My wife, Marcia, offered me more wisdom and support than anyone has the right to ask for. But she earned special merit by tromping around the battlefield of Cannae with me in hundred-plus-degree heat. Our children, Sylvie and Mike, wisely stayed at home.
Finally, this book would never have been written without the influence of three commanders of the classroom, the late Alvin Bernstein, Donald Kagan, and Walter LaFeber. I dedicate this book to them, with gratitude.
© DEDE HATCH PHOTOGRAPHY
BARRY STRAUSS is professor of history at Cornell University. He is the author of six books, including The Battle of Salamis, named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post; The Trojan War: A New History; and The Spartacus War.
Visit Barry Strauss at www.barrystrauss.com.
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A NOTE ON SOURCES
I include the main works in English, with a few essential, foreign-language texts, that I used to write this study and as a guide to further reading.
Students of classics and ancient history should have The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) by their side. Excellent maps of the ancient world can be found in Richard J. A. Talbert, ed., The Barrington Atlas of the Ancient Greco-Roman World. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
ALEXANDER
None of our three commanders has generated as many scholarly books and articles as Alexander. What follows is just a taste.
A good place to begin is Philip Freeman’s recent Alexander the Great (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2011), which offers a knowledgeable and readable overview. The most thorough and scholarly introduction to Alexander is A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), but it is not an easy read. Robin Lane Fox’s Alexander the Great (London: Penguin Books, 1973) is a powerful narrative and just as well grounded in the scholarship—and the author wears his learning lightly. Peter Green’s Alexander of Macedon: A Historical Biography, 356–323 BC (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, originally published 1974) is also good but not as good on military matters. Green and Bosworth are harsher on Alexander than are Freeman and Lane Fox. J. R. Hamilton’s Alexander the Great (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1973) is very concise.
Other good, recent introductions to Alexander include Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past (Woodstock & New York: Overlook Press, 2004); Waldemar Heckel, The Conquests of Alexander the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Guy MacLean Rogers, Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness (New York: Random House, 2004), and Joseph Roisman, ed., Brill’s Companion to Alexander the Great (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003).
For introductions to the history of Macedonia and Philip II, see Eugene N. Borza, In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington, eds., A Companion to Ancient Macedonia (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and Ian Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
Scholars strive for balance. Still, Alexander has a way of bringing out extremes and some of the best historians of Alexander tend to fall among his admirers or detractors. The dean of the admirers is W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, 2 vols. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 1948), who wrote a classic and influential account offering an idealistic portrait of Alexander as a proponent of universal brotherhood. A year later, in 1949, Fritz Schachermeyr described Alexander as a terrifying and dangerous genius in a magisterial work, revised in 1973 as Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichkeit und seines Wirkens (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften; Philosophisch-Historische Klasse; Sitzungsberichte, 1973). In English the leading skeptic of the late twentieth century was Ernst Badian, who sketched an image of Alexander as opportunistic, fallible, and anything but idealistic in a series of influential essays. Among the best are “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7 (1958): 424–44; “Alexander the Great and the Loneliness of Power,” AUMLA 17 (1962): 80–91, reprinted in Badian, Studies in Greek and Roman History (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964), 192–205; “Alexander the Great and the Greeks of Asia,” in E. Badian, ed., Ancient Society and Institutions: Studies Presented to Victor Ehrenberg on his 75th Birthday (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1966), 37–69; “Agis III,” Hermes 95.2 (1967): 170–92; “Alexander the Great, 1948–1961,” Classical World 65 (1971) 37–56, 77–83; “Alexander in Iran,” in I. Gershovitch, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. II (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 420–501; “Darius III,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100 (2000): 241–68. Badian also wrote a series of short but sharp encyclopedia entries on Alexander topics for Encyclopedia Iranica, http://www.iranica.com/, and Brill’s New Pauly: encyclopaedia of the ancient world (Leiden, Brill: 2007).
A. B. Bosworth is the most important skeptic writing about Alexander today. In addition to his Conquest and Empire (above), see his Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). For a stimulating if overdrawn argument for Alexander as strategic failure, see J. D. Grainger, Alexander the Great Failure (London: Continuum Books, 2007).
Frank L. Holt has written several important books about Alexander’s campaigns in Bactria and Sogdiana, among them the intriguing Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) and the provocative Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). Pierre Briant emphasizes Alexander’s debt to the Persians in Alexander the Great and His Empire: A Short Introduction, translated by Amélie Kuhrt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
Most of the ancient sources are available in paperback. The reader should begin with Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander (Harmondsworth, England, & Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1976), and then continue with Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 2004). Next comes Plutarch’s “Life of Alexander,” which is conveniently found in Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, translated and annotated by Ian Scott-Kilvert (Harmondsworth, England, 1973). Another important source, Diodorus Siculus, is best read in the Loeb Classical Library edition: C. Bradford Welles, translator; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Volume VIII, Books 16.66–17 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). A minor ancient sou
rce, Justin’s Epitome of the Philippic History, of Pompeius Trogus, can be found in translation at http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/justin/english/index.html.
On the Macedonian way of war, F. E. Adcock’s The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962) is still a good introduction. J. R. Ashley, The Macedonian Empire: The Era of Warfare Under Philip II and Alexander the Great, 359–323 B.C. (Jefferson, NC, & London: McFarland, 1998), is insightful although not always accurate.
On Alexander as commander, a good place to begin is the perceptive sketch by John Keegan in his The Mask of Command (New York: Penguin Books, 1988). The great military theorist J.F.C. Fuller offers an incisive analysis in The Generalship of Alexander the Great (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1960), if not one always backed up by later scholarship. N.G.L. Hammond, Alexander the Great: King, Commander, and Statesman (Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press, 1980), is scholarly and perceptive if sometimes worshipful; A. B. Lloyd, “Philip II and Alexander the Great: The Moulding of Macedon’s Army,” in A. B. Lloyd, ed., Battle in Antiquity (London: Duckworth, in association with the Classical Press of Wales, 1996), 169–98; Nick Sekunda, The Army of Alexander the Great (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1984); Idem, The Persian Army 560–330 BC (London: Osprey Publishing, 1992).
On Alexander’s pitched battles, see the following studies, in addition to the books above: Granicus—E. Badian, “The Battle of the Granicus, A New Look,” Ancient Macedonia II (Thessaloniki: 1977): 271–93; Clive Foss, “The Battle of the Granicus: A New Look,” ibid.: 495–502; N.G.L. Hammond, “The Battle of the Granicus River,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 100, Centenary Issue (1980): 73–88; Devine, A. M. “Demythologizing the Battle of the Granicus,” Phoenix 40 (1986): 265–78; Nikos Th. Nikolitsis, The Battle of the Granicus (Stockholm: [Svenska Institutet i Athen], 1974); M. Thompson, Granicus 334 BC: Alexander’s first Persian victory (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007). Issus—A. M. Devine, “The Location of the Battlefield of Issus,” Liverpool Classical Monthly 5.1 (1985): 3–10; Idem, “The Strategies of Alexander the Great and Darius III in the Issus Campaign (333 B.C.),” Ancient World 12 (1985): 25–37; Idem, “Grand Tactics at the Battle of Issus,” Ancient World 12 (1985): 39–59. Gaugamela—E. W. Marsden, The Campaign of Gaugamela (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964); A. M. Devine, “Grand tactics at Gaugamela,” Phoenix 29 (1975): 374–85; Idem, “Gaugamela, a Tactical and Source-Critical Study,” Ancient World (1986) 13: 87–16. Hydaspes—A. M. Devine, “The Battle of Hydaspes, a Tactical and Source-Critical Study,” Ancient World (1987) 16: 91–113.
I have benefited from the following studies on specific subjects: Ada Cohen, The Alexander Mosaic: Stories of Victory and Defeat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Due, B. (1993), “Alexander’s Inspiration and Ideas,” in Jesper Carlsen, ed., Alexander the Great: Reality and Myth (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002) 53–60; R. Edwards, “Two Horns, Three Religions. How Alexander the Great ended up in the Quran,” American Philological Association, 133rd Annual Meeting Program (Philadelphia, 5 January 2002) 36, under Reception of Classical Literature, No. 5.; D. W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); E. A. Fredricksmeyer (1982), “On the Final Aims of Philip II,” in W. Lindsay Adams and Eugene N. Borza, eds., Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Macedonian Heritage (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982): 85–98; E. A. Fredricksmeyer, “Alexander the Great and the Kingship of Asia,” in A. B. Bosworth, ed., Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 136–66; A. Pasinli, The Book of Alexander Sarcophagus (Istanbul: A Turizm Yayinlari, 1997); E. M. Anson, “The Persian Fleet in 334,” Classical Philology 84 (1989): 44–89.
On Alexander’s route, see the classic studies by Freya Stark, Alexander’s Path from Caria to Cilicia (London: J. Murray, 1958) and “Alexander’s March from Miletus to Phrygia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 78 (1958): 102–20; and the irresistible book and television documentary by Michael Wood, In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), and In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (London: BBC Worldwide, 2010). See also Doganer, S. (2007), “Alexander the Great: Warrior King as Geographer,” [in Turkish] Türk Cografya Dergisi 48: 19–58.
Two very different books about Alexander as a strategist, each offbeat and each worth reading, are Partha Bose, Alexander the Great’s Art of Strategy (New York: Penguin, 2003), and David J. Lonsdale, Alexander the Great, Lessons in Strategy (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).
Mary Renault’s two fine novels about Alexander now seem a little dated: Fire from Heaven (New York: Vintage, 2002, originally published 1969) and The Persian Boy (New York: Vintage, 1988, originally published 1972). For insightful, imaginative, and exciting re-creations of Alexander’s battles, see two novels by Stephen Pressfield, The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great (New York: Bantam, 2005) and The Afghan Campaign: A Novel (New York: Broadway, 2007). Valerio Massimo Manfredi has a trilogy about Alexander: Alexander: Child of a Dream (New York: Washington Square Press, 2001), Alexander: The Sands of Ammon (New York: Washington Square Press, 2002), and Alexander: To the Ends of the Earth (New York: Washington Square Press, 2002). My favorite is The Sands of Ammon because of its dramatic portrayal of Memnon of Rhodes and its evocation of the Anatolian landscape.
HANNIBAL
Lost causes have a special appeal and Hannibal is no exception. He brings out something endearing for writers although readers should be aware that older books, especially those before 1945, often purvey a certain amount of nonsense about the “Semitic character.”
There is no such problem in an excellent, recent, and short introductory book by an outstanding scholar of the Punic Wars, Dexter Hoyos, Hannibal: Rome’s Greatest Enemy (Exeter, UK: Bristol Phoenix, 2008). An introductory article by Hoyos is also enlightening, “Hannibal: What Kind of Genius?” Greece and Rome, 2nd series 30.2 (1983): 171–80. Three older, idiosyncratic, and usually charming introductions to Hannibal are G. P. Baker, Hannibal (New York: Cooper Square Press, 1999, originally published 1929); Leonard Cottrell, Hannibal Enemy of Rome (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992, originally published 1960); Ernle Bradford, Hannibal (New York: Dorset Press, 1981). The best and most reliable scholarly volume in English is Serge Lancel, Hannibal, translated by Antonia Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988). Jakob Seibert wrote a magisterial biography in Hannibal (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993), but it has not been translated from German to English. Dexter Hoyos offers an excellent analysis of Hannibal and his family in Hannibal’s Dynasty: Power and Politics in the Western Mediterranean, 247–183 BC (London & New York: Routledge, 2003).
The best introduction to the Punic Wars is Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (London: Cassell, 2000). See now the essays in Dexter Hoyos, ed., A Companion to the Punic Wars (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). For an insightful analysis, see Brian Caven, The Punic Wars (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1992). See also R. M. Errington, The Dawn of Empire: Rome’s Rise to World Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972); N. Bagnall, The Punic Wars: Rome, Carthage, and the Struggle for the Mediterranean (London: Pimlico, 1999). T. A. Dorey and D. R. Dudley, Rome Against Carthage (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972), is short and sound.
The single best military history of the Second Punic War is J. F. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978). John Peddie, Hannibal’s War (Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton Publishing, 1997), is insightful and often unconventional in its judgments. There is much of value in the essays in Tim Cornell, Boris Rankov, and Philip Sabin, eds., The Second Punic War: a reappraisal (London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 1996). Terence Wise and M. Healy, Hannibal’s War with Rome (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002), is a fine source of illustrations.
Richard Miles offers an
excellent introduction to Carthage, with special insight into Hannibal’s use of communications and a sober discussion of child sacrifice, in Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization (London: Allen Lane, 2010). A gorgeous collection of photos of art objects and archaeological finds from Carthage and the Carthaginian empire can be found in Hannibal ad Portas: Macht und Reichtum Karthagos/herausgegeben von Badesischen Landesmuseum Karlsruhe (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2004); the text of this museum catalog is in German.
For an introduction to Rome in the era of the Second Punic War, see Michael H. Crawford, The Roman Republic, second edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). See also H. H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World from 753 to 146 B.C. (London: Methuen & Co, 1970).
For the Roman army, see below under “Caesar.”
On the man who beat Hannibal, see B. H. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus, Greater than Napoleon (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004, originally published 1926) and H. H. Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970).
On the origins of the Second Punic War, Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), offers a chapter of astute and concise analysis. For a detailed account, see Dexter Hoyos, Unplanned Wars: The Origins of the First and Second Punic Wars (Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998). On Polybius and Hannibal’s decision to go to war against Rome, see A. M. Eckstein, “Hannibal at New Carthage: Polybius 3.15 and the Power of Irrationality,” Classical Philology 84.1 (1989): 1–15.
Some other valuable studies of topics in the Second Punic War include: On Hannibal and Rome’s Italian allies, see Michael P. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On Fabius’s strategy, P. Erdkamp, “Polybius, Livy, and the Fabian Strategy,” Ancient Society 23 (1992): 127–47. On Hannibal and religion, see T. W. Africa, “The One-Eyed Man against Rome,” Historia 19.5 (1970): 528–38; B. Corinne, “Melqart,” in Lindsay Jones, editor in chief, The Encyclopedia of Religion (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), vol. 9: 5,846–849.
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