Cambridge Classical Studies
2 total works
Plutarch and Arrian have contributed more than any other ancient authors to our picture of Alexander the Great, but since they wrote four or more centuries after his death the value of what they said depends upon the sources of information on which they themselves drew. In this 1993 book the attempt is made to define and to evaluate those sources in a detailed study, analysing the historians' works section by section and comparing them with other accounts of the same episodes. This volume completes Professor Hammond's study of the five Alexander-historians begun with Three Historians of Alexander the Great (Cambridge University Press, 1983) and lays a basis for work in this area.
Our knowledge of Alexander the Great is derived from the widely varying accounts of five authors who wrote three and more centuries after his death. The value of each account can be determined in detail only by discovering the source from which it drew, section by section, whether from a contemporary document, a memoir by a companion of Alexander, a hostile critique or a romanticizing narrative. In this book the three earliest accounts are studied in depth, and it becomes apparent that each author used more than one source, and that only occasionally did any two of them or all three use the same source for an incident or a series of incidents. This book will be of value to ancient historians and of interest also to those studying Alexander the Great.