Great Books: Plutarch's Biography of Alexander (Part Seven of Seven)

Parts One through Six of this essay can be accessed in the archive on the right of the screen.

There is ample evidence that Alexander was much more at ease with conquest than with complexities of ruling over the vast terrain he had already taken. It is not surprising, then, that he did not tarry long at Susa but, instead, began his next campaign to extend his armies (and the Greek cultural influence) further east than had ever been attempted. As if to underscore the urgency with which he set his thronging army back into action, he opened the march with an act of incomprehensible finality.

Alexander, now intent upon his expedition into India, took notice that his soldiers were so charged with booty that it hindered their marching. Therefore, at the break of day, as soon as the baggage wagons were laden, first he set fire to his own, and to those of his friends, and then commanded those to be burnt which belonged to the rest of the army. [568]

Though Plutarch writes that the men were “inspired” by his intentional arson, he also notes in the following paragraph that Alexander “was now grown very severe and inexorable in punishing those who committed any fault.” It does not take a social scientist to presume that his soldiers may have continued supporting his efforts more out of fear than out of an urge to seek yet more glory, yet more wealth and yet more territory. Plutarch’s narrative of the conquest that seemed to have no end becomes sketchier after Darius’ death. Literally, two years of campaigning are boiled down into just a few nondescript paragraphs detailing various wounds that Alexander received and the interpretation of certain omens that preceded the taking of particular cities.

His narrative picks back up with some detail around 326 BCE when Alexander met the forces of Porus on the river Hydaspes at the foot of the Himalayas. His account of the battle, involving a dangerous river crossing at night, echoes Alexander’s earlier battle against Darius’ general at Granicus. Despite being opposed by a robust army with elephants, chariots, and thousand of soldiers at its disposal, Alexander’s army was victorious and Porus, unlike Darius before him, surrendered and, for his humility, was retained to rule the region as satrap under Alexander’s authority. Plutarch indicates that Alexander desired to push further into India, crossing the Ganges into lands truly unknown but, the realities of a war without end seem to have caught up with him.


But this last combat with Porus took off the edge of the Macedonians’ courage, and stayed their further progress into India. For having found it hard enough to defeat an enemy who brought but twenty thousand foot soldiers and two thousand horse into the field, they thought they had reason to oppose Alexander’s design of leading them on to pass the Ganges, too…for they were told the kings of the Gandaritans and the Prasesians expected them there with eighty thousand horse, two hundred thousand foot, eight thousand armed chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants. [570]

Whether guided by the discontent of his army or the real possibility that all he had gained might yet be lost, Alexander, for the first time since he had begun his war against the Persians, turned back and began a slow trek, presumably towards home. Taking small fortified cities on his way, Alexander traveled down their rivers for about seven months until, at last, he reached the sea, or, more specifically, the Indian Ocean. At Pattala, he made an odd decision to split his land and sea forces, marching his army along the southern edge of the continent while the fleet shadowed him at sea, following the coast. The expedition proved to be an arduous one.

[Alexander] returned himself by land through the country of the Orites, where he was reduced to great straits for want of provisions, and lost a vast number of his men, so that of an army of one hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers and fifteen thousand horse, he scarcely brought back above a fourth out of India, they were so diminished by disease, ill diet, and the scorching heats, by most by famine. [572]

Restored somewhat by provisions taken at the city of Pura and tributes from surrounding kingdoms, Alexander’s taste for war and hard marching seems to have been slaked. The once-disciplined Greek army (though now composed of many peoples from every land taken in its wake) degenerated, at Alexander’s behest into a “disorderly and wandering march” through Carmania that was, by Plutarch’s account, “accompanied with all the sportiveness and insolence of bacchanals, as much as if the god himself had been there to countenance and lead the procession” [572]. Finally, the land army rejoined the fleet at Harmozia which was positioned at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Though he dreamed of sending an expedition around the southern tip of Africa to enter the Mediterranean from the East, Alexander found himself suddenly burdened by the cumulative effects of ruling a territory so vast with an army now so ragged from war. Vassal nations, once conquered, now began to question the invincibility of Alexander’s authority. Macedonia herself saw her government splinter into fragments with parts governed by Alexander’s regent and others taken by his mother to rule. Making haste back towards his homeland, Alexander stopped in at Susa to marry Darius’ daughter, Statira II, no doubt with intention of cementing his authority over the Persians before returning to Greece.

Bad luck and trouble seemed to follow Alexander on his journey homeward as friend after friend died of excess, whether in food, drink, battle or some combination of the three. Plutarch writes that:

When once Alexander had given way to fears of supernatural influence, his mind grew so disturbed and so easily alarmed that, if the least unusual or extraordinary thing happened, he thought it a prodigy or a presage, and his court was thronged with diviners and priests whose business was to sacrifice and purify and foretell the future. So miserable a thing is incredulity and contempt of divine power on the one hand, and, so miserable, superstition on the other, which like water, where the level has been lowered, flowing in and never stopping, fills the mind with slavish fears and follies, as now in Alexander’s case. [575]

Not long after his wedding, Alexander, presumably consumed by one of these frightful moods, either fell victim to a fever and drank himself to death while in it or drank himself senseless and lapsed into said fever. Whatever the order, the result was the same. As reported by Plutarch, Alexander “fell into delirium, and died on the thirtieth day of the month of Daesius.”


Without Alexander’s personal vigor, unyielding vision, and, most importantly, individual sanction for the transfer of power after his death, the vast empire he had conquered fragmented within months of his death. Greek military power in the ancient Mediterranean and beyond became a thing of the past though, most importantly, the Greek culture persisted throughout what Alexander would have called “The Known World” for centuries beyond his passing.

Great Books: Plutarch's Biography of Alexander (Part Six)

Parts 1-5 of this essay can be accessed from the archive to the right of the screen.

Having finally defeated the historical enemy of the Greeks and acquired a giant empire in the process, one could assume that Alexander’s life from that point forward might be wrapped up by saying, “and they all lived happily ever after.” Nothing could be further from the truth for it is Darius’ death that serves as the fulcrum between Plutarch’s largely positive narrative about Alexander and the dour tale of the young Emperor’s descent into paranoia, madness, and eventual death that follows.

After a couple of throwaway tales about scouting expeditions and rescuing Bucephalus from barbarian kidnappers, Plutarch begins threading the loom for the darker portion of the tapestry to emerge. As Alexander transitions from conqueror to ruler, Plutarch begins to make note of changes in his behavior and demeanor. He began to partially emulate the style of Persian dress, under the auspices, at first, of engaging in pacifying diplomacy with the Persians he now ruled but, eventually, assuming a hybrid of Macedonian and Persian costuming to signify his role as a unifying figure between these multi-generational enemies.

Even as he continued to engage in minor skirmishes to subdue small pockets of resistance within the newly forged empire, the difficulty of holding together pieces of his army that had, in some cases, been campaigning with him for going on five years began to fray the relationship between he and his most reliable forces. This tension became more pronounced as Alexander’s paranoia began to rule more and more of his decision making progress. This tendency first reaches a boiling point, in Plutarch’s account, when Alexander begins to question the loyalty of Parmenio’s son, Philotas.

There was scarcely any one who had greater repute among the Macedonians that Philotas, son of Parmenio. For besides that he was valiant and able to endure any fatigue of war, he was also next to Alexander himself the most munificent…But he carried his arrogance and his pride of wealth and his habits of display and luxury to a degree of assumption unbecoming a private man; and affecting all the loftiness without succeeding in showing any of the grace or gentleness of true greatness… [563]

According to Plutarch, Philotas had taken a female slave named Antigone as part of his spoils. After a while, he began to confide her in his belief that “all the great actions were performed by him and his father” though it was Alexander who received the glory and the credit. It is recounted that she passed this information along to one of Alexander’s advisors and was eventually brought before Alexander himself to repeat what she had heard. Alexander took no action against Philotas then but ordered the woman to continue relaying any mutinous words or actions that she was able to glean.

Later, when a man loyal to Alexander named Nicomachus caught wind of a plot to assassinate him, he tried to bring the news to the court via Philotas. According to Plutarch, Philotas refused the men access to the court twice before they took the information to someone else, who notified Alexander at once. Already suspicious of Philotas’s popularity with the men of his army and his questionable belief in Alexander’s own greatness, Alexander was easily convinced by those around him that Philotas must be himself the mastermind of the plot. Though Plutarch provides us with no evidence or even supposition that Philotas was guilty of anything other than disrespect, Alexander had him tortured to death and then had Parmenio executed for good measure. “These actions,” writes Plutarch, “rendered Alexander an object of terror to many of his friends” and sent shockwaves all the way back to Macedon and Greece. Antipater, another general who served under both Phillip and Alexander, began quietly solidifying alliances among the Greeks in order that he might find a port of refuge should Alexander turn on him as well.

The next target of Alexander’s disproportionate response, however, would not be one of his suspected enemies, but his friend, Clitus who had, in fact, saved Alexander’s life at least once and to whom he was bonded like a brother. One night, in the midst of a long drinking binge, Clitus took offense at songs designed to mock particular Macedonians being sung in front of barbarians (ie anyone that wasn’t Greek) and, ill-considered or not, turned his anger towards Alexander. His reproach escalated into a full-blown argument between the two until Alexander killed him to the shock of everyone present. The incident deeply upset Alexander, who, according to Plutarch, regretted his actions immediately. Alexander fell into a dark depression from which he eventually emerged, but perhaps more deranged and unsettled than ever before.

The final schism reported by Plutarch is probably of more interest to history than it was to Alexander’s increasingly nervous court as it concerns his relationship with Aristotle. During the period when Alexander was mourning his execution of Clitus, his advisers brought in two different philosophers to console him. The first, Callisthenes, was a student of a friend to Aristotle and the second, Anaxarchus is described by Plutarch as having “always taken a course of his own in philosophy, and had a name for despising and slighting his contemporaries” [566]. Callisthenes had apparently already done much to earn the general displeasure of the Macedonians, including insulting them at the king’s request (as a form of moral instruction) and striking far deeper with his pointed barbs against them than good taste might dictate. When the plot against Alexander (that got both Philotas and Parmenio executed) was uncovered, a rumor was spread that the perpetrator, a young man named Hermolaus, had gotten the idea by asking Callisthenes what he needed to do in order to become “the most illustrious person on Earth.” Callisthenes was presumed to have told him that “the readiest way was to kill him who was already so” as well as reassuring him “not to be awed by the golden couch, but remember that Alexander was a man equally infirm and vulnerable as any other” [567].

According to Plutarch, not only did Alexander have Callisthenes killed (the method again varies) but the philosopher’s relation to Aristotle placed a permanent wedge between the King and his former teacher and may well have led to Aristotle’s abandonment of Athens and subsequent death in Boetia.

Great Books: Plutarch's Biography of Alexander (Part Five)

The first four parts of this essay can be accessed from the archive bar on the right side of the screen.

The Battle of Gaugamela has been covered in depth by such a variety of historians, both ancient and modern, that we ultimately learn more about Plutarch and the slant of his narrative from his account of it than we do about this decisive battle that effectively spelled the end of the Persian empire. As Plutarch’s stated purpose is to focus his “more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men,” he spends the paragraphs leading up to the battle sketching out contrasting pictures of his opposing generals’ states of mind, rather than their military readiness.

Upon discovering the news of his wife’s death, Darius is portrayed as being torn between his grief at watching his empire slowly destroyed by Alexander’s relentless campaigning and his lyrical admiration for his opponent’s virtue. Plutarch quotes him (rather liberally one suspects) as saying:

“Ye gods,” said he, “of my family and of my kingdom, if it be possible, I beseech you to restore the declining affairs of Persia that I may leave them in as flourishing a condition as I found them, and have it in my power to make a grateful return to Alexander for the kindness which in my adversity he has shown to those who are dearest to me. But, if the fatal time be come, which is to give a period to the Persian monarchy, if our ruin be a debt that must be paid to the divine jealousy and vicissitude of things, then I beseech you grant that no other man than Alexander may sit upon the throne of Cyrus” [555].

Despite his uncertainty regarding the future, Darius, by Plutarch’s account, came seeking Alexander with “a million of men” (though historians of every era have reached widely differing conclusions about this). The two armies met at a place known as Gaugamela, probably located near Mosul in modern Iraq. Unlike the previous battles, in which the terrain and subterfuge played a huge role in the outcome, the scene Plutarch describes sounds a lot like two giant armies, lining up on open terrain so that a clear victory might be achieved by one or the other. Darius, who had been attacked at night by Alexander twice now, kept his men nervously waiting all night for the battle to begin. Meanwhile, Alexander after “performing certain mysterious ceremonies, and sacrificing to the god Fear,” ignored the advice of his second general, Parmenio, who wanted to use the nighttime to level the advantage in numbers that Darius enjoyed, and instead went to bed.

As for the battle itself, Plutarch is a better biographer than a military historian. Though he includes more details about this battle than previous ones, his account focuses more on Alexander’s personal courage than on tactics.

And not only before the battle, but in the height of danger, he showed himself, and manifested the self-possession of a just foresight and confidence. For the battle for some time fluctuated and was dubious…But before they could come to blows with the first ranks, the barbarians shrunk back, and were hotly pursued by Alexander, who drove those who fled before him into the middle of the battle, where Darius himself was in person [557]

However the battle itself may have been fought, Alexander’s bold charge right up the center of the Persian line, as is accepted among many ancient historians of the day, was the deciding factor. Soon, Darius found his chariot trapped by the dead bodies of the men given the duty of protecting him and managed to escape only with his life (again) by abandoning the battlefield on horseback. With his exit, the Persian army (along with its supplemental troops drawn from many places) lost its spirit and surrendered the victory to Alexander.

Before leaving the Battle at Gaugamela, Plutarch’s unshielded disregard for Parmenio as a meaningful contributor to Alexander’s legacy of conquest is worthy of some discussion. Parmenio had been among Phillip’s generals and, as such, represented the one of the only direct ties back to Macedonia from whence this expedition originally began. As Parmenio’s contribution to holding the army together and waging war as co-general doesn’t fit in with Plutarch’s mission to glorify Alexander at the expense of all else, Parmenio is ultimately cast as a villain of sorts. He is described throughout the work as a foot-dragging, overly conventional and, eventually, openly critical detractor from Alexander’s greatness. Plutarch describes his contribution to the Battle of Gaugamela as “sluggish and unserviceable” while wondering aloud “whether age had impaired his courage….or that, as Callisthenes says, he secretly disliked and envied Alexander’s growing greatness.” It’s entirely feasible that these were ideas that Alexander himself propagated after things turned sour between he and Parmenio later, but Plutarch certainly shows no reservations about reporting it as fact rather than speculation or, even, outright slander.

After the battle, despite the fact that Darius had escaped, there was little else for Alexander to do but march down the royal Persian road and take the throne at Susa. Meeting little to no resistance along the way, Alexander was recognized as the rightful ruler of the known world upon his arrival and, pleased by the unimaginable luxury of the Persian court, settled his army in the area for the winter. Plutarch is meticulous in his description of the spoils taken at Susa and to whom they were sent to back in Greece, whether to reinforce alliances or just to enrich those friends and loved ones whom he had not seen in over three years now. He also suggests that a torpor of sorts fell over the armies while wintering in Susa, much to Alexander’s chagrin.

But when he [Alexander] perceived his favorites grow so luxurious and extravagant in their way of living and expenses…he reproved them in gentle and reasonable terms, telling them he wondered that they who had been engaged in so many single battles did not know by experience, that those who labour sleep more sweetly and soundly than those who are labored for…And to strengthen his precepts by example, he applied himself now more vigorously than ever to hunting and warlike expeditions, embracing all opportunities of hardship and danger…But his followers, who were grown rich, and consequently proud, longed to indulge themselves in pleasure and idleness, and were weary of marches and expeditions, and at last went so far as to censure and speak ill of him. [560]

It begs mentioning that Plutarch spends almost as much time describing uncouth things that Alexander did while drinking heavily as he does insisting that Alexander’s reputation as a drunken lout was undeserved. These are the inconsistencies in his depiction of Alexander that are difficult to reconcile and represent, so far as we can see from this distance, the gap between the myth and the man that Plutarch refuses to treat as separate personages.

After the winter, Alexander resolved to marshal his armies once again to track down the elusive Darius but, even as he prepared to leave the capital, word arrived that Bessus, a Persian satrap and one of the commanders that opposed him at the Battle of Gaugamela, had prevented Darius from escaping out of Persia and was holding him for Alexander to take. Though Plutarch is less than clear in explaining the sequence of events, Alexander rushes far ahead of his army, accompanied by only his most ardent and able followers, in an attempt to reach Darius before harm might befall him. He was not successful.

And, at last, after much trouble, they found him lying in a chariot, wounded all over with darts, just at the point of death…he told Polystratus, who gave [him water], that it had become the last extremity of his ill fortune to receive benefits and not be able to return them. “But Alexander,” said he, “whose kindness to my mother, my wife, and my children I hope the gods will recompense, will doubtless thank you for your humanity to me. Tell him, therefore in token of my acknowledgement, I give him this right hand,” with which words he took hold of Polystratus’s hand and died. When Alexander came up to them, he showed manifest tokens of sorrow, and taking off his own cloak, threw it upon the body to cover it. [562]

While this account is very touching, it does make one somewhat suspicious that Plutarch has become a mouthpiece for what Alexander had wanted people to believe rather than a seeker of the truth. Given Alexander’s propensity for having people in his social orbit punished (sometimes with death) for minor indiscretions, this image of him deeply concerned for the well-being of an enemy he had relentlessly pursued for three years of his still-young life just seems too saccharine to be accurate. More likely, Alexander wished to have Darius publically transfer the authority of the Empire to him (as he had insisted when offered terms for truce earlier) in order to better maintain order in the outlying areas of his now radically expanded empire. It is also possible that he just wished to kill Darius personally to earn the glory among the Greeks that would come from having done so. While ancient historians were not of one accord as to what exactly happened to Bessus for having slain Darius before Alexander’s arrival, every account differs only in the mode of his death and not the severity with which he met it.

Great Books: Plutarch's Biography of Alexander (Part Four)

The first three parts of this essay can be read here, here, and here.

In one battle, Alexander had changed the political landscape of the Mediterranean and Asia (what we now think of as Asia Minor and the Middle East) forever. Functionally, he now controlled all of Greece and Asia Minor and became master of an unimaginable hoard of slaves and treasure seized from the Persians at Damascus. Despite his upbringing as a prince of a nation flush with military success, the spoils won from the Battle of Issus were enough to cause Alexander to remark, “This, it seems, is royalty” [550].

Plutarch uses the aftermath of the battle as another opportunity to rhapsodize on Alexander’s benevolence, detailing a half dozen or more ethical situations that arose from his success and how he, invariably, resolved them in a manner more generous than might be expected. Of greatest importance to history, as it had yet to unfold, was Alexander’s treatment of Darius’s mother, wife, and two daughters. Upon learning that they had been taken among the Persians at Damascus, Plutarch writes that:

Alexander sent Leonnatus to them, to let them know that Darius was not dead, and that they need not fear any harm from Alexander, who made war upon him only for dominion; they should themselves be provided with everything they had been used to receive from Darius. [550]

Despite the temptation to immediately pursue Darius and deliver the killing blow while he was still in retreat, Alexander decided instead to bring the eastern coast of the Mediterranean under his authority, whether by diplomacy or force. Some, like the peoples of Cyprus, surrendered without a fight. As a result, Alexander marched unopposed as far as modern day Lebanon before reaching the well-defended island city of Tyre which refused to submit to him.

With no fleet of his own to attack the island, Alexander first blockaded Tyre from land reinforcements and then set about building a land bridge to Tyre across which he could move his large siege engines and armies. Though it took seven months and the lives of hundreds of his men, Alexander eventually reached the city and overcame its defenses. He ordered the destruction of large portions of the city and sold most of its inhabitants into slavery as punishment for refusing his authority.

As with Thebes before it, the destruction of Tyre sent a chilling message to the other vassal nations that found themselves suddenly far stranded from their Persian rulers: Submit or be destroyed utterly. While the historical record tells us that the Siege of Gaza a few months later was an equally bloody ordeal, Plutarch chooses to skim over it for reasons that remain his own, deciding to fix instead on the strange manner in which Alexander was seriously wounded (his version includes a bird, a dirt clod, and an unruly siege engine). Regardless, by 332 BCE, Alexander had subdued the entirety of the eastern Mediterranean coast and, without pause, turned his attention immediately towards Egypt.

Unlike the coastal cities that held out against Alexander (who by and large fought for their own independence rather than out of a tortured sense of loyalty to Darius), Egypt was only too happy to welcome Alexander as their ruler. Plutarch’s first mention of the Egyptians announces their capitulation as an established fact, noting that, “when he was master of Egypt, designing to settle a colony of Grecians there, he resolved to build a large and populous city and give it his own name” [552]. After laying out the plans for Alexandria, Alexander set out on a dangerous journey to consult the Oracle at Ammon. While Plutarch again offers little speculation on his motivation, one can presume that his intentions were at least two-fold. First, in order to legitimize (if not secure) his sovereignty over Egypt, he would have to be anointed to some extent by its religious leaders. Second, the Oracle at Ammon was as revered as that at Delphi and Alexander, it seems, had a few questions yet that he believed only a god could answer.

Having passed through the wilderness, they came to the place where the high priest, at the first salutation, bade Alexander welcome from his father Ammon. And being asked by him whether any of his father’s murderers had escaped punishment, he charged him to speak with more respect, since his was not a mortal father. Then, Alexander, changing his expression, desired to know if any of those who murdered Phillip were yet unpunished, and further concerning dominion, whether the empire of the world was reserved for him? This, the god answered, he should obtain and that Phillip’s death was fully revenged, which gave him so much satisfaction that he made splendid offerings to Jupiter, and gave the priests very rich presents. [553]

Every historian who approaches Alexander as a subject must wrestle at some point with the question of whether or not he believed that he was born of divinity and Plutarch is no exception. His methodology gives him some distance from the topic as he presents evidence for and against the idea throughout the whole of this biography. It is, nonetheless, tempting to look at this moment in Ammon where Alexander is informed in no uncertain terms that he is the son of the greatest god (for the priests, Ammon; for Alexander, Zeus; and for Plutarch, Jupiter) and wonder if this is when he began to believe his own hype. His success as a general was without question as he had accomplished in three years what the Greek city-states, in hundreds of years, could not. Claiming that one was a distant descendent of a god (as both Phillip and Olympias had) was the privilege of the nobility. To insist that one was the direct offspring of Zeus was an exponentially more audacious claim and yet that, whether by his own design or by those who venerated him in the chaos that reigned after his death, is the myth that survived him.

While in Egypt, Alexander received a letter from Darius outlining terms for a cease-fire. In exchange for the cessation of hostilities between them and the safe return of the hostages, Darius was willing to cede all lands west of the Euphrates to Alexander, along with a ridiculous amount of treasure and the hand of one of his daughters in marriage to Alexander to bind the agreement. Alexander sent word back that unless Darius came before him and yielded his authority, he would come and take it by force.

Soon after, Darius’ wife, Statira, died in childbirth. Plutarch explicitly states on numerous occasions that Alexander did not force himself upon her or any of Darius’s family during their captivity. The timing however of this particular death (some two years after Darius’ defeat at Issues) suggests that someone was keeping her company in the aftermath and, given the lifestyle that Alexander lavished upon Statira and the others, it makes more sense that the child would have been his as, by the rules of war, she was part of his personal spoils. With peace denied and new indignities having been suffered by Darius, there was to be nothing to stand in the way of a fresh engagement between these two empires.

Great Books: Plutarch's Biography of Alexander (Part Three)

The first two parts of this essay can be read here and here.

Before extending our discussion of Alexander’s exploits among the Persians, Plutarch’s own narrative designs insist that we take a moment to acknowledge a few aspects of Alexander’s person and the world in which he lived not related specifically to military conquest. Plutarch makes the observation early on in his biography that Alexander’s temperament was different than many of his contemporaries. Growing up, as he did, in an ascendant kingdom flush with new wealth, his principle interest seems to be focused more on knowledge than anything else (as suggested in the story of his meeting with the Persian ambassadors). We can easily imagine Phillip as something of a social-evolutionary throwback; a king eventually ruling over Greek cities in disarray that had done away with kings as an institution of government for centuries. He had accepted the mantle of Greek Supreme Commander against the Persians, but there is little evidence from what remained of his life that he ever intended to fulfill that promise. It was a title that showed his mastery over the more civilized people to his south and, perhaps little else, which, given the sorry state of affairs in Greece at the time, may have suited them just fine.

Alexander, in contrast, embraced information acquired through learning. Though he was a noted patron of the arts, Plutarch tells us that he disdained sport of all kind, presumably recognizing it as a sublimation of the military urge for which he strove in its pure form for the length of his adult life. He seems, at least from this distance, determined to bring to life the legendary qualities that he found in The Iliad and lacking in the world around him. It is only fitting then that his last action before engaging the Persians for the first time was to visit Troy and bask in the vicarious glory of its relics and statuary; in some sense, mixing the functions of ritual and play into one seamless act of devotion to a long-since decayed ideal.


The other exotic aspect of Plutarch’s examination of Alexander’s life is the attention paid to omens and sacrifices as the catalyst for the more climatic events. Both Alexander and Darius draw sustained inspiration from various portentous events though, in nearly every case, the omen reported is always favorable to their endeavors. This leads us to believe that either their interpreters were smart enough to know that every odd occurrence better equal something good or their life expectancy might not be so hot or that bad omens were perhaps left unmentioned as they diverted the observer from whatever action against which it portended. Some have noted that Rome in the 1st century CE was, in many ways, more superstitious than the late-Hellenic culture from which Alexander himself emerged. This sustained emphasis on the power of the supernatural on mortal events is woven into the very fabric of Alexander’s myth, if not his life and makes Plutarch’s re-imagination of him perhaps more epic than if spun by an earlier or later writer.

After having taken the Pamphylian coast down to Side, Alexander turned his army north and westward on a winding path through rugged terrain. Skirmishing with unallied Pisidians along the way, he eventually reached the land of the Phrygians. While Plutarch describes him as having “conquered the Phrygians,” he makes no mention of a siege which suggests that the city merely capitulated to his obvious military superiority. Gordium was also a major stopping point on the Persian royal road leading to the eastern coast. In taking this city, Alexander effectively cut Darius off from using the road to rush reinforcements or supplies to his insurgents still operating in those territories.


As Alexander turned again southward, after having taken another city on the road a little further west, and eventually entered Cilicia. Perhaps weakened from wounds sustained in earlier battles, Alexander became gravely ill in Cilicia. Plutarch suggests that bathing in a cold river set off his sickness and that he was only cured by medicinal means that brought him closer to death before bringing him back from it. Temporarily deprived of leadership, the massed army of Macedonian, Greek, and assimilated armies along the way came to a standstill in Cilicia. As Plutarch recounts, the significance of this was not lost on Darius even if he misjudged the reason.

Darius was by this time upon his march from Susa, very confident, not only in the number of his men, which amounted to six hundred thousand, but likewise in a dream, which the Persian soothsayers interpreted rather in flattery to him than according to the natural probability…There was at this time in Darius’s army a Macedonian refugee, named Amyntus, one who was pretty well acquainted with Alexander’s character. This man, when he saw Darius intended to fall upon the enemy in the passes and defiles, advised him earnestly to keep where he was, in the open and extensive plains, it being the advantage of a numerous army to have field-room enough when it engages with a lesser force. Darius, instead of taking his counsel, told him he was afraid the enemy would endeavor to run away, and so Alexander would fall out of his hands. “That fear,” replied Amyntus, “is needless, for assure yourself that far from avoiding you, he will make all the speed he can to meet you, and is now most likely on his march toward you.” [548-9]

As history would show, this was the omen to which Darius should have hearkened as, within days, his fortunes and the once-impervious empire that rested on his shoulders would be rent asunder by Alexander and his armies at the Battle of Issus. Meeting in the valleys and swamps of Cilicia, Darius realized too late that his overwhelming numbers were of little use in the fragmented terrain and lost not only the battle but his wife, two daughters, and a substantial amount of treasure in a hasty retreat that barely saved his own life.

1st image- Portrait of Alexander the Great. Marble, 2nd-1st century BC. Said to be from Alexandria, Egypt. Photo by Andrew Dunn, 2004.

2nd image- Alexander at Ilium by Andre Castaigne (1898-99)

3rd image- Alexander Cutting the Gordion Knot, by Martino Altomonte. 1708.

4th image- The Battle of Alexander at Issus. Albrecht Altdorfer. 1529

Great Books: Plutarch's Biography of Alexander (Part Two)

This first portion of this essay can be read here.

Plutarch remarks that Alexander’s transition to power could not have come at a more pivotal moment in Macedonian history. While Phillip’s throne could and did pass from him to Alexander by virtue of blood (as well as ambition), the same could not be assumed of his mantle as Supreme Commander of the Greeks against the Persian Empire. If the Greeks were to be counted among Macedonia’s subjects, they would have to be conquered anew and many feared that the effort necessary to bring this about might rend the country apart.

Alexander, by Plutarch’s account, would hear none of this caution and, after subduing the barbarian tribes to his north and west to the banks of the Danube, he turned his attention to important Greek cities already in revolt, Thebes and Athens. After making initial attempts at diplomacy, Alexander turned the full might of his armies upon Thebes so that, in Plutarch’s word, he might make them, “so severe an example [that it] might terrify the rest of Greece into obedience” [545]. In 335 BCE, Thebes, with the exception of her temples and a house belonging to the poet Pindar, was burned to the ground and its citizenry, for the most part, sold into slavery.

As might be expected, the Athenians quickly lost their own taste for defiance and entered Alexander’s burgeoning empire as willing and respected servants. With the wealth and armaments of the whole of civilized Greece (with the exception of Sparta) backing him, Alexander accepted the title as the Supreme Greek Commander against the Persian Empire and began plotting the downfall of his counterpart among them, Darius III. Plutarch makes no mention of whether the Greeks actually thought Alexander could deliver what he was promising but it does not take a time machine to appreciate that a young, ambitious ruler making mischief outside of Greece had to be preferable to one focused on micro-managing affairs at home. Before venturing to the East to begin his campaign, Alexander traveled to the Oracle at Delphi to gauge divine opinion on his actions. Plutarch, who, in his role as high priest of Apollo at Delphi would have access to records regarding the event, recounts it as such:

Then he went to Delphi, to consult Apollo concerning the success of the war he had undertaken, and happening to come on one of the forbidden days, when it was esteemed improper to give any answer from the oracle, he sent messengers to desire the priestess to do her office; and when she refused, on the plea of a law to the contrary, he went up himself, and began to draw her by force into the temple, until tired and overcome with his importunity, “My son,” said she, “thou are invincible.” [546]

From Delphi, Alexander travels on to Troy where, we are told, he makes a sacrifice to Minerva (Athena). Given what we know about Alexander’s love for the Iliad, it’s not hard to imagine him choosing Troy as his point of departure so that he might bask in the glory of legend before creating a few of his own. He would not have long to wait as a large Persian army, commanded by satraps (local governors appointed by Darius III) was amassed on the opposite side the river Granicus and represented the very large barrier that Alexander would have to go through in order to gain access to the interior of Asia.

The Battle of Granicus. Engraving based on a painting by Lebrun


By Plutarch’s account, the battle begins with Alexander making a foolhardy rush across the river in the middle of the night on his horse to attack the enemy with his cavalry splashing along behind him to keep him from getting killed in the opening moments of the campaign. Plutarch writes:

However, he persisted obstinately to gain the passage, and at last with much ado making his way up the banks…he had instantly to join in mere confused hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, before he could draw up his men, who were still passing over into any order. For the enemy pressed him with loud and warlike outcries; and charging horse against horse, plied with their lances; after they had broken and spent these, they fell into it with their swords. [547]

Conjuring an image that recalls Groo the Wanderer moreso than the soon-to-be master of the known world, this is an archetype that Plutarch utilizes over and over; of Alexander as an impetuous but fearless leader who is always willing to throw himself headlong into the enemy with no concern for his well-being. While we can accept some of this as myth-building (as it reinforces the essential nature of Alexander’s conquest), one is tempted to believe some of the hype, given the number of times that Alexander is gravely wounded in battle.

As the Greek army arrives on the opposite bank to join their war-crazed leader, the Persian forces are quickly overwhelmed and dissolve under the force of their attack. Only one group of Greek mercenaries surrender to Alexander, presumably hoping their common heritage will spare them the indignity of execution. Alexander’s response is to attack them without warning, resulting in further casualties. Plutarch obviously doesn’t approve of this Greek on Greek violence as he describes Alexander’s refusal to accept their surrender as “guided rather by passion than judgment,” noting later that the “obstinacy of his to cut off these experiences desperate men cost him the lives of more of his own soldiers than all the battle before” [547-8].


The Capture of Miletus by Andre Castaigne (1898-1899)

Whatever his shortcomings may have been at the Battle of the Granicus, Alexander knew that he had changed the rules of the battle that the Greeks had been fighting against the Persians for centuries with a single victory. Turning his army southward, he took the rich city of Sardis and then went on down the Western coast to liberate former Greek colonies at Ephesus, Miletus, and Halicarnassus. These early successes provided Alexander with something of a quandary. In toppling Sardis, he had disrupted Persian authority in the entire area and returned to Greek authority the very colonies that had been the original source of enmity between the two peoples. Traditional strategy, like that exercised by Darius, dictated that he should consolidate his rule in the area and, as Plutarch puts it, “made himself secure in the resources of these provinces” [548].

There was something, however, about the relative ease with which he had been able to accomplish a feat that had eluded the Greeks for hundreds of years that spoke to his more impulsive side. The decision, according to Plutarch and the myth-makers that preceded him, ultimately did not come from Alexander himself but from an unexpected intervention of the supernatural.

While he was thus deliberating what to do, it happened that a spring of water near the city of Xanthus in Lycia, of its own accord, swelled over its banks, and threw up a copper plate, upon the margin of which was engraven in ancient characters, that the time would come when the Persian empire should be destroyed by the Grecians. [548]

Whether spurred by his own ambition or this miraculous prophesy coming to light just as he debated his next move, Alexander quickly marshaled his armies and turned them eastward, conquering along the treacherous Pamphylian coast until they reached the city of Side which surrendered without a fight.

Great Books: Plutarch's Biography of Alexander (Part One)

Great Books: Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecian and Romans: Alexander
Written by Plutarch sometime in the latter part of the 1st century CE
Place: Chaeronea in the province of Boeotia (Greece)


Alexander the Great. 3rd century BC statue, signed "Menas". - Picture by: Giovanni Dall'Orto


The complete text of Plutarch’s biography of Alexander can be found online at http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/alexandr.html
and utilizes the same Dryden translation as the quotations in this essay. All page attributions refer to the 2nd edition of the Great Books of the Western World series from Encyclopedia Britannica.

With our third Plutarchan biography now under analysis, we are able to discern at least two valuable truisms in his writing on the lives of historical figures. First, the closer that the subject approaches to the time in which Plutarch is writing, the more credible strains of information that he must filter regarding that subject in order to create a narrative that is truly his own. Second, while Plutarch places a high premium on empirical evidence (literal mountains of which still existed in Plutarch’s time), he does not discard what is clearly hearsay or outright myth-building in his quest to reconstruct the meaning of Alexander’s life. Towards the end of his introduction, Plutarch defends his approach with candor.

As portrait painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others [541].

He begins, however with those facts about Alexander’s birth and lineage that are as beyond dispute as a study of the past will allow. Alexander was born to King Phillip II of Macedonia and one of his wives, Olympias. Both lines could purportedly trace their lineage back to Zeus himself though this probably tells us less about his actual ancestry and more about (forgive the pun) the penetration of the overarching culture that venerated Zeus in this and other parts of Greece.

Plutarch spends a good deal of time in his treatment of Alexander’s childhood emphasizing the tensions between Phillip and his son, beginning with the story (or stories) surrounding his birth. Olympias, he records, participated in cultic rituals unfamiliar to Macedonia that venerated snakes and, quite possibly, incorporated them into the act of worship. From this simple point of departure, a wide range of myth is generated regarding Alexander’s birth, ranging from a number of dreams predicting his greatness to a full-blown visitation by Zeus himself to the Queen’s bed in order to conceive the world’s new master.



Later, Plutarch describes a meeting between a young Alexander and ambassadors from the Persian Empire in which he so impresses them with his penetrating questions that they praise him as Phillip’s superior even before he ascends to the throne. This, added with commentary that Alexander chafed at his father’s every military success as a battle that he would not be glorified in waging himself reinforces a narrative that Alexander considered himself as somehow bigger than the kingdom he would inherit as well as the King from whom he would inherit it. Indeed, this very idea is placed into Phillip’s mouth after Alexander tames a wild horse named Bucephalus with only his natural graces, to which Phillip is supposed to have uttered his timeless words, “O my son, look thee out a kingdom equal to and worth of thyself, for Macedonia is too little for thee” [543].

At first, though, Alexander’s remarkable qualities seem to earn him great favor with his father. Though Alexander’s early education was overseen by famed teachers of his time, Phillip thought enough of his son’s potential to recruit perhaps the Greek world’s most renowned philosopher, Aristotle to be his tutor at the age of fourteen.



It proved to be something of a Faustian bargain for Aristotle. In exchange for his services, Phillip restored and repopulated Stagira, Aristotle’s birthplace which had been destroyed in recent conquest. Aristotle ended up spending two years actively teaching Alexander before the demands of the state drew the young prince away to more pressing affairs. History suggests that Aristotle spent four more years (until Alexander’s ascendancy to the throne) at the palace before returning to an Athens now subdued by Macedonian authority. Plutarch makes little pit stops while telling Alexander’s tale to indicate how the relationship with Aristotle cooled over time, indicating perhaps that the master was dissatisfied with his student’s application of his theories on governance. Still, Alexander was reported to have carried an edition of the Iliad notated by Aristotle himself on the length of his journeys and never repudiated his teacher to such as degree as to order his execution; a rarity among those who stayed too long within his erratic orbit.

Just as Alexander is elevated to regent of the kingdom at the age of 16 (notching a few military victories of his own in his father’s absence), dissension about the eventual line of succession begins to arise. Working militarily in tandem, Alexander and Phillip conquered both the Thebans and Athenians. Phillip was eventually named as the Supreme Commander of a planned invasion of the Persian empire on behalf of all the Greek cities but Sparta. Upon his return to Macedonia, however, he chose to marry a woman named Cleopatra, the niece of Attalus, one of his more celebrated generals. As Olympias was not of Macedonian origin, an heir between the couple would have threatened Alexander’s claim to the throne, despite his proven service to the kingdom.

These fears came to a head at the royal wedding when Attalus offered a toast in hopes of a legitimate heir to Phillip’s throne. Alexander became incensed and began verbally berating him, only to have his father advance upon him with the intention to kill him. As Plutarch recounts the story, Phillip tripped on his way and fell flat on his face before the disgusted Alexander who, in turn, fled the capital with his mother. After a short self-imposed exile, tensions between the Phillip and Alexander were eased by friends interceding on the behalf of both and, in time, Alexander returned to his father’s side.

This threat to his eventual rule became more exaggerated when he later intercepted a courier from a neighboring state, offering the king’s eldest daughter to another of Alexander’s brother, Arrideus. Fearing his father again meant to bypass him in the eventual transfer of power, Alexander sent an advocate back to the Persian satrap, tarnishing Arrideus as an illegitimate heir and offering his own services as husband to the princess. Furious that his son would undermine his authority so openly among his vassals, Phillip banished all of Alexander’s entourage from the kingdom.



Whether guided by Olympius, Alexander or other less visible forces within the kingdom, a man named Pausanias, rendered all of the political posturing moot when he assassinated Phillip. After dispatching his enemies and other contenders to the throne, Alexander then ascended the throne of Macedonia at the age of twenty. He was taking over a kingdom, “beset on all sides with great dangers and rancorous enemies” [545]. Though Phillip had radically expanded the influence of Macedonian authority, the lands he conquered were far from subjugated and still desired internal rule. It was poised on this precipice of outright rebellion across the Macedonian kingdom that Alexander took the reins of power and began plotting his own course forward; one that would lead him away from Macedonia, never to return.