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Alexander the Great and the History of Globalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2011

Hugh Liebert
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Abstract

Alexander the Great is often understood to be the first statesman to attempt a “universal state,” owing in large part to his philosophical education under Aristotle. This picture of Alexander informs many of his depictions in popular culture, and influences his appropriation in contemporary discourse on globalization. I argue here that Plutarch's Life of Alexander offers an alternative view of Alexander's political action, one that explains his imperial ambitions by focusing on his love of honor (philotimia) and the cultural indeterminacy of his native Macedon, rather than his exposure to philosophy. Plutarch's portrayal of Alexander provides a useful model for the study of globalization by showing how political expansion can arise from and give rise to indeterminate political identities.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , Fall 2011 , pp. 533 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

1 I will refer to ancient texts following the abbreviations found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. Hornblower, Simon and Spawforth, Anthony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. All translations from the Greek are my own, although I have consulted the English translations that appear in the Loeb editions. Section numbers of Plutarch's works are given as they appear in the Loeb editions.

2 On the Roman reception of Alexander see especially Spencer, Diana, The Roman Alexander: Reading a Cultural Myth (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002)Google Scholar; for Alexander as “puffed-up beast” (tumidissimum animal), see Sen., Ben. 16.1–2. Alexander, Dante damns to the seventh circle of hell in his Inferno, trans. Pinsky, Robert (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1994), 12.98–100Google Scholar. On Alexander's reception in the middle ages more generally, see Mossé, Claude, Alexander: Destiny and Myth, trans. Lloyd, Janet (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 178–88Google Scholar. Racine portrayed Alexander as an exemplary absolutist, prefacing his tragedy Alexander the Great with a letter to Louis XIV in which he compared Alexander to the French king; see Racine, Complete Plays, trans. Solomon, Samuel (New York: Modern Library, 1969), 1:70Google Scholar. Compare Brauer, George C. Jr., “Alexander in England: The Conqueror's Reputation in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Classical Journal 76 (Oct.–Nov. 1980): 35, 40Google Scholar; and Mossé, Alexander, 189–96. “Cato” thought Alexander a “universal murderer” (Trenchard, John and Gordon, Thomas, Cato's Letters [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995], 2:662Google Scholar).

3 For Alexander as feminist and multiculturalist, see Rogers, Guy MacLean, Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness (New York: Random House, 2004)Google Scholar, v. For Alexander as corporate titan, see Bose, Partha, Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy: The Timeless Leadership Lessons of History's Greatest Empire Builder (New York: Penguin Books, 2004)Google Scholar; also see Forbes, Steve and Prevas, John, Power Ambition Glory (New York: Random House, 2009)Google Scholar.

4 For Alexander as protototalitarian, see Hanson, Victor Davis, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), 89–90Google Scholar; also see Badian, Ernst, “Alexander the Great, 1948–67,” Classical World 65 (Oct. 1971): 45–46Google Scholar. Rogers discusses comparisons among Alexander, Hitler, and Stalin and arrives at the conclusion that “Alexander was not a precursor of Stalin or Hitler” (Rogers, Alexander, 280–83). I will suggest below that, according to Plutarch, Macedon's location on the periphery of Greece had a decisive influence on the formation of Alexander's political ambitions. If this claim is correct, it points to a parallel between Alexander and many modern tyrants potentially more interesting than their shared brutality: a portrait of Alexander that highlights his Macedonian origins may deserve a place alongside portraits of the Corsican Napoleon, the Austrian Hitler, and the Georgian Stalin.

5 The recent surge in Alexander studies has been noted by Allen, Brooke, “Alexander the Great—or the Terrible?,” Hudson Review 58 (Summer 2005): 220Google Scholar, and by Alonso-Núñez, J.M., “The Universal State of Alexander the Great,” in Crossroads of History: The Age of Alexander, ed. Heckel, Waldemar and Trittle, Lawrence (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 2003), 175Google Scholar. I will cite many examples of scholarly approaches to Alexander throughout this article. For historical fiction on Alexander, see in particular the novels of Valerio Massimo Manfredi and Mary Renault. For children's books, see especially Shecter, Vicky, Alexander the Great Rocks the World (Plain City, OH: Darby Creek Publishing, 2006)Google Scholar; Morley, Jacqueline and Antram, David, You Wouldn't Want to be in Alexander the Great's Army! (Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts, 2005)Google Scholar; and Roberts, Katherine, I Am the Great Horse (Frome, Somerset: Chicken House, 2007)Google Scholar, which begins: “My name is Bucephalus, and you should know right away that I'm no Black Beauty.”

6 For a survey of parallels between Roman and contemporary politics that discusses Rome's role in American political discourse, see Murphy, Cullen, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007)Google Scholar. For the Pentagon study of Alexander's empire, see Office of the Secretary of Defense for Net Assessment, Military Advantage in History (Washington, DC: OSD-NA, 2002)Google Scholar. The Macedonian case is ultimately a negative example: “[Alexander the Great] led his army to innumerable tactical and operational victories, but his leadership was based more on a ‘cult of personality’ than on a sustainable institutional structure” (80).

7 This distinction is denied, of course, by scholars who consider the discourse of “globalization” a rhetorical fig leaf over imperial realities. See, for instance, Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

8 Paul Cartledge has suggested such an account of Alexander in his recent Alexander the Great (New York: Vintage Books, 2004)Google Scholar, which concludes: “Perhaps, then, this is the time for all of us—of whatever religious persuasion, or none—to recover an Alexander who can symbolize peaceful, multi-ethnic coexistence” (266; see also 217). For a discussion of Alexander's appeal for movie directors, consider Cartledge and Greenland, Fiona, eds., Responses to Oliver Stone's Alexander: Film, History, and Cultural Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

9 It seems to be a firmly established norm that every study of globalization begin with a ritual lamentation of the word's imprecision. See, for instance, Hopkins, A. G., ed., Globalization in World History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002)Google Scholar; see also Wolf, Martin, Why Globalization Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 13–16Google Scholar.

10 I adopt this tripartite division from Plato's Republic (4.435a–441c), where the soul is divided into desire (to epithumētikon), spirit (to thumoeides), and reason (to logistikon).

11 This market account can be found in many mainstream books on globalization. See, for instance, Friedman, Thomas, The World Is Flat (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2005), 8–11Google Scholar; also see Wolf, Why Globalization Works, esp. 19 and 40–57.

12 In other words, we apply John Rawls's “original position” on a global, rather than a national, scale. Much of the literature on cosmopolitanism is rooted in a critique of Rawls for failing to apply the structures of A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar in his later work on international law (Rawls, , The Law of Peoples [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999]Google Scholar). See in particular Pogge, Thomas, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity, 2002)Google Scholar. Martha Nussbaum echoes this critique of Rawls and suggests that on these grounds it is necessary to make a break from his thought altogether (Nussbaum, , “Beyond the Social Contract: Capabilities and Global Justice,” in The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, ed. Brock, Gillian and Brighouse, Harry [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005]Google Scholar). See also Singer, Peter, One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, esp. ix, 148, 150–95.

13 Pl., Resp. 4.439e–441c. The literature on thumos in Plato is vast, but one can profitably consult two recent studies: Hobbs, Angela, Plato and the Hero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially chaps. 1–2 and 9; and Rabieh, Linda, Plato and the Virtue of Courage (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, chap. 4. For analyses of contemporary politics in light of Plato's thumos, see in particular Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992), xvi–xvii, 181–91Google Scholar; more recently, see Mansfield's, HarveyManliness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, x–xi and chap. 7, and his 2007 Lecture, Jefferson, “How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science,” reprinted in First Things 175 (Aug./Sept. 2007): 41–47Google Scholar. My summary account of thumos is particularly indebted to Fukuyama's lucid treatment of this concept in The End of History and the Last Man. I follow these analysts of contemporary politics in using “thumotic” as the adjectival form of thumos, rather than the more authentically Greek and more cumbersome “thumoeidetic.”

14 Kojève, Alexandre, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. Nichols, James Jr. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man; Wendt, Alexander, “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003): 491–542CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 3–30, 95–96; and Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 162–91, 199–208.

16 The persistence of national identity is a common theme in realist theories of international relations. See in particular Mearsheimer, John, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Summer 1990): 5–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Samuel Huntington has predicted the persistence of particular identities more inclusive than nations but more exclusive than humanity (“The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 [Summer 1993]: 22–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

17 Realist theorists of international relations claim that states seek relative, rather than absolute, gains from cooperation with other states, whether via trade or international institutions. See Mearsheimer, John, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001)Google Scholar, 36, 51–53, 401–2; see also Grieco, Joseph, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 485–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an argument linking expansion of identity (in this case, from local to national) to gains in relative power, see Posen, Barry, “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power,” International Security 18, no. 2 (1993): 80–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Carl Schmitt analyzes humanitarian internationalism as a surreptitious pursuit of power; critics of economic globalization often echo his insights. See Schmitt, , The Concept of the Political, trans. Schwab, George (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar, 54, 74–79.

18 For this threefold division of levels of identity, see Pierre Manent's discussion of the three “political forms”: city, nation, and empire (Manent, , A World Beyond Politics?, trans. LePain, Marc [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006]Google Scholar, chap. 4; and Democracy Without Nations?, trans. Seaton, Paul [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007]Google Scholar, esp. “Appendix B: What Is a Nation?”).

19 The dominance of a particular stratum of allegiance is normally signified and solidified by its serving as the decisive political grouping. Nationality becomes most firmly entrenched as a marker of identity once it is tied to a state; by contrast, the indefiniteness of globalization has much to do with its as yet modest political institutionalization. For an exemplary depiction of the emergence of the nation-state out of and in relation to preexisting strata of allegiance, consider Marx, Anthony, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, which argues that modern national identity originates in the powerful “exclusionary cohesion” of preexisting religious sects (that is, their ability to command the loyalty of members of an in-group by identifying and discriminating against an out-group). Marx's account differs from histories of national identity that emphasize the novelty of modern nations and attribute their rise to the influence of some exogenous variable such as the emergence of capitalism; along these lines, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983)Google Scholar, and Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

20 The economic analysis of Alexander's conquests enjoys a venerable pedigree, reaching back to Montesquieu. “One cannot doubt,” Montesquieu says, “that [Alexander's] design was to engage in commerce with the Indies through Babylon and the Persian Gulf” (Spirit of the Laws, trans. Cohler, Anne M. et al. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)]Google Scholar, 367). Compare Rogers, Alexander, 220; see also Tarn, W. W., Alexander the Great (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948)Google Scholar, 145.

21 Tarn, Alexander the Great, 147. Tarn is the most influential recent exponent of this approach to Alexander; one can detect Tarn's influence in Robin Lane Fox's widely read Alexander the Great, as Badian notes in a critical review of this book (Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 96 [1976]: 229–30).

22 Kojève, , “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in On Tyranny, by Leo Strauss, rev. ed., ed. Gourevitch, Victor and Roth, Michael (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 170–71Google Scholar. Kojève claims that Alexander's state would be universal but not homogeneous; it would not do away with classes, even though it would eliminate races (172–73). Compare Dillon, John, “Plutarch and the End of History,” in Plutarch and His Intellectual World, ed. Mossman, Judith (London: Duckworth, 1997)Google Scholar.

23 Critics of the once-conventional cosmopolitan Alexander emphasize Alexander's ruthless pursuit of his self-interest. See in particular Badian, Ernst, “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7 (Oct. 1958): 425–44Google Scholar; more recently, see Grainger, John, Alexander the Great Failure: The Collapse of the Macedonian Empire (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007)Google Scholar. Alexander's service to the Macedonians in particular (as opposed to the other inhabitants of his empire) is stressed in Arrian's version of Alexander's speech at Opis (Arr., Anab. 7.9–10).

24 Plut., Alex. 1.2.

25 On Plutarch's ties to the Roman elite, see Jones, C. P., Plutarch and Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971)Google Scholar. Plutarch discusses the importance of having friends in high places at Pol. Praec. 814c–d. He describes his active involvement in his native city of Chaeroneia at ibid., 811b–c and 816d.

26 There is an extensive bibliography on Plutarch's comparative method of composing Lives. One should see in particular Pelling, C. B. R., Plutarch and History (London: Duckworth, 2002)Google Scholar, chap. 16; see also Duff, Tim, Plutarch's Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999)Google Scholar, chaps. 8–9.

27 See, for instance, Plut., Num. 17; Lyc.-Num. 4.8; and Rom. 19, where Plutarch's vivid recital of the Sabine women's speech to two warring peoples demonstrates that not only statesmen deserve praise for feats of cultural reconciliation.

28 Plut., De fort. Alex. 329c, 330d. Compare Plut., Ant. 6.3.

29 For Plutarch's depiction of the harshness of Roman rule, see Pol. Praec. 813e, 814e–f. The extent to which Greek subordination to Rome influenced Plutarch's composition of the Lives is a matter of considerable debate. Jones's Plutarch and Rome, for instance, portrays Plutarch as quite content with Roman rule: “Plutarch is only one of many [Greeks] who sympathized with Rome, consorted with powerful Romans, and preached a lesson to eastern cities that converged with Roman interests” (129). While it seems clear, as Wardman, Alan, Plutarch's Lives (London: Elek Books, 1974)Google Scholar, 104, says, that “the Lives were not intended to be a textbook of revolution against Rome,” one might still argue, contra Jones, that Plutarch's concern to preserve what remained of Greek autonomy (see, e.g., Pol. Praec. 814e–f) did not arise from his allegiance to Rome but from his allegiance to Greece and his native city of Chaeroneia. The passages from the Pol. Praec. cited above, along with numerous episodes from the Lives, suggest that, however ardently one might wish for concord, simultaneous allegiance to Greece and Rome could not always be maintained.

30 On tensions between cities and empires, consider the Life of Demosthenes in particular. Cultural pluralism is a central concern of the Numa and, as we shall see, the Alexander. The pair composed of Philopoemen and Flamininus speaks to both themes.

31 For the funding of choruses, see Plut., Arist. 1.4–5; Per. 13.6; for daring scholarship, Sol. 32; Num. 22.4.

32 On Spartan philotimia, see Plut., Lyc. 25.3; Lys. 2.1–2; Ages. 5.3; on Alcibiades, see especially Alc. 23; on Caesar, see Caes. 3.2, 6.1, 6.3, 7.2, 17.1–2, 54.4, 58.4.

33 The difference between the “Fortune and Virtue of Alexander” and the Life has been noted frequently by scholars of Plutarch. See, for instance, Wardman, Alan, “Plutarch and Alexander,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 5, no. 1/2 (1955): 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Badian, “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” 437; Hamilton, J. R., Plutarch: Alexander (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969)Google Scholar, xxxvii–xxxix; and Whitmarsh, Tim, “Alexander's Hellenism and Plutarch's Textualism,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 52, no. 1 (2002): 174–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 179–80. Further complicating any comparison between the two works is the fact that the De fort. Alex. was evidently divided into two contrasting halves, of which only the second remains. It seems that in the first half, Plutarch argued that fortune was responsible for Alexander's success; in the second, that Alexander's virtue bore more responsibility than fortune. On this point I follow Hamilton, Plutarch: Alexander, xxxvi, esp. note 3, against Wardman, “Plutarch and Alexander,” 100n5.

34 I focus primarily on Alexander's initial campaign against the Persian empire, rather than his extension of the campaign towards India. Once Alexander decides to march past Persia, Plutarch's Life becomes increasingly tragic, and is marred by controversies, conspiracies, and murders. This change in the tone of the Life is consistent with the interpretation of Alexander's character that I will propose. Whereas the conquest of Persia makes a kind of cultural sense to the Greeks whose esteem Alexander seeks (even if the methods he uses to rule the Persians are unfamiliar), the extension of the campaign does not. Alexander's initial, broadly laudable motives are progressively replaced by a rather brutal libido dominandi; he escapes the orbit of Greek esteem, and grows increasingly barbaric (in every sense of the word) as a result.

35 Whitmarsh puts this point nicely: “For all that Herodotus presents Macedonians as victors in the struggle for Greek identity, he also reveals that there was a struggle to be waged. On the margins between the world of the Greek poleis and the non-Greek North, and hence on the imaginary boundaries between Hellenism and barbarism, Macedonia constitutes an intellectual testing-ground for ideas of Greekness. The history of Macedonia throughout antiquity shows the persistence of this ambiguity” (“Alexander's Hellenism and Plutarch's Textualism,” 175). Macedon's ambiguous Greekness is a central theme in Cartledge, Alexander the Great; see, for instance, 45, 49–50, 64, 106, 124, 132–33, 136, and 152–53. Compare Hall, Jonathan, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 154–56Google Scholar and 220–21.

36 I borrow the term “political form” from the work of Pierre Manent, who uses it to conceptualize the influence of the size of a political body on political life. See Manent, A World Beyond Politics? and Democracy Without Nations?

37 Hdt. 8.142 (the phrase “hand-in-glove” is taken from David Grene's translation of Herodotus). Cf. 9.45, where Alexander I, the Macedonian king during the Persian Wars, solemnly swears, “I myself am an old-line Greek, and I would not want to see Greece enslaved rather than free.” He says this, however, while fighting alongside the Persians.

38 See, for instance, Dem., Third Phil. 25.

39 Isoc., Phil.; Ad. Phil.; Thuc. 2.99.

40 From this point forward I refer parenthetically to Plutarch's Alexander.

41 See Hdt. 5.22 for Herodotus's account of Macedon's inclusion in the games.

42 It was once thought that the characters of Plutarch's protagonists were altogether fixed and therefore not capable of change; accordingly, Plutarch was thought to select stories to illustrate the static characters of his subjects, rather than to depict their development. A number of more recent studies, however, have complicated this picture. There are, in fact, several instances in Plutarch's Lives of character development. One should see, most recently, Duff, Tim, “Models of Education in Plutarch,” Journal of Hellenistic Studies, no. 128 (2008): 1–26Google Scholar, as well as Gill, Christopher, “The Question of Character-Development: Plutarch and Tacitus,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 33, no. 2 (1983): 469–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swain, Simon, “Character Change in Plutarch,” Phoenix 43, no. 1 (1989): 62–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pelling, Plutarch and History, chap. 14. Duff argues that passages depicting character development in the Lives are associated with philosophical education and are generally signaled by some allusion to Platonic texts (“Models of Education,” 22). Although Duff detects an allusion to Plato's Phaedrus in Plutarch's use of the Bucephalus story to introduce his description of Alexander's education under Aristotle, he does not discuss the Alexander as an example of character development (“Models of Education,” 10n42, 19). The opposition between static and developmental approaches to character can be overdrawn, however, since even a static character may have traits that exist in tension with one another, the balance of which might shift over time (as many of the scholars cited above note). In the case of the Alexander, for instance, it is clear that Alexander becomes increasingly immoderate and superstitious as his career progresses (e.g., Alex. 75); the departure from his earlier moderation and piety is hardly less significant for having been anticipated somewhat earlier in the Life (e.g., Alex. 2.5–6, 4.3–4).

43 It is important to note that in the “Fortune and Virtue of Alexander,” Alexander acts against Aristotle's advice to treat non-Greeks “as though they were animals or plants.” The philosophical model Plutarch uses to comprehend Alexander's universalism comes from Zeno rather than Aristotle. Nevertheless, in this essay, Alexander is said to have been deeply influenced by Aristotle in other respects; Plutarch claims that Alexander received the most valuable equipment for his eastern campaigns from his boyhood tutor, in the form of “a discourse of philosophy and memoranda on fearlessness, courage, moderation, and magnanimity” (De fort. Alex. 328a, 329a–d, 331e).

44 Arist., Pol. 3.3.1276a26–30, 7.3.1325b5–10, 7.4.1326b1–8, 7.7.1327b19–1328a15.

45 See in particular Plut., Alex. 7.3–5.

46 The only Lives in which philosophy might seem a more prominent theme than in the Alexander are the Dion/Brutus, which are explicitly devoted to depicting Platonists in political life, and the Lycurgus/Numa, which, as I argue elsewhere (“Plutarch's Critique of Plato's Best Regime,” History of Political Thought 30, no. 2 [2009]: 251–71Google Scholar), amount to Plutarch's reflection on the “best regime” of Plato's Republic.

47 Alexander is said to wonder at Diogenes's contempt (kataphronēthenta) for him, his arrogance (huperopsian), and the greatness (megethos) of the man (Plut., Alex. 14.3). The Gymnosophists had been accused of stirring up revolt in a city subject to Alexander. Rather than execute them outright, Alexander decides to ask them difficult questions, “saying he would kill the first to answer incorrectly, and then the others one by one in the same manner” (64.1). After hearing them answer, however, Alexander pardons them and sends them home with gifts.

48 This free-spiritedness is also, incidentally, what the young men at court find so compelling about the court philosopher Callisthenes. According to two of his detractors, “the young men gathered around Callisthenes and looked up to him as if he were the only free man among so many thousands” (55.1).

49 Plut., Alex. 55.4–55.55, 78.2. Although even in the Life Plutarch sometimes amplifies Alexander's intellectual interests (see, e.g., Alex. 8), Alexander's deeds tend to belie his claims, at least as they relate to philosophy. (We shall see that for Alexander poetry is another matter entirely.) Arrian also expresses skepticism regarding Alexander's commitment to philosophy: “Alexander was not entirely without understanding of superior goods, but he was nevertheless mastered terribly by the desire for glory [ek doxēs gar deinōs ekrateito]” (Anab. 7.2).

50 Mossman, , “Tragedy and Epic in Plutarch's Alexander,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 108 (1988): 83–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes the prevalence of poetry in the Alexander, and suggests that Plutarch uses techniques redolent of tragic and epic poetry to craft a Life “which is one of the most memorable he ever wrote, rich in ambiguity, contradiction and irony and thus magnificently real” (93). See also Mossman, , “Plutarch, Pyrrhus, and Alexander,” in Plutarch and the Historical Tradition, ed. Stadter, Phillip (London: Routledge, 1992), 90–93Google Scholar.

51 Alexander, naturally, is cast as Achilles. See also Plut., Alex. 24.6–8.

52 Plut., De fort. Alex. 328a; Alex. 8.2. See also Alex. 26.1.

53 Hom., Il. 5.340.

54 Alexander's admiration of Greek culture is evident even in his most grisly actions toward the Greeks. Before setting out on his eastern campaign Alexander defeats the Greeks soundly and destroys Thebes, expecting this atrocity to quiet the Greek cities. Six thousand Thebans are killed, and the remainder (more than thirty thousand) are sold into slavery, but among those spared are the descendants of Pindar (Plut., Alex. 11.5–6).

55 This narrative of Greek history is present long before Plutarch writes his Lives—one finds it expressed with particular clarity in Isocrates's writings (e.g., Phil., Ad Phil., and Paneg.). On Plutarch's debt to Isocrates, with an emphasis on Plutarch's Lycurgus and Numa, see de Blois, L. and Bons, J. A. E., “Platonic Philosophy and Isocratean Virtues in Plutarch's Numa,” Ancient Society 23 (1992): 159–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also de Blois, and Bons, , “Platonic and Isocratean Political Concepts in Plutarch's Lycurgus,” in Teoria e Prassi Politica nelle Opere di Plutarco, ed. Gallo, I. and Scardigli, B. (Napoli: M. D'Auria, 1995), 99–106Google Scholar.

56 Plut., Arist. 16.3; Them. 6.3.

57 Plut., Cim. 18–19.

58 Plut., Lys. 6.

59 Plut., Ages. 15.2–3. Notice that Plutarch implicitly contrasts the Greeks to the Macedonians here.

60 Compare Asirvatham, Sulochana, “Classicism and Romanitas in Plutarch's De Alexandri Fortuna aut Virtute,” American Journal of Philology 126 (2005): 107–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 116–17, which argues that the universalism Plutarch ascribes to Alexander's empire cannot have arisen from Greek sources, and suggests that Plutarch must have projected onto Alexander an idea he encountered in Roman philosophy and historiography.

61 For an elaboration of this point with respect to sources outside of Plutarch, see Bosworth, A. B., “Alexander and the Iranians,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 100 (1980): 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Alexander's empire is, of course, not unique in its inclusion of multiple cultures. The Persian empire, which Alexander conquered and the satrapal administrative structure of which he by and large adopted, had developed forms of indirect rule—such as the co-option of native, non-Persian oligarchs—that allowed it to dominate foreign nations without excessive (and needlessly offensive) intervention. Alexander's novelty lies in his effort to blend native and nonnative customs so as to preclude, at least potentially, the necessity of indirect rule along the lines of his imperial predecessor.

63 Clothing is not the only issue at stake—even more significant are the proskunēsis, a kind of ritual prostration commonly performed before the Persian king but anathema to more egalitarian Greeks (see Plut., Alex. 45.1, 51.3, 54–55.1, 74.1), and membership in the army (see in particular the thirty thousand Persians Alexander has educated in Greek and trained in Macedonian arms; Alex. 47.3, 71.1). Clothing, however, seems to function metonymically for other disputed customs in Plutarch's narrative.

64 Alexander has already discovered that proclaiming his divine birth, whether or not he believes it, allows him to rule over barbarians more effectively. He does not, however, let his newfound divinity change his treatment of Greeks; as Plutarch says bluntly, “Alexander himself neither suffered from delusions nor grew arrogant; others, however, he rendered servile (katadouloumenos) through the opinion of his divinity” (28.3).

65 Alexander's relation to Greek culture resembles what Brague, Rémi, in Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, trans. Lester, Samuel (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2002)Google Scholar, has called “secondarity” or “Romanity,” a manner of possessing culture distinct from that of the originators of the culture and their direct descendants.

66 See Plut., Alex. 9.4–5, for the dispute over Alexander's patrimony. For disputes over Alexander's paternity, see 8.3 and 50.6, where Cleitus shouts at Alexander, “it is by Macedonian blood and by these wounds that you have become so great as to make yourself Ammon's son and forsake Phillip.”

67 Plut., Alc. 23.

68 For the Roman understanding of Alexander in the Lives, see in particular Plut., Aem. 27.4, 31.5; Flam. 7.3, 21.3; Pomp. 2.1–2, 34.5, 46.1–2; Caes. 11.3; Ant. 80.1.

69 Urbinati, Nadia, Mill on Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar, has shown how Athens acquired its prominence within democratic theory, thanks largely to the work of the historian George Grote and John Stuart Mill. Josiah Ober has written extensively on the relevance of ancient examples to modern democratic practice; see in particular his Athenian Legacies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, chaps. 2–3. Thucydides's prominence within realist international relations theory is discussed (and criticized) in Welch, David, “Why International Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides,” Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 301–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Clark, Michael, “Realism Ancient and Modern: Thucydides and International Relations,” PS: Political Science and Politics 26, no. 3 (1993): 491–94Google Scholar, and Bagby, Laurie, “The Use and Abuse of Thucydides in International Relations,” International Organization 48, no. 1 (1994): 131–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 The market account of globalization generally identifies its origins with the first emergence of a global market—and this did not occur within Alexander's lifetime. When a global market first came into view, however, is a matter of some debate. For a global market originating with the discovery of the new world, see Flynn, Dennis and Giráldez, Arturo, “Globalization Began in 1571,” in Globalization and Global History, ed. Gills, Barry and Thompson, William (London: Routledge, 2006), 235Google Scholar. For globalization originating with durable commercial ties between East and West forged during the middle ages, see Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works, 100; see also Jack Weatherford's recent bestselling history of Khan, Genghis, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (New York: Three Rivers, 2004), 267Google Scholar.

According to cosmopolitan theorists, globalization begins once individuals are capable of bracketing their particular allegiances and envisioning their moral obligations towards mankind as a whole. This orientation is most evident in the relatively recent emergence of widespread concern for universal human rights; however, one might also trace this development to the rise of the “world religions” of Christianity and Islam. And if one considers the universalism of Christianity to owe something, at least, to that of the empire within which it arose, it becomes possible to look for sources of global identity within the pagan world. Recent scholars of “ancient cosmopolitanism” have buttressed this approach to the history of Christianity by stressing the universality implicit in Roman political practice and often quite explicit in Roman philosophy and historiography (see, for instance, Roland Robertson and Inglis, David, “The Global Animus: In the Tracks of World Consciousness,” in Globalization and Global History, ed. Gills, Barry and Thompson, William [London: Routledge, 2006], 34Google Scholar, and the works of Nussbaum I have cited above). These scholars trace the intellectual roots of this body of thought to the ancient Stoics, whose cosmopolitanism is sometimes figured as an intellectual response to the universal empire of Alexander the Great.

71 The argument I am making here might be taken to be the equivalent, within thumotic accounts, of Joseph Stiglitz's claim regarding market accounts of globalization: “there is not just one market model. There are striking differences between the Japanese version of the market system and the German, Swedish, and American versions” (Globalization and its Discontents [New York: W. W. Norton, 2002], 217Google Scholar). Also see Berger, Peter and Huntington, Samuel, eds., Many Globalizations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, particularly 3, 9, and 14, where a parallel between contemporary cultural globalization and the Hellenistic age is suggested.