sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 1

Krzysztof Nawotka / Agnieszka Wojciechowska (eds.): Legacy of the East and Legacy of Alexander

To what extent and in which ways did Indigenous economic, social, and religious systems infringe on the governing structures of the Makedonian Empire, and how best to define Alexander's footprint on the polities that outlived it defined scholarship ever since Droysen. The Melammu Project, of whose 13th Symposion the present volume represents the outcome, offers a stimulating venue for approaching (again) a daunting and loaded topic such as the one encapsulated in the title: Legacy of the East and Legacy of Alexander. One reason is the project's multidisciplinary outlook, which seeks to bring together scholars from different intellectual and academic backgrounds to bridge chronological and disciplinary boundaries to provide a holistic picture of ancient societies across Afro-Eurasia.

In the case of Alexander's scholarship, such a framework is especially praiseworthy. For once, only relatively recently have researchers begun paying due attention to evidence beyond the Greek and Latin sources to understand Alexander's politics faced with traditions of kingship other than those of Makedonia, in the process shedding new lights on the conquest's dynamics, the reasons behind its success, and the motives accounting for its failures. [1] Recent work on the literary and ideological world in which the authors of Alexander's histories lived and wrote (notably Arrian, whose reliability is increasingly scrutinized) further problematized several assumptions that guided research for decades - one case being Alexander's "Iranian policy" following the death of Darius III or the Persian brides' destiny after Susa, a topic whose implications loom large over issues such as ethnicity in the Hellenistic period. [2]

The volume brings together philologists, archaeologists, numismatists, ancient historians, and - notably - literary scholars and experts in reception studies to explore the world of Alexander at different geographical scales and through various cultural lenses (from Boiotian epigraphy to the appropriation of selected aspects of Alexander's (myt)history across the Malay world). It thus seeks to provide new avenues for research by pointing out "the complexity of historiographic and other literary traditions on Alexander and the necessity of conducting a meticulous study of non-Western literary, iconographic, and documentary evidence" (XVIII). The book succeeds best in this ambitious attempt by focusing on selected episodes of Alexander's campaign to deconstruct the sources' agenda while reconstructing their proper historical and cultural context and readdressing the scholarly balance on some long-researched but still contested issues.

A few examples are in order. Howe (59-76) explores how Ptolemy constructs his role as a fearless commander and yet astute strategist by comparing the wounds he and Alexander suffered during the Indian campaign. Realizing that Ptolemy exploited even minor details (which, because of their apparent insignificance on the broader narrative, may be assumed to be trustworthy) to "curate his own identity" and weaponized it against his competitors is a point that needs stressing, especially given how much of his work underpins Arrian's Anabasis. Understanding through which means such a literary creation of a (would-be) royal persona took place may help assess other accounts of the Diadochoi from a new and productive angle. A similar point can be made in the case of Frances Pownall's (129-154) and Julian Degen's papers (155-182). They both address the question of the dating, genesis, motives, and outcomes of Alexander's "Orientalism" as seen respectively in the king's clashes with the Makedonian old guard (Pownall's contribution) and in the supposed changes in court protocol, the structurally most profound result of which would have been a restricted access to Alexander (discussed by Degen). The authors successfully highlight the intentionality behind the transmitted accounts on which modern historians rely. If, on the one hand, Arrian appears to have compressed his narrative to have Alexander confronting the Makedonian aristocracy in increasingly aggressive ways only after Darius' death to dramatize his descent into Persian absolutism (another longstanding trope of Greek historiography) while sidelining the structural aspects of - vicious - court politics in Makedonian society, on the other hand, it emerges that access to the king had always been carefully regulated, and whatever transformation took place (already under Philipp) answered to security issues rather than manifesting an assumed takeover of a new ruling ethno-class for which, at the time of Alexander, there is little to no evidence, at least not in the imperial core, meaning the moving court. The importance of reading the source in their cultural, political, and even physical context (the landscape through which Alexander moved) becomes evident in Agut-Labordère's contribution (one among the most refreshing of the volume) discussing the Siwa trip (303-323).

By restoring the importance of desert politics and socioeconomic networks in the account of Alexander's conquest of Egypt, Agut-Labordère makes a strong case for detaching "ourselves from him [Alexander] - or rather what we think we know about his psychology" to effectively "progress in the understanding of Alexander's conquest" (316). This is a methodologically crucial point that carries significant implications for future scholarship, especially when dealing with areas of Alexander's world - such as Central Asia, India, or the Southern coast, for which written accounts too often overshadowed precious local context to be gained from archaeology or ethnohistory.

Scholarly traditions and intellectual backgrounds should also be more prominent in assessing Alexander's legacy. This is illustrated by Milinda Hoo's treatment of the conqueror's cultural footprint (the question of "Hellenism") in the Far East (103-128). By scrutinizing scholarly understandings of civic life and religious traditions in Afghanistan, she makes clear that "the question of 'Alexandrian legacy' ultimately has more to do with modern historiographical interests in the role and importance of Alexander" and "the need to create a satisfying coherent historical narrative in order to know, place, and position Baktria" rather than with a cleared-eye assessment of the evidence itself. Despite decades of postcolonial critical theory, Plutarch's portrait of Alexander as a cultural hero still looms (too) large and needs more self-conscious criticism.

On the downside, the volume lacks a clear structure, as the contributions are arranged in no apparent logical or thematic order, and one has to resort to the (exhaustive) index to navigate the book. Save for a few papers (Hoo's, Stoneman's, Kubica's, Callieri's, Wasmuth's, and the already mentioned one by Labordère), "the East" of Alexander's world is remarkably underrepresented in a volume with a title like the present one - the crucial Southern Iranian coast is not covered at all, and the same goes for areas such as the Southern Caucasus, which Alexander did not conquest but which were obviously impacted by the takeover of the Achaemenid Empire. It also sports a few too many typos, which is surprising for a publishing house such as Harrassowitz. Yet, Legacy of the East offers several compelling case studies that may stimulate further informed travels across Alexanderland.

Notes:

[1] Julian Degen: Alexander III. zwischen Ost und West: indigene Traditionen und Herrschaftsinszenierung im makedonischen Weltimperium, Stuttgart 2022.

[2] Julian Degen / Robert Rollinger: The World of Alexander in Perspective. Contextualizing Arrian, Wiesbaden 2022.