Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman

(Book Review)

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 7^th 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.)

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