Archaeology Odyssey

The classic study of this important topic is Donald Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1978).

For example, John Frederick Charles Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1960), p. 188, and Andrew Robert Burn, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World (New York: Collier, 1962), p. 153.

The first-century A.D. Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus (Life of Alexander the Great 8.3.1–15) claims that Spitamenes’s beloved wife begged him to end the war, but he refused. She therefore cut off his head as he slept and then personally delivered the trophy to Alexander’s tent. The king rejoiced but ordered the woman to leave his camp, lest she unnerve his army. The daughter of this woman was later married to Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals and the founder of the Seleucid dynasty in Syria.

Alexander killed Cleitus the Black, whose career is included in Waldemar Heckel, The Marshals of Alexander’s Empire (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 34–37.

Plutarch, Moralia 341 f.

Full details may be found in Frank Holt, Alexander the Great and Bactria (Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1988).

In one month, Alexander captured 4,835 tons of gold and silver. Greek sources record only 116.2 tons of plundered silver in the Aegean wars of the previous 150 years!

On Philip II and the Macedonian background, see Eugene Borza, In the Shadow of Olympus (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990). Alexander’s murdered kinfolk included his father, mother, siblings, two wives and son.

Frank Holt, “Alexander the Great Today,” Ancient History Bulletin 13.3 (1999): pp. 111–117, also available electronically (http://www.trentu.ca/ahb/ahb13.html).

Important studies include Andrew Stewart, Faces of Power (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993); George Cary, The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1956); and Ernst Badian, ed., Alexandre le Grand: Image et Réalité (Vanduvres-Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1976).