Before and After Alexander
The Legend and Legacy of Alexander the Great
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the arc of western history, Ancient Greece is at the apex, owing to its grandeur, its culture, and an intellectual renaissance to rival that of Europe. So important is Greece to history that figures such as Plato and Socrates are still household names, and the works of Homer are regularly adapted into movies. The most acclaimed hero of all, though, is Alexander the Great.While historians have studied Alexander’s achievements at length, author and professor Richard A. Billows delves deeper into the obscure periods of Alexander’s life before and after his reign. In the definitive Before and After Alexander, Billows explores the years preceding Alexander, who, Billows argues, without the foundation laid by his father, Philip II of Macedon. would not have had the resources or influence to develop one of the greatest empires in history. Alexander was groomed from a young age to succeed his father, and by the time Philip was assassinated in 336 BC, his great empire was already well underway.The years following Alexander's death were even more momentous. In this ambitious new work, Richard Billows robustly challenges the notion that the political strife that followed was for lack of a leader as competent as Alexander, pointing out instead that there were too many extremely capable leaders who exploited the power vacuum created by Alexander's death to carve out kingdoms for themselves.Above all, in Before and After Alexander, Billows eloquently and convincingly posits a complex view of one of the greatest empires in history, framing it not as the achievement of one man, but the culmination of several generations of aggressive expansion toward a unified purpose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Columbia University history professor Billows (Marathon: How One Battle Changed Western Civilization) provides a thorough analysis of the legacy of history's most famous conqueror. According to Billows, Alexander the Great was more of an accident of history than a maker of it, and so he focuses on the transformative eras before and after Alexander's 13-year reign Alexander first appears at the book's halfway point and is gone after a single chapter. Billows argues that Alexander was only able to conquer the lands between Greece and India on the strength of Macedonia's established military might. It was under the 24-year rule of Alexander's father, Philip II, that Macedonia became an economic and military power among the Greek city-states; in particular, he introduced and perfected the Macedonian phalanx military formation, which was used to its greatest effect in the wars of Alexander. After a period of civil wars, Alexander's successors established the Antigonid, Seleucid, and Ptolemaic empires, all of which endured into the Middle Ages and spread Hellenistic culture, the Greek language, and libraries across Europe and Asia. The author meticulously defends his provocative thesis about Alexander's role with in-depth historical analysis and an array of citations and quotes from primary sources, making this a clear, enlightening exploration of one of the most influential periods of human history.