For nearly two and a half millennia, Alexander the Great has loomed
over history as a legend-and an enigma. Wounded repeatedly but
always triumphant in battle, he conquered most of the known world,
only to die mysteriously at the age of thirty-two. In his day he
was revered as a god; in our day he has been reviled as a mass
murderer, a tyrant as brutal as Stalin or Hitler.
Who was the man behind the mask of power? Why did Alexander embark
on an unprecedented program of global domination? What accounted
for his astonishing success on the battlefield? In this luminous
new biography, the esteemed classical scholar and historian Guy
MacLean Rogers sifts through thousands of years of history and myth
to uncover the truth about this complex, ambiguous genius.
Ascending to the throne of Macedonia after the assassination of his
father, King Philip II, Alexander discovered while barely out of
his teens that he had an extraordinary talent and a boundless
appetite for military conquest. A virtuoso of violence, he was
gifted with an uncanny ability to visualize how a battle would
unfold, coupled with devastating decisiveness in the field.
Granicus, Issos, Gaugamela, Hydaspes-as the victories mounted,
Alexander's passion for conquest expanded from cities to countries
to continents. When Persia, the greatest empire of his day, fell
before him, he marched at once on India, intending to add it to his
holdings.
As Rogers shows, Alexander's military prowess only heightened his
exuberant sexuality. Though his taste for multiple partners, both
male and female, was tolerated, Alexander's relatively enlightened
treatment of women was nothing short of revolutionary. He outlawed
rape, he placed intelligent women in positions of authority, and he
chose his wives from among the peoples he conquered. Indeed, as
Rogers argues, Alexander's fascination with Persian culture,
customs, and sexual practices may have led to his downfall, perhaps
even to his death.
Alexander emerges as a charismatic and surprisingly modern
figure-neither a messiah nor a genocidal butcher but one of the
most imaginative and daring military tacticians of all time.
Balanced and authoritative, this brilliant portrait brings
Alexander to life as a man, without diminishing the power of the
legend.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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