Michael Wood - In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great

CONTENTS

PART ONE
THE INVASION OF ASIA

PART TWO
SON OF GOD

PART THREE
LORD OF THE WORLD

PART FOUR
THE ROAD TO SAMARKAND

PART FIVE
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

PART SIX
NOSTOI: THE RETURNS

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Epub ISBN 9781473530102

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First published in hardback in 1997
Published in paperback in 2001

This edition published in 2004 by BBC Worldwide Limited

Reprinted in 2009 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing A Random House Group Company

Copyright Michael Wood 1997, 2001, 2004

Michael Wood has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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Roman marble bust of Alexander the Great copied from a Greek statue of 338 BC.

Gold medallion with the head of Alexanders father, Philip, whom Alexander claimed bore him ill will and jealousy.

Onyx cameo portrait of Alexander with his mother Olympias, c. 278 BC. Many believed that the couple were implicated in Philips murder.

Princely pursuits the contemporary Lion Hunt mosaic from the palace at Pella. The young prince on the left may be Alexander; on the right is perhaps Hephaistion, the kings favourite. Theirs was a society where men learned early how to kill.

The Gorgons head at Didyma. Alexander wore this image on his breast to turn enemies into stone. It worked.

The huge temple to Apollo at Didyma. Alexander came here in autumn 334 BC to visit the oracle whose sacred spring, long dried up, promptly burst into life. Like some modern presidents, Alexander was exceptionally skilled at making things happen to suit him. The oracle prophesied that he would become Lord of Asia.

The Sacred Way, south of Miletus, western Turkey. Alexander came this way in autumn 334 BC on his way to Didyma, a visit which strikes us today as a mixture of pilgrimage and press call. As so often with Alexander, the truth probably lies half way between the two.

The Issus battlefield today. In the left foreground is the steep cliff which broke up the advance of Alexanders phalanx; Alexanders cavalry charge came down from the right, on the slope in the middle distance, where a steel mill now stands.

The terror of war. Discovered in Pompeii in 1831, this great mosaic (2.17 metres by 5.12 metres) is a second-century Roman copy of a painting done in Macedonia around 300 BC. Composed of minute stone and glass tesserae, perhaps no work of art has better captured the frenzy and confusion of battle. Darius, in the yellow Persian tiara, seems powerless to halt Alexanders remorseless impetus.

Alexander charges on Bucephalus (detail).

Alexanders Arch at Tyre, perhaps marking the place where Alexanders siege causeway started.

Aerial view of Tyre. Now a peninsula, Tyre was once an island, until it was joined to the mainland by Alexanders causeway.

Siwa Oasis. Surrounded by the Libyan desert, it is easy to see why the Greeks thought this an abode of the gods.

Beloved of Ra, son of Ammon, Alksndrs Alexander, as Pharaoh of Egypt, worships the phallic god Min in his chapel inside the great temple of Amenophis III at Luxor.

Parsa. The magnificent palace of the Persian kings which the Greeks called Persepolis.

The picture shows the apadana, the reception hall where the Persian kings held their annual durbars to receive tribute from half the world.

The Khawak Pass over the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan (3850 metres). Like Alexander, our team had no alternative but to walk, carrying the gear on horses.