Dear Stanley,

You ask the following: Was Alexander of Macedonia truly great or just an ungrateful son with a manipulative mother, with a tendency towards hubris?

I cannot answer directly to your question. However, it is alleged that Alexander the Greak, king of Macedonia, once asked his tutor, the Greek geometer Menaechmus, to teach him a shorcut to master of geometry. "Oh King! -- Menachemus replied -- To travel through your country there are royal roads and roads for ordinary people. To master of geometry there is only one road, and this (difficult) road is the same for all". Alexander's desire of achieving demanding goals through a shortcut makes us think of, say, a manipulative figure.

I hope that this helps.

Best regards,

Oralndo

I think the question presents two extremes and that the truth lies between them. Certainly Alexander's family, background, training, and circumstances were instrumental to his successes. However, Alexander still had to achieve those successes, and he could have done otherwise.

I think I'm most interested in the truth of past events, whether or not Alexander was the golden boy of legend or in fact just another noble in the right place at the right time. He was a bad son, but families were perhaps different then.

It is highly likely that Philip would have achieved as much as Alexander-is in fact the latter's career part of myth-construction from Achilles, Hercules onwards-framed within journeying and conquest.

It starts with Sargon the Great, Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, etc. Each era seems to have own great. In each case, opportunity and timing play critical roles in elevating a leader to a higher stature than sometimes is deserved. In the case of Alexander, he certainly achieved significant success against a weak Persian king, walked through Babylon without a fight, encountered some resistance in Lebanon and more difficulty in India where he was severely injured. In my opinion, he died too young to achieve greatness beyond his military conquests. Contrast Alexander to Ashurbanipal who was a noted patron of literature and the arts. Yet he conquered the know power of his time including empires in Egypt, Iran, Turkey. His library was the first in the world and preserved much of what we know about the Sumerian.