Before and After Alexander by Richard A. Billows

Author:Richard A. Billows [BILLOWS, RICHARD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS002010, HIS002020, HIS039000, HIS027220
ISBN: 9781468316414
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2018-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

15. Coin of Alexander depicting the king holding a thunderbolt

(Wikimedia Commons public domain image from PHGCOM)

In other words, the legend of Alexander as a superhuman hero was assiduously cultivated by Alexander himself from early on in his reign, and was spread by his court historian Callisthenes and by other eyewitness historians after Alexander’s death, as well as by poets employed to write about Alexander in a deliberately heroizing vein. One can add his cultivation of his physical image. Only one painter, Apelles, the greatest painter of Alexander’s time, was permitted to produce official portraits of Alexander. Apelles painted Alexander wielding Zeus’ thunderbolt, and Alexander authorized coins depicting himself with the thunderbolt (ill. 15). It is hard to think of another ruler who was as assiduous as Alexander at cultivating his own image and making that image superhuman: perhaps the Sun King Louis XIV of France comes closest. It is understandable, given the exaggerated respect shown in pre-modern sources for the act of military conquest, that Alexander’s self-aggrandizing propaganda should have had its effect and been copied and further exaggerated in subsequent writings, almost down to the present day. But there is no need for us, in the twenty-first century, to go along with it. Alexander was an impressive general and an influential conqueror, but no more than that. The legend of Alexander has had its day.

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