Alexander the Great

Robin Lane Fox follows Alexander from his Macedonian upbringing and accession to the destruction of the Persian Empire and the long campaigns that carried his army as far as India. The military story is here in full, but so is the harder question of the man behind it: his ambitions, personality and place within the Greek, Macedonian and Persian worlds of the fourth century BCE.

The surviving evidence leaves room for uncertainty, and Lane Fox does not treat Alexander’s later legend as simple biography. Instead, he sets the celebrated victories alongside the political pressures and cultural encounters that shaped the campaign. His biography remains attentive to both the achievements that made Alexander famous and the difficulties of reconstructing him from ancient sources.