The Lost Book Of Alexander The Great

Author : Andrew Young
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781594163784
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lost Book of Alexander the Great written by Andrew Young and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Reconstruction of Ptolemy I's History of Alexander's Conquests, a Primary Source Cited in Later Books That Disappeared More Than One Thousand Years Ago Alexander the Great is well known as one of the first great empire builders of the ancient world. Among those fellow Macedonian officers who accompanied Alexander in his epic conquests from Greece to India was Ptolemy Lagides. Ptolemy served alongside Alexander from the Persian defeat at the Battle of Issus in modern-day Turkey and the journey to find the oracle that proclaimed Alexander to be Zeus incarnate, to the Battle of the Hydaspes River in 326 BC that opened India to the West. Following Alexander's death, Ptolemy gained control of Egypt where he founded the dynasty in his name, created the great library of Alexandria, and was patron of the mathematician Euclid. Sometime during his rule in Egypt, Ptolemy wrote a history of Alexander's conquests. Although it is probable that Ptolemy enhanced his own importance, sources indicate that it was regarded as an accurate and even-handed account of the campaigns of Alexander. However, Ptolemy's book was lost--perhaps with the destruction of the library he founded--and not even an original fragment has survived. His book, however, was acknowledged as a primary source of information for later Roman historians. In The Lost Book of Alexander the Great, Andrew Young explores the world of ancient writings about the Macedonian leader in order to determine whether any of Ptolemy's writings can be recovered. Inspired by Stephen Greenblatt's distinguished biography of Shakespeare, Will in the World, and written for the general reader, the author uses literary forensics to suggest which parts of later books about Alexander the Great, most notably the account by Arrian of Nicomedia, might be the words of Ptolemy. In addition to separating later Roman sensibilities from the original Greek of Ptolemy, the author re-creates the famous library of Alexandria, and takes the reader along on Alexander's conquests as closely as we can to how Ptolemy may have recounted them.

Author : Philip Freeman
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416592814
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Philip Freeman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first authoritative biography of Alexander the Great written for a general audience in a generation, classicist and historian Philip Freeman tells the remarkable life of the great conqueror. The celebrated Macedonian king has been one of the most enduring figures in history. He was a general of such skill and renown that for two thousand years other great leaders studied his strategy and tactics, from Hannibal to Napoleon, with countless more in between. He flashed across the sky of history like a comet, glowing brightly and burning out quickly: crowned at age nineteen, dead by thirty-two. He established the greatest empire of the ancient world; Greek coins and statues are found as far east as Afghanistan. Our interest in him has never faded. Alexander was born into the royal family of Macedonia, the kingdom that would soon rule over Greece. Tutored as a boy by Aristotle, Alexander had an inquisitive mind that would serve him well when he faced formidable obstacles during his military campaigns. Shortly after taking command of the army, he launched an invasion of the Persian empire, and continued his conquests as far south as the deserts of Egypt and as far east as the mountains of present-day Pakistan and the plains of India. Alexander spent nearly all his adult life away from his homeland, and he and his men helped spread the Greek language throughout western Asia, where it would become the lingua franca of the ancient world. Within a short time after Alexander’s death in Baghdad, his empire began to fracture. Best known among his successors are the Ptolemies of Egypt, whose empire lasted until Cleopatra. In his lively and authoritative biography of Alexander, classical scholar and historian Philip Freeman describes Alexander’s astonishing achievements and provides insight into the mercurial character of the great conqueror. Alexander could be petty and magnanimous, cruel and merciful, impulsive and farsighted. Above all, he was ferociously, intensely competitive and could not tolerate losing—which he rarely did. As Freeman explains, without Alexander, the influence of Greece on the ancient world would surely not have been as great as it was, even if his motivation was not to spread Greek culture for beneficial purposes but instead to unify his empire. Only a handful of people have influenced history as Alexander did, which is why he continues to fascinate us.

Author : Lionel Pearson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great written by Lionel Pearson and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Anthony Everitt
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0425286533
Total Pages : 505 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Lewis Vance Cummings
Publisher : Grove Press
ISBN 13 : 9780802141491
Total Pages : 484 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alexander the Great written by Lewis Vance Cummings and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reissued to coincide with the release of Oliver Stone's epic movie on Alexander the Great (slated for fall 2004) and the Summer Olympics in Greece, Lewis Cummings's comprehensive and readable biography of Alexander the Great gives us the full portrait of this brilliant and tyrannical leader. A sagacious ruler and a volatile, often violent commander, a sensuous youth and a paradigm of chastity, Alexander the Great of Macedonia remains one of the most fascinating and contradictory figures in world history. Son of King Philip and the tempestuous Queen Olympia, educated by Aristotle himself, a swift succession of military victories gave him an empire that extended from Greece to India. From his first conquest in northern Greece at the age of sixteen, to a swift succession of victories over Macedonia, Egypt, Persia, and Asia, Alexander possessed almost inhuman energy and hubris that defied Zeus himself, until his death at the age of thirty-two. Alexander the Great is an epic history of a man who became one of the most heralded rulers and despised geniuses of all time.

Author : David Grant
Publisher : Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1785899538
Total Pages : 896 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In Search Of The Lost Testament of Alexander the Great written by David Grant and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-01-28 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique ‘backstory’ of Alexander and his successors: the biased historians, deceits, wars, generals, and the tale of the literature that preserved them. ‘Babylon, mid-June 323 BCE, the gateway of the gods; prostrated in the Summer Palace of Nebuchadrezzar II on the east bank of the Euphrates, wracked by fever and having barely survived another night, King Alexander III, the rule of Macedonia for 12 years and 7 months, had his senior officers congregate at his bedside. Abandoned by Fortune and the healing god Asclepius, he finally acknowledged he was dying. Some 2,340 years on, five barely intact accounts survive to tell a hardly coherent story. At times in close accord, though more often contradictory, they conclude with a melee of death-scene rehashes, all of them suspicious: the first portrayed Alexander dying silent and intestate; he was Homeric and vocal in the second; the third detailed his Last Will and Testament though it is attached to the stuff of romance. Which account do we trust?’ In Search Of The Lost Testament Of Alexander The Great is the result of a ‘decade of contemplations on Alexander’ presented as a rich thematic narrative Grant describes as the ‘backstory behind the history’ of the great Macedonian and his generals. Taking an uncompromising investigative perspective, Grant delves into the challenges faced by Alexander’s unique tale: the forgeries and biased historians, the influences of rhetoric, romance, philosophy and religion on what was written and how. Alexander’s own mercurial personality is vividly dissected and the careers and the wars of his successors are presented with a unique eye. But the book never loses sight of central aim: to unravel the mystery behind Alexander’s ‘unconvincingly reported’ intestate death. And out of Grant’s research emerges one unavoidable verdict: after 2,340 years, the Last Will and Testament of Alexander III of Macedonia needs to be extracted from ‘romance’ and reinstated to its rightful place in mainstream history: Babylon in June 323 BCE. Although the result a decade of academic research, In Search Of The Lost Testament Of Alexander The Great is written in an entertaining and engaging style that opens the subject to both scholars and the casual reader of history looking to learn more about the Macedonian king and the men who ‘made’ his story. It concludes with a wholly new interpretation of the death of Alexander the Great and the mechanism behind the wars of succession that followed.

Author : Kathryn Waterfield
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0451532732
Total Pages : 112 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Who Was Alexander the Great? written by Kathryn Waterfield and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander the Great conquers the New York Times best-selling Who Was...? series! When Alexander was a boy in ancient Macedon, he already had grand ambitions. He complained that his father, the great king of Macedon, wasn't leaving anything for him to conquer! This, of course, was not the case. King Alexander went on to control most of the known world of the time. His victories won him many supporters, but they also earned him enemies. This easy-to-read biography offers a fascinating look at the life of Alexander and the world he lived in.

Author : Elizabeth Carney
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134318197
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Olympias written by Elizabeth Carney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the life of Olympias, the first woman to play a major role in Greek political history. This biography penetrates the myth, fiction and sexual politics, and conducts a close examination of Olympias through historical and literary sources.

Author : Plutarch
Publisher : Modern Library
ISBN 13 : 1588363473
Total Pages : 98 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Pseudo-Callisthenes
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780755625406
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Book of Alexander the Great written by Pseudo-Callisthenes and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: