ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DIVINE KILLER?

Alexander the Great had no low opinion of himself. That’s not surprising, given that the fourth-century BC ruler had conquered most of the known world before he reached the age of 30. Nevertheless, he appears to have been well aware of the value of self-promotion. Besides his armies of soldiers he retained a small army of writers and artists, employed to project the image of himself that he wanted to disseminate to the world at large.

Hardly anything of those original writings survives today, unfortunately – though we do have the works of ancient Greek and Roman historians and biographers such as Curtius Rufus, Arrian and Plutarch who themselves had access to the lost texts by Ptolemy, Aristoboulus, Nearchus and others. On the other hand, large numbers of portrait coins and medallions and sculptures do survive intact, some contemporary or near-contemporary, so we have a very good idea of the impression Alexander wished to create for his many hundreds of thousands of subjects scattered over an empire stretching from what is today