Alexander the Great: the Tragedy of Triumph - Assignment Example

What methodological issues are raised by the ancient accounts of the reign of Alexander the Great, and what are the limitations of these accounts? Alexander’s life is an exceptionally great tale – one of the most interesting found anywhere either in fact or fiction. His life is very extensive, with the sheer vastness of the lands he conquered, the number of battles he fought, the number of cities he founded and the number of people who have been touched by his magic. There is a certain complexity in his story that no credible historian was able to rely on one single text as the basis for his account of Alexander’s life and his period. It is difficult to illustrate or describe the man’s inner being, but the ancient sources are able to sketch a biography of his life with a fair degree of truthfulness, at least in regard to major events and their dates. The basic materials used as references for known Alexandrian accounts differ in several important respects and, therefore, their limitations: first, authors have varying purposes and biases in writing their respective accounts and so are often in conflict with each other; second, the most of the sources are incomplete while some are actually existing only as scattered fragments in other sources. The main cause of this ongoing disagreement, wrote Carol Thomas (2007), is the nature of surviving sources: the earliest attested accounts are lost or, at best, preserved only in scanty fragments while those that have survived are late, often conflict with one another, and are used by authors who carry their own agenda. (p. 9) Primary Sources All the surviving ancient accounts date from three centuries or more after Alexander’s death and that they all make use of now-lost primary sources that were varied in measures biased, incomplete or romanticized in order to please a specific reading public. (p. xix) Of the primary sources, we have the most number of fragments from works by Aristoboulus of Cassandria (Alexander’s architect), Cleitarchus of Alexandria, Chares of Mytilene, Callisthenes of Olynthus, Nearchus of Crete, Onesicritus of Astypalaea and Ptolemy, Alexander’s general. All these primary authors raise problems: did each one deal with the reign in full or did some concentrate on aspects of it or on the person or the king? (Worthington, p. 1) One of the dilemmas in extensively examining the majority of Alexander’s early historians is that their work are only known through brief citations as referenced by the historians that provided us with the current tangible sources. Nearchus, however, is the chief exception to the rule. His chronicles of his voyage and ordeals since they began sailing in South India to Susa is the narrative base for the second half of Arrian’s Indike, and that from here, we have a fair idea of the content of his work in outline and detail even after all of Arrian’s own embellishments and infused perspectives. This is the reason why Nearchus tales are widely attested and could sustain analysis. Callisthenes of Olynthus is one of Alexander’s contemporaries. It is expected that his work, Deeds of Alexander, should be widely quoted and referenced from among the secondary sources. However, this is not the case. The reason almost certainly points to his penchant for exaggeration and eulogic bias in favor of Alexander and the Macedonians. For instance, he made the Pamphylian Sea bow before Alexander and exaggerated the numbers of the Persian soldiers in the battle in Issus as well as embellishing several other incidents. Since, the Roman inherited the future from the Greeks, and considering their notorious bias against Alexander, Callisthenes was widely ignored and in some accounts even vilified. Callisthenes represents the extreme sector of Alexander’s historians – biased, self-serving and often fawning. The limitation of these primary sources lies fundamentally on the fact that we don’t have them in their entirety as they exist in fragments. In addition, they must also be treated with caution because the accounts are not without their faults. For instance, Callisthenes, the court historian, was biased towards Alexander while Ptolemy and Aristobulus were guilty of exaggerating their own roles and achievements during Alexander’s reign. The inbuilt bias of these primary sources is patent, however, they offer priceless insights and testimonies that must never be underestimated. Secondary Sources In the discussion of the sources of Alexander the Great’s life, Marcus Junianus Justinus (1997) cited a category he called as the apologetic tradition, which is represented by Flavius Arrianus (Arrian) in his History (or possibly Anabis) of Alexander – a history in seven books, written in the second century AD. (p. 34) In regard to the Roman writers, there is a widespread bias in their work because their accounts are provided as apparent critiques of Alexander’s life – his wars and his empire – in the form of the theme of “Alexander as a brigand.’ The Roman perspective is best represented by Quintus Curtius, among other authors including St. Augustine. This is unfortunate because the likes of Curtius have access to detailed narratives such as the long accounts of Alexander’s admiral Nearchus According to Ian Worthington (2003), the problem is especially acute in the case of Clietarchus: It is clear that he was a popular author in the Roman period. He is cited by a wide range of authorities, and he may have been the most generally read of all Alexander historians. Unfortunately, the thirty-six fragments… deal exclusively with trivialities. And so while the Roman historians have access to priceless primary sources that are now lost to us, they have sufficiently garbled these first-hand accounts to give us pieces that are distorted – those that serve their political and historical biases. An additional category of sources was posited by van Reenen, van Mulken and Dyk. According to them, this is the Greek Alexander Romance, covering Alexander’s descent from the Egyptian magician-king Nectanebus, his youth, his accession to the throne of Macedonia, his campaigns in Persia and India where he triumphed over kings Darius and Porus, his miraculous adventures in the East, and, finally, the conspiracy leading to Alexander’s death. (p. 211) Now, there are numerous versions of this school. But that they have been translated into Latin and would, henceforth, become the foundation of later adaptations and other materials. The Extant Sources There are four principals accounts out of all the Alexandrian literature that are now extant, all of them written after Alexander’s time and so dependent on earlier writers. First is Diodorus’ Book XVII of his Library of History, which is an account of the reign of Alexander except for an important gap between chapters 83 and 84. Then we have Quintus Curtius’s account of Alexander’s life written in ten books, two of which are already lost. Then we have Plutarch’s Parallel Lives wherein Alexander is included in the discourse of Greek and Roman statesmen. Finally, there is Arrian’s account of Alexander’s expedition in seven books. There are similarities between Diodorus and Quintus Curtius work, which according to M.M. Austin (1981), indicate that they drew, in part at least, on a common source often identified as Cleitarchus, a contemporary of Alexander. (1981, p. 3) Arrian Out of the four extant sources, Arrian’s work is considered as the fullest and most detailed available for Alexander. As previously mentioned, Arrian’s account represents the so-called apologetic tradition wherein there was a tendency to omit or distort important facts, aspects and episodes of Alexander’s life. Arrian explicitly indicated that his work and, possibly, all of his contemporaries’, are based mainly on two sources – Ptolemy and Aristobulus. (Arrian 1933, I, Preface) Critiques argue that the limitation of Arrian’s work is that it relied solely on the Ptolemaic tomes which has exaggerated some portion of his own accounts and have narrated events in favor of Alexander and adverse towards his rivals. The text of Arrian, wrote Worthington, is often read as though it were practically the same as Ptolemy and that it is considered as a traditional shorthand used to characterize that part of Arrian narrative that is commonly believed to be based on Ptolemy. (p. 13) Diodorus and Curtius Diodorus and Curtius are two historians that are hostile to Alexander. They represent the Roman perspective, which unfortunately made use of the precious primary sources to suit their own ends. Diodorus, for instance, garbled the entire body of Alexandrian literature he had access to by contracting the voluminous work of his sources such as Cleitarchus in one single book. Because of the drastic summation, it is not surprising to find that often this writer is guilty of gibberish narratives and severe abbreviation of events. What is worse is that Diodorus could not help to impose his own personality. According to Worthington, he had watered down the style of the original, reducing it to a flat monotony. (p. 12) Curtius, on the other hand, provides a lengthy account of Alexander’s reign. However, this account is punctuated by bouts of commentaries with highly subjective attributions of motives. It is, thus, expected that his source materials were reworked in order to satisfy his rhetoric. An excellent illustration, not exactly of the Alexandrian bias between Diodorus and Curtius but of their style and method of narrative is the account of the capture of the Aornos Rock. Diodorus dwelt on the revelation of the route to the forward position. A lengthy discourse was devoted to the background of the guide – an impoverished old man and his sons – but was extremely brief about what took place during the siege itself. (Diodorus 17.85. 4-6) What became apparent from the narrative is that Alexander had no difficulty scaling the Rock and defeating the enemy. Now Curtius, provides us with much the same impression, only that it is infused by his usual complications. (Curtius 8. II. 3-19) As it is, Diodorus is excessively brief while Curtius is certainly confused and seem to cover his deficiency in this regard by his incompetent contamination, grafting together two incompatible accounts of the actual siege. (Bosworth, p. 51) Fortunately, in times of confusion or obvious distortion of facts and event, one could cross-examine the events when they are cited by the extant sources and, hopefully, extract or illuminate the accurate events, people and dates. Plutarch Plutarch, meanwhile, is a case of his own. He was, undoubtedly, familiar with sources contemporary to Alexander, and he credits twenty-four individual sources by names in his Alexandrian account in Parallel Lives. In a commentary on Plutarch’s work, Robin Waterfield and Philip Stadter (1998) said: Plutarch felt that he had contemporary documents of extraordinary value in establishing the character of his protagonist. He regularly uses these letters to correct the account of historians… The historical value of the Life is not the account of military events, which were not of central interest to Plutarch, but in the number and variety of stories, which bring to life the world of Alexander… Contemporary writers reported many of these items, large and small and Plutarch preserved them for us. (p. 310) Critiques of Plutarch cites instances of forgeries in his sources but in these circumstances, one could just easily refer to other extant sources to determine authenticity, especially if the account could also be found in these literature. A clear limitation in Plutarchs work seem to be in the way he used his sources. Plutarch’s citations usually serve to highlight an isolated fact, not to define the source of a narrative, and other historians that are not named probably were used as well. Conclusion An evaluation of the limitations of the sources of Alexandrian literature tells us that they differ in context. These texts are influenced by political, poetic and historical leanings of their respective authors. Because of this it appears that the primary sources – those who are truer to Alexander, the players in his time and life, the events, and dates – become irretrievable, buried in the narratives of historians who have exaggerated and used the materials for their personal and political objectives. This contributes to the fact that important questions about Alexander’s life – his personality, conduct and goals – still remain a matter of controversy and speculation to this day. Fortunately for us, there are other sources that can be used to cross-reference potentially corrupt accounts. This underscores the importance of Arrian. His work, as previously cited, is the most complete and positively the most objective account of Alexander the Great’s life. While there are acknowledged faults in his work, the sheer volume and details of his narratives provides us with facts that could easily be extracted from a perceived bias or exaggeration. This is also true in the case of Plutarch. The four extant sources available to us, though not sufficient to demonstrate or illustrate the complexity of Alexander’s life and his achievements, allow us to have a glimpse of specific aspects so we could reconstruct, if not the whole person of Alexander, his work and the events that have transpired in his time. References Arrian. (1933). Anabasis Alexandri, books I-VII. E. Illiff (ed.). W. Heinemann, Ltd. Arrian, Romm, James and Mensch, Pamela. (2005). Alexander the Great: selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius. Hackett Publishing. Austin, M.M. (1981). The Hellenistic world from Alexander to the Roman conquest: a selection of ancient sources in translation. Cambridge University Press. Bosworth, A.B. (1996). Alexander and the East: the tragedy of triumph. Oxford University Press. Curtius. (1886). Historiae Alexandri Magni Bibliotheca scriptorum graecorum et romanorum teubneriana. Max Carl Paul Schmidt (ed.) F. Tempsky. Diodorus. (1828). Bibliotheca historica. Ludwig August Dindorf (ed.) Harvard University Press. Plutarch. (1914). Plutarchs Lives. Bernadotte Perrin (ed.) W. Heinemann. Plutarch, Waterfield, Robin and Stadter, Philip. (1998). Greek lives: a selection of nine Greek lives, Oxford Worlds Classics. Robin Waterfield (Ed.). Oxford University Press. Thomas, Carol. (2007). Alexander the Great in his world Volume 12 of Blackwell ancient lives. Wiley-Blackwell. van Reenen, Pieter, van Mulken, and Dyk, Janet. (1996). Studies in stemmatology. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Worthington, Ian. (2003). Alexander the Great: a reader. Routledge. Read More