M. and B. characterise their biography as reactionary to a dominant trend in Alexander scholarship. It is a ‘return to a tradition of interpreting Alexander that offers a more source-based view’, and one that rejects a view of him as ‘little more than a pathological mass murderer’ (pp. xi–xii). They seek to recover a more historically ‘authentic’ Alexander (p. 145) liberated from distortions due to ‘the arrogance of moral judgment that self-righteous modernity can impart’ (p. xii). (Only on p. 181 do E. Badian and A.B. Bosworth emerge as the principal perpetrators of such scholarship.) Throughout the biography the authority of the major ancient sources (mostly Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus and Curtius) is invoked; nine chapters rely on a patchwork of these accounts. A tenth surveys judgements about Alexander from his death to the present. Intended ‘for non-specialists’, the biography contains no footnotes and almost no textual references to passages in the ancient sources.
M. and B. pursue an ‘authentic’ version of Alexander's life in three ways. (1) They impute a personality to Alexander based on his passion for Greek literature, especially the Iliad and Euripides, and his immersion by royal women in the religious worldview of Greeks and Macedonians (pp. 4–8). Here identification with his heroic ancestors Achilles (through his mother Olympias) and Heracles (through his father Philip), as well as with Dionysus (through both), exerts a controlling influence. (2) M. and B. see this personality tempered by Alexander's three-year tutelage by Aristotle, whose ethical principles mould it into the character of the ‘great-souled man’ (megalopsychos) we recognise from NE 4.3. Likewise influential are the development of practical intelligence (phronesis, as at NE 6) and the political theory of monarchy as we find it at Pol. 3.14–16. (M. and B. do not refer to these texts by name, nor do they make clear how an ethical ‘ideal’ that clings tenaciously to a conservative worldview characteristic of Greek civilisation outside the city-state can absorb sophisticated products of civic culture like Aristotelian ethics and political theory.) (3) The story M. and B. tell relies consistently on understanding Alexander's behaviour as ‘plausible’ (p. xi) through the lens of this alexandrocentric subjectivity, which those who interact with him find difficult to grasp or consent to because this worldview is unique to the great man himself. Above all M. and B. reject any attempt to interpret their subject's motives and reasoning through an objective perspective external to his own mind, especially one from an alien culture and era like modernity. Such attempts are ‘anachronistic’ and reflective of an ‘unjustified and self-righteous arrogance in one's moral superiority’ (p. xii).
Alexander's primary ethical value was his obsession with achieving paramount superiority over others, with the expectation of their honour in recognition of this, and a consequent demand for their unwavering ‘loyalty’. So armed, M. and B. guide us through the controversial episodes in the conqueror's adult life. For example, was Alexander complicit in, or even responsible for, Philip's assassination? While M. and B. prevaricate because of the strong motives he had for eliminating his father, they absolve him because the ancient sources ‘never accuse him of killing his father’ (p. 41). They also exculpate him for the murders of those who might have challenged his fledgling authority because such tactics were ‘demanded’ by ‘the brutal reality of Macedonian politics’ (p. 42). Was Alexander justified for the genocide of the rebellious Thebans? The answer is ‘yes’ because the Thebans failed to remain ‘loyal’ to their oath of allegiance to Philip and failed to recognise young Alexander's superiority, foolishly hurling the insult ‘tyrant of Greece’ at him (p. 49). Over and again M. and B. use the failure to be ‘loyal’ (read ‘submissive’) to Alexander as justification for his righteous and homicidal anger. This constitutes a ‘natural justice’ in Alexander's eyes (p. 64), although some readers may see this as simply a justice ‘in the interest of the stronger’ (Rep. 338c1–339a).
To carry out their apologetic intent M. and B. utilise several narrative strategies. One counterbalances an account of savage behaviour with a virtuous act, as when Alexander paused his Theban massacre to recognise with clemency the honour of Pindar and the widow Timocleia (p. 50). Another strategy picks and chooses details from ancient accounts that illustrate the selflessness of Alexander's motives. M. and B. use Curtius' version of what happened just prior to the controversial sack of Persepolis because it registers the young king's horror and rage upon encountering Greek prisoners of war who were physically mutilated by the Persians. In Curtius (5.5.5–6.1) this explains the sacking as justifiable retribution, whereas in Diodorus (17.69–72) no mention is made of Alexander's anger as a motive for the sacking. M. and B. also portray Alexander's response to the Macedonian conspiracies against him as appropriate because any who fail to recognise his supernatural superiority are ‘disloyal’. Even the assassination of the aged Parmenio can be explained away – again, because ‘justification in Alexander's world came from the violent reality of power politics among the Macedonian elite’ (p. 105). But due to the campaign in India M. and B. must concede that ethically speaking there are two Alexanders: one ‘at court’ who allows morally questionable acts and another ‘on the march’ who remains in control (pp. 138–9). They finally admit that his personality was a complex mixture of reason and emotion that reveals itself to be ‘contradictory’ (p. 180).
When it comes to such controversial dimensions of Alexander's character as his alcoholism and sexuality, M. and B. prove evasive. They reasonably label ‘anachronistic’ any identification of him as ‘alcoholic’ in any modern sense, given the different functions and forms drinking takes from a comparative, cross-cultural perspective. Excessive drinking was ‘normal’ and endemic to elite Macedonian leadership, and Alexander could not ‘unlearn’ such ‘habits learned while young’ (p. 92). (However, M. and B. do not make clear how Alexander could be steeped in traditional Greek ethical values and not have adopted the norm among elites of moderation in consuming alcohol.) As for his sexuality, again M. and B. reasonably claim that the modern categories of hetero-, homo- and bi-sexuality simply do not apply. While well indicated for homoerotic practices in city-state culture, M. and B. do not inquire into the more relevant uses of homoeroticism among the elite Macedonian military. They also remind us that no ancient source explicitly identifies Alexander and Hephaestion as lovers and instead emphasise the information we possess about Alexander's heterosexual relations (pp. 98–100).
The biography's most interesting and persuasive claim about the unique ‘ideal’ motivating Alexander is his belief, following Aristotle, in the ‘mixing’ of natures as the key to superhuman achievement. This mixing describes and justifies his own sense of himself as a unique combination of human and divine while still alive, but it also explains his belief that the empire could only cohere through mixing Graeco-Macedonians and barbarians. In this regard M. and B. see Alexander as recalcitrant for breaking with Aristotle's injunction that Greeks rule over barbarians as slaves; Alexander thus becomes ‘his own man’ when making imperial policy (p. 68). They repeatedly underscore the multi-ethnic character of these policies as a retort to scholars who portray Alexander as a failed administrator of his empire (pp. 77–80). (Despite their disapproval of importing our ‘anachronistic’ values into Alexander's life, how can we not see this resonate positively with our own social ideal of multiculturalism?)
Some readers may welcome this apologetic effort to rescue Alexander from the clutches of interpretative schemata lying outside the intellectual framework of antiquity. Others may cringe at the naivety of a historical method that identifies wholly with its subject and precludes a hermeneutics employing any transhistorical, transcultural moral criteria. But surely we cannot, as M. and B. enjoin us, let the ancient sources have both the first and last word on Alexander.
