Vanishing point

Looking back at our reading it begins to seem as though we have been looking at the same question through a variety of lenses. We moved from the vulnerable defenders of Melos and students of the Encheiridion to some of the prime movers and shakers of the ancient world, but many of the texts seem to grapple with a recurring cluster of concepts and motifs -- materialism and immaterialism, Fortune and freedom, empire and res publica, agents of change and those seeking to remain faithful to past origins, virtue and chance. All having to do, one way or another, with the question of liberty -- individual, political, expressive (parrhesia), and ontological.*


More and more clearly one sees that the comparison of Caesar and Alexander would have been the capstone, or perspectival axis of the Lives - a crucial text, involving judgments about two of the most complex figures of the ancient world. (A rather elementary effort by Appian is here.) That it is "lost" is just another enigmatic property attaching to these two ultimate men of mystery.


Mussy will be sending an update of our schedule, but in brief, we begin Sept. 3, 1 p.m., at the Fruitville Library with the Story of David. The Robert Alter text will be used by some, the King James Bible by others, but any good edition is fine. That will be followed in October by the Wasteland. Paul should be updating us with more on this soon.

*This first section was rewritten in part in an effort to be clearer.

Anthony Grafton reviews A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century

Here's the opening:

History was born in Greece in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E. It has flourished ever since then, in diverse but recognizably related forms, and it still exists today, as a form of inquiry into the past, a literary genre, and a set of practices plied and taught in universities. That's our story, in the West, and we're sticking to it. Or at least John Burrow is. After a swift glance toward ancient ways of keeping records, Burrow begins his elegant and erudite book with a rich study of Herodotus and Thucydides, the Greek founders of the genre. Then he bounds forward, passing in review Hellenistic and Roman, early Christian and medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment historians, and ends up in the territory that he has cultivated throughout his career: Europe, and especially Britain, in the last two centuries. The trip passes quickly, Burrow makes a highly accomplished guide, and the reader ends up--rather as the tourist does after a well-organized two weeks in Italy--tired, impressed, and gratified. But is it history? That is the sixty-four-talent question, to which we will eventually return.

Paradiso I in English

There's a translation of Paradiso 1 on our former Classics blog, here.

Alexander in Dante and as heir to Zeno

It will not come as a surprise that Alexander figures enigmatically in Dante. Scholars apparently are not even sure that he appears in the Commedia. If he does, it comes in Canto 12, the circle of the violent to others, where an Alessandro is steeped in the river of blood along with many other tyrants:

Quivi si piangon li spietati danni;
quivi è Alessandro, e Dïonisio fero
che fé Cicilia aver dolorosi anni.
(12.106-08)

Some have suggested other tyrant Alexanders, while others are certain it's Alexander the Great.

Those who think it's another Alexander, such as Alexander of Pherae, note that Dante has an admiring passage in the Convivio about the Great:

"Make to yourselves friends of the money of iniquity," thereby inviting and encouraging men to render acts of liberality through benefactions, which engender friendships.⁽⁴⁴⁾ How fair an exchange does he make who gives of these most imperfect things in order to have and acquire things that are perfect, such as are the hearts of worthy men! This market is open every day. Indeed, this kind of commerce is different from all others, for when a man believes he is buying one person with a benefaction, thousands and thousands are bought with it. Who does not still keep a place in his heart for Alexander because of his royal acts of benevolence? Who does not keep a place for the good King of Castile, or Saladin, or the good Marquis of Monferrato, or the good Count of Toulouse, or Bertran de Born, or Galeazzo of Montefeltro?⁽⁴⁵⁾ When mention is made of their gifts, certainly not only those who would willingly do the same, but those as well who would sooner die than do the same, retain in their memory a love for these men. Conv. 4.11

In the De Monarchia, Dante finds that

Alexander king of Macedon came closer than anyone else to winning the prize of monarchy. De Monarchia II.VIII

But Dante notes that Providence had it in mind for Rome to become the chosen vehicle for empire. And Sayers notes that one of Dante's sources, Orosius, described Alexander the Great as a terrible tyrant, "insatiable of human blood."

Plutarch, on the other hand, wrote not only his lengthy Life of Alexander, but another lengthy work, included in the Moralia, in which he debates whether Alexander's extraordinary life was due more to Fortune or to his own virtue. Here he views Alexander's project in a way that might be suggestive in light of the link to the Stoic worldview we glimpsed in Epictetus, here represented by Zeno:

Moreover, the much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field. This Zeno wrote, giving shape to a dream or, as it were, shadowy picture of a well-ordered and philosophic commonwealth; but it was Alexander who gave effect to the idea. For Alexander did not follow Aristotle's advice to treat the Greeks as if he were their leader, and other peoples as if he were their master; to have regard for the Greeks as for friends and kindred, but to conduct himself toward other peoples as though they were plants or animals; for to do so would have been to cumber his leadership with numerous battles and banishments and festering seditions. But, as he believed that he came as a heaven-sent governor to all, and as a mediator for the whole world, those whom he could not persuade to unite with him, he conquered by force of arms, and he brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men's lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life.39 He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked; they should not distinguish between Grecian and foreigner by Grecian cloak and targe, or scimitar and jacket; but the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue, and that of the foreigner in iniquity; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children. De Fortuna Alexandri

and a little further on:

Alexander desired to render all upon earth subject to one law of reason and one form of government and to reveal all men as one people, and to this purpose he made himself conform.

One thing seems clear: Plutarch's need to underscore his view of Alexander tells us there were other, strongly different views that he was trying to counter.

The Mouseion

The library of Alexandria or Mouseion was perhaps Alexander's greatest indirect legacy. More about it here.

Sources for Alexander: Modern and Ancient

From Wikipedia:

The five main surviving accounts are by Arrian, Curtius, Plutarch, Diodorus, and Justin.

• Anabasis Alexandri (The Campaigns of Alexander in Greek) by the Greek historian Arrian of Nicomedia, writing in the 2nd century AD, and based largely on Ptolemy and, to a lesser extent, Aristobulus and Nearchus. It is considered generally the most trustworthy source.
• Historiae Alexandri Magni, a biography of Alexander in ten books, of which the last eight survive, by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, written in the 1st century AD, and based largely on Cleitarchus through the mediation of Timagenes, with some material probably from Ptolemy;
• Life of Alexander (see Parallel Lives) and two orations On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great (see Moralia), by the Greek historian and biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea in the second century, based largely on Aristobulus and especially Cleitarchus.
• Bibliotheca historia (Library of world history), written in Greek by the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, from which Book 17 relates the conquests of Alexander, based almost entirely on Timagenes's work. The books immediately before and after, on Philip and Alexander's "Successors," throw light on Alexander's reign.
• The Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus by Justin, which contains factual errors and is highly compressed. It is difficult in this case to understand the source, since we only have an epitome, but it is thought that also Pompeius Trogus may have limited himself to use Timagenes for his Latin history.

To these five main sources some scholars add the Metz Epitome, an anonymous late Latin work that narrates Alexander's campaigns from Hyrcania to India. Much is also recounted incidentally in other authors, including Strabo, Athenaeus, Polyaenus, Aelian, and others.

Plutarch offers a list of some of his sources:

46 Here the queen of the Amazons came to see him, as most writers say, among whom are Cleitarchus, Polycleitus, Onesicritus, Antigenes, and Ister; 2 but Aristobulus, Chares the royal usher, Ptolemy, Anticleides, Philo the Theban, and Philip of Theangela, besides Hecataeus of Eretria, Philip the Chalcidian, and Duris of Samos, say that this is a fiction.

Alexander's domain

These maps showing the easternmost reach of Alexander's campaign come from the Wikipedia article about him, a worthy supplement to Plutarch's Life.



A bust after Lysippus

if the deity that sent down Alexander's soul into this world of ours had not recalled him quickly, one law would govern all mankind, and they all would look toward one rule of justice as though toward a common source of light. But as it is, that part of the world which has not looked upon Alexander has remained without sunlight. ~ Plutarch.