Alexander in Amsterdam - Minerva

Greek history
Alexander
the
immortal
A new exhibition at Amsterdam’s Hermitage
Museum looks at the enduring legacy of
Macedonia’s most famous son
Alexander III of Macedonia
(r. 336–323 BC) (Fig 1)
owes his epithet ‘the Great’
to the vast swathe of territory
that he conquered, stretching
from Greece in the west to lands
beyond the River Indus in the east.
This conquest of much of the known
world was achieved in little more than
11 years, following Alexander’s accession
to the throne of Macedonia in 336
BC, aged 20.
The exhibition features treasures
from the Russian State Hermitage collection,
and has been adapted from
an exhibition held in St Petersburg in
2008. It endeavours to provide a picture
of Alexander the man, and the
great cultural and artistic changes that
followed in the wake of his conquest of
the Persian Empire.
The exhibition begins with the myth
of Alexander and his heroic deeds
as depicted in paintings, tapestries
and decorative arts from the 17 th to
the 19 th centuries (Fig 3). The exhibition
then moves on to what is titled
‘Alexander’s Reality’, focusing on his
native land of Macedonia, his teachers,
his heroes and his ideals. To the
20
Greeks, Macedonians were still violent
barbarians living on the edge of the
civilised world. Nevertheless, under
the rule of Philip II (359–336 BC), the
large northerly kingdom had exploded
into military and political importance,
subduing the city-states to the south,
and imposing control over lands lying
west of the Hellespont and south of
the Danube. Macedonians were also
proving the equals of their Greek
neighbours intellectually, and in 343
BC Philip arranged for his son to be
tutored by Aristotle (384–322 BC). The
opportunity for Aristotle was too great
to refuse, not only because Alexander
was described as a quick pupil who was
eager to learn, but also because Philip
had destroyed his native town, Stageira
in Chalcidice, not long before; once
Aristotle agreed to teach Alexander
and his boyhood companions, the
Macedonian king promised to rebuild
the town and free the citizens from
slavery or exile.
The majority of the exhibition is
devoted to the anabasis of Alexander,
the great campaign against the might of
the Achaemenid Empire and the journey
to the East. The military campaign
had been planned by his father just
2
Fig 1. Fine-grained with his dagger under his pillow,
marble portrait of
Alexander which shows
the characteristic
tilted head and
mane-like hair.
A 1
declaring that he esteemed it a perfect
portable treasure of all military virtue
and knowledge’. Once across the
Hellespont, it was therefore Troy that
became the first goal of Alexander.
On reaching the site of the ancient
city, steeped in Homeric myth, where
the hero Achilles had won undying
fame before meeting his long prophesied
early death, Alexander made
1 before his assassination by Pausanias,
one of his bodyguards, at the theatre in
Aegae. Under Alexander the invasion
3
of Persia would develop into an unparalleled
campaign of conquest lasting
more than a decade. Treasures produced
in the far-flung regions of the
vast empire of the Persian King Darius
III are on display in the Amsterdam
Hermitage, from Egypt in the west,
Sogdiana and Bactria in the north, to
India in the east. Visitors can follow
the route of his celebrated journey (Fig
6) on interactive maps and computers.
According to Alexander’s biographer
Plutarch, the young Macedonian
king ‘constantly laid Homer’s Iliad…
st century AD
Roman copy, probably
from Asia Minor, from
a Greek original of
175–150 BC.
Fig 2. The Courage
of Poros, by Bernard
Picart (1673–1733).
The engraving
depicts the Battle
of the Hydaspes,
and Alexander’s hard
won victory against
Poros in 326 BC.
70.6 x 55cm.
Fig 3. Bronze table
clock, featuring a
seated Alexander
reading from a scroll,
with weapons behind
his throne. After an
original timepiece by
Pierre Thomire,
(c. 1830–40). H. 70cm.
Minerva September/October 2010