{"id":6742,"date":"2011-06-18T19:06:32","date_gmt":"2011-06-18T18:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=6742"},"modified":"2011-06-18T19:06:32","modified_gmt":"2011-06-18T18:06:32","slug":"book-review-after-alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2011\/06\/18\/book-review-after-alexander\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: After Alexander"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Romm, Ghost on the throne: The death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire<\/em>, Random House (2011). 368p. $28.95. ISBN: 978-0-307-27164-8.<\/p>\n

The story of how Alexander of Macedon inherited the army that had conquered Greece and used it to conquer the world is known to us all.\u00a0 Much less well known is what happened when, unexpectedly, Alexander died in Babylon in June 323 BC.\u00a0 He left, as heirs, an unborn child and a half-wit brother, and a group of generals in command of his army.\u00a0 As might be expected, these generals fell out among themselves, murdered each other, fought over the spoils and, as the memory of their king receded, murdered his heirs and made themselves into kings.\u00a0 The Successor kingdoms, of the Seleucids, Ptolemies, and Antigonids, define the Hellenistic era.<\/p>\n

James Romm has chosen to tell the story of how Alexander died, and how his generals fought and squabbled, down to the extinction of the Macedonian Royal family.\u00a0 This he does with verve and imagination.\u00a0 No-one could fault the enthusiasm with which he tells the story, and it should appeal to the general reader.\u00a0 He also breaks up the narrative of the plotting by interleaving material from the archaeological discoveries at Verginia (ancient Aegae) in Macedonia, where, possibly, the splendid burials are actually those of Philip Arridhaeus and the child Alexander IV.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The narrative is well plotted, and switches between one group and another are well-signalled and organised.\u00a0 It would have been very easy to confuse the reader; but this is deftly avoided.\u00a0 The action in Athens, and the downfall of Phocion and the attempts by the Athenians to regain their liberty are vividly depicted.<\/p>\n

Each chapter has a respectable number of footnotes, gathered at the end.\u00a0 Unfortunately\u00a0an error in the proof omitted the numerals from the text, making it difficult for me to see how well distributed these were.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An appendix gives the primary sources, and wisely adds links to online versions on sites such as Lacus Curtius and my own.\u00a0 I learned from this, indeed, that Photius’ summary of Arrian’s Events after Alexander<\/em> is online, which I had not known.\u00a0 Earlier in the book, indeed, I learned that\u00a0a leaf from the full version is extant in a palimpsest.\u00a0 The book does not shy away from snippets like this, and is all the better for it.<\/p>\n

The author discusses his approach to the historical record in the preface.\u00a0 Basically he tells the story straight, just as they tell it, without invention, fiction, or needless imagination.\u00a0 This is the right approach to take, and the discussion of the issues in the preface is itself a useful education for the sort of reader who will read this.\u00a0 The bibliography at the end is well chosen to assist that same reader.\u00a0 It is a book, indeed, that I would have found most interesting in my\u00a0mid teens, when I was reading books by Leonard Cottrell, or Narrow Pass, Black Mountain<\/em>.\u00a0 It gives ordinary people access to history.\u00a0 It will, undoubtedly, recruit young people to become scholars of the Hellenistic period.<\/p>\n

The only problem that I foresee, though, is that, in a way, the story is a depressing tale.\u00a0 There is no happy ending to all this.\u00a0 At the end of it all, Alexander’s family are all dead, and most perish miserably.\u00a0 This is not the fault of the author, of course, but it makes for less than cheering reading at the end of a busy day at work, or on a packed commuter train.\u00a0 And that is the audience to which this book, surely, is directed.\u00a0 I don’t\u00a0feel drawn to\u00a0read it again, for instance.\u00a0 I reached the end and felt sad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The typesetting is professional, although the proof had various errors of formatting in it.\u00a0 The maps and illustrations are good, well-drawn, and not distracting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cover, on the other hand, is an unappealing piece of work.\u00a0\u00a0The tired, stale old clich\u00e9 of some ancient artefact on a coloured background — just like Narrow Pass, Black Mountain<\/em>, of 40 years ago — is not even as good as that, for the colour is muddied and off-putting.\u00a0 I am amazed that Random House would put a book out with that cover.\u00a0 Try again, chaps.\u00a0 This is a book about people and human interest.\u00a0 Commission someone to paint a picture of a bunch of Greeks in armour in bright colours before the walls of Babylon, and let the book sparkle on the shelf.\u00a0 This is a period of history that took place in bright sunlight — let the cover reflect it.<\/p>\n

All in all, this is an excellent piece of work.\u00a0 The scholarship is sound but not intrusive, and the story rattles along.\u00a0 Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Romm, Ghost on the throne: The death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire, Random House (2011). 368p. $28.95. ISBN: 978-0-307-27164-8. The story of how Alexander of Macedon inherited the army that had conquered Greece and used it to conquer the world is known to us all.\u00a0 Much less well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[144,322],"class_list":["post-6742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-alexanders-tomb","tag-book-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}