The Visit to Troy

Alexander’s attitude to religion
The visit to Troy

The visit to Troy
• Troy had an important part in Alexander’s life:
- Troy had been destroyed by allied Greek
forces in the Trojan War 900 years before
- The story of the war, written by Homer in The
Illiad were considered historical fact
- Alexander was proud of the achievements of
those early Greeks
- Alexander identified with Achilles as an
ancestor

Alexander’s actions at Troy
• Read Arrian Pg 66 – 67 and note down
Alexander’s actions at Troy
• What does this tell us about Alexander’s attitude
to religion?

Why did Alexander visit Troy?
• He was religious & superstitious, so would
have wanted to appease his ancestors
and the gods
• He wanted to visit the place he had heard
so much about in Homer’s epics
• He wanted to visit the place where his
ancestor, Achilles, had fought so bravely
- Alexander was very competitive & often
imitated & tried to better great heroes of
the past. He saw Achilles as a model, and
himself as a rival of Achilles.

Alexander knew the propaganda
• He saw himself as the
modern day Achilles
- both were heroes
value of such a visit
- both were great warriors
- he saw Hephaestion &
himself as Achilles &
Patroclus
• He wanted to remind his
soldiers of the success of
their ancestors & inspire
them to do as well.

Alexander’s use of Propaganda
• His visit to Troy recalled the great expedition of the
combined Greek forces against Troy
- Emphasised the pan-Hellenic nature of this expedition
To show this war was a war of Greeks against barbarians
- In revenge for the burning of Greek temples in the
Persian invasion of 480 BC

Summing up
• What does this tell us about
Alexander?
- he understood the value
of propaganda
- he had a religious &
superstitious nature
- he had an unending
desire to associate himself
with his ancestor, on his
mother’s side, Achilles