Otago University, New Zealand hosted a third conference focused on Alexander the Great and attended by scholars from Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the United States. The international flavor is reflected in the fine collection of seventeen essays assembled in this volume. Alexander & His Successors: Essays From the Antipodes is the third book in the Regina series, which commenced with Crossroads of History: The Age of Alexander (2003), and was followed in turn by a second volume, Alexander’s Empire: Formulation to Decay (2007).

Over a span of three decades, E. Badian’s 1976 edited collection has proven seminal, and its essays are still regularly cited; likewise after nearly a decade, the citation index of Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction is demonstrating its impact. The Regina volumes over time will also show a comparable significance. There is in these three volumes a continuity of theme, at the same time as originality, liveliness and evolution. Old problems are explored and new things can be said of them; different perspectives—such as those of other cultures—provide fresh understanding, and sometimes the literary priorities of an ancient author can cast light on an issue as complex as chronology.

As with the other volumes, although Alexander himself offers a kind of nexus, the essays in this volume explore a diverse range of themes around his reign, and, as implied in the word ‘Successors’, beyond Alexander. Of course ‘Successors’ automatically evokes the Diadochoi, and there are scholars in this volume who explore historical issues concerning several of Alexander’s marshals who established dynastic kingdoms. But ‘Successors’ can also have another application—meaning, more broadly, ‘responses to Alexander’. Johann Gustav Droysen, a titanic figure in nineteenth century German scholarship, elaborated an idea first expressed in Plutarch’s Moralia, and not only created the myth of Alexander as the great reconciler of East and West, but also promoted the idea of Hellenismus, or the blending of Hellenic culture with the religious forms of eastern civilizations. For Droysen Alexander was not merely a conqueror, but the proponent of a unified culture world-wide. This attractive—if not insidious—view has had an extraordinary effect that has had more impact in shaping modern approaches to Alexander than anything else; in this instance, reception of Alexander shaped ideology, rather than history.

In Alexander studies, the Siwah fountain still bubbles up from the earth.

From the Introduction

• Introduction
       Elizabeth Baynham
• Johann Gustav Droysen, Alexander the Great and the Creation of the Hellenestic Age
       Brian Bosworth
• Source-Critical Reflections on Cleitarchus’ Work
       Victor Parker
• Jeder Hat Alexander-Bild, Das Er Verdient:
  The Changing Perceptions of Alexander in Ancient Historiography
       Boris Dreyer
• Historical Method and a Chronological Problem in Diodorus, Book 18
       John Walsh
• Philip II and the Creation of the Macedonian Pezhetairoi
       Edward M. Anson
• The Asthetairoi: A Closer Look
       Waldemar Heckel
• Macedonians, Heroes and Athenian Burial Laws
       Lara O’Sullivan
• Alexander’s Snake Sire
       Daniel Ogden
• The Divinity of Alexander in Egypt: A Reassessment
       Andrew Collins
• Omens of the Death of Alexander the Great
       Paul McKechnie
• The Death of Alexander the Great: Reconsidering Poison
       Leo Schep
• The Decadence of the Thessalians:
  A Topos in the Greek Intellectual Tradition From Critas to the Time of Alexander
       Frances Pownall
• Cassander’s Wife and Heirs
       Franca Landucci Gattinoni
• Some Remarks On the Funerals of the Kings: From Philip II to the Diadochi
       Víctor Alonso
• The ‘Otago Alexander’
       Robert Hannah
• (Re)Making Demosthenes: Demochares and Demetrius of Phalerum on Demosthenes
       Craig Cooper
• The Besieger in Syria, 314-312 BC: Historiographic and Chronological Notes
       Pat Wheatley
• Bibliography

Publication Release Date: 15 May 2009

396 Pages (PB)                                                $24.95