John D. Grainger
Alexander the Great Failure.
Hambledon & London, 245 pages, $24.95

If ancient archetypes still inform our own heroes and villains, then Alexander the Great is the prime case of a young man who, having cultivated immeasurable renown, gave in to the demands of celebrity. His beginnings could not be more auspicious: Philip II, his father, was the most effective ruler of the Macedonian empire, and one of his ancestors, according to Plutarch, was the legendary warrior Hercules. Aristotle himself tutored the young prince, and by sixteen Alexander was conducting military campaigns, eventually expanding his empire from Athens to beyond Kandahar. But he became so enthralled with his own legend that his death, at age thirty-three, may have been a reminder that he, too, was made from the flimsy stuff of mortals.

The conventional view holds Alexander as a brilliant tactician...

 

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