Wheatley, Pat and Elizabeth Baynham. 2015. East and West in the World Empire of Alexander: Essays in Honour of Brian Bosworth. Oxford University Press.
The essays in this volume – written by twenty international scholars – are dedicated to Professor Brian Bosworth who has, in over forty-five years, produced arguably the most influential corpus of historical and historiographical research by one scholar. Professor Bosworth’s name is often synonymous with scholarship on Alexander the Great, but his expertise also spreads far wider, as the scope of these essays demonstrates. The collection’s coverage ranges from Egyptian and Homeric parallels, through Roman historiography, to Byzantine coinage. However, the life of Alexander provides the volume’s central theme, and among the topics explored are the conqueror’s resonance with mythological figures such as Achilles and Heracles, his divine pretensions and military display, and his motives for arresting his expedition at the River Hyphasis in India. Some of Alexander’s political acts are also scrutinized, as are the identities of those supposedly present in the last symposium where, according to some sources, the fatal poison was administered to the king. Part of the collection focuses on Alexander’s legacy, with seven essays examining the Successors, especially Craterus, and Ptolemy, and Alexander’s Ill-fated surviving dynasty, including Olympias, Eurydice, and Philip III Arrhidaeus. Readership: Scholars and students interested in the life of Alexander the Great, and historiography, ancient history and civilizations, and mythology more generally.
ToC:
- Judith Maitland: “MHNIN AEIΔE ΘAE: Alexander the Great and the Anger of Achilles”
- Waldemar Heckel: “Alexander, Achilles, and Heracles: Between Myth and History”
- Lara O’Sullivan: “Callisthenes and Alexander the Invincible God”
- Elizabeth Baynham: “Why the Devil wears Prada: The Politics of Display in Military Kit in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC”
- Edward M. Anson: “Alexander at the Beas”
- David Whitehead: “Alexander the Great and the Mechanici”
- Ian Worthington: “From East to West: Alexander and the Exiles Decree”
- Norman G. Ashton: “Craterus Revisited”
- Daniel Ogden: “Nectanebo’s Seduction of Olympias and Benign Anguiform Deities of the Ancient Greek World”
- Timothy Howe: “Cleopatra-Eurydice, Olympias, and a ‘Weak’ Alexander”
- Elizabeth D. Carney: “Dynastic Loyalty and Dynastic Collapse in Macedonia”
- Robin Lane Fox: “King Ptolemy: Centre and Periphery”
- Ken Sheedy and Boyo Ockinga: “The Crowned Ram’s Head on Coins of Alexander the Great and the Rule of Ptolemy as Satrap of Egypt”
- Pat Wheatley: “Diadoch Chronography after Philip Arrhidaeus: Old and New Evidence”
- Getzel M. Cohen: “Polis Hellenis”
- David Kennedy: “Thapsacus and Zeugma”
- Jane Bellemore: “Valerius Maximus and His Presentation of Alexander the Great”
- Arthur J. Pomeroy: “Tacitus and the Crises of Empire”
- John R. Melville-Jones: “Legitimizing an Emperor: The Solidus of Alexander III”