Making Alexander ‘Great’ (or not so great) in Hammond’s and Bosworth’s scholarly biographies

Abstract

I explore how the different Alexanders have been created in the modern <br/>academic field and what we can learn from it. The focus of this paper is on how scholars produce their narratives by using the ancient source material. As my primary material for this study, I have chosen two famous critical scholarly biographies: Hammond’s Alexander the Great: King, Commander and Statesman and Bosworth’s Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great. We can see how the two views; benign and cynical views are constructed in scholarly narratives. The narratives on Alexander’s action are promoting certain moralistic views of imperialism and war.