Alexander, the brilliant young Macedonian king remembered as “the Great,” has frequently been compared to the mythic Greek hero Achilles. Both were beloved by their soldiers and almost invincible. But tellings of Alexander’s life have resembled the story of another legendary figure, Icarus, in that his martial skill, good luck and ambition are said to have driven him too far.
In trying to reach the end of the world as he knew it, Alexander flew too close to the sun. The final years of Alexander’s life have often been used by historians to impart any number of moralizing lessons often rooted in anti-Asian racism. Even in his lifetime, Alexander faced criticism that his campaign into Asia corrupted him.
As he conquered further lands, the story goes, he became megalomaniacal: unnecessarily violent, easily offended and preoccupied with conquest. In this version of the narrative, Alexander’s offenses piled up to the point that some historians insisted he couldn’t have died of natural causes and must have been assassinated. Which is why Rachel Kousser’s new biography, “Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great,” is a breath of fresh air on its subject.
Kousser neatly sums up the myth of Alexander’s “trajectory from upstanding Macedonian monarch to corrupt, violent Oriental despot” and then spends a few hundred pages refuting it. Instead of taking on his entire life — a daunting prospect given that ancient biographi.
