ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Acclaimed biographer Anthony Everitt shows there is still more to learn about this extraordinary figure, whose often tyrranical rule had echoes through history right up to our current moment.

Over two millennia later, Alexander's memory and glamour persist, and his early death at 33 has kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that meant something different to every age: in the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early twentieth century he even came to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time?

Anthony Everitt judges Alexander's life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, who enjoyed the arts and used the poet Homer's great epic, the Iliad, as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over a vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror, who in his short life built the largest empire to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of great cruelty.

As debates continue about the meaning of his life, Alexander's death remains an unsolved mystery. Did he die of natural causes, felled by a fever, or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexander's story that has eluded so many for so long.

Acclaimed historian Anthony Everitt's bestselling books range across the ancient world and its most exciting characters. With Alexander the Great, he returns to a single-subject biography and perhaps his most ambitious subject yet. Everitt is a former visiting professor in the visual and performing arts at Nottingham Trent University, and is the author of Cicero, Augustus, Hadrian, The Rise of Rome, and most recently, The Rise of Athens. He has served as secretary general of the Arts Council for Great Britain.