Part of the 'Eminent Lives' series, this concise, vivid biography of a major world empire-builder, by one of our leading historians.
In this concise portrait of the great empire builder of the ancient world, Norman Cantor focuses on Alexander's personal life as well as his military conquests. Relying on four biographies of Alexander's contemporaries, combined with modern psychiatric and cultural studies, Cantor describes Alexander's relations with his patients, his Oedipal complex and his bisexuality.
At the centre of the book are Alexander's attempts to bridge the East and West, the Greek and Persian worlds, especially his using Achilles, the hero of the Trojan War, as his model. Finally, Cantor explores Alexander's view of himself in relation to the pagan gods of Greece and Egypt.
The result is a psychological and cultural study of a great figure of the ancient world whose often puzzling personality had so much to do with his career.
