“Thank God our parents aren’t alive to see this,” we murmur every day.
Covid-19 cases are on the rise in Texas, Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina, with an increase in hospitalizations; a Trump rally at an indoor venue in Tulsa, Oklahoma, could be a health risk that spreads the virus; a black man was found hanging from a tree in California; a black man who had fallen asleep inebriated in a Wendy’s drive-thru in Atlanta ran from the cops and was shot and killed in the parking lot; protesters burned the Wendy’s to the ground…
It goes on and on.
I read a lot of fiction, but at the moment I am escaping from the present through biography. I am in the midst of reading a fascinating biography by Anthony Everitt, Alexander the Great: His Life and Mysterious Death. Everitt is a brilliant historian who has written eminently readable biographies of Cicero and Augustus. Here, he selects some of the most riveting details of Alexander’s life in elegant prose so clear and entertaining that it rivals the Alexander trilogy of historical novels by Mary Renault.
He portrays Alexander as a shrewd politician and cold-blooded warrior who is equally intent on shaping his legend and expanding his empire. After conquering Thebes, Alexander can’t decide what penalties the survivors should pay. He hands it over to a council, who clearly know and carry out Alexander’s wishes.
Everitt writes,
WHAT WAS TO BE done with Thebes, that ancient city of legend and history? This was where Oedipus had ruled, killed his father, married his mother, and blinded himself in expiation. Here too the man-woman seer, Tiresias, had prophesied. Alexander was in two minds, or possibly three. At heart, he favored a severe penalty. This would deter the Greeks from rising again during his absence in Persia and so support the overriding strategic aim which he had also pursued in Thrace….
However, the council finally recommended that the king and hegemon take no more lives, but sell the entire population on the slave market and raze the city. Alexander will have recalled that it was the same penalty his father had imposed on the thriving city of Olynthus in 348. He accepted the judgment and put it into effect. It would be as if Thebes had never existed.
Horrifying! The council left the famous poet Pindar untouched, though.
Everitt explores the different versions of Alexander’s life in ancient history. And as a fan of Homer’s Iliad, I am fascinated that Alexander also loved Homer and identified himself as the new Achilles. He visited Troy (then a dilapidated tourist village) to create and solidify his connection to shining Achilles.
I do love Everitt’s writing: imaginative, fascianting, learned, and fast-paced.