Alexander the Not-So-Great

Few figures have straddled the region between fact and fantasy as securely as Alexander the Great.  This simple Macedonian lad created an army that conquered most of the known world, leaving behind a legacy that is equal parts truth and myth.  Alexander was a cornerstone figure of the classical Greek period, an era that has had an incredible impact on our contemporary world.

But who was Alexander?  And can we measure him by contemporary standards?  These are questions asked by the late Norman F. Cantor (1929-2004) in his book Alexander the Great: Journey to the End of the Earth.  This was Professor Cantor’s last book (Dee Ranieri is also credited on the title page), and it is not a biography in the commonly-accepted sense of the word.  Rather, Alexander reads more like a series of informal talks with a man deeply committed to researching and understanding the ancient world.

Cantor provides a great deal of color to the world of ancient Greek city-states and the kind of life lived there.  He also offers keen insight into Alexander’s family, including his cold and calculating father, and his mother, who was the center of a cult of snake worshippers.  (Needless to say, the distant past is often quite colorful.)

Cantor wisely positions Alexander as a figure of a pagan, pre-Christian world.  As such, it is nearly impossible for us to know him through the prism of our contemporary lives – the people of his era were physically like us, but otherwise may as well have been from Mars.  How can we fully understand a man who, because of omens and other talismans, could believe that he was the son of Zeus?  How can we judge a man who was as much an adventurer/explorer as conqueror when today most of the remotest parts of the world are open to anyone with a credit card?

Cantor walks us through Alexander’s long-term love affair with fellow-soldier Hephaestion and his devotion to the Persian eunuch Bogoas, and maps his brilliant military victories in Afghanistan (even then a graveyard for soldiers), Pakistan, and India.  He tells us of his alcoholism, his heroism, his education under Aristotle and his ability to inspire men.  Because of the conversational tone of the book, one gathers a more familiar, accessible idea of Alexander than might otherwise have been available through a more conventional biography.

However, the real treat of the book comes at the end – where Cantor asks “How ‘Great’ Was Alexander?” – a chapter that puts his personal triumphs and demons, his military coups and administrative failures, into some sort of perspective.  Cantor writes, Alexander emphasized the attributes of courage and strength.  Under the laws of war he leveled cities and sold their inhabitants into slavery.  He was merciless, even to those he cared for.  He risked the dismay of his Companions, and when, in a drunken stupor, he killed one of his best friends, his act ultimately led to an assassination attempt against him … The Athenian tragedians warned against arrogance, and Plato and Aristotle sought the refinements of reason.  But these qualifications to the spirit of paganism did not seem to affect Alexander, although Aristotle had been his tutor in his early years.  He sought glory on the battlefield, stole the Persian emperor’s treasury, and disported himself like a Homeric hero, all without conscience.  In his lifetime he caused the deaths of half a million of his enemies’ soldiers, and accepted without equanimity the loss of at least 25,000 of his own battle-hardened soldiers.

The grief, misery and death that Alexander left in his wake are a little hard to reconcile with our vision of a warrior-hero.  Like many books that cover figures as diverse of Charlemagne, Richard the Lionhearted and Napoleon Bonaparte, we ourselves feel sullied after reading about Alexander when we remember that most of the “great” men of history were professional murderers blood simple on dreams of conquest or religious “liberation.”  Kudos to all historians, novelists and artists who ask the key question of all of our Great Men – what was the cost?

The Lute Player by Norah Lofts

Norah Lofts (1904-1983) has a loyal and respectful readership among those who actually read books, rather than talk about them.  There is a small and passionately devoted reading class (Robertson Davies called them the clerisy) for whom the reading of novels is nearly an act of devotion and your correspondent hopes to number himself among this blessed few.

So when fellow travelers of the printed page recommended Norah Lofts, attention had to be paid.  Quite a successful novelist in her time, Lofts wrote three novels set in the same country house in Suffolk, England, a number of mystery novels under the pen name Peter Curtis, and several historical novels.  My introduction to Lofts was her deeply moving novel about Richard the Lionhearted, The Lute Player (1951).

Usually, there are two types of historical fiction.  One strings momentous events into some kind of narrative, usually propelled by a key historical figure.  (An excellent example of this would be Anouilh’s Becket.)  The other type usually focuses on some kind of personal drama involving fictional characters played out against the backdrop of history.  (My favorite example here is Rostand’s Cyrano, where the battle of Arras is largely a matter of who loves whom.)  The Lute Player is actually a wonderful synthesis of both approaches.

The novel is the story of Richard Plantagenet and the Third Crusade into the Holy Land.  His vision was to Christianize Jerusalem and thereby create a multi-national Christian kingdom.  (Imagine the changing tides of history had he succeeded.)  It is told through three vastly different viewpoints, that of Duchess Anna Apieta (a wholly fictional character), Richard’s mother, the historical Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Blondel the lute player (a character of disputed historicity).

The Lute Player is a novel of thwarted passions, sexual and otherwise.  Anna Apieta loves the lute player Blondel.  However, Blondel loves Berengaria, princess of Navarre; she, in turn, loves Richard Plantagenet.  But Richard loves both Blondel and, more importantly, a vision of what his kingdom would be once he has secured the Holy Land.

This simplistic summation may be misleading – rest assured that The Lute Player is no Harlequin Romance in armor.  The passions of the key characters drive their personalities, and are often the root causes of decisions that change the course of history.  Lofts writes with keen psychological insight and deep sympathy for her characters; her gaze is steady and critical, but charitable nonetheless.

Here is a snippet where Blondel awakes, wounded on the battlefield.  On one side of him is a dead man, on the other, a man whose mouth and jaw have been hideously damaged by a sword:

Presently I was conscious of a smell of boiled mutton mingling with and then overpowering all the other smells.  I opened my eyes again and saw two men, one carrying a great steaming bucket, the other a ladle and a number of bowls.  “Who’s for mutton stew, fresh mutton stew?” cried the man with the bucket.

“Dead,” said the one with the bowls, peering at my right-hand neighbor and moving on to peer at me.  “The next is all right.  Hi, boy, want some fresh mutton stew?  Put you on your legs in no time.”

“No, thank you,” I said, and ridiculous fresh tears came into my eyes as I thought how welcome, how wonderful, fresh mutton stew would have been last night; to me with an unsickened stomach, to the man on my right who would never enjoy anything again, to the man on my left who last night had had his teeth and his lips and his tongue as God made them.

Good stuff.  Even better is how Lofts can delineate character in a few deft strokes.  Here is Anna Apieta on an abbess:

She had a keen brain and, in any matter disconnected with the religious life, a sense of justice, a gift of logic.  Professionally – and religion with its many ramifications was to her a profession rather than a vocation – she was unjust, illogical, dictatorial to an unimaginable degree, and unbearably superior.  So armored, so immune, that often words failed me and I longed with childish fury to smack her smooth plump face.

The Lute Player is most deeply satisfying as an investigation into the mystery that is Richard the Lionhearted.  For a mainstream novel of 1951, it treats his homosexuality in a surprisingly nonjudgmental way, and one of Blondel’s major difficulties is his own inability to respond to Richard: …I began to reckon his many virtues, his great courage, his justice, his attention to detail, his lively mind, his fortitude in adversity; even the fact that he was, when he chose, a minstrel without peer leapt up to give me a sharp stab.  I had always preserved a sense of proportion in my attitude towards him, had never fallen into the state of hero worship as many diverse kinds of men had done.  In the great days of his triumphs and resounding exploits some corner of my mind had stayed sour.  Now in the days of his failure, with his fatal weakness exposed, my cursed minnesinger’s art set to work on him and I saw him as a great man, a hero – rebuffed by a sniffling, prudish little lute player.

But Richard also uses people indiscriminately to achieve his own ends, mercilessly slaughters captives, and is responsible for the death and mutilation of legions his own men and his enemies.  At what point, Lofts seems to ask, are the great deeds of great men not worth the horrible price that accompanies them?  It is a timeless question, and we are no closer to an answer now than was Lofts, nor even Richard the Lionhearted.