General

The main motif of book one is the relationship between the older, more powerful, king and the younger hero. The rage engendered by this conflict is a recurrent theme in the entire work. Alexander was raised in the shadow of his father, the greatest king which Macedon had ever known. Although young Alexander was greatly admired, his father's will was law and this must certainly have exacerbated the usual father son competition. If Alexander envisioned himself as the new Achilles, surely Philip must have, however imperfectly, represented Agamemnon to him. This might only be a young boy's emotional response and not based upon reason, but it seems that the role of Agamemnon in Alexander's fantasy could only have been played by Philip. Agamemnon's character in The Iliad is regal, arbitrary, and unjust to Achilles and these are the things Alexander must have imagined in Philip at times, as well. The strong motif of a younger hero in conflict with an older king must have struck a familiar chord with Alexander.

Bk 1.33 to .60

Achilles manifests his piety during the plague he indicates that he feels that the war is cursed and proposes to leave, but first he seeks the advice of a seer. Alexander never made a major move without consulting a seer. His absolute belief in the religion of his time and place is incontestable. The gods are so inextricably woven into the tale of the Iliad as to become characters in the story and this in no way would seem strange to Alexander. The Iliad was considered not to be a work of fiction, but rather to be history. For Alexander this tale of one of his ancestors was fact. The presence of the gods in the tale was in no way untoward as the mother of his ancestor, Achilles was herself the semi divine daughter of Zeus and therefore Alexander believed himself to be directly descended from the gods. He believed in himself and he believed implicitly in his gods without the slightest of doubts.

The Iliad could not help but to reinforce Alexander's quite conventional religious beliefs. At an early age, he could not find the idea of apotheosis to be fantastic. It was after all, a part of history and an accepted fact. This possibility was to remain important in the motives for his actions until his death.

Bk.1.140

Achilles is often referred to in The Iliad as, ' the swift runner' , the sprint was Alexander's best sport.

Bk.1.168

Agamemnon and Achilles are seen in a struggle which suggests a relationship common to a father and son competition seen from the point of view of the son. The king is presented as being a stern, unreasonable, greedy antagonist, while the just and moral hero, Achilles, is the protagonist of the piece.

It is impossible to believe that Alexander, given his life situation, would not empathize with the character of Achilles and the genesis of this empathy would seem obvious. The character which Homer has created as Achilles could not have been a better fit for Alexander.

The analogy between Agamemnon and Philip is, of course not complete. Where Achilles says, ' never once did you arm with the troops and do battle.', he breaks any parallel with Philip. but he shows a value which which Alexander would hold throughout his life.

Bk.2.420-510

The unusually prominent role of the hero's mother in this tale of battle must, indeed have struck a personal note for Alexander. When Agamemnon wrongs Achilles, it is to his strong divine mother which he turns for redress and it is she, Thetis, who takes his side at all times. She is ever ready to defend him against all insult and injury through her favored position with the gods. This is very like the mysterious queen and priestess, Olympias.

It is in these passages that the short and glorious military life of Achilles begins to be stressed; it shall be a motif throughout the tale and often reiterated. Achilles has a choice, he can he can give up his battles, return to Thrace, and live a long and comfortable, if undistinguished, life. He chooses the brief and glorious life of a battle hero thereby reinforcing the values which all of Hellas and Alexander were to hold in the future. Alexander would have no more trouble with that decision than would his role model, Achilles; there was never a contest.

In book 2 we see the armies of the Achaeans arming for battle. Achilles, angry still over the perceived insult of Agamemnon, retires to his lodge where he remains incommunicado, a ploy which would be used to great effect, by Alexander on several occasions. They both use the denial of their presence as a tool to achieve their purposes and Alexander must first of encountered this technique in The Iliad.

Bk.2

As the Trojans prepare for battle, we get our first impression of Paris. Paris is an alternative name for Alexandros. In many cultures each person's name has an accepted alternative name; it is not a nickname and it need not be descriptive like, Platon, nor is it a shortened form of the name. It is simply an alternative to a first name. Alexander's alternative name was Paris. He hated it and most of the world came to know this. No one ever called Alexander Paris, indeed it was considered unwise to mention the name in his presence. While visiting the sites of Troy, Alexander was offered a lyre which supposedly had once belonged to Paris; he refused it. Alexander's impression of the character of Paris would have been formed by Homer and it is here that we begin to see why he so hated the name.

Paris was the brother of Hector who called him," Paris, appalling Paris! Our prince of beauty---Mad for women. You lure them all to ruin! Would to god you had never been born, died unwed. That's all I'd ask."

Curiously, in ancient times an excessive love of women was considered to be effeminate. It was a weakness of character and Alexander spent his life building a character so beyond question as to appear more than human. His most vicious detractors would never call him effeminate. This Hellenic value instilled in Alexander at an early age would add to the esteem of his contemporaries, both men and women, as it would not in Christian times.

Alexander's hero, Achilles is not a part of the action in books 4 to 9. He remains hors d'combat which, at the request of his mother is predetermined by Zeus to be disastrous to his allies. Achilles is willing to sacrifice the lives of many of his friends in order to achieve his goals, but this results in no opprobrium from the Achaeans. Modern readers, at once, find his attitude to be petulant and disloyal, but there is no hint of this in Homer. Only a difference in cultural values can account for this and it should be remembered that Alexander, and indeed all Macedonians, held values quite close to those of Homer.

" And deep in his well built lodge Achilles slept with the woman he brought from Lesbos, Phorbas' daughter, Diomede in all her beauty sleeping by his side. And over across from him Patrocolus slept with the sashed and lovely Iphis by his side."

It is difficult to reconcile these lines with the modern belief that a homosexual relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion parallels the same relationship between Achilles and Patrocolus; this is never even alluded to in Homer. Indeed, it cannot possibly be justified with the contemporary definition of homosexuality. Certainly the entire tale of the rage of Achilles is engendered by the tale of the beautiful girl, Briseis, whom Achilles wanted to keep and Agamemnon took from him. These things cannot allow us to even consider Achilles to be a homosexual role model for Alexander without redefining homosexuality.

Achilles remains aloof from the battles which rage throughout these seven books of the Iliad. This performance piece was produced for a specific audience. The audience was composed of men and the men were part of a warrior culture which held courage in battle to be the highest of all manly virtues. This cultural perception was held throughout Hellas and was strongly entrenched in the culture of Macedon. Alexander, reading these pages, would have a reaction very different from the reaction of modern readers. People today who read The Iliad for the first time often decry the long catalog of atrocities which seem to them to be over abundant. Where we may see repulsive and repetitive horrors, the warriors for whom the tale was created, who had first hand knowledge of this sort of warfare, would see only a perfectly respectable life style in which the better a man was at mass killing and maiming, the more he was admired by his society.

Alexander was born into the somewhat backward looking culture of Macedon and was an important part of that culture. He was raised by warriors in the company of warriors and as heir apparent to Philip II, he was trained to be the best of warriors. Reading these lines of Homer, or hearing them recited, he would find little sorrow in the battle death of a warrior. This was considered throughout Hellas as the best possible honor for a mortal man. Alexander was scrupulous about honoring his dead precisely because he believed entirely in his cultural tenets. His warrior ethos is most evident in the respect he accorded to the dead of even enemy warriors.

These pages of Homer which we may read with some distaste, Alexander would have enjoyed for their positive reinforcement of what he considered to be the good and proper actions of an honorable man. In this belief he was supported by the great majority of the people of his day.

Bk.18.560-709

The shield of Achilles is described in great detail for some 150 lines. Alexander well knew this inscription when he took the shield purported to be that same one. Like many of Alexander's actions, bearing the shield of Achilles is highly symbolic. In assuming the symbol of Achilles, Alexander assumes a recognizable identity; he symbolically proclaims himself to be the new Achilles come from the West to conquer in the East. It is clear that Alexander well understood the military advantage of propaganda. It was much more than self aggrandizement which caused him to promulgate the tales of his prowess and good fortune; these tales traveled faster than his armies. Many cities, knowing the news of alexander, laid down their arms and opened their gates at the approach of Alexander because they already believed the image he was creating with some degree of premeditation. Whether he believed his shield to be authentic or not, He knew that most of the world believed it and he used it.

Bk22.467-476

In these lines, Homer tells of how, in his fury, Achilles desecrated the body of Hector by piercing what we now call the Achilles tendons, and passing rawhide straps through them, lashing the corpse to his chariot to drag it around the walls of Troy.

There is a parallel story told about Alexander after the siege of Gaza. Curtius states that Alexander, after capturing the Persian governor of the city, Batis, had him lashed by the ankles to a chariot and dragged to death around the walls of the city. Though Curtius is our only source of this tale of Homeric vengeance and he is writing some 300 years after the event, it could be true, though it sounds suspiciously like a literary device.

The two month siege was a particularly difficult one and Alexander was twice wounded in the fighting. He was shot in the shoulder with an arrow and lost a dangerous amount of blood. He was still recovering from this wound when, in the last days of the siege, he had his leg broken by an artillery missile. The unlucky Batis was brought to judgment before an Alexander who was angry and in pain. If the story is a literary fabrication, it is certainly a plausible one. Alexander was familiar with the tale of Achilles and Hector, but then so was Curtius.

Bk.23

It is in book 23 of The Iliad that an undeniable parallel so poignantly asserts itself. It is here, where old soldiers have wept for 3000 years, that we most clearly see Alexander and Hephaestion . Alexander always had these writings with him. There can be no doubt that one July night in Ecbatana, 324 years before the birth of Christ, he sat alone with his hair all shorn and his face covered with ashes reading these very words which he knew so well. Of this we may be certain. For many, it is impossible to read book 23 of The Iliad without thinking of Alexander and Hephaestion

Bk. 24

The entire motif of book 24 deals with the mercy of Achilles. This is the tale of how old Priam got back the body of his son, Hector. It is one of the more moving chapters of the work and. I think this must have very much effected a young man like Alexander. In line 190 begins the tale of how Thetis, the mother of Achilles, delivers to him a message from Zeus. The words of Zeus about Achilles are, "Whoever begs his mercy, he will spare with all the kindness of his heart," This is entirely consistent with the actions of Alexander throughout his campaigns. He was ever eager to extend mercy to the conquered, but only if they asked for it. It was always haute au bas, but it was usually given. You had to beg.

Conclusion

There is no reason to believe that the sources are wrong in asserting that Alexander read and re read the Iliad all his life. They are all in agreement on this point. Almost all Hellenes knew the Iliad. It was history, art, and religion all rolled up into one. To this day you can hear readings from it in tavernas all over Greece. Alexander, as an educated prince, could not but know it very well. It is reported that wherever he went, in the palace at Babylon, or in a soggy tent by the Indus, slaves put a copy by his bed before he retired. The values contained in it appear consistently throughout his life. His connection to this work is, I think, incontestable. Did he model his life upon Achilles? Perhaps, but it seems more likely that he identified with the character quite early on and rather than attempting to be like Achilles, he felt he really was like Achilles from the start. He believed in breeding. He thought that the blood of kings and gods ran in his veins. He must have felt a direct physical relationship to the divine hero. in a sense, Achilles was a part of him. Being Alexander of course, he had to best him and all others as well. In truth, he did.