Alexander the Great

Author: N.A

Publisher: PediaPress

ISBN: N.A

Category:

Page: 225

View: 3482


The Nature of Alexander

1979-11-12
Biography & Autobiography

Author: Mary Renault

Publisher: Pantheon

ISBN: N.A

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 304

View: 7905


A psychological study of Alexander the Great by the writer who fictionalized his biography in a series of novels.

The Courts of Philip II and Alexander the Great

2022-01-19
Literary Criticism

Author: Frances Pownall,Sulochana R. Asirvatham,Sabine Müller

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

ISBN: 3110623641

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 312

View: 3156


Recent scholarship has recognized that Philip II and Alexander the Great adopted elements of their self-fashioning and court ceremonial from previous empires in the Ancient Near East, but it is generally assumed that the advent of the Macedonian court as a locus of politics and culture occurred only in the post-Alexander landscape of the Hellenistic Successors. This volume of ground-breaking essays by leading scholars on Ancient Macedonia goes beyond existing research questions to assess the profound impact of Philip and Alexander on court culture throughout the ages. The papers in this volume offer a thematic approach, focusing upon key institutional, cultural, social, ideological, and iconographical aspects of the reigns of Philip and Alexander. The authors treat the Macedonian court not only as a historical reality, but also as an object of fascination to contemporary Greeks that ultimately became a topos in later reflections on the lives and careers of Philip and Alexander. This collection of papers provides a paradigm-shifting recognition of the seminal roles of Philip and Alexander in the emergence of a new kind of Macedonian kingship and court culture that was spectacularly successful and transformative.

The Anabasis of Alexander

2018-04-10
History

Author: Arrian

Publisher: Ozymandias Press

ISBN: 1531284442

Category: History

Page: 437

View: 804


The Anabasis is by far the fullest surviving account of Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire. It is primarily a military history, reflecting the content of Arrian's model, Xenophon's Anabasis; the work begins with Alexander's accession to the Macedonian throne in 336 BC, and has nothing to say about Alexander's early life (in contrast, say, to Plutarch's Life of Alexander). Nor does Arrian aim to provide a complete history of the Greek-speaking world during Alexander's reign. Arrian's chief sources in writing the Anabasis were the lost contemporary histories of the campaign by Ptolemy and Aristobulus and, for his later books, Nearchus. One of Arrian's main aims in writing his history seems to have been to correct the standard "Vulgate" narrative of Alexander's reign that was current in his own day, primarily associated with the lost writings of the historian Cleitarchus.

In Search Of The Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

2017-01-28
History

Author: David Grant

Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

ISBN: 1785899538

Category: History

Page: 896

View: 7019


A unique ‘backstory’ of Alexander and his successors: the biased historians, deceits, wars, generals, and the tale of the literature that preserved them. ‘Babylon, mid-June 323 BCE, the gateway of the gods; prostrated in the Summer Palace of Nebuchadrezzar II on the east bank of the Euphrates, wracked by fever and having barely survived another night, King Alexander III, the rule of Macedonia for 12 years and 7 months, had his senior officers congregate at his bedside. Abandoned by Fortune and the healing god Asclepius, he finally acknowledged he was dying. Some 2,340 years on, five barely intact accounts survive to tell a hardly coherent story. At times in close accord, though more often contradictory, they conclude with a melee of death-scene rehashes, all of them suspicious: the first portrayed Alexander dying silent and intestate; he was Homeric and vocal in the second; the third detailed his Last Will and Testament though it is attached to the stuff of romance. Which account do we trust?’ In Search Of The Lost Testament Of Alexander The Great is the result of a ‘decade of contemplations on Alexander’ presented as a rich thematic narrative Grant describes as the ‘backstory behind the history’ of the great Macedonian and his generals. Taking an uncompromising investigative perspective, Grant delves into the challenges faced by Alexander’s unique tale: the forgeries and biased historians, the influences of rhetoric, romance, philosophy and religion on what was written and how. Alexander’s own mercurial personality is vividly dissected and the careers and the wars of his successors are presented with a unique eye. But the book never loses sight of central aim: to unravel the mystery behind Alexander’s ‘unconvincingly reported’ intestate death. And out of Grant’s research emerges one unavoidable verdict: after 2,340 years, the Last Will and Testament of Alexander III of Macedonia needs to be extracted from ‘romance’ and reinstated to its rightful place in mainstream history: Babylon in June 323 BCE. Although the result a decade of academic research, In Search Of The Lost Testament Of Alexander The Great is written in an entertaining and engaging style that opens the subject to both scholars and the casual reader of history looking to learn more about the Macedonian king and the men who ‘made’ his story. It concludes with a wholly new interpretation of the death of Alexander the Great and the mechanism behind the wars of succession that followed.

The Nature of the Page

2019-12-27
Literary Criticism

Author: Joshua Calhoun

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

ISBN: 0812296745

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 288

View: 3343


An innovative study of books and reading that focuses on papermaking in the Renaissance In The Nature of the Page, Joshua Calhoun tells the story of handmade paper in Renaissance England and beyond. For most of the history of printing, paper was made primarily from recycled rags, so this is a story about using old clothes to tell new stories, about plants used to make clothes, and about plants that frustrated papermakers' best attempts to replace scarce natural resources with abundant ones. Because plants, like humans, are susceptible to the ravages of time, it is also a story of corruption and the hope that we can preserve the things we love from decay. Combining environmental and bibliographical research with deft literary analysis, Calhoun reveals how much we have left to discover in familiar texts. He describes the transformation of plant material into a sheet of paper, details how ecological availability or scarcity influenced literary output in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and examines the impact of the various colors and qualities of paper on early modern reading practices. Through a discussion of sizing—the mixture used to coat the surface of paper so that ink would not blot into its fibers—he reveals a surprising textual interaction between animals and readers. He shows how we might read an indistinct stain on the page of an early modern book to better understand the mixed media surfaces on which readers, writers, and printers recorded and revised history. Lastly, Calhoun considers how early modern writers imagined paper decay and how modern scholars grapple with biodeterioration today. Exploring the poetic interplay between human ideas and the plant, animal, and mineral forms through which they are mediated, The Nature of the Page prompts readers to reconsider the role of the natural world in everything from old books to new smartphones.
Find Full eBook
Theme by Grace Themes