And
so, after having read and reviewed book 1 and book 2 of Valerio
Massimo Manfredi’s Alexander the Great trilogy, I come at last to the end of
this series.
In
broad terms, everything I said about books 1 and 2 holds true for this last
book as well. The prose is very clunky,
cheesy, and full of unnatural speech and exposition dumps. And yet, it’s all quite readable. As with the previous two books, this book
seems to be re-interpreting a lot of events to put Alexander the Great in a
better light than he deserves, but aside from minor details the main narrative
is pretty historically accurate.
But
since I’ve already critiqued this series in broad terms in my previous two
reviews, I’ll jump right into the historical nit-picking in this review.
Historical Inaccuracies
First
a couple disclaimers. (1) I’m not an expert. My only source of information is just one biography of Alexander the Great I read by Philip Freeman. I use Philip Freeman’s biography of Alexander
to critique Valerio Massimo Manfredi, but if Philip Freeman is in error, then
so am I. (2) I’m not going to get into all the small
nitpicky little details, or I’d be writing here forever. I’ll just try to confine myself to what I
view as the major inaccuracies.
In
this third book of the trilogy, Alexander personally kills, or has killed, many
of his friends and companions: Philotas, Parmenion, Cleitus the Black, and
Callisthenes.
Of
these four, only the death of Cleitus the Black is portrayed as similar to the
historical version Philip Freeman recounts—Alexander speared Cleitus during a
drunken argument, immediately regretted it, and spent days in mourning
afterwards.
As
for Parmenion and his son Philotas, Philip Freeman says that the relationship
between Parmenion and Alexander had been tense all along—Parmenion was one of
the aristocracy of Macedonia, he and his family were a potential rival to the
throne for Alexander, a somewhat unwelcome reminder to Alexander of his
father’s old-guard soldiers, and Parmenion and Alexander were constantly in
conflict over policy and strategy throughout the whole campaign. In Philip Freeman’s version, when Alexander
finally has an excuse to eliminate Parmenion and his son Philotas, he’s only
too happy to do so.
In
Manfredi’s version, all the Macedonian leaders are one big happy family. Parmenion and Philotas are devoted to
Alexander, and he loves them. This makes
it somewhat harder to believe that Alexander would turn on them. And so accordingly Manfredi has to give
Alexander much more motivation.
In
Philip Freeman’s version, the evidence against Philotas is extremely thin—his
only crime appears to have been disregarding rumors of a plot to kill Alexander
that may or may not have been serious.
In
Manfredi’s version, Philotas knows full well the plot against Alexander is
real, and is even involved in a softer version of it. (In Manfredi’s version, Philotas does not
want Alexander killed, but is part of a plot to remove him from power.) In fact in Manfredi’s version, the plot
against Alexander manifests itself into an actual assassination attempt that
Alexander barely survives.
Similar
comments can be made about the execution of Callisthenes. In Philip Freeman’s version, there was
absolutely no evidence connecting Callisthenes with the Pages’ Conspiracy, but
Alexander just used it as an excuse to get rid of a troublesome
insubordinate.
In
Manfredi’s version, Callisthenes is still not directly involved, but the pages
are directly getting their inspiration from him.
According
to Philip Freeman, ancient sources differ on whether Callisthenes was executed
by Alexander, or whether he died in prison, but he was definitely arrested by
Alexander. In Manfredi’s version,
Callisthenes commits suicide before he is arrested, completely removing
Alexander from any guilt.
To
give credit where credit is due, although Manfredi’s version may not make great
history, it makes much better drama. The
historical story of Alexander finding some flimsy excuse to get rid of his
enemies is not very interesting. But the
drama of a man betrayed by his best friends, and forced to take action against
the people he loves the most, has much more potential. (I don’t think Manfredi’s flat prose takes
full advantage of the dramatic potential he’s created, but there’s certainly an
element of pathos and tragedy in his version of the story.)
One
last major difference: according to Philip Freeman, Alexander’s lover Barsine
bore him a son named Hercules, and they both survived until Alexander’s death
(after which, they were both poisoned in the power struggles that followed
Alexander’s death.)
In
Manfredi’s version, Barsine is killed in the battle of Gaugamela. I’m not exactly sure why Manfredi made this
change, but I suspect it was because he wanted to romanticize Alexander’s love
for Barsine, and so Barsine had to be killed off to free Alexander’s heart so
he could marry the Persian queens.
Historical Nitpicks
When
seeing the dead body of the Persian King, Manfredi has Alexander reflect thus:
There
came to his [Alexander’s] mind the lines of the Fall of Ilium which
describes the lifeless body of Priam, killed by Neoptolemus:
Here lies the King of Asia, the powerful lord of armies
Like
a tree felled by lightening
And
abandoned trunk, a body without a name.
(from p. 231)
I actually read The Fall of Ilium back in my youth, when I was going through my stage of being obsessed with the Trojan War. And The Fall of Ilium was
written was written by Quintus of Smyrna in the 4th century A.D. (W). Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. (Unless there is another earlier work called The
Fall of Ilium, but if there is, I can’t find it on Google. So I’m going to count this as an anachronism
until someone can tell me differently.)
And
yes, I do realize this is exactly the sort of nitpicky historical detail I just
said I wouldn’t get into in this review, but since I have some
familiarity with The Fall of Ilium, I couldn’t resist commenting on
this.
A Comparison with an Obscure Japanese TV
Show that No One Else has Ever Heard Of.
Throughout
reading this whole trilogy, I was constantly reminded of the Japanese TV drama Shinsengumi. And
I know that’s a really obscure comparison to make, but I’m going to indulge
myself anyway.
As
I said in my review of Shinsengumi, the whole series was a
historical whitewash designed to make the characters appear much more likeable
than they actually were. To its credit,
the show didn’t completely skip over problematic historical incidents, but any
sort of atrocity the Shinsengumi committed would be completely re-worked so
that somehow the Shinsengumi were always in the right, and their victims were
always in the wrong.
And,
as I also mentioned in my review, as much as this historical inaccuracy irked
me on the one level, it also became part of the fun on another level. If you knew the history, then you knew all
the terrible things the Shinsengumi were going to do, but you didn’t know how
the writers of the show were going to re-frame everything to show that the
Shinsengumi weren’t that bad after all.
And so, trying to guess how the writers would excuse away all the Shinsengumi’s
atrocities became part of the fun of watching the show.
It
was a similar experience reading Manfredi’s Alexander the Great trilogy. Seeing how he would squirm and weasel to
mitigate Alexander’s historical guilt could be irritating, but it could also be
part of the fun of reading historical fiction.
Good Points of This Trilogy
Throughout these reviews, I’ve mostly been harping on the bad points
of this trilogy. But as easy as these
books are to criticize, let me re-emphasize that they’re not all that bad, as
reading experiences go. They’re cheesy,
sure, but they’re pretty fun to read, and they’re easy reading. If these books were boring or difficult or
troublesome, rest assured I wouldn’t have finished the first one, let alone
stuck through with the whole trilogy.
Historical fiction is a very demanding genre—the writer has to satisfy both the needs of a
novel, and of a history. And while I
wouldn’t say that Manfredi’s trilogy is flawless, it’s good enough, and it’s no
small thing to write a narrative that encompasses all of the major events and
battles in Alexander the Great’s life.
(I know I’ve nitpicked these books on historical inaccuracies, but on
the whole they seem to be fairly accurate.)
Also,
although I’ve relied on Philip Freeman’s history to critique these trilogies,
there are some interesting details and characters that Philip Freeman misses,
which I only found out about from Manfredi.
For
example, Philip Freeman writes little about Alexander of Epirus, who was
Alexander the Great’s uncle (and also, because of the incestuous relationships
of ancient royalty, his brother-in-law).
It was from Manfredi’s version of events that I learned the story of
Alexander of Epirus, and the interesting historical parallels between the two
Alexanders. As Alexander the Great went
East into the Persian Empire, his uncle/brother-in-law went West to Italy,
where he became involved in the wars there, and even made a treaty with the
Roman Republic, before being killed in battle.
Having my
interest in Alexander of Epirus aroused by Manfredi, I went to Wikipedia to
find out more. Wikipedia has
more interesting details on this.
According to Wikipedia (W), the Roman historian Livius speculated what would have happened if Alexander the Great had gone
to fight the Romans, instead of his uncle/brother-in-law, and this speculation
is regarded as the first surviving piece of alternative history.
Some
other interesting characters also pop into Manfredi’s historical fiction that
are also absent from Philip Freeman, like the philosopher Pyrrho, who is
briefly mentioned on page 443 of this final book. Manfredi doesn’t give a lot of details about
Pyrrho, but just a brief mention that some significant philosopher was
travelling with Alexander’s armies around India. And those small details were enough to at
least encourage me to go to the Wikipedia page (W) to learn more.
There
are also some hints of a larger story.
For example, in Manfredi’s trilogy much is made of the love between
Alexander’s companion Perdiccas and Alexander’s sister Cleopatra. Somewhat disappointingly, nothing ever comes
from all this build up in Manfredi’s narrative, so once again the curious
reader must go to Wikipedia to find out what the pay-off of this story will
be. In Wikipedia (W), I found
out that after Alexander’s death, Perdiccas did indeed marry Cleopatra, and
then shortly afterwards was killed in the power struggle between Alexander’s
generals.
The
power struggle after Alexander’s death is not really covered in Manfredi’s
trilogy. Which is unfortunate. It seems to me to be the most interesting
part of the whole Alexander saga. Which
brings me to my next point…
Manfredi and Oliver Stone and Game of
Thrones
The publisher’s introduction to this book on the front page claims
that Manfredi’s Alexander the Great Trilogy has been translated into 24
languages in 38 countries, and that the “film rights have been acquired by
Universal Pictures in light of a large international production.” Since this book was published way back in
1998, I thought, “Aha! Is this trilogy
where the Oliver Stone movie takes its inspiration?”
Well,
a quick Internet search reveals that no, apparently it’s not. The Universal Picture movie was apparently a
planned, but never produced, project with Leonardo DiCaprio as Alexander the
Great and Nicole Kidman as Alexander’s mother [LINK HERE].
It
might as well have been the inspiration for Oliver Stone’s movie, however. Many of the major events are the same: the
assassination of Alexander’s father, for example, as well as Alexander turning
on and killing his former companions: Philotas, Parmenion, and Cleitus the
Black. All of these are prominent events
in Manfredi’s trilogy, and all of these also made it into Oliver Stone’s movie.
The
problem with compressing the entire story of Alexander the Great into two
hours, however, is there’s no time to develop any of these characters. Who cares if Alexander kills Cleitus the
Black, Philotas, or Parmenion, if the audience is never given a chance to get
to know any of these characters in the first place?
If
the story of Alexander the Great is ever to be told on screen, it will have to
be as a TV show, not as a movie.
It
used to be commonly thought that television audiences didn’t have the patience
for complicated history with too many characters and too much complicated
intriguing. But now Game of Thrones
(which is essentially a fake-history drama) has proven that there is actually an
audience hungry for these kind of stories of complicated intrigue. And ever since Game of
Thrones, I can no longer read a history book without imagining it as an HBO drama series. So you’ll have
to forgive this.
Alexander’s
story could easily make a great HBO drama series. There was way too much story here for Oliver
Stone’s movie, but you could easily stretch all these conquests, intrigues, and
conspiracies out into a TV show. The
intrigues around the Macedonian throne in the first book of this trilogy could
easily be season one. Then once
Alexander succeeds his father as king, the conquests of Alexander the Great
could be a couple more seasons easily.
But then the real Game of Thrones style drama would be the power
struggle that followed Alexander’s death, when all his generals turned on each
other, and everyone started killing everyone else.
As
mentioned above, I’m somewhat disappointed that this didn’t make it into
Manfredi’s version of the story.
(There’s a brief epilogue which alludes to this fighting on pages
569-572, but no details.) Given
Manfredi’s version of events, in which all the Macedonian leaders are just one
big happy family, it’s somewhat difficult to imagine how he would have
explained away the fact that they all started killing each other as soon as
Alexander died. But I would have been
interested to see his attempt.
At
any rate, whilst reading this trilogy, I’ve read a number of reviews that said
Mary Renault’s Alexander the Great trilogy is much better than Manfredi’s. And it looks like Mary Renault has the whole
last book of her trilogy dedicated to telling the story of the power struggle
after Alexander’s death. That should be
interesting.
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