Alexander The Great: The Most Reliable Sources Of History

Very few reliable sources on Alexander the Great’s reign remain in existence today. Of these sources, the four major ones are histories by Plutarch, Diodorus, Arrian and Quintus Rufus. The earliest of these sources was written in the first century BC, so it is clear to see that the author’s own personal outlook may have influenced by their times and personal experiences in life that may or may not have changed since Alexander was alive since he died about three-hundred BC. In addition to the times that these histories were written, it is important to know more about the authors of these histories, Their views and approaches to writing their histories, and more about the histories in general in order to determine the accuracy and biases that

might influence the history that they have written.
In order to understand the histories that these men wrote, it would be good to first understand who these men were.

First, let’s take a look at the historian Diodorus of Sicily. Now, Diodorus lived in the first century BC, and wrote the earliest surviving major source regarding Alexander the great’s reign. Diodorus lived near the end of the Roman Republic, and he wrote about the military campaigns of Caesar in one of his books (Bagnall et al. 2115). Now, due to the scarcity of sources on people of that time, not very much was known about this man, but it was known that he titled his history Bibliotheke or the Library as he intended to write a sort of universal history of his time. It was also known that he was from Agyrium, Sicily and he travelled all across the known world to gather the information that he needed to write his history. We also know that he wrote a great many books, but only fifteen of these books exist in full today (Sacks

3).
The next author of a major source, Plutarch, sought to write a history much different from the one that Diodorus wrote at an earlier time. Instead of a comprehensive history, Plutarch wrote bibliographies of many prominent figures that lived between the 4th century BC to the 3rd century BC. He lived during the height of the Roman Empire, but we don’t know much about him other than what he wrote about himself (Duff xv). We know that he was from the general Athens area and that he knew some important Romans. We also know that he travelled often. From this, we can infer that Plutarch was from the upper classes of the Roman Empire, as he had the time and money to do these things. Additionally, we know that Plutarch wrote his histories in Greek, the language that Alexander’s empire had spread (Duff xvi). We also know that, unlike Diodorus, a great many of his works survive in whole.
The third author that wrote a significant history of Alexander the Great’s reign was a man with the given name Lucius Flavius Arrianus, who was referred to as Arrian. Arrian wrote the Anabasis Alexandri, or the campaigns of Alexander. Like all of the other sources, Arrian lived under the control of Rome. Unlike the sources mentioned so far, there was more that was known about Arrius outside of his writings, likely due to the fact that he lived later than the other sources, as he lived under the emperor Hadrian. Not only did he live under Roman Greece, he was also a Roman citizen who received several honorary titles in the empire. Because of this, it was fair to assume that Arrius, too, was well off in society.
In addition to being a well-off Roman, Arrian also named himself after an influential Greek intellectual and historian by the name of Xenophon. Xenophon was a contemporary of Plato’s and wrote about Cyrus the Younger’s revolt against Xerxes and his use of Greek mercenaries, of which he was one, that served him well until Cyrus died in battle. Like Xenophon, Arrian wrote histories and commanded battles, which was why he might have chosen to name himself after Xenophon. Knowing the person that he named himself and his work after can help to explain why he wrote the histories of Alexander, and how he prided himself as Greek Roman by comparing himself to such an important historian.
Similar to the other sources that we have, Rufus was a Roman historian who lived hundreds of years after the life of Alexander the Great reign.

Rufus wrote the work titled Historae Alexandri Magni Macedonis or The History of Alexander the Great of Macedon. This source had 10 books, but the first two have been lost to history. Additionally, we don’t know very much about Rufus’ life or the time that he composed the book, and these things have been the topic of scholarly debate (Heckel 1). Despite this, we know that Rufus lived after the foundation of the Empire which makes him, at the earliest, a contemporary of Diodorus. Additionally, from what we know about Rufus, he had a short senatorial career the Roman province of Africa, or modern

Tunisia.
Now that we know more about the authors and what they have written, we should look more into their sources. Now, obviously these sources are not primary or even secondary sources for the most part, as these histories were not compiled until hundreds of years after the death of Alexander the Great, so these sources relied on other, older sources in order to get their information. Modern historians can identify these common sources and try to understand where the information in these books were coming from, even though we don’t have those sources anymore today. In fact, it seems like many of the sources being reviewed do share some of the same older sources.
Now, while we do not know the entirety of the contents of most of these original sources, we have an idea of what these sources contain. The first major source from the era was Cleitarchus, the “official history” of Alexander the Great’s reign until Alexander executed him (Heckel 6). He was not the only major source for our surviving sources. Additionally, there is Ptolemy, the Pharaoh of Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great and a claimant to be his heir after his death. Additionally, some of these surviving sources use documents and visual sources in their histories
First, let’s look at the sources that Diodorus of Sicily used to compose his books that he called the Bibliotheke. Now, Diodorus borrowed heavily from Cleitarchus in his writings about Alexander the Great. According to Sacks, while plagiarism is “too strong a term... to use in judging ancient practices... [is] commonly applied to Diodorus’ method of composition” (Sacks 9). In fact, it is not likely that Diodorus used any sources other than Cleitarchus to compose his history, because there has not been much success by way of proving that there he has used any other source (Heckel 6).
Like Diodorus, Rufus also used Cleitarchus as a source for history. Unlike Diodorus, however, Rufus uses more sources than Diodorus, but it is likely that he also relied heavily on Cleitarchus’ account as well (Heckel 7). However, since Rufus’ entire history was about Alexander the Great and Diodorus’ history was meant to be a compendium of history, Rufus’ account is much more true to Cleitarchus’ original source. Additionally, Rufus used more than just Cleitarchus to compose his history, he also used other sources for his work, such as Ptolemy and Timagenes (Heckel 7).
Thirdly, Plutarch actually used sources different from the first two, for the most part. While he does share in his use of Ptolemy with Rufus, he also names literally hundreds of writers whose work he used” (Duff xxiv). Due to his desire to write about biographies, and not histories as well as his desire to not compete with other histories, he ended up using several sources that we do not see the other authors using, such as comedic plays and speeches by prominent politicians during their times. Despite the wealth of sources that Plutarch cited, not too many of them are surviving to the modern day. In fact, sometimes the very information that he used from these sources is the only information that we know about those original sources (Duff xxv). Additionally, he also quotes older sources such as the classical greek Homeric poems in order to draw parallels to the popular culture at that time. Like I have said earlier, Plutarch’s works were meant to shed more light on the person themselves rather than the events that surround them, leading him to be very selective in order to paint his narrative (Duff xxiii).
Finally there is the account of Arrian. Similarly to all of the other surviving sources, Arrian relies on the main primary sources to a large extent when compiling his Anabasis. Additionally, however, Arrian actually does use Diodorus’ history and Plutarch’s biographies as some of his sources for his work. Arrian also tried using letters and notes and other documents from the time period, including the notes of Alexander’s secretary Eumenes and, supposedly, letters written by Alexander the Great himself (Cartledge xix). Notably, however, these documents mostly all came from the Greek side of the conflicts, with not too much being known today about the Persian side.