The Nature of Alexander

Ancient Sources

IN COURTESY TO THEIR fellow scholars, classical historians naturally and properly take for granted a previous knowledge of the ancient source material. This book is meant for general readers; and the following list may serve as a guide to those wishing to make their own assessments and explorations. Almost all the works are available in translation; the relative reliability of the more important has been discussed in the text.

Arrian, History of Alexander

Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander

Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Life of Alexander

Diodorus Siculus, History (Book XVII for Alexander’s reign; but also XVI and XVIII for events preceding and following)

Justin, Epitome of Trogus

Additional biographical details or anecdotes

Plutarch, Lives: Demosthenes; Eumenes; Phocion

Plutarch, Moralia: On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander; Sayings of Kings and Commanders

Strabo, Geography (Book XV for many quotations from Nearchus)

Athenaeus, The Diepnosophists (discursive gossip)

L. Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (collected fragments, with commentary on the writers). American Philological Association, New York; also printed in Great Britain 1960

Works relevant to Alexander’s life and times

Demosthenes, Orations

Aeschines, Orations

Isocrates, Epistles and Orations

Aristotle, especially the Politics and Ethics

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers: Life of Aristotle

Works known to Alexander, which certainly or probably influenced his thought

Homer, Iliad R. Lattimore’s verse translation, published by University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1962, is preferable to E. V. Rieu’s prosy one, published by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1950)

Xenophon, Anabasis; Cyropaedia

Herodotus, History

Euripides, Tragedies (especially, perhaps, The Bacchae, written and first performed in Macedon)

For the legend

E. A. Wallis Budge, The Alexander Book in Ethiopia. Oxford University Press. London 1933

George Cary, The Mediaeval Alexander, ed. D. J. A. Ross. Cambridge University Press. London 1956

A. M. Wolohojian (trans.), The Romance of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes (a recent translation from a good Armenian version). Columbia University Press. New York and London 1969

H. W. Clarke’s quaint literal translation (1880) of the thirteenth-century Persian Sikandar Noma E Bora is unfortunately scarce.