REVIEW BY MARC DESANTIS
Alexander of Macedonia is known as the Western world’s greatest conqueror. Not for nothing has he been given, since antiquity, the appellation ‘the Great’. In just 11 years, he drove his army of superb cavalry and unstoppable pikemen against Greeks, Persians, Scythians, and a host of other enemies, defeating them all.
Genius though he undoubtedly was in the ways of war, Alexander had to be more than an excellent general to maintain his grip on the lands he overran. He had to change himself to become the kind of king who could manage the immense task of pushing his weary soldiers ever onward, while leaving trustworthy officials behind to keep the peace in provinces to his rear.
Ancient historians tended to emphasise Alexander’s decline over time from the young and heroic man who set out to conquer Persia in 334 BC (he was just 22 when he did so) to the often drunk and sometimes blood-thirsty tyrant of his later years. It made for a compelling morality tale. In Alexander at the End of the World, author Rachel Kousser argues otherwise. ‘The last years of Alexander were not just the sordid aftermath of a once impressive career; they were in fact what made him “Great”,’ she says.
Excavating the Lowlands and Borders