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Plutarch's Alexander chapter 14 Plutarch’s Alexander Sulochana R. Asirvatham In her monograph on the Roman Alexander, Diana Spencer studied the rep- resentation of Alexander the Great in Latin literature, which tends to view him negatively as an example of the excesses of power.1 Roman sources are not all negative, however: the empire also birthed the most laudatory pieces on Alexander we possess, all written in Greek—Plutarch’s biographical Life of Alexander and his two display-speeches collectively known as DeAlexandriFor- tuna aut Virtute, Dio Chrysostom’s Kingship Orations, and Arrian’s Anabasis.2 To say that they are the “most laudatory” is not to say that they are uncriti- cal, but that they generally present Alexander as a hero, or at least as someone capable of heroic behavior..This represents a clear departure from the less obvi- ously ideological treatments found in the Hellenistic period; the imperial Greek works also imbue Alexander for the first (and last) time in antiquity with a dis- tinctly “Hellenic” persona reflecting the particular philosophical and cultural dispositions of each author. Plutarch’s Alexander-works are certainly the most colourful and, today, the most popularly influential writings on Alexander3— indeed, one wonders whether we would be tempted to talk about a “renais- 1 Diana Spencer, The Roman Alexander (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002). 2 This also includes the Greek Alexander Romance, which like Plutarch’s and Arrian’s works present Alexander as ambitious, brave, and daring. Unlike those works, however, the Romance and its offshoots have a humbling message for Alexander, who, as he travels the world in a quest for knowledge (rather than for conquest), comes across a number of human and super- natural beings who counsel him to heed his own mortality. While Plutarch sees Alexander as a force of nature who comes to a tragic end, and Arrian’s work is an extended praise of Alex- ander’s Achillean attributes, the Romance and the vast tradition it influenced uses Alexander to contemplate mortality and the limits of human greatness. Richard Stoneman, Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend (New Haven, ct/London: Yale University Press, 2008), is the most complete available study of the Alexander Romance tradition in much of its globe-and-time- spanning entirety. 3 Admittedly this is hardly a scientific statement, but it is based on two observations. First, Plutarch’s Life of Alexander is the only extant account of Alexander’s birth and childhood, and as such it has naturally become the basis for any popular work that deals with young Alexan- der (e.g. Mary Renault’s Fire From Heaven (New York: Knopf, 1969); Oliver Stone’s film Alexan- der (2004)). Highlights are stories that illustrate Alexander’s precociousness (e.g. the taming of Bucephalas) and education (by Aristotle and Leonidas), but perhaps the most powerful © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004359932_015 356 asirvatham sance” of interest in Alexander under Trajan without him.4 I am not primarily concerned here with establishing a connection between Trajan and Alexander, although it seems reasonable to think that it was Trajan’s interest in Alexan- der that prompted Greek writers to create new Alexanders. I seek instead to demonstrate how Plutarch establishes Alexander as the supreme conquering figure in world history—a world history that had for centuries been accepted by Greek writers as having the Roman Empire at its “end”—by distinguishing him from at least three “entities”: the Macedonian past, which includes his parents, Macedon itself, and its Macedonian soldiery; from his Hellenistic Successors; and, finally, from the Romans themselves—the last most easily examined by comparison with his treatment of Alexander’s counterpart in the bioi, Julius Caesar.5 (The Macedonian soldiers are sometimes an exception, as they have point of interest is the rumour that Alexander was really the son of Zeus, which Plutarch suggests was fostered by Olympias (see below). The second observation is the influence that Plutarch’s presentation of Alexander in De Alexandri Fortuna aut Virtute as a “unifier of mankind” (329a–d) has continued to have on his popular image (as any internet search of “Alexander the Great” and “unity of mankind” will easily demonstrate), despite its decades-long rejection by scholars (e.g. Ernst Badian, “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind”, Historia 7 (1958): 425–444; H.C. Baldry, “The Idea of the Unity of Mankind”, in Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 8 (1961): 167–195; see also PaulVeyne, “Humanitas: Romans and non-Romans”,in The Romans, ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. L.G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993, 342–369). The idea came into the English-speaking world from Droysen via W.W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1948), 399–449, who believed that the idea that Plutarch attributes to Zeno the Stoic in De Alexandri Fortuna aut Virtute, but which Plutarch says was only put into action by Alexander, originally came from Alexander himself. For quite the opposite interpretation (that Plutarch has imposed Romanizing ideas on Alexander) see Sulochana R. Asirvatham, “Classicism and Romanitas in Plutarch’s De Alexandri Fortuna aut Virtute”, American Journal of Philology 126:1 (2005): 107–125, and below. 4 As does, e.g. Angela Kühnen, Die imitatio Alexandri als politisches Instrument römischer Feldherren und Kaiser in der Zeit von der ausgehenden Republik bis zum Ende des dritten Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (PhD. diss., Universität Duisburg-Essen, 2005), 193–194. 5 This article, in parts, summarizes arguments I have made elsewhere in “Olympias’ Snake and Callisthenes’ Stand: Religion and Politics in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander”, in Between Magic and Religion: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and Society, ed. Sulochana R. Asirvatham et al. (Lanham, md: Rowman and Littlefield 2001), 93–125; Asir- vatham, “Classicism and Romanitas”; Sulochana R. Asirvatham, ‘The Roots of Macedonian Ambiguity in Classical Athenian Literature,’ in Macedonian Legacies: Studies in Macedonian History and Culture in Honor of Eugene N. Borza, ed. Timothy Howe, et al. (Claremont, ca: Regina Books, 2009), 235–255; Sulochana R. Asirvatham, “His Son’s Father? Philip ii in the Second Sophistic”, in Philip ii and Alexander the Great: Father and Son, Lives and Afterlives,.
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