Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great

Alexander is one of the two principals in most versions of the Diogenes and Alexander anecdote.

Cities

Around twenty towns or outposts were founded by Alexander the Great.^[5] Some of the main cities are:

• Alexandria, Egypt
• Alexandria Ariana, Afghanistan
• Alexandria in the Caucasus, Afghanistan
• Alexandria on the Oxus, Afghanistan
• Alexandria Arachosians, Afghanistan
• Alexandria on the Indus, Pakistan
• Alexandria Bucephalous, Pakistan
• Alexandria Eschate, "The furthest", Tajikistan
• Charax Spasinu (Alexandria), Iran
• İskenderun (Alexandretta), Turkey
• Kandahar (Alexandropolis), Afghanistan
• Iskandariya (Alexandria), Iraq

The Italian city of Alessandria is not named for Alexander the Great but for Pope Alexander III. However, the Medieval choice of this name was likely influenced by the example of the above cities.

As city planner

By selecting the right angle of the streets, Alexander made the city breathe with the etesian winds [the northwestern winds that blow during the summer months], so that as these blow across a great expanse of sea, they cool the air of the town, and so he provided its inhabitants with a moderate climate and good health. Alexander also laid out the walls so that they were at once exceedingly large and marvelously strong.

— Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, volume 8

Literature

• Dante talks well about him in the Convivio and De Monarchia; the position of Alexander in the Divine Comedy, though, is more uncertain, for though there is a reference to an Alexander being punished in the Circle of the Violent (Canto XII), it is not explicit as to whether this is in fact Alexander the Great himself. Alexander, however, is notably absent from Dante's depiction of virtuous pagans (Canto IV).
• Alexandre le Grand, tragedy in five acts by Jean Racine, first staged 1665.
• In the late 1830s, Letitia Elizabeth Landon wrote three major poems on Alexander, beginning with Death-Bed of Alexander the Great. in 1835,^[6] which was followed by The Dream in the Temple of Serapis. 1836^[7] and in 1837 Alexander on the Banks of the Hyphasis.,^[8] the latter being one of her Subjects for Pictures.
• In 1868 Tchaikovsky contemplated writing an opera featuring Alexander the Great, taking place in Greece and Babylon and centering on the relations between Hebrews and Greeks. The plot would have featured a Jewish woman falling in love with Alexander and for his sake leaving her Jewish lover, who eventually becomes a prophet. However, though surviving Tchaikovsky letters include details of this planned opera, its plot and characters, he finally abandoned this plan and chose instead for an opera with a Russian background.^[9]
• Rudyard Kipling's story "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) provides some glimpses of Alexander's legacy. Made into a movie of the same title in 1975, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.
• Dutch writer Louis Couperus' Iskander. De roman van Alexander den Groote (1920) is a historical novel about Alexander after his invasion of Asia. Largely based on the Alexander historians Quintus Curtius Rufus, Arrian, and Plutarch, the novel thematises Alexander's psychological condition during the last years of his life.
• Lord Dunsany's play Alexander (1925) is a dramatization of Alexander's life, with fantastic elements. In this work Alexander encounters the god Apollo and the Queen of the Amazons.^[10]
• Alexander appears in "A Trooper of the Thessalians" (1926), a short story by Arthur D. Howden Smith.^[11]
• In 1949, Terence Rattigan's play Adventure Story, based on Alexander the Great, premiered in London.
• Robert Payne published a novel in 1954 about Alexander's life, Alexander the God (not to be confused with the Druon novel, below).^[12]
• In 1958, Maurice Druon wrote a novel about Alexander, Alexandre le Grand (1958). It was translated into English as Alexander the God (1960) by Humphrey Hare.^[13]
• From 1969 to 1981, Mary Renault wrote a historical fiction trilogy on the life of Alexander: Fire from Heaven (about his early life), The Persian Boy (about his conquest of Persia, his expedition to India, and his death, seen from the viewpoint of Bagoas, a Persian eunuch and Alexander's eromenos), and Funeral Games (about the events following his death). Alexander also appears briefly in Renault's novel The Mask of Apollo, and is alluded to directly in The Last of the Wine and indirectly in The Praise Singer. In addition to the fiction, Renault also wrote a non-fiction biography, The Nature of Alexander.
• Science fiction writer Poul Anderson wrote an alternate history story, "Eutopia" (1967), featuring a timeline where Alexander the Great lived to an old age and established a stable empire that endured to modern times as an enlightened, peaceful and advanced Greek-speaking world culture.^[14] Similar "Alexandrian timelines" also appear in several other alternate histories by various writers.
• Ivan Efremov wrote a historical novel Thais of Athens about the life of hetaira Thaïs, as she follows Alexander in his campaigns. Alexander and Thaïs have a love relationship in the novel.
• French writer Roger Peyrefitte wrote a trilogy about Alexander the great which is regarded as a masterpiece of erudition: La Jeunesse d'Alexandre, Les Conquêtes d'Alexandre and Alexandre le Grand.
• In Alan Moore's
  Ozymandias
  , goes into detail about how he followed in Alexander the Great's footsteps in order to achieve enlightenment.
• A trilogy of novels about Alexander was written in Italian by Valerio Massimo Manfredi and subsequently published in an English translation, entitled Child of a Dream, The Sands of Ammon and The Ends of the Earth.
• ISBN 0-345-37910-1
  .
• Judith Tarr's historical fantasy novel Lord of the Two Lands (1993) is about the relationship between Alexander and an Egyptian priestess.^[15]
• Steven Pressfield's 2004 book The Virtues of War is told from the first-person perspective of Alexander. Pressfield's novel The Afghan Campaign is told from the point of view of a soldier in Alexander's army. Alexander makes several brief appearances in the novel.
• In
  Rider
  , and is referred to as the King of Conquerors.
• In Stephen Baxter's A Time Odyssey series, Alexander plays a part in the first and third books, featuring an encounter with Genghis Khan's horde and the extension of Alexander's empire into the New World.
• In Nicholas Nicastro's 2004 historical novel Empire of Ashes, Alexander's career is described from the perspective of a skeptical Athenian soldier/historian who must debunk Alexander's official divinity to save himself from a charge of sacrilege.
• Eternity by Greg Bear features an alternate reality in which Alexander did not die young and his empire flourished instead of collapsing.
• In the novel by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels in part III, chapter VII, Gulliver sees and talks to the ghost of Alexander.
• In the pages of The Haunted Tank from DC Comics, the spirit of Alexander sent the spirit of Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart to protect World War II Lieutenant Jeb Stuart Smith and the light tank M3 Stuart he commands.^[16]
• In Tom Holt's comic novel Alexander at the World's End an impoverished scholar's life is set upon a new course when he becomes Alexander's tutor.
• Hitoshi Iwaaki's Historie tells what Alexander is in his opinion. Alexander in the story is timid, but smart. He has a split-personality disorder, the original one has a snake birthmark on his face, another one named Hephaestion puts makeup to conceal it, as he loathes snakes, which his mother Olympias worships. His birth also was questioned, but easily extinguished when his mother killed the man rumored to be his real father.