The Death of Alexander the Great: What - or - Who Really Killed the Young Conqueror of the Known World?

Rating:
Summary: fiction stranger than fact
Review: Thought provoking. Green's iconoclastic 1973 work set out to show us Alexander's (A.) darker side, Doherty finishes it. Doherty has set out his stall to prove A. was assassinated and nothing it is going to get in the way. It's a well researched work, a fusion of scholarly argument and awkward conclusions, oversimplification and scurrilous use of sources- dismissing them as unreliable at times or quoting them verbatim when it suits his case. His denigration of Plutarch almost seems personal. The use of terms such as 'its is obvious' or `the conclusion is inevitable' try to lure us into easy conclusions against all evidence which can perhaps be dismissed as author enthusiasm. There plenty of hyperbole and there are some inaccuracies. Antigonus for example is referred to as an `eye-witness' present at the time of Alexander's. He has Alexander reciting from Euripides `Andromache' (much quoted from by Doherty) at the ill-fated `comus' when it should have been `Andromeda'. The book ultimately decides it's Ptolemy, helped by the fact that the forged `journal `mentions the cult of Serapis started by Ptolemy. Hardly conclusive. From there on in its downhill for Ptolemy. This is a clever book, if you let yourself be taken. What it does provide is good insight into source problems if you ignore Doherty's `Ephippus- like' propaganda. What is perplexing is that this is extremely well researched with all the right source references and yet heads off on uncomfortable conclusions Yet for all that it remains a thought provoking read. It provides clear insights into the political intrigues and power-plays of the time. But as a work definitively attempting to pinpoint an assassin, it doesn't work. But an essential read for any Alexander scholar.