In order to write this book, B. wandered into Alexanderland, a region once described by J. Davidson as a primordial bastion of unevolved scholarship hopelessly devoted to such nonsense as ‘the facts about Alexander the Great’ and ‘what really happened’ (J. Davidson, ‘Bonkers about Boys’, London Review of Books 23.21 [2001], 7). Oblivious to the benefits of material evidence, its great beasts grazed solely on literary sources, chewing them down to their very roots in search of sustenance. Plodding and ponderous, they remained mired in the backwaters of military history, prosopography and Quellenforschung. B. found the place little changed, with its hoary inhabitants still facing herd-like in one direction, their backs to the East, with little imagination about new ways to write about Alexander (H. Bowden, ‘Recent Travels in Alexanderland’, JHS 134 [2014], 136–48). He observed the same few denizens addressing the same old themes in conferences and edited volumes, while the alternate publishing format of single-author books had grown mercenary and stale. A glut of little paperbacks ‘too numerous to list’ required of each ‘a unique selling point (USP)’ as a marketing gimmick. B. blamed publishers for tempting authors to write such works, and authors for doing this badly. Without a hint of irony, B. loudly scolded the residents of Alexanderland while moving quietly into their neighbourhood, his Very Short Introduction a ‘SOLD’ sign on a dinosaurian cul-de-sac.
B.'s addition to the Alexander booklet industry naturally comes with its own USP. B. considers it useless to inquire what he or anyone else now thinks of Alexander, since the real question is what the king's contemporaries thought of him (p. 108). This ordinarily takes us back to investigations of the lost primary sources, those intriguing works written by eyewitnesses including Callisthenes and Ptolemy that were later consulted by secondary authors such as Plutarch and Arrian. Without them there is no story to tell, and B. depends on these sources constantly even while insisting that ‘we still have no reliable way of determining how much, if any, of their accounts can be trusted’ (p. 5, emphasis added). This is quicksand of another sort in some quarters of Alexanderland, where residents write books based heavily on sources and methods they decry as unsatisfactory. Complaining that the Alexander sources are an unreliable tangle of legend and literary licence is neither U nor a good SP, so the reader is promised a redeeming focus on contemporary material evidence (epigraphic, numismatic and archaeological). Here and there, B. does introduce documentary source material to good effect, such as an Egyptian relief (pp. 65–7) or a Babylonian astronomical diary (pp. 69–70), but his story is inescapably driven by the much-lamented literary tradition, often using old-fashioned Quellenforschung (pp. 97–8).
Particularly unsettling is the chasm between troth and truth in the use of numismatic sources. It is one thing to advertise that coins may tell ‘a truer story than the narratives written hundreds of years later’ (p. 8), but quite another to mention in passing just two coins minted by the king's successors (pp. 7–8, 60) and only one issued by Alexander (pp. 88–9). Since Alexander alone produced an estimated 138,000,000 coins in numerous official varieties, B. has missed his best opportunity to utilise a stunning mass of material evidence relevant to the king's policies, motivations and world view. The remarkably informative and easily accessible work of numismatists such as G. Le Rider goes completely unnoticed (Alexander the Great: Coinage, Finances, and Policy [2007], translated from the 2003 French edition). Nothing corrects the anecdotal claims of Plutarch and company quite like numismatic evidence, which shows that Philip did not leave Alexander broke, and that the son had no immediate urge to step out of his father's shadow. Worse still, B. has misrepresented and misunderstood the one Alexander coin he does mention, the so-called Porus decadrachm (pp. 88–9). He regularly and rightly insists (e.g. pp. 60–70) that all evidence must be contextualised, yet he ignores the salient fact that this decadrachm was part of a larger series of related coins minted with a common purpose. This is no less significant than understanding the Alexander Mosaic as part of a Pompeian house (p. 4). The whole coin series reveals a contemporary version of events not to be found in the literary sources, precisely the kind of evidence that might help validate Bowden's USP (F. Holt, Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions [2003]).
On the plus side, B. writes well and knows how to weave together the far-flung edges of his story, from sixth-century b.c.e. Persia to the modern Enlightenment. He paces the narrative quickly, often thematically, in nine chapters that each focuses on one aspect of Alexander's life, for example Prince, Warrior, Commander, Pharaoh, King of the World and Traveller. B. asks his readers (p. 42) to use his three-page timeline and solitary map to pull this treatment together, although not just the dim-eyed denizens of Alexanderland will require a magnifying glass to read the latter. The burden placed on the coordination of text and timeline falters at a few points: some items in the timeline are not in the book (siege of Gaza, capture of the Sogdian Rock), and some noteworthy things in the text are omitted from the timeline (the revolt of Agis, the voyage of Nearchus). A handful of key people and events show up in neither, such as Harpalus, Calanus, Sisygambis, the Epigonoi and the Opis Mutiny, all casualties no doubt of the restrictive Very Short Introduction format. This is a pity given B.'s avowed interest in the stability of Alexander's empire and its interactions with Eastern cultures.
Nowhere is the minimalist approach more evident than in the complete lack of notes and source citations, a deficiency unaided by the bare-bones list of references and further reading. B. includes three works of fiction and one dvd, but nothing by such giants in modern Alexander studies as Sir William Tarn and Ernst Badian, the former a champion of the kindly Alexander and the latter of the cruel. Their work may be dated, but at least when Tarn published his own little book on Alexander back in the Mesozoic of 1948, it had footnotes and for good measure a supplemental volume of addenda and appendices running to nearly 500 pages (Alexander the Great, 2 vols [1948]). B.'s work is, to be sure, a sometimes fascinating collection of obiter dicta, but it does not encourage – much less enable – a newcomer to sort facts and opinions. Where, for instance, is the source that tells us Philip's assassin Pausanias ‘was arrested before he could escape’ and was later executed alongside Heromenes and Arrhabaeus (p. 31)? On what authority does B. transfer the capture of Darius’ family from Issus to Damascus (p. 77)? Who are the modern scholars allegedly duped by the ancients into believing that Alexander's march through Gedrosia was a disaster rather than the success B. claims it to have been (p. 92)?
Who, in the end, is B.'s Alexander? B. intended in this book to offer no particular vision or judgement (p. 108), but one emerges none the less. His narrative systematically tones down the brutality of Alexander's campaigns, the disaffection of his troops, the king's claims to divinity, his corruption by wealth and power, and his heavy-handedness towards the Greeks. Readers will therefore discern a genial and politic Alexander whose like has not been imagined for quite some time by the inmates of Alexanderland. Old-timers there will shake their shaggy heads knowingly at one last irony: B. has claimed what is left of the abandoned lot once owned by Sir William Tarn.
