Hello, Professor Cartledge. First off, can you define myth? And can we start with Alexander's birth? Did Olympias believe she had an affair with Zeus that produced Alexander?
A myth is a traditional (originally oral) tale with partial reference to something of broad social-cultural significance usually involving gods or other supernatural agencies. As for Alexander's birth, we, of course, are reliant on others to relay what may have been Olympias' own view of the matter, whether publicly or privately expressed. It seems that she was the kind of person to believe in the literal truth of what others might consider at most metaphorical. I can well believe that she told Alexander privately that his real father was not Philip but Zeus. (A similar sort of tale found its way into the much later - that Alexander's father was 'really' Nectanebos, the last pharaoh of Egypt.) Such myths had an important - politically legitimating - function, quite apart from their
