海角大神

Alexander鈥檚 greatness rises again in newest biography

In 鈥淎lexander the Great,鈥� author Anthony Everitt crafts a lucid, readable, and compelling portrait of the celebrated general of ancient times.

Back in 2002, Anthony Everitt published a book about the Roman statesman and orator Cicero, whose life represents an embarrassment of riches for a biographer. We have volumes of text from the man鈥檚 own hand, carefully preserved for millennia and brimming with almost every conceivable detail about his thoughts, relationships, and preoccupations. It鈥檚 likely the fullest record of any single individual from antiquity, and from it Everitt crafted a thoroughly textured portrait.聽

Everitt鈥檚 newest subject, Alexander the Great, represents the distant opposite end of that spectrum. Alexander wrote copious letters, but none of them survive. He was trailed on many an arduous campaign by court chroniclers, but their work has vanished. Virtually every one of his great generals and aides wrote an account of being an eye-witness to the glorious boy general, but all of those accounts have perished. Diligent historians in succeeding centuries worked with those letters, chronicles, and autobiographies in order to write fresh, first-generation accounts, but those accounts are gone. As Everitt puts it, in heartbreakingly mild terms, 鈥淭he sources we have are less than adequate and were composed hundreds of years after the fact.鈥�

Less than adequate indeed. Alexander was born in 356 B.C. and succeeded his father, King Philip II of Macedon, when he was 20. In the ensuing decade, he steadily demonstrated the strategic and tactical genius that allowed him to conquer a large swath of his world, leading his hardened Macedonian troops to victory after victory against the sprawling Persian Empire of King Darius III, eventually invading India in 326 B.C. By the time Alexander died in Babylon in 323 B.C., he鈥檇 already generated many chronicles and many legends.聽

Of that great mass of writing, five thin samples survive and form the basis for the modern-day industry of Alexander biographies, of which Everitt鈥檚 is the latest and one of the most engaging. He retells the famous arc of Alexander鈥檚 career and, as hinted in the book鈥檚 title: 鈥淎lexander the Great: His Life and His Mysterious Death,鈥� ending with a twist. Those five surviving samples were written by Diodorus Siculus, from the 1st century B.C., Quintus Curtius Rufus and Plutarch, from the 1st century A.D., Arrian from the 2nd century, and Ammianus Marcellinus from the 4th century. Centuries lay between the time of Alexander and the first substantial histories of that time.聽

That鈥檚 a challenge for any biographer, and Everitt only makes things more challenging by promising things he can鈥檛 possibly deliver. 鈥淚 shave with Occam鈥檚 razor,鈥� he tells his readers. 鈥淥f competing solutions to tricky questions, it is often simplest to accept what the ancient historians tell us if it is not obviously wrong.鈥�

But he unblinkingly relates, for instance, the familiar story of how young-boy Alexander, under the stern eye of his father King Philip and his court, impetuously insisted that he could tame the magnificent horse Bucephalas and then proceeds to do so, amazing all the adults present. 鈥淸Philip] kissed Alexander when he had dismounted,鈥� Everitt writes, 鈥渁nd is supposed to have remarked: 鈥楳y boy, we鈥檒l have to find a suitable kingdom for you. Macedonia is too small.鈥欌�� The source Everitt cites for this obvious bit of legend (so carefully echoing childhood-miracle stories from Greek mythology) is Plutarch, who, as noted, wrote 500 years after the fact. In other words, he鈥檇 be cut to ribbons by Occam鈥檚 Razor.聽

Sometimes, Everitt doesn鈥檛 even bother to take Occam鈥檚 Razor out of its case. He tells us, for instance, that 鈥渁ltogether Alexander was quite a sight on the battlefield,鈥� without mentioning a source, although it鈥檚 at least a believable surmise. Less believable is his equally unsourced claim that 鈥渟o far as having sex was concerned, Alexander was incurious. He showed no signs of attraction to women,鈥澛� an odd thing to say about a young man who had three wives.聽

鈥淚 set myself two cardinal rules,鈥� Everitt writes. 鈥淚 am blind to the future, and I describe the lives of my characters as though I did not know what was going to happen next.鈥� There鈥檚 a strong case to be made that these rules are impossible for any writer to follow, especially when it comes to Alexander.聽

But the idea behind such rules, the immediacy of the storytelling, gives Everitt鈥檚 account its infectious sense of narrative momentum. 鈥淎lexander the Great鈥� won鈥檛 unseat the scholarship of magnificent Alexander biographies like those by Robin Lane Fox or Peter Green. But its energy is unflagging, including the verve with which it tackles that teased final mystery about the specific cause of Alexander鈥檚 death. Even readers well-versed in Alexander鈥檚 story will be fascinated all over again.