I have been stalking the 2000 reprint of this book for a number of years, but its high price has always caused me to talk myself down from the brink of buying it. Well... Sarahmac found a copy for well under three figures and snatched it up as a Christmas present, and I spent all of January reading it.
I didn't realize this had started out as Heckel's dissertation, and because I don't know ancient Greek or Latin (and my German is out of shape**), his direct quotes of others' works are mostly Greek to me. Following up all of the footnotes would require having Arrian, Plutarch, Curtius, Justin, and Diodorus on hand (ideally in the original languages, and not in translation, like my copies), and I didn't want to stop in the middle of Heckel's narrative, so I left those on the shelf.
In the end, despite the fact that I couldn't take full advantage of the information inside, this is a fabulous reference book full of biographies of the major and minor officers from Alexander's accession to the throne to his death. It's a useful entry in the library of even the casual Alexander historian, so I'm keeping it.
As it's about the "marshals" of the empire, there's very little on the women; for that, you'd need to read Carney's possibly even more fabulous (and more reasonably priced) Women and Monarchy in Macedonia.
** there are a lot of German historians of Alexander the Great. I'll leave as an exercise to the reader whether this Teutonic obsession with a "superman" is disturbing. My excuse is that I'm a redhead named Alex.
No comments:
Post a Comment