Why I Read This Book
The
conquests of Alexander the Great is one of those episodes in history that I
really should have read up on long ago, but somehow never got around to. However, with my interest now officially
aroused by the Valerio Massimo Manfredi Alexander the Great historical fiction trilogy (which I’m currently reading), I decided I wanted to track
down a more factual history book to supplement the historical fiction.
There
were a couple different biographies of Alexander the Great at my local
bookstore, but this one looked to be the most readable. It also contained a blurb from Tom Holland on
its front cover “As racy and pacey as any novel. Here, in vivid detail, are all the familiar
highlights of Alexander’s career….Mr. Freeman’s ambition, he tells us in his
introduction, was ‘to write a biography of Alexander that is first and foremost
a story.’ It is one he splendidly fulfills….
A rollicking read.” Since I had recently read and enjoyed Rubicon by Tom Holland, and had found Tom Holland has a very skilled sense
for writing history as a story himself, I figured he knew what he was talking
about, and his recommendation probably meant this book would be another great
narrative history.
I
bought the book, and I was not disappointed.
The Review
Having now read the book myself, I find myself in complete agreement
with the Tom Holland quote. Philip
Freeman is a very skilled writer, and this book was a pleasure to read. It reads like all great history should—like a
story. And Philip Freeman writes with
all the storytelling skills of a novelist.
Definitely
add this book to my list of favorite narrative history books.
Because
this is probably best illustrated by example, I’ll quote a paragraph to try to
show Philip Freeman’s skill at writing.
The paragraph below probably won’t make complete sense taken out of
context, but hopefully some sense of Freeman’s prose style will come through:
“A
fierce struggle raged around Alexander as the Persians tried to kill him and
end the war with one blow. The king’s
lance was broken in the fight, but when he called on his groomsman for another
he was told the young man’s lance had snapped in two. Surrounded and unarmed, his old companion
Demaratus of Corinth, veteran of wars in distant Sicily and the man who some
say years earlier had bought Bucephalas for the brash prince, rushed forward
and gave him his own weapon. Alexander
took courage from his friend and rushed back into the fray, charging a Persian
noble named Mithridates and stabbing him in the face. The death of this son-in-law of the Great
King distracted Alexander from the approach of another Persian nobleman,
Rhoesaces, who rode at the king and struck him so hard on his head with his
sword that his helmet split in two. The
king was stunned by the blow, but managed to knock Rhoesaces onto the ground
and skewer him with his lance. Even as
he struck, the satrap Spithridates now charged Alexander from behind and raised
his sword to strike a death blow when suddenly Black Cleitus threw himself at
the Persian lord and cut off his arm cleanly at the shoulder. Alexander may have been frustrated at the
number of Philip’s old officers in his ranks, but he owed his life that day to
the courage and skill of Cleitus.” (p. 81)
However,
while the writing style may be top notch, the primary problem with any history
of Alexander the Great is that Alexander the Great himself is not a very
sympathetic or likeable figure to spend 300 some pages with. As Philip Freeman shows, Alexander was not
entirely evil. He could be brave,
heroic, chivalrous, and merciful to his enemies. But, as Philip Freeman also shows, depending
on his moods he could also be terribly vindictive, and he was responsible for
several massacres of civilians.
This is a
problem that Philip Freeman addresses briefly at the end of the book. When talking about how Alexander’s image
changed over time, Freeman writes: “For the British Victorians, he [Alexander]
was a mirror of themselves as enlightenment purveyors of civilization
through a culture backed by superior military.
This rosy view of Alexander collapsed with the devastating wars of the
twentieth century, when the horrific reality of absolute power swept away any romantic
notions of benevolent tyranny. Today
many modern scholars prefer to see Alexander as little more than a ‘drunken
juvenile thug,’ as one prominent historian has recently characterized him.”
(p. 328-329).
However,
Freeman, who has a biographer’s natural sympathy towards his subject, goes on
to add: “This view of Alexander is much too simplistic. He was a man of his own violent times, no
better or no worse than Caesar or Hannibal.
He killed tens of thousands of civilians in his campaigns and spread
terror in his wake, but so did every other general in the ancient world. If he were alive today, he would undoubtedly
be condemned as a war criminal—but he did not live in our age.” (p. 329).
It
is perfectly true that Alexander was just operating according to the standards
of his time. However, that knowledge
does not (and probably should not) make him any more sympathetic to the modern
reader.
But
as with so many figures in history, the story of Alexander is fascinating in
spite of how repulsive Alexander himself was.
For one thing, all of what we now know as Western Culture would not
exist if it were not for Alexander the Great spreading Greek culture and
philosophy. As Freeman writes, “It
seems safe to say that without the Macedonian king [Alexander] and his
conquests, the philosophy, art and literature of ancient Greece that have so
influenced our lives for more than two thousand years would instead have been
only one of many voices in a chorus of ancient civilizations” (p. 323)
And
a few pages later, Freeman continues: “The spread of Alexander’s Hellenistic
culture throughout the Roman world and beyond became a prime factor in the
eventual success of Christianity. The
New Testament and most other popular early Christian literature were written in
the Greek language, not the native Aramaic of Jesus of Nazareth. The almost universal knowledge of Greek
allowed the Gospels to be read with equal ease in Jerusalem, Egypt, and Rome. When the Apostle Paul wrote his New Testament
letters to the native people of Asia Minor, Greece, or to the Romans
themselves, they were composed in the tongue of Alexander. Indeed, one could make a persuasive case that
without the conquests of the Macedonian king, the Christian religion would have
remained a local phenomenon” (p. 327-328).
As
Freeman also writes, the impact of Alexander the Great was felt not just on the
West, but on the East. In his last few
pages, Freeman writes about how Alexander’s legend is still felt in Iran, and
in Arabia. Alexander the Great is
mentioned in both the Bible and the Koran.
[And,
although Philip Freeman doesn’t mention this, as I said in my previous post on Alexander the Great, the impacts of his conquests were felt as far
away as Malaysia and possibly Cambodia—the Sultans in Malaysia claim descent
from Alexander the Great, and the Cambodian word for “foreigner” may have
originated from Alexander’s invading Ionian armies.]
So,
for anyone interested in understanding the world as we know it today, reading
up on Alexander’s life and conquests make for fascinating reading, whether or
not you approve of the man himself.
The
other great thing about studying Alexander the Great is that, because he
travelled so widely and so far, reading his biography is also a crash course in
all the civilizations and countries of the ancient Middle East. Or at least it can be in the hands of a
skilled writer who knows how to bring the ancient world fully to life. And Philip Freeman is that author. So the reader starts out learning about
ancient Macedonia and Greece, but then follows Alexander into Turkey, and
Palestine, down to Egypt, and into the Mesopotamia. Into Babylon, and then to Persepolis. Up into Bactria, and then into the Hindu
Kush. Across the Indus River and into
India and the Punjab, and then all the way down to the Arabian Sea. And everywhere Alexander went, Philip Freeman
tells the reader about the civilizations he encountered, and the geographic
obstacles he and his army had to overcome.
Alexander’s biography can almost serve as a crash course on all the
cultures and civilizations of the ancient world, and it’s absolutely
fascinating reading.
For
example, when Alexander conquers the ancient city of Susa in the Persian
Empire, Philip Freeman gives a brief, but fascinating summary of the city’s
history and importance:
“The
city of Susa was the old capital of the kingdom of Elam, a land of southern
Mesopotamia stretching into the Zagros Mountains of Persia to the east. It was once a large territory encompassing
parts of Persia before the ancestors of Cyrus the Great took over the
highlands. Elam served as the main
conduit of trade between the east and Mesopotamia for goods such as timber and
minerals. The people of Elam, like the
Sumerians, wrote on clay tablets in cuneiform script thousands of years before
Alexander. Once the Persians brought the
Elamites of the Mesopotamian plain into their empire in the sixth century, they
made their tongue one of the official languages of state. The language of Elam was unrelated to any
other in the area, though it may have shared a common origin with those spoken
in ancient times in parts of India. In
any case, it was an important means of communication in Alexander’s new empire,
and required that the king employ scribes who were fluent in the language.
“After
a march of twenty days from Babylon, the Macedonian army arrived at Susa. The royal palace spread out there on three
steep hills was the setting for the biblical tale of Esther, while just below
the citadel lay the tomb of the prophet Daniel.
Chief among the features of the Great King’s palace was the open
audience hall with dozens of pillars more than sixty feet high. Suppliants approaching the royal chamber
would climb a series of stairs past stunning gold reliefs of the king’s guard
and a larger-than-life statue of the first Darius himself. Tribute from the whole empire was built into
the palace as a reminder of the awesome power of the king—cedar wood from
Lebanon, ivory from India, walls decorated by Egyptians, stone shaped by Greek
workers from the Aegean coast. Inside
the hall was an explosion of color, with golden images of sphinxes and lions,
while the capitals of the columns were carved like the heads of gigantic
bulls. Across the river next to the vast
complex stood the smaller palace of the Great Artaxerxes II, built in the time
of Alexander’s grandfather. This Persian
king constructed a less imposing but still opulent structure as a retreat from
the endless demands of the royal court.
An inscription there prayed that the gods would grant him and his palace
protection from all evil, that the palace might be a paradayadam for him. In
later Persian, the same word would become pairidaeza and pass into Greek
as paradeisos, or paradise.” (p. 193-194)
And
much later, when Alexander’s army gets to India, then the reader also gets
treated to a description of the ancient cultures Alexander found there:
“Alexander’s
often brutal campaign in India did not hinder his ongoing fascination with native
religions. As early as his visit to
Taxila he had gathered together Indian wise men to question them about their
beliefs. The king was fortunate to visit
a land with such a rich collection of religious traditions. Some aspects of Indian religion, such as
belief in a multitude of gods, would have been familiar to anyone from the
Mediterranean world, but many of the ideas he encountered would have been quite
puzzling to Alexander.
Followers
of the native Jain tradition sought to release the soul from the cycle of pain
and reincarnation through the practice of asceticism. The most devout became monks who wandered
around naked through the land owning nothing but a small pot for washing. All Jains sought to follow the teachings of
master from the past who had achieved enlightenment. The latest had been Mahavira, a former
warrior who lived along the Ganges two centuries before Alexander. Other Indians were devotees of a teacher
named Siddhartha Gautama, who had lived near the Himalayas at
about the same time as Mahavira.
Siddhartha had been born a prince, but had abandoned his previous life
when he first encountered old age, disease, and death. Underneath a bodhi tree he gained
enlightenment and release from the cycle of rebirth, becoming the
Buddha—literally “the one who is awake”—and devoting himself thereafter to
guiding his followers along the path of escape from suffering and rebirth. There were also many religious traditions
known under the collective term of Hinduism that traced their origins to the
arrival of the Aryan tribes in India many centuries before. The invaders brought with them the hymns of
the Vedas and many gods similar to the Persian pantheon, but their beliefs were
also shaped by contact with the rich traditions of the natives they met in
their new land. Hindus worshiped Vishnu,
Brahma, Shiva, and many other deities, but shared with Jains and Buddhists the
desire to attain release from the endless cycle of reincarnation.” (p. 286)
That’s
only two examples, but the entire book is like that. Whenever Alexander’s armies march into a new
city or region, Philip Freeman gives fascinating historical background on the
people who live there. While reading
this book I was complete immersed in all the fantastic and exotic cultures of
the ancient world and the Near East.
Other Notes:
*
Perhaps as a result of the way history is often taught in schools, I think many
of us tend to view ancient history as just one period, rather than as many
different and diverse periods. On a
conscious level, of course, I know better.
But on a subconscious level I still tend to feel as if Homer and
Alexander and Julius Caesar and Constantine were all more or less
contemporaries.
For
this reason, it’s always interesting for me to be reminded that books like The Iliad are not just regarded as ancient classics nowadays, but
were already being regarded as ancient classics way back in the time of
Alexander the Great.
As
Philip Freeman illustrates, Alexander the Great was obsessed with The Iliad
(he carried a copy on his campaigns with him, and many of his actions seemed
consciously designed to deliberately emulate the exploits of Achilles.) It’s fascinating to think how long this book
has survived, that we today can still read and thrill to the same stories that
fascinated Alexander the Great 2,000 years ago.
* I remember learning in 7th
grade bible class about Alexander the Great’s trip to Jerusalem. (This was when we were studying the
inter-testament period). Interestingly
enough, Philip Freeman talks about this incident, but is skeptical that it
actually happened: “The ancient records do not mention Alexander taking the
less direct but more hospitable road inland through Galilee and down through
the Jordan River Valley. The Jewish
historian Josephus alone asserts that Alexander journeyed to the temple at
Jerusalem to pay his respect to the high priest, but this is almost certainly
pious fiction. Instead the Macedonians
took the shorter path down the coast past Mount Carmel, then on to Joppa, where
Jonah reportedly took the ship before being swallowed by a great fish.”(p.
139)
* As I mentioned, I originally
tracked down this book because I wanted to fact check Valerio Massimo
Manfredi’s historical fiction.
And
now that I’ve read this book, I’m much better informed. I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert
after reading just one popular history book, but I have a much better idea of
where Manfredi is simplifying, where he is omitting, and where he is combining
characters.
However,
now that I know all this, I find that I can’t be bothered to write a long post
comparing everything in Manfredi’s book to the historical record. Instead, I’ll simply recommend that anyone
who is reading Manfredi, and interested in double checking him against another
historian, track down this book and read it for yourself. (I will say that on the whole Manfredi’s
historical fiction is fairly accurate, and that I can understand why he’s
making the simplification and omissions that he is making in order to satisfy
the demands of a novel.)
* While I was reading this book,
I re-watched Oliver Stone’s Alexander with my brother-in-law
over the Christmas break. This
was a movie I had seen way back in 2004 when it first came out, but had never
re-watched since. I was pleasantly
surprised to find out that Oliver Stone’s movie was not nearly as bad as I had
remembered it. But it does definitely
help to know the history. Oliver Stone’s
dilemma is that he’s got way too much history than he can possibly tell in one
movie, so a lot of events are just briefly covered in these confusingly rushed
scenes, and a lot of stuff is only alluded to instead of shown. But if you know what the actual history is
that Oliver Stone is trying to allude to, then the movie becomes a bit more
interesting. (It also helped, I think,
that we didn't watch all 214 minutes of the movie all in one sitting, but
instead paused it halfway through and broke it up into two separate nights.)
Link of the Day
5 comments:
Were you guys watching Stone's latest (and, he assures us -- again -- his final) edit? I kinda liked it, even though I found Colin Farrell's "AAAAHCK-TING!" incredibly distracting.
Also wondering if you've read any of Steven Pressfield's historical novels? He's got a jones for military writing, and focuses intently on physical conditions. His details make for memorable reading, at least with me. I haven't read The Virtues Of War (his Alexander book), but I'd have no trouble recommending Killing Rommel, The Tides of War or Gates of Fire (the last his best, IMO). I'd certainly want to hear what you thought of Virtues.
I don't remember exactly what was on the DVD box. It was something about a director's cut--so different than the version I saw back in 2004 presumably, but I don't really remember it well enough to compare. I just remember being bored to tears back in 2004, and this time around rather enjoying it. Maybe lowered expectations helped?
I've never heard of Steven Pressfield, but as always thanks for the recommendation. I'll try to keep my eye open for him.
At the moment, I'm still slogging my way through Valerio Massimo Manfredi's trilogy.
After I finish those, assuming I'm still up for more Alexander, I plan to move into Mary Renault's trilogy.
While reading reviews of Manfredi's trilogy, I came across a number of people on the Internet who seemed to regard Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy as the best Alexander historical fiction out there. When I was back home last month, I made sure to pick up copies, so those will be directly next on my reading list.
This Guardian article, for example, makes it look like Renault's books could be very interesting reading:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jul/31/august-reading-group-alexander-trilogy-mary-renault
Mary Renault - wow: there's a name I haven't encountered in a long, long time. I'll be curious to hear how her prose holds up.
Hi
I got this book today only and your review does give me a boost and a motivation to read it as early as possible! Nice review :)
Thanks for the comment Ankita. Let me know what you think of the book once you finish it.
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