The image of Alexander flourished across the disiecta membra of the empire he created and far beyond it. Consideration is given here to the appropriation of the king’s image in the broader sense – and principally through the medium of texts – in relation to the founders of the greater two of the Successor dynasties, those of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. The legend of Seleucus was richly bathed in Alexander-imagery, and this imagery was focused, in different ways, on the person of Seleucus himself. Some of the tales focus syntagmatically on his personal interaction with the king, whilst he yet lived, and indeed in one case even after even he had died. Others serve to establish paradigmatic or typological parallel between the actions of Alexander and those of Seleucus, and some seek to do both. The case of Ptolemy is different: whilst there is again some focus on Ptolemy’s personal interaction with Alexander, much of the legend-generation focuses rather on Alexander’s relationship with Ptolemy’s city of Alexandria, the glory of which was the king’s tomb. So long as Ptolemy remained ensconced in the city, he could afford to bask in a more indirectly reflected variety of the king’s charisma.

The extended mourning for Agamemnon in the kommos scene of the Choephoroi dramatizes relationships to the dead not found previously in the trilogy. Unlike in the Agamemnon, in the kommos, death is neither an end point nor a peaceful rest. Instead, the mourners repeatedly alternate contradictory conceptualizations of Agamemnon’s existence and power in the beyond: They insist on his outraged, avenging spirit; paradoxically, they also refer to his honored place among kings in the underworld. At some points, they call on him to send his power from below; at others, they beg him to rise from the dead. None of the characters seems to know which of these possible afterlives, if any, are true. The “poetics of multiplicity” evident in the kommos affects the emotional, epistemic, and ethical aspects of the scene. The Chorus’s contrafactual image of Agamemnon as glorious king in the afterlife, jammed against their insistence on his dishonored death and burial, compels Orestes to begin the second coup d’état. It is potentially the first instance in extant Greek literature in which a fictional depiction of the afterlife motivates extreme political action.

analyzes events immediately following the death of the eleventh Imam with no apparent offspring. In spite of his strong claim as son of the tenth Imam, Jaʿfar “the Liar” ultimately failed to succeed to his father. Opposing camps generated anti-Jaʿfar propaganda which survives in our sources and can be used to reconstruct key events and early discourses. It is argued that within twenty-four hours of the eleventh Imam’s death, several events of central symbolism for future understandings of the Occultation had occurred, including funerary rituals for the dead Imam; the claim that one of his concubines was posthumously pregnant with his child; and the dispute over the inheritance of the Imam’s property. These events were related to claims for Imamic mediation including claims made for the mother of the dead Imam, Ḥudayth; servants within the household of the Imam; and the concubine pregnant with the Imam’s child.

This chapter is concerned with Alexander in Egypt in both life and legend. Subjects discussed include his foundation of Alexandria, which became a new capital for Egypt on the Mediterranean coast, his expedition through the Libyan desert to Siwah, where the oracle’s recognition of the conqueror as son of Zeus-Ammon resonated in both Greek and Egyptian cultic terms, his acceptance as the pharaoh of Egypt, and finally, after his death in Babylon, his return for burial to Egypt, where his embalmed corpse and tomb in Alexandria became the centre of Ptolemaic ruler cult, a focal point for later visits of Roman emperors, and where the question of its actual location remains a source of continuing fascination and debate. In the accounts of classical historians, Alexander in Egypt is already variously presented; the historiography is as important as the history. From the start some specifically local legendary elements may be seen and over time the Romance or Legend of Alexander in its many different forms overshadows and surpasses any strictly historical account.

Completing the trajectory of the book through text, illustration, recitation, architecture, and iconography, this final chapter looks at a case study for the intersection of text, image, and sound in Hagia Sophia. By looking at a sixth-century plaque from the church’s original construction and its afterlife over the centuries, the chapter studies how iconographies develop and change through various uses and contexts of display, and how these shifts alter the resonances with which the reading of the Gospel in the church was understood. The chapter seeks to unsettle our expectations of iconography and how ritual and space intersect with one another.