Classics 291A - S- Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great's conquests in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Western Asia made him one of the most talked about figures in antiquity. Yet our ability to understand Alexander is difficult. Most of the primary sources were composed hundreds of years after his untimely death. In investigating Alexander and the world that was engendered through his conquests in the fourth century BCE, we must consider the basic question: Are the available primary sources reliable? This course will function as a history lab, where we will be engaged in reading, dissecting, and comparing the surviving narrative histories on Alexander, his ambitions, follies, and wars: Flavius Arrian, Q. Curtius Rufus, and Plutarch. Through weekly source comparisons, journals, and a research paper, students will discover that Alexander, despite his instant and lasting fame and an abundance of sources, is challenging for historians to pin down.