• Complain

F. S. Naiden - Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great

Here you can read online F. S. Naiden - Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2018, publisher: Oxford University Press, genre: History. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

F. S. Naiden Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great
  • Book:
    Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Oxford University Press
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2018
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Whatever we may think of Alexander--whether Great or only lucky, a civilizer or a sociopath--most people do not regard him as a religious leader. And yet religion permeated all aspects of his career. When he used religion astutely, he and his army prospered. In Egypt, he performed the ceremonies needed to be pharaoh, and thus became a god as well as a priest. Babylon surrendered to him partly because he agreed to become a sacred king. When Alexander disregarded religion, he and his army suffered. In Iran, for instance, where he refused to be crowned and even destroyed a shrine, resistance against him mounted. In India, he killed Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus by the hundreds of thousands until his officers, men he regarded as religious companians, rebelled against him and forced him to abandon his campaign of conquest. Although he never fully recovered from this last disappointment, he continued to perform his priestly duties in the rest of his empire. As far as we know, the last time he rose from his bed was to perform a sacrifice.
Ancient writers knew little about Near Eastern religions, no doubt due to the difficulty of travel to Babylon, India, and the interior of Egypt. Yet details of these exotic religions can be found in other ancient sources, including Greek, and in the last thirty years, knowledge of Alexanders time in the Near East has increased. Egyptologists and Assyriologists have written the first thorough accounts of Alexanders religious doings in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Recent archaeological work has also allowed scholars to uncover new aspects of Macedonian religious policy.Soldier, Priest, and God, the first religious biography of Alexander, incorporates this recent scholarship to provide a vivid and unique portrait of a remarkable leader.

F. S. Naiden: author's other books


Who wrote Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
Soldier Priest and God A Life of Alexander the Great - image 1
Soldier, Priest, and God

Soldier Priest and God A Life of Alexander the Great - image 2

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Naiden, F. S., author.

Title: Soldier, priest, and god : a life of Alexander the Great / F.S. Naiden.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018011264 (print) | LCCN 2018036455 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190875350 (updf) | ISBN 9780190875367 (epub) | ISBN 9780190875343 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Alexander, the Great, 356 B.C.323 B.C.Religion. | GreeceKings and rulersBiography. | GeneralsGreeceBiography. | Middle EastReligion. | LCGFT: Biographies. Classification: LCC DF234.2 (ebook) | LCC DF234.2 .N35 2019 (print) | DDC 938/.04092 [B]dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011264

Endpapers: A Topographical View of the Asian Expedition, 334323 BC. Ancient World Mapping Center.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

;

From a Greek Folktale

Contents

this book owes much to audiences at New York Universitys Institute for the Ancient World, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Reading, Tulane University, Washington and Lee University, and Camp Schwab, United States Marines, Okinawa, who all heard lectures of mine on Alexander. I also thank audiences at the conventions of the Association of Ancient Historians, the Society for Classical Studies, and the Society for Military History, and I gratefully thank Stefan Vranka and Oxford University Press for shepherding this book to publication. For work on the maps thanks go to the Ancient World Mapping Center, especially director Richard Talbert, and to the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, which defrayed the cost.

Special thanks for comments, corrections, or suggestions go to Eugene Borza, Andrew George, Peter Green, Waldemar Heckel, Julith Jedamus, Joseph Manning, Francesca Rochberg, Robartus Van der Spek, Andrew Stewart, Richard Stoneman, Dorothy Thompson, Christopher Tuplin, and Everett Wheeler. I cannot adequately thank Ann Loftin, who copyedited most of the manuscript, except to say to her, as I would to each reader I have named, that the errors are mine and the felicities yours, insofar as they are not treasures deposited by centuries of tradition.

Soldier, Priest, and God

in 336 bc , the twenty-year-old Alexander succeeded his father, Philip, as king of the Macedonians, a rural Balkan people. Within a decade or so, a tale spread that Zeus and not Philip was his father. This tale was no more improbable than what happened in the meantime. Alexander and his army had overthrown the Persian Empire, which stretched from Asia Minor to India by way of Egypt. Bigger things have happened, such as the spread of Christianity and Islam, but more slowly. It took several centuries for Jesuss followers to spread his message across the Roman Empire, and followers of the Prophet Muhammad fought for nearly 200 years to spread Islam from Arabia to Spain and Central Asia.

Whatever we may think of Alexanderwhether great or only lucky, a civilizer or a sociopathwe do not regard him as a religious leader. We do not expect that much religion from a military commander. Before deciding when to cross the English Channel in 1944, General Eisenhower consulted meteorologists, not diviners. He encouraged his men with prayerful words, but he accepted enemy surrenders without ceremony and assigned the burial of the dead to chaplains. Alexander depended on diviners scrutinizing sheep livers to learn when to cross the Hellespont and the Indus. Along with prayerful words, Alexander made a display of hacking sacrificial animals to death. When enemies surrendered to him, he often obliged them to perform a ritual of supplication. Rather than assign the dead to chaplains, Alexander conducted funerals himself. Every dead comrade could turn into a friendly or unfriendly ghost, a being to be pleased or placated.

Religion was much more than these rituals. Temples were also treasuries, so religion affected war finance. Many rituals were very public events, so religion affected diplomacy and the administration of conquered territory. Religion provided legitimacy, and so it affected the solidarity felt among soldiers and the loyalty of subjects.

Religion dominated warfare because gods dominated everything. The Indus River was a god, and Zeus controlled the weather. Zeus also watched over suppliants, and he blessed a special religious fraternity, called the cult of the companions, to which Alexander and his subordinates belonged. Alexander claimed Heracles and Zeus as ancestors. In this sort of world, atheism was virtually impossible, and religious freedom was a risk no community would take. If the gods abandoned a community, an eclipse might pluck the sun or moon out of the sky, a hostile river might leap out of its bed, or an earthquake pitch a city into the sea.

All ancient commanders played religious parts, but Alexander played the most. He uttered or inspired the most prayers and made the most sacrifices, and he did so in the most places, languages, and rituals. We may think of him as the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the head of the Church of England, all in one.

Piety did not make Alexander overly scrupulous. As a priest, he mostly observed festival days on which fighting was forbidden, but he sometimes found religious reasons to ignore festival days and fight anyway. Told by a seer to defeat the enemy by the end of the month, he lengthened the month. Told not to sacrifice in a temple, he besieged the city where the temple stood, and persevered until he captured the temple and made the sacrifice, even thoughor just becausethe city was Tyre, the Manhattan of the ancient world.

When Alexander used religion astutely, he and his army prospered. At the start of his reign in Macedon he rallied his late fathers companions, and in neighboring Greece he gained kudos by refurbishing temples and sponsoring festivals. In Egypt he performed the ceremonies needed to be pharaoh and thus became a god as well as a priest. Babylon surrendered to him partly because he agreed to become a sacred king of another kind. All over the Levant, he demoralized enemies and pacified subjects by worshipping as the locals did.

When Alexander neglected or mismanaged religion, he and his army suffered. The farther he got from the Mediterranean, where he knew some of the gods and had a feel for others, the less skill he displayed, and the more men he killed or lost. In Iran, where he refused to be crowned and even destroyed a shrine, resistance against him mounted. In India, the Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus baffled him, and he killed them by the hundreds of thousands. Then his officers, men he regarded as companions of a religious kind, rebelled against him and forced him to abandon his campaign of conquest.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great»

Look at similar books to Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great»

Discussion, reviews of the book Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.