Sources for Alexander the Great: An Analysis of Plutarch’s ‘Life’ and Arrian’s ‘Anabasis Alexandrou

Plutarch and Arrian have contributed more than any other ancient authors to our picture of Alexander the Great, but since they wrote four or more centuries after his death the value of what they said depends upon the sources of information on which they themselves drew. In this book the attempt is made (surprisingly for the first time) to define and to evaluate those sources in a detailed study, analysing the historians’ works section by section and comparing them with other accounts of the same episodes. This volume completes Professor Hammond’s study of the five Alexander-historians begun with Three Historians of Alexander the Great (CUP, 1983) and lays a new basis for work in this area.