father, Philip Mecdon, becoming master of the Greek world east of the Adriatic. A mere six years later, he had conquered the mighty Persian Empire, and by the time he was htirty he had taken his victorious armies even further, ruling an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. But before his thirty-thid birthday Alexander was dead.
Alexander's legacy has had a major impact on military tacticians, scholars, statemen, adventurers, authors, visual artists, and filmmakers. In his own lifetime and in ours he has been seen as hero, holy man, Christian saint, a new Achilles, philosopher, scientist, prophet, and visionary. Cartledge brilliantly evokes Alexander's remarkable political and military accomplishments, following the geographical path of his victorious armies and charting the tremendous field of this warrior-hero's influence. With attack and brio, he cogently explains why and how Alexander is endlessly fascinating, providng a view to a better understanding of such fundamental topics as charismatic leadership, imperialism, and Middle Eastern geopolitics.
