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  • From Tyrant to Philosopher–King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England by Charles Russell Stone
  • John R. C. Martyn
Stone, Charles Russell, From Tyrant to Philosopher–King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England (Cursor Mundi, 19), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013; hardback; pp. viii, 254; 7 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €70.00; ISBN 9782503545394.

This is a very interesting study of Alexander’s changing reputation, from his early glorification by the ancient Greeks to his damnation by the Stoics and the medieval Church, with a more realistic acceptance in modern biographies. The book has been well presented by the publisher, Brepols, and well researched by Charles Stone, with a judicial choice of illustrations, as on p. 32, explaining an illumination that shows Alexander dividing his kingdom. He is not riding a horse, as is usual, nor holding a large sword, as on p. 19, but is most imposing with his flashing eyes.

On p. 207 of Stone’s work, sixteenth-century Arthur Golding’s only mention of Alexander is that when young he loved reading historical works, sleeping with Homer’s Iliad under his pillow. He struck a schoolmaster for denying his students the works of Homer. This shows a young Alexander, ready to strike his schoolmaster for the sake of his fellow students. This would have [End Page 214] been while studying at Plato’s school in Athens, to which he later donated 800 talents. His other inspiring tutor was the incomparable scholar Aristotle, who taught him at Pella until he was seventeen, mainly using Homer’s two epics and the Greek tragedians. Up to the death of his father, Philip II, Alexander would have been well trained also in military matters, especially as a cavalry leader, and his Macedonian troops were very well prepared for conquests, having recently conquered Greece, and ready to attack the wide-spreading Persian Empire, as Stone points out.

Quite recent accounts of Alexander’s life and character have harked back to his condemnation found in medieval biographies, as in Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary, published in 1897, stating that after entering Persepolis in triumph his passions were inflamed, as he became a slave to debauchery, and his caprices were as cruel as they were ungrateful. In a fit of drunkenness, instigated by an Athenian courtesan, Thais, he set fire to Persepolis, leaving it in ashes, and then put to death an innocent Parmenio, together with his son who was guilty of conspiracy, and finally murdered his elderly foster-brother, Clitus, in a drunken brawl, for praising Philip’s accomplishments.

By contrast, Arrian in his work on Alexander, published in 1575, wrote: ‘Not without some divinity was a man of this sort born on earth, a man who has no mortal equal. … His legacy and glory, greater than that which befalls mortal man, have even survived among people up to this very day. Even I, although I have reproached some of Alexander’s deeds in my history … confess that my admiration for him still exceeds my sense of propriety’ (see p. 211). So too in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1966 reprint: ‘the sack of Persepolis was probably intended to mark the end of the Persian monarchy’, and no mention is made of his drunkenness, debauchery, or cruelty, and ‘He died of a fever, the greatest general of his race and probably of antiquity’.

The main flaw in Stone’s work is his use of Latin translations that omit or mistranslate words, and of Anglo-Saxon works that are almost all left untranslated. On pp. 23–24, the Old English text from Orosius is followed by a modern English version, but many others in Old English are left untranslated. For some readers this is unfortunate.

By contrast, quotations in Latin are all translated, but they leave out words and phrases in the original, or mistranslate them. On p. 49, the diminutive adulescentem suggests ‘a sweet young man’ and crureque vulnerato means ‘with his leg wounded’, not ‘a bloody wound’. On p. 50, Enim uero is ‘For, indeed’, illorsum is ‘there’ or ‘thither’, Ergo is ‘And so’, and quoque (‘also’) has...

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