Alexander the Great, the King of Macedonia, and conqueror of much of the civilised world of his day, was born in 356 BC at Pella; he died June 13, 323 BC, in Babylon, Iraq.
EditLife and Career
His father, Philip II, arranged for Alexander to be tutored by Aristotle. Was made regent at the age of sixteen while his father marched against Byzantium. He was not quite twenty when he ascended the throne after his father was assassinated in 336 BC. In 330 BC Alexander subdued the whole of Sogdiana and married Roxana whom he had taken prisoner. In 325 BC he arrived in Persia and married Stateira, daughter of King Darius who he had defeated in battle in 334 BC.
Alexander was also subject to unbounded passions for beautiful boys. From childhood he had been closely bonded with his friend Hephaiston whose death in 324 BC he mourned extravagantly, reportedly devastating whole districts to assuage his grief. His relationship with a beautiful eunuch Bagoas, formerly the favourite of King Darius, is the subject of Mary Renault’s 1972 novel,
The Persian Boy.
Listed at number 118 in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in
The Pink Paper, 3 October, 1997, issue 501, page 17.
EditBibliography
Elizabeth Baynham, (1999), “Alexander the Great: The Unique history of Quintus Curtius”, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 237 pages, ISBN 0 472 10858 1.
IN BRIEF: Ancient History by Katherine Clarke in The Times Literary Supplement, 16 July, 1999, page 32. “The modern fascination with the figure of Alexander the Great is not without ancient precedent. His magnificent achievements impressed such illustrious Romans as Pompey and Julius Caesar; if we are to believe Plutarch’s anecdote, the latter was moved to tears by the standard Alexander had set for aspiring conquerors of the future, and he determined to emulate his example. By contrast, Quintus Curtius Rufus, one of our major sources on Alexander, has been described as exasperating, irresponsible, unreliable and having no sense of what was important in Alexander’s career. One of the most famous names in world history written up by one of antiquity’s least cherished authors: not perhaps the most promising combination.” “It is thus a pleasure to find that Elizabeth Baynham values Curtius’ work for more than the mere preservation of earlier accounts which are themselves lost, and directs the techniques of source-criticism towards discovering what was distinctive about Curtius’ version of the past.” “Not all will agree with Curtius’ elevation from the status of unreliable source to that of literary artist. But any reader of Baynham’sAlexander the Greatwill gain valuable insights into the reactions of the Roman imperial power to the figure who provided its most compelling model.” Tom Cowan, (1996), “Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World”
N. G. L. Hammond, (1997), “The Genius of Alexander The Great”, 234 pages.
“N G L Hammond, the foremost expert on acient Macedonian history, here presents a new account of Alexander’s fabled career. Through a careful analysis of ancient sources - the writings of Diodorus, Justin, Curtius, Plutarch and Arrian - Hammond has effectively separated the work of reliable contemporaries from fictional reports of Alexander’s accomplishments. The resulting narrative pronounces the Macedonian conqueror a man truly deserving the title Alexander the Great.” Roger Peyrefitte, (1977), “La jeunesse d’Alexandre”, Paris: Albin Michel.
Roger Peyrefitte, (1979), “Les conquêtes d’Alexandre”, Paris: Albin Michel.
Roger Peyrefitte, (1981), “Alexandre le Grand”, Paris: Albin Michel.
Paul Elliott Russell, (1994), “The Gay 100”.
EditPress Cuttings
Legendary treasure of Alexander the Great may have been found by Steve Connor in The Independent, 21 April, 2000, page 13. “A skeleton that was thought to belong to the father of Alexander the Great may in fact be that of his half-brother, according to scientists who have analysed the bones. The new interpretation of the skeleton, found in a royal tomb unearthed in 1977, raises the possibility that some of the magnificent treasures that were found with the remains may actually have belonged to Alexander himself. His tomb has been lost.” Scholar claims to find secret of Alexander’s tomb by Richard Owen in The Times, 14 August, 2000, page 15. “An Italian scholar who dedicated his life to a search for the tomb of Alexander the Great died before he could reveal to the world that he had found it, a new book claims. The story of the discovery of the mausoleum at Alexandria in Egypt has been pieced together by Nicola Bonacasa, a former pupil of Achille Adriani, the distinguished Italian archaeologist who for many years was head of the Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. Professor Adriani died in 1982 before he could make his findings public. Professor Bonacasa, head of the Archeology Institute at the University of Palermo in Sicily, said that over the past two decades he had painstakingly reconstituted Professor Adriani’s theories and evidence from notes, lectures and half-finished texts. In the resulting posthumous book, Professor Adriani says he concluded that the tomb of Alexander, for which scholars have suggested various sites over the years, was ‘right under our noses all the time’, in the Latin Cemetery at Alexandria. It is built of huge blocks of golden and rose-coloured oriental alabaster, Professor Adriani says, and corresponds precisely to ancient descriptions of Alexander’s last resting place.” Alexander’s great legacy surfaces after a thousand years by David Keys in The Independent, 11 April, 2001, page 7. “After a nine-year search, archaeologists have located the centre of one of the Ancient World’s greatest cities. A team of French and Egyptian archaeologists, led by Franck Goddio, has discovered and mapped the sunken remains of the once bustling heart of the Roman Empire’s second-largest sity, Alexandria.” “Research into the sunken metropolis has a particular relevance today because of the social and ideological importance of ancient Alexandria. The city was founded as a political and ideological statement against nationalism and ethnic and religious chauvinism. It was based on multiculturalism and religious pluralism. Its population was deliberately imported by Alexander from all over the Hellenistic world. It was this cosmopolitanism that appears to have been one of the key factors in allowing Alexandria to become the intellectual, artistic and trading centre of the ancient Mediterranean world.” Alexander’s bigtime fans by James Christopher in The Times 2, 8 August, 2001, page 22. “The greatest adventure Dr Valero Massimo Manfredi ever enjoyed happened almost 2,500 years before he was born. It is the story of Alexander the Great and Manfredi has relived every pulsing moment of that extraordinary life in an epic best-selling trilogy. Child of a Dream, The Sounds of Ammon, and the forthcoming The Ends of the Earth have shifted three million copies world-wide, and made the Italian archaeologist the envy of the academic world.” Alexander, if only you’d been to see the doctor by Ben Macintyre in The Times, 18 August, 2001, page 22. “Doctors at the University of Maryland recently convened to discuss the extraordinary case of a physically robust 33-year-old man originally from northern Greece who died mysteriously after suffering acute abdominal pains, chills and a high fever.” “The American doctors swiftly rejected theories of poisoning or malaria and finally, after prolonged discussion, settled instead on a diagnosis of Salmonella typhi, the intestinal bug that causes typhoid fever, with complications from a perforated bowel and ascending paralysis that made the patient seem dead while he was still alive. Alexander the Great, the experts concluded in The New England Journal of Medicine, was done in by a dodgy dinner 23 centuries ago, just as he was about to mount an expedition to open a maritime route from Babylon to Egypt.”