About this Site

This site contains 1,000 resources about Alexander the Great—from history to the upcoming Hollywood movie Alexander—sorted, described and rated. I've spent five years searching the web for this stuff, so you don't have to.

What can I find here?

First, if you want movie news and reviews, skip right to Oliver Stone's Alexander.

Want more? Start with Web Biographies or Alexander in Brief for biographies long and short. Army and Battles covers Alexander the military commander. Alexander's Character explores Alexander the individual, including sub-sections on Alexander's sexuality, his religious feelings (chiefly, did he think himself a god?), and so forth. His death and (lost) tomb get their own sections. The rich but troublesome Greek and Latin sources get three sections: about the sources, texts on the web and printed translations.

That's just 1/3 of the sections. Check out the left-hand bar for the rest or view the site map.

Feel free to email me at [email protected]. I need all the help I can get keeping this thing up-to-date.

Why does Alexander the Great have 1,000 links?

If you want reliable information about Alexander, you will certainly find many sources here. The primary source and academic sections contains over 300 links, and the general quality of online resources has increased somewhat in the last year or so. That said, the web is often not the best place to learn about history. So then, why this site?

Beyond history, this website attempts to show how Alexander is perceived, used and abused on the web today, and through the web, in culture over time. Alexander looms far above the other classical "greats" as a figure of world culture. Julius Caesar didn't make it into the Book of Daniel or the Koran, but Alexander did. Paintings of Cicero might make a nice magazine article; Alexander's depictions could fill a museum. Demosthenes has, as far as I know, never been made into a Japanese anime, let alone more than one. And did William Shatner ever play Alcibiades? I don't think so.

Alexander's name continues to carry great weight around the world. Greek, Macedonian and Albanian nationalists fight to claim his mantle. Many Indian and Iranian nationalists hate him with equal vigor. Some Christians believe his conquests prepared the world to receive the Gospel. Some Jews believe he worshipped at the temple in Jerusalem. Some Muslims consider him a prophet. Zoroastrians credit him with the destruction of much of their sacred literature. Tiepolo painted his sexual continence. Homosexuals and bisexuals interpret his amours rather differently. Epileptics, left-handers, pederasts, dandruff sufferers... everybody has their claws in him.

There are people who think he's buried in Japan. There are people who think it's Illinois.

It really gets interesting when the Internet brings these different groups together. Through this site you can drop on a group of Baha'is discussing Alexander's sexuality, drawing on the Koran, Shi'ah allegory, Persian nationalism, the novels of Mary Renault, and western academic scholarship.

What about the movie?

Movie Countdown. Alexander opens November 24. I managed to get into a press screening. Read my Review of Alexander. Other early reviews are at Oliver's Stone's Alexander.

11/15/04 — After two years of letting things slide, I've finally gotten around a complete overhaul. About half the entries are new, and a lot's been rewritten. In the coming days I plan to release an updated version of my companion site Images of Alexander.

I've done a lot, but there's more out there. Know of a good site? See an error? Email me at [email protected].

Sincerely,

Tim Spalding
Portland, ME

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