ALEXANDER’S ORIENTALISM/POLICY OF CULTURAL FUSION

THE DIVINITY OF ALEXANDER/GOD OR MAN?

Did Alexander think he was a god?

He was descended from Heracles on his father’s side and Achilles on his mother’s and certainly he believed that he was marked out for a special destiny since childhood. There are rumours that Olympias told him he was the son of Zeus and his birth was heralded by a series of bizarre omens but Plutarch tells us that although he behaved as a man convinced of his own divinity among the barbarians he was more humble among the Greeks.

The origin of his divinity seems to have begun in Siwah yet even here Plutarch tells us he first asked the priest if the murderers of his father had all been caught but was told to be more tactful since his father was not mortal. Perhaps for political reasons the priest hailed him as the son of Ammon. Alexander returned to Memphis directly where he was proclaimed Pharaoh after Siwah. All Egyptian pharaohs were living Horuses – the son of Amun, whom the Greeks called Zeus Ammon.

But if he really believed he was a god then why did he not claim it openly?

  • 300 captured suits of Persian armour from Granicus dedicated to Athena’s temple in Athens with inscription, “Alexander, the son of Philip, and the Greeks won these spoils from the barbarians who dwell in Asia.”
  • In his response to Darius 2nd Letter after Issus Alexander accused Darius of “assassinating my father” Philip.
  • Addressing his assembled troops at the Mutiny at Opis he spoke first of my father Philip’s achievements.

Plutarch however informs us that in a letter to the Athenians he told them that Samos had been gifted to them by his supposed father Philip implying his real father was someone or something else; clearly an allusion to Ammon but we also have to remember his speech to his army before Issus where he claimed that Athens was for the time being loyal only through fear. Intimidating Athens was always his policy since Thebes. Perhaps he only ever claimed divinity to those whom he needed to rule, which explains why he once held up his bleeding arm to his companions quoting a line from Homer’s Iliad to prove that blood not ichor ran through his veins.

What did Arrian think?

In his obituary at the end of the Anabasis Arrian clearly doubts his claim to divinity calling it a mere device and likening him to heroic kings (not gods) of myth like Minos, Theseus and Ion who all claimed descent from the gods. He sees this naive claim as not a serious fault and puts it down to his ambition and the fact that he died whilst still a young man. Taking Alexander’s divinity as a matter of policy like his donning of Persian dress he criticises Cleitus for publically opposing his king and Callisthenes for speaking out of turn to him.

What did Plutarch say

Plutarch, a philosopher, is more ambiguous about his true opinion. He presents Alexander as a demi-god from the beginning of his biography relating how Apollo’s oracle at Delphi bade his father to worship Zeus Ammon above all other gods and warned him he was fated to lose the eye with which he spied the god copulating with his wife in the form of a snake; an event that did happen and seems to have caused the marriage breakdown.

The Philosophical approach

Plutarch however also goes on to say that in Egypt he listened to the lectures of the philosopher Psammon who claimed all men as being the son of God and Alexander replied that to his mind that although all were children of God, God drew a special number to him and claimed them as his own. This self-importance seems to hint at Plutarch’s real opinion, which is actually a compromise between divinity and Arrian’s idea of a political device. We are all God’s children, but some of us are more conscious of it than others and to these men greatness belongs.

What do you think?

I agree with Arrian. I don’t think Alexander was a god although he grew to depend more and more on alcohol in India and surrounded himself with cronies only too willing to flatter him and since Plutarch tells us that when he drank he took to boasting he seems to me to have had an addictive personality and he also seems quite narcissistic to me. He could not stand a rival of any sort. He hated Philotas because he was far too generous with his money. Parmenio even warned his son to appear less great. He had Parrmenio killed because he was far too influential among the old guard to be left alive once his eldest son had been executed. He hunted Darius and Bessus and Spitamenes and Porus because they claimed they were better kings than he. He even strove against nature itself in crossing Gedrosia and the gods in trying to go farther east than Heracles and Dionysus. Such a man once unhinged by drink might well have begun to believe his own lies. Perhaps this explains his near suicide at Mallia, but like Arrian I do not think it likely that he truly believed, when sober, that he was divine. It was merely a way of keeping the barbarians who were used to seeing their kings as demi-gods obedient to his takeover and this explains why he never directly enforced proskynesis on his men once Callisthenes voiced the objections of his countrymen.

ALEXANDER’S ALCOHOLISM?

ALEXANDER’S ATTITUDE TO WOMEN