Cities of Alexander the Great

Book excerpt: The cities founded by Alexander the Great were an essential part of his overall achievement. The problems concerning them, however, are many - and some incapable of solution. This book attempts to unravel the tradition, seeking to demonstrate that it originated in a tendentious political pamphlet of the third century BC, written in Ptolemaic Alexandria in the context of the development of the earliest version of the Alexander-Romance. The author explores the ramifications of this reconstruction from a lost Greek original through to the Persian and Arab traditions, and concludes that the number of cities commonly claimed to have been founded by Alexander needs to be considerably reduced. The book also includes some more general considerations regarding Alexander's policies and intentions.