Monuments, memory, and space in imperial greek narratives of Alexander

Abstract

This chapter explores Alexander the Great’s attitude to commemorative landscapes in imperial Greek narratives. It focuses on Plutarch’s Alexander and argues that he is both painfully aware that the meaning of manmade monuments is unstable and strongly invested in the power of narrative imprinted instead on living landscapes. Plutarch’s Alexander thus avoids his own monumentalization and reshapes others’ memorials to serve his own story. This tendency is explored via a statue of Xerxes, the tomb of Cyrus, and Stasicrates’ proposal to shape Mt. Athos into a statue of Alexander. Plutarch’s depiction is compared to Arrian’s and, where relevant, the Alexander Romance. Finally, Philostratus’ In Honor of Apollonius of Tyana is shown to vindicate the anxieties of Plutarch’s Alexander, as monuments attributed to the conqueror in India are used to fix him in time, space, and memory to limit his narrative control and potency. Show more