The life of Alexander the Great

The Life of Alexander by Plutarch.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RCCMO2EU0QNWU?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is another text I read for the Online Great Books program.

Alexander has had great press. In our OGB Zoom seminar, Alexander was picked as “favorite” by a plurality of the group. The general consensus was that he was “awesome.”

Alexander certainly was awesome. He started his world-conquering career as a teenager. He died of either a fever or poisoning in his early thirties. In between, he beat the Persian Empire in three straight-up battles that resulted in the decapitation of the empire, which was then replaced by the Macedonian elite. Alexander took his army from one end of the empire to the other - Egypt, Afghanistan, and India.

The impression I got in my reading was that the Macedonians were like a motorcycle gang and Alexander was the leader of the gang. The Macedonians descended on the largely peaceful Persian empire like Marlon Brando's motorcycle taking over a sleepy rural town. The next thing you know, they are tearing up the gardens of Persopolis and sleeping with Persian women. The Macedonians were the barbarians at the gates in that reading.

Of course, to hear the Greeks tell it, they were the carriers of high culture, including philosophy. Alexander was depicted as the scion of that high culture. Aristotle, after all, was one of his instructors.

And, yet, Alexander was a thug. Aside from courageously throwing himself into tight situations in battle, he was not above killing Macedonians, e.g., Cletus the Black, in drunken fits. Alexander was responsible for the death of thousands for his personal glory, particularly in his gratuitous invasion of India.

A new thing I learned from Plutarch was the disputed issue of Alexander's death. Was Alexander poisoned or did he die of fever? Further, what was Aristotle's involvement in that death? Did he recommend the poison? Plutarch doesn't give any firm answers, and it isn't something I had heard before, but it is an interesting angle.