This book offers the first critical edition with an English translation and commentary on some of the letters attributed to Alexander and transmitted by mainly Plutarch and Arrian. The vast majority of the texts examined here are constituted by Alexander’s 'private' letters, but the book also includes some letters regarded as official. Thirty-four letters are included, although there are many more letters allegedly written by Alexander, which are definitely forgeries. The doubts about the letters mostly come from the fact that the Romance of Alexander is considered a sort of epistolary novel, thus it has been argued that at some point a collection of Alexander’s letters was put together, containing a nucleus of genuine letters, but also expanded with forgeries. This volume attempts to isolate the letters which are regarded as authentic by the majority of modern scholars, with each letter followed by an outline of previous scholarly discussion of its authenticity. The book brings to wider attention a much-neglected corpus by employing an innovative approach. The traditional study of epistolography tends to focus on literary rather than historical aspects of the genre, whereas this book, by exploring the culture behind the action of writing at Alexander’s court and the diverse approaches in relation to the letters, suggests that different criteria and new ways of writing history, prompted by Eastern standards, were introduced at his court. Furthermore, the collection shows that the step Alexander made, when he assumed the title of Great King, had formal and cultural implications. Finally, the book discusses the provenance of the letters, especially who among the historians contemporary with Alexander knew and handed the letters down.

In this volume an international group of scholars revisits the themes of John Marincola's ground-breaking Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography. The nineteen chapters offer a series of case studies that explore how ancient historians' approaches to their projects were informed both by the pull of tradition and by the ambition to innovate. The key themes explored are the relation of historiography to myth and poetry; the narrative authority exemplified by Herodotus, the 'father' of history; the use of 'fictional' literary devices in historiography; narratorial self-presentation; and self-conscious attempts to shape the historiographical tradition in new and bold ways. The volume presents a holistic vision of the development of Greco-Roman historiography and the historian's dynamic position within this practice.