THE MAN WHO RODE BUCEPHALUS

ALEXANDER THE WHO?: Face to face with history's Greatest (VICTORIA JAMES, Aug. 27, 2003, Japan Times)

The future conqueror of almost all the known world, who acceded to his father's throne at age 18 and died of fever aged just 33, claimed descent from the immortal Hercules. His mother, Olympias, stoked her son's god-complex by claiming she was impregnated not by Alexander's father, Philip II of Macedonia, but by a giant serpent.

All these myths collide in "Alexander the Great," an exhibition now showing at Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park, which displays a number of representations of the great leader (statues, busts and coinage) in company of which he would doubtless have approved -- an extensive pantheon of classical gods and heroes.

Alexander was certainly divinely good-looking. Three images (one a nearly contemporaneous head of a statue, the others two Imperial Roman copies of third-century B.C. originals) clearly represent the same face over a period of time. The first is a beautiful boy with a head of curls; the next a youth with a resolute, firmly set chin; the third a mature man, his face filled out slightly though not a whit less handsome for it.

But Alexander's reputation didn't rest on his looks. At age 6 he is said to have received Persian envoys during his father's absence; at age 13 he began to study under Aristotle; at 16 he served as his father's regent; and, while still a teenager, in a wager with his father he subdued and rode a wild horse that no one had been able to handle. (The steed, named Bucephalus, became Alexander's warhorse.)

That was merely Alexander's grooming for greatness, and the beginning of the legend.

Nice short essay about Alexander, but for a fuller portrait we recommend the excellent biography by Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B. C.: A Historical Biography. Also, Baz Luhrmann is working on a biopic of Alexander's life, which might be great itself if he can pull it off. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 30, 2003 7:12 AM