Scholars may not be writing many biographies of Alexander the Great himself any more – probably no great shame –, but the market for edited volumes on various aspects of Alexander's empire, reign and reception is booming. This book arrives sandwiched between two recent collections that offer some overlap: K. Trampedach and A. Meeus (edd.), The Legitimation of Conquest: Monarchical Representation and the Art of Government in the Empire of Alexander the Great (2020), and F. Pownall, S.R. Asirvatham and S. Müller (edd.), The Courts of Philip II and Alexander the Great (2022). With the literary sources on Alexander being late and derivative, renewed examination of the creation and dissemination of royal ‘propaganda’ is welcome.
The volume opens with a chapter by Baynham that examines the concept and use of ‘propaganda’ in the age of Alexander. The first half consists of a light but useful discussion of the term ‘propaganda’ and its application to the ancient world; it is quite short and lacks any real depth. Rather, about half the essay consists of short summaries of subsequent chapters. A serious introduction could have done much to consolidate and shape the thinking on this important theme, particularly since there are no concluding remarks to the volume.
E.M. Anson's chapter offer a fast-paced, and necessarily selective, overview of Alexander's reign and argues that Alexander was instrumental in the creation of his self-image through the centralised control of propaganda at the Argead court. Anson discusses much that is important to our understanding of the creation of propaganda during Alexander's life – Troy, Achilles, Siwah, proskynesis, Gaugamela –, but his uncritical acceptance of how these events are framed in our surviving Roman-era sources, which are late and derivative, is disconcerting. The journey to Siwah and the introduction of proskynesis were not solely religious concerns, for instance. The chapter would have benefited from some critical consideration of the Roman literary modelling of our sources, on which see recently V. Liotsakis, Alexander the Great in Arrian's Anabasis (2019) and J. Finn, Contested Pasts: a Determinist History of Alexander the Great in the Roman Empire (2022).
F. Pownall examines the well-known differences in Aristoboulus’ and Ptolemy's accounts of Alexander's journey to and from Siwah as recorded by Arrian and argues that the emphasis on Memphis in Ptolemy's account reflects the city's importance for him in the early years of his rule: it served as Ptolemy's capital pre-311 bce, by which stage he had moved to Alexandria, and it was the original burial place of Alexander. Consequently, this might suggest that Ptolemy composed his history early in his reign. Interestingly, Pownall connects Ptolemy's account with the Liber de Morte, which likely emanated from the Ptolemaic court c. 309/8 and records that Alexander was to be buried in Egypt.
Continuing with the Ptolemaic focus, T. Howe examines Arrian's paired accounts of Alexander's pursuit of Darius and Ptolemy's pursuit of Bessus and argues that they employ ‘intratextual literary emulation of Alexander to comment on the nature of monarchy and legitimate succession’ (p. 54). Howe opens with some useful comments on literary techniques – focalisation, speeches, inter/intratextuality – and examines how writers such as Arrian would have refashioned what they found in their sources. Howe's analysis is attractive, but what appears as intratextual literary emulation of Alexander in Arrian might not have played out in the same way in Ptolemy's lost work. Howe argues ‘tentatively’ that Arrian's account of the pursuit of Bessus ‘should be considered a fragment of Ptolemy … by context and content’ (p. 67), but we should remember that Arrian was well able to shape his sources into new literary models, as H. Bowden (‘Alexander as Achilles: Arrian's use of Homer from Troy to Granicus’, in: T. Howe and F. Pownall [edd.], Ancient Macedonians in the Greek and Roman Sources [2018]) has shown for the Iliadic modelling of Anabasis 1.11–16.
Walsh offers a critical source analysis of Diodorus’ account of the Lamian War (18.8–18). Working on the not uncontested argument that Hieronymus is the source of Diodorus’ narrative, Walsh argues that ‘a careful review of Diodorus can establish the bias of Hieronymus’ and that ‘a more critical reading of Diodorus is required to see beneath Hieronymus’ fierce bias and judgemental language’ (p. 75). This is a dubious assumption and Walsh's argument only works if Diodorus 18.8–18 is almost verbatim Hieronymus in structure, organisation and terminology, which goes against recent scholarship arguing for Diodorus’ originality (Walsh's own publications on Diodorus’ Lamian War narrative [2009 and 2018] are not cited in the chapter). Indeed, reading this chapter, one would be forgiven for believing that Hieronymus’ work survived intact as Walsh uncritically attributes Diodorus’ narrative to Hieronymus. While Walsh acknowledges Diodorus’ interventions (pp. 83, 85), one wonders whether the Diodoran cover can really be peeled back this neatly to reveal the Hieronyman biases underneath or whether this approach to the sources is valid at all.
F. Landucci offers a short essay on the court of Antigonus Gonatas with particular comment on the importance of his mother Phila – daughter of Antipater and wife of Demetrius Poliorcetes – in remodelling Gonatas’ image in Macedon in the mid-third century. Gonatas was born of both the Antipatrid (Phila) and Antigonid (Demetrius) dynasties and was able to blend both strands of Macedonian rule during his reign, though one would presume that Demetrius would have been able to do the same in the 290s. However, with nothing to say about Alexander the Great and little to do with propaganda, Landucci's paper seems out of place in this volume.
S. Müller takes Onesicritus’ account of the funerary inscription on Darius’ tomb as a starting point for a deeper analysis of the history of relations between Argead Macedon and the Persian empire from Amyntas I to Alexander III. She argues convincingly that the accuracy of Onesicritus’ account suggests a first-hand visit by Onesicritus and Alexander to the tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam, which included those of Darius and Xerxes, but that this was not emphasised in the surviving accounts of the visit as it would have been ‘counterproductive to Alexander's previous panhellenic posture and also unsuitable for the Alexander historiographers indulging in panhellenic themes’ (p. 116). Müller argues for the influence of Xenophon's Cyropaedia as a literary model for the Alexander historians.
H. Bowden focuses attention on the Roman literary modelling of Alexander as a western king corrupted by eastern power and decadence. He argues that this is part of a moralising theme that was influenced by the historical circumstances of the late first century bce and early first century ce – Bowden's framing example of the donations at Alexandria is excellently done. Bowden argues that Alexander first adopted aspects of Persian dress shortly after his victory at Gaugamela and that this was not all that contentious during his lifetime, rather it was magnified by the moralising focus of the surviving Roman authors. Müller's and Bowden's papers are excellent and work very well together.
Returning to the world of Alexander's successors, J. Roisman examines instances of desertion by Macedonian troops after Alexander's death and argues against the link between loyalty and military victory that M.M. Austin emphasised in his seminal article (CQ 36 [1986]). Focusing on the examples of Adea-Eurydice, Olympias, Alexander IV and Demetrius, Roisman argues that there was a multiplicity of reasons at play in known examples of military desertions. Roisman's analysis of military desertions between Demetrius, Lysimachus and Pyrrhus from 287–285 is particularly eye-opening. Again, however, this paper has almost nothing to say about either Alexander the Great or propaganda.
Rounding out the volume, P. Wheatley and C. Dunn bridge the gap between Alexander and his successors by offering an excellent examination of the importance of coinage for disseminating royal propaganda. Exploring in particular the transitions of power, they examine examples of continuity and rupture in royal types. After Philip's death, Alexander continued to mint Philip's types in order to emphasise continuity of rule and tradition; his silver coinage focused on typically Macedonian imagery of Heracles and Zeus; his gold coinage emphasised Athena and Nike, perhaps with nods to the battles of Marathon and Salamis. For Alexander's successors, the authors find that the coinage reflects accurately their changing ambitions (p. 173). It cannot be stressed enough how important coinage is as a direct, first-hand and centrally controlled reflection of royal image making. This paper is one of the highlights of the volume.
The book has three themes (p. 6): the dominance of Ptolemy Soter in the source traditions (though Ptolemy is not the focus of Walsh's chapter, as Baynham says); source manipulation of propaganda within Alexander historiography; and the audience for royal propaganda. By and large, the volume hits these themes, but with mixed results. I am not convinced that the focus on the audience is analysed in-depth throughout. Bowden does an excellent job of discussing the bias of Roman sources, Müller emphasises some studied silences in the sources, while Wheatley and Dunn emphasise the military audience of some of the coinage types, but for whom were Ptolemy, Aristoboulus, Onesicritus and others writing: soldiers, the masses, Greek elites, fellow kings and commanders or members of the Macedonian elite? What were they trying to convince their (hardly homogeneous) audience of? What practical difference did it make? Was the ‘propaganda’ convincing and what were its consequences?
Beyond audience, we might consider the creators behind royal propaganda. It is easy to attribute everything to Alexander or Ptolemy as master propagandists, but neither ran an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’. To a large extent, the development and dissemination of royal propaganda would have been undertaken outside the king's watchful eye by poets, courtiers, commanders and members of the native elite who understood how the king wanted to be or should be represented. Alexander and Ptolemy had no Joseph Goebbels or Leni Riefenstahl, but as kings they appear to us as the most visible tip of a large and deep process of royal image-making that took place, probably competitively, at court and must have involved numerous different advisors and decision makers.
Overall, this book is a mixed bag. The topic is a worthy one, but the focus and quality fluctuates. At its best, there is the core of an excellent volume, but as it stands, it is too unfocused. Only four papers concern Alexander and the theme of propaganda (Anson, Müller, Bowden, and Wheatley and Dunn – and perhaps the first half of Baynham's). Two concern Ptolemaic propagandist use of Alexander's memory, also relevant and important (Howe and Pownall). The remainder (Walsh, Landucci and Roisman) say almost nothing about Alexander and only intermittently, if at all, discuss propaganda. The book arose from the 2013 Australasian Society for Classical Studies conference, but, unfortunately, some of the papers presented there on the topic of propaganda are not found in the volume. The introduction is superficial, and there is no conclusion to tie the arguments together. Readers wanting a detailed examination of propaganda and strategies of legitimation during the reign of Alexander will have to look elsewhere.
