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.

Philosophy and Narrative

Shaw points to this excerpt, found here, which may have some resonance in view of our wanderings among texts as diverse as The Encheiridion, Sallust, The Lives of Cato, Cicero and Caesar, The Melian Dialog, Marcus Aurelius, Epicurus, Thucydides, Plato, and, glancingly, Dante:

Narrative is the speech of memory. Philosophies are essentially narratives. All great works of philosophy simply tell the reader what is the nature of things. The arguments we find within such works are meaningful within the structure of the narrative they contain. The narration confers meaning. Questions of meaning always precede questions of truth. Philosophical arguments do not stand on their own. They cannot profitably be removed from the narrative that informs them and evaluated as though they had independent value and truth.

Philosophies, like all narratives, act against forgetting. To forget is to leave something out, to omit or overlook a feature of a subject matter or of the world. Philosophical speech is memorial speech because it reminds us of what we have already forgotten or nearly forgotten about experience. The speech of philosophical narrative can never become literal-minded because to act against forgetting is to attempt to hold opposites together. The narrative is always based on a metaphor; a metaphor is always a narrative in brief. The narrative is also the means to overcome controversy, because for the self to overcome an inconsistency of its thoughts it must develop not simply a new argument but a new position, a new narrative in which to contain any new argument.

The self makes itself by speaking to itself, not in the sense of introspection but in the sense of the art of conversation, which is tied to the original meaning of dialectic. On this view, philosophy is not rhetorical simply in its need to resolve controversy, nor is it rhetorical simply in terms of its starting points for rational demonstration. Philosophy is rhetorical in these senses, but it is further rhetorical in its total expression. Any philosophy commands its truth by the way it speaks. Great philosophies speak in a powerful manner that affects both mind and heart. It is common, in the Dialogues, that, after engaging in the elenchos, Socrates says he is unsure whether a claim that seems to be true really is true. His answer is to offer a “likely story.” All philosophies, on my view, are likely stories, which originate in the philosopher’s own autobiography and are attempts to move from this to the autobiography of humanity, to formulate the narrative of human existence in the world and to speak of things human and divine.

From Donald Philip Verene, Philosophical Rhetoric (2007) via

Caesar, sunk by Gauls, surfaces

Oldest known bust of Caesar found

Divers in France have found the oldest known bust of Roman dictator Julius Caesar at the bottom of the River Rhone, officials have said.

Comment from Gift Hub, an experiment in the critical discourses surrounding philanthropy:

Caesar conquered Arles. A bust in his honor was erected. Two years later he is assassinated in Rome. His bust is thrown in the river since being a follower of the assassinated dictator would have been dangerous. Now divers find the stone head.

Today, we know that big funders are "hyper-agents," who, like great generals, found the worlds in which others live.

Rome's Treasure

Caesar's plunder of the Roman treasury is alluded to at the precise moment Dante describes the Gate of Purgatory opening to him:

E quando fuor ne' cardini distorti
li spigoli di quella regge sacra,
che di metallo son sonanti e forti,

non rugghiò sì né si mostrò sì acra
Tarpëa, come tolto le fu il buono
Metello, per che poi rimase macra.

And when the hinges of that sacred door,
which are of heavy and resounding metal,
were turning on their linchpins,

the Tarpeian rock roared not so loud
nor proved so strident when good Metellus
was drawn away and it was then left bare.

Purg. ix.133-138

The man whose life made Caesar weep

Plutarch's Life of Alexander is here.

An online bio of Caesar

For more detail on Julius Caesar online, have a look at Caesar, A Sketch, by James Anthon Froude, M.A.

Caesar online and previously noted

The online edition of Plutarch's Life of Caesar is here.

A couple of previous posts about Caesar are here and here.