Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

298 NOTES TO PAGES 198–201
39. On Alexander’s religion in the Life of Alexander, see Asirvatham
2001 and below.
40. Carney (2006: 132–35) points out how Olympias’ harsh treatment
in the Life of Alexander has over-infl uenced generations of scholars who
have ignored the more positive image of her found in the Moralia.
41. According to Pelling 2002: 303–05, Plutarch’s level of interest in
Alexander’s childhood is unusual in ancient biography. We often see an
emphasis on the education of a statesman, but less often the behavior that
will prefi gure adult behavior. The Life of Alexander has both. The infl uence
may be from Plutarch’s sources: there seems to have been at least
one work contemporary with Alexander on his childhood, modeled on
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. But I would argue that Plutarch’s use of these
stories of Alexander that foreshadow his imperial accomplishments owes
as much to the present as to the past.
42. While Alexander is not called a “philosopher” in the Life as in De
Alexandri Fortuna aut Virtute, he is presented throughout the biography
as having a philosophical attitude toward not only the day-to-day temptations
of alcohol and sleep, but also the trappings of conquest.
43. This idea is supported by Plutarch more or less until Alexander’s
murder of Clitus and the proskynēsis episode with Callisthenes, when the
more “tragic” elements of Alexander’s outsized personality begin to take
permanent hold. See Asirvatham 2001: 108–24.
44. See Asirvatham 2001, 112–16.
45. Philip is not always denigrated by Plutarch, who seems to take a
page from Polybius when he emphasizes the king’s own philanthrōpia in
Dem. 23.4.
46. The language of Alexander’s humanitas, incidentally, provides an
interesting contrast with that of Polybius—who had labeled Philip, and
not Alexander, as a model of praotēs, megalopsuchia, epieikeia, and
philanthrōpia (“mildness,” “generosity,” “gentleness,” and “humaneness”)
(5.10.1). In stark contrast to Second Sophistic authors, however,
Polybius doubted the ability of paideia to affect philanthrōpia (Bauman
2000: 5, 11)—the root, as it were, of Second Sophistic authors’ wishful
thinking about Rome.
47. His hybridity is suggested by Lucian ( Alex. 2), who calls him “the
disciple of Epictetus, a Roman of the highest distinction, and a life-long
devotee of letters.”
48. Anab. 1.12. See Moles 1985 and Marincola 1989 for discussion.
49. Apparent in the long list of the military dispositions he gives in
Anab. 3.11.8–12.5, the most detailed description of the Macedonian
army in Arrian’s corpus, and “rightly taken as one of the principal bases
for modern reconstruction” for the Macedonian forces (Bosworth 1980–
95: i, 300).