Historiographical Alexander: Alexander the Great and the Historians in XIXth and XXth Centuries

Overview & Synopsis

In a famous statement, Ulrich Wilcken argues that each historian has his own Alexander. A critical examination of the traditions in Historiographic Alexander allows to reconsider both our ideas of alterity and success, and how great can be a human being, or to what extent what was great in the past still has to be accepted as such in our present days. To sum up, to revisit Alexander from the eyes of the historians in the Contemporary Age offers a genuine opportunity to rethink History as such, and to evaluate how can we imagine new ways to explain the past in order to build a rich appreciation of the present in order to imagine brand new futures. The aim of the following pages is to review Alexander’s portraits and concerns in the works and scopes of the more recent historical traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.