Download or read book Curtius Rufus Histories of Alexander the Great Book 10 written by and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a translation, with commentary, of a major Roman source on the end of the reign of Alexander the Great. Book 10 of Curtius' Histories covers the reign of terror and mutiny that followed upon Alexander's return from India; and offers the fullest account of the power struggle that began in Babylon immediately after his death. The Introduction establishes a profile of Curtius Rufus (quite probably a Roman Senator of the first century AD), and his agenda as a historian. John Yardley's translation and the commentary are designed for the reader without Latin. The Commentary provides detailed analysis of the historical events of the crucial period 325-3 BC covered by Curtius, and also tries to get behind the surface level of meaning to show how Curtius intended his history to be a text for his time. Curtius' text is also examined as a literary achievement in its own right.
Download or read book The History of Alexander written by Quintus Curtius Rufus and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-04-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who led the Macedonian army to victory in Egypt, Syria, Persia and India, was perhaps the most successful conqueror the world has ever seen. Yet although no other individual has attracted so much speculation across the centuries, Alexander himself remains an enigma. Curtius' History offers a great deal of information unobtainable from other sources of the time. A compelling narrative of a turbulent era, the work recounts events on a heroic scale, detailing court intrigue, stirring speeches and brutal battles - among them, those of Macedonia's great war with Persia, which was to culminate in Alexander's final triumph over King Darius and the defeat of an ancient and mighty empire. It also provides by far the most plausible and haunting portrait of Alexander we possess: a brilliantly realized image of a man ruined by constant good fortune in his youth.
Download or read book Histories of Alexander the Great written by Quintus Curtius Rufus and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The History of the Life and Reign of Alexander the Great written by Quintus Curtius Rufus and published by . This book was released on 1809 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Elizabeth Baynham and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literary tradition surrounding the Macedonian conqueror is rich, contradictory and complex. Much of what we know comes from the history of Quintus Curtius, who wrote a history of Alexander in the first century AD. Baynham explores Curtius' historical style and his presentation of the legendary king. She examines his use of ancient sources, and discusses why Curtius chose to preserve the information about Alexander that he did. She demonstrates that his work was a carefully planned narrative, and that he was not only interested in presenting Alexander as a clever ruler and accomplished tactician, but also as a human subject to the whims of chance, of fortuna .
Download or read book Alexander The Great written by James Romm and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2005-03-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprising relevant selections from the four ancient writers whose portraits of Alexander the Great still survive--Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius--this volume provides a complete narrative of the important events in Alexander's life. The Introduction sets these works in historical context, stretching from the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War through Alexander's conquest of Asia, and provides an assessment of Alexander's historical importance as well as a survey of the central controversies surrounding his personality, aims and intentions. This edition includes a timeline, maps, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index.
Download or read book The Life of Alexander the Great written by Plutarch and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2004-04-13 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 336 b.c. Philip of Macedonia was assassinated and his twenty-year-old son, Alexander, inherited his kingdom. Immediately quelling rebellion, Alexander extended his father’s empire through-out the Middle East and into parts of Asia, fulfilling the soothsayer Aristander’s prediction that the new king “should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him.” The Life of Alexander the Great is one of the first surviving attempts to memorialize the achievements of this legendary king, remembered today as the greatest military genius of all time. This exclusive Modern Library edition, excerpted from Plutarch’s Lives, is a riveting tale of honor, power, scandal, and bravery written by the most eminent biographer of the ancient world.
Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Arrian and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2004-09-28 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprising selections from the writings of Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus, this definitive biography of the greatest conqueror in history features an Introduction on Alexander's enduring legacy by acclaimed British television personality Michael Wood.
Download or read book Conquest and Empire written by A. B. Bosworth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-26 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of the process and consequences of the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon (who reigned from 336 to 323 BC), focusing on the effect of his monarchy upon the world of his day. A detailed running narrative of the actual campaigns from the Danube to the Indus is complemented and enlarged upon by thematic studies on the reaction in Greece to Macedonian suzerainty, the administration of the empire, the evolution of the Macedonian army and its role as the instrument of conquest, and on the origins of the ruler cult.
Download or read book The Campaigns of Alexander written by Arrian and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-07-31 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although written over four hundred years after Alexander's death, Arrian's account of the man and his achievements is the most reliable we have. Arrian's own experience as a military commander gave him unique insights into the life of the world's greatest conqueror. He tells of Alexander's violent suppression of the Theban rebellion, his defeat of Persia and campaigns through Egypt and Babylon - establishing new cities and destroying others in his path. While Alexander emerges as a charismatic leader, Arrian succeeds brilliantly in creating an objective portrait of a man of boundless ambition, who was exposed to the temptations of power.
Download or read book The Landmark Arrian written by Arrian and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander, widely considered the most authoritative history of the brilliant leader’s great conquests, is the latest addition to the acclaimed Landmark series. After twelve years of hard-fought campaigns, Alexander the Great controlled a vast empire that was bordered by the Adriatic sea to the west and modern-day India to the east. Arrian, himself a military commander, combines his firsthand experience of battle with material from Ptolemy’s memoirs and other ancient sources to compose a singular portrait of Alexander. This vivid and engaging new translation of Arrian will fascinate readers who are interested in classical studies, the history of warfare, and the origins of East–West tensions still swirling in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan today. Enriched by the series’ trademark comprehensive maps, illustrations, and annotations, and with contributions from the preeminent classical scholars of today, The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander is the definitive edition of this essential work of ancient history.
Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Anthony Everitt and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. “[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum . . . Its energy is unflagging, including the verve with which it tackles that teased final mystery about the specific cause of Alexander’s death.”—The Christian Science Monitor 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, Persia, and ultimately to India—all before his untimely death at age thirty-three. Alexander believed that his empire would stop only when he reached the Pacific Ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that has 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’d even come to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time? In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexander’s 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, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homer’s 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 remarkable cruelty. As debate continues about the meaning of his life, Alexander's death remains a mystery. Did he die of natural causes—felled by a fever—or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexander’s story that has eluded so many for so long.
Download or read book Alexander the Great A Very Short Introduction written by Hugh Bowden and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander the Great became king of Macedon in 336 BC, when he was only 20 years old, and died at the age of 32, twelve years later. During his reign he conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest empire that had ever existed, leading his army from Greece to Pakistan, and from the Libyan desert to the steppes of Central Asia. His meteoric career, as leader of an alliance of Greek cities, Pharaoh of Egypt, and King of Persia, had a profound effect on the world he moved through. Even in his lifetime his achievements became legendary and in the centuries that following his story was told and retold throughout Europe and the East. Greek became the language of power in the Eastern Mediterranean and much of the Near East, as powerful Macedonian dynasts carved up Alexander's empire into kingdoms of their own, underlaying the flourishing Hellenistic civilization that emerged after his death. But what do we really know about Alexander? In this Very Short Introduction, Hugh Bowden goes behind the usual historical accounts of Alexander's life and career. Instead, he focuses on the evidence from Alexander's own time -- letters from officials in Afghanistan, Babylonian diaries, records from Egyptian temples -- to try and understand how Alexander appeared to those who encountered him. In doing so he also demonstrates the profound influence the legends of his life have had on our historical understanding and the controversy they continue to generate worldwide. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Philip II and Alexander the Great written by Elizabeth Carney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-24 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The careers of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great (III) were interlocked in innumerable ways: Philip II centralized ancient Macedonia, created an army of unprecedented skill and flexibility, came to dominate the Greek peninsula, and planned the invasion of the Persian Empire with a combined Graeco-Macedonian force, but it was Alexander who actually led the invading forces, defeated the great Persian Empire, took his army to the borders of modern India, and created a monarchy and empire that, despite its fragmentation, shaped the political, cultural, and religious world of the Hellenistic era. Alexander drove the engine his father had built, but had he not done so, Philip's achievements might have proved as ephemeral as had those of so many earlier Macedonian rulers. On the other hand, some scholars believe that Alexander played a role, direct or indirect, in the murder of his father, so that he could lead the expedition to Asia that his father had organized. In short, it is difficult to understand or assess one without considering the other. This collection of previously unpublished articles looks at the careers and impact of father and son together. Some of the articles consider only one of the Macedonian rulers although most deal with both, and with the relationship, actual or imagined, between the two. The volume will contain articles on military and political history but also articles that look at the self-generated public images of Philip and Alexander, the counter images created by their enemies, and a number that look at how later periods understood them, concluding with the Hollywood depiction of the relationship. Despite the plethora of collected works that deal with Philip and Alexander, this volume promises to make a genuine contribution to the field by focusing specifically on their relationship to one another.
Download or read book The First European written by Pierre Briant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-02 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightenment thinkers, searching for ancient models to understand contemporary affairs, were the first to critically interpret Alexander the Great’s achievements. As Pierre Briant shows, in their minds Alexander was the first European: an empire builder who welcomed trade with the “Orient” and brought Western civilization to its oppressed peoples.
Download or read book Studies in the Transmission of Latin Texts written by S. P. Oakley and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a comprehensive study of all the known manuscripts and incunables of two works: the history of Alexander the Great written by Quintus Curtius Rufus, probably in the first century AD, and the translation into Latin by Lucius Septimius of the spoof history of the Trojan War, allegedly written at the time of that war by a certain Dictys Cretensis. Drawing on in excess of 200 witnesses, the analysis reveals how the text of Curtius in all our extant manuscripts descends from one damaged copy that survived from the Roman Empire into the Middle Ages, and how the text of Dictys survived in two such copies. It demonstrates that clear and decisive results can be achieved by application of the so-called stemmatic method, and how the application of those results will lead to several improvements to our standard text of Dictys. As well as determining which manuscripts future editors should use in editing these texts and examining them in detail, it also offers equally full discussion of those which will not be needed, establishing many localizations and derivations. The result is a large body of material that will help deepen our knowledge of the transmission of classical Latin texts, especially in the Renaissance, as well as our knowledge of scribal practice and of techniques that can be deployed in the genealogical study of manuscripts and incunables.
Download or read book Alexander the Great and the East written by Krzysztof Nawotka and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even if Alexander's rule in Asia has to be approached primarily through the study of Greek and Latin authors, many papers in this volume try to look beyond Arrian, Plutarch, Curtius, and Diodorus to Greek inscriptions, papyri, Egyptian, Babylonian, medieval Syriac and Arabic evidence. One focus is on Egypt, from the XXX dynasty to the Ptolemaic age. A lasting achievement of the early Macedonian age in Egypt is the lighthouse of Pharos, probably devised under Alexander to serve both as a watchtower of Alexandria and the focal point of the fire telegraph. Another focus of the volume is on Babylonia, with caveats against the over-enthusiastic usage of cuneiform sources for Alexander. This focus then moves further east, showing how much caution is necessary in studying the topography of Alexander's campaigns in Baktria, the land often misrepresented by ancient and medieval authors. It also deals with representation and literary topoi, having in mind that Alexander was as much a historical as a literary figure. In many respects ancient Alexander historians handled his persona in strong connection with Herodotean topics, while the idealized portrait of Alexander translated, through court poetry, into the language of power of Ptolemy of Egypt. Alexander was adopted to cultural traditions of the East, both through the medium of the Alexander Romance and through his fictitious correspondence with Aristotle, sometimes becoming a figure of a (Muslim) mystic or a chosen (Jewish) king.
