Alexander the Great: His Life and His Mysterious Death, Everitt Anthony

More than two millennia have passed since Alexander the Great built an empire that stretched to every corner of the ancient world, from the backwater kingdom of Macedonia to the Hellenic world, Ancient Persia, and ultimately to India--all before his untimely death at thirty-three. Alexander believed his empire would only stop when he reached the ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that meant something different to every era: in the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early twentieth century he even came to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time?

In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexanders life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, who enjoyed the arts and used the poet Homers great epic, the Iliad, as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror who in his short life built the largest empire up to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of great cruelty.