Alexander Stans Achilles: Heroism Intersects with Fandom
By: C.S. Voll
Tags: Media, Culture, Philosophy, History, Psychology

Strabo describes Alexander as a man who was “fond of Homer” (Strabo 13.1.27). The Macedonian monarch’s most treasured possession was his copy of the Iliad, annotated by Anaxarchus, Aristotle, Callisthenes and Alexander himself (Martin 2012). Allegedly, the two items Alexander always placed under his pillow was a copy of the Iliad and a knife. All of this reinforces the impression that the text continued to influence his thinking.

The Conquest Eastward and its Homeric Parallels

The Iliad details an East-West clash between a coalition of Greek states and Troy and its allies, which many ancient Greeks believed to be a factual account (Chrissanthos 2008: 79). To Alexander, this text was reportedly “a viaticum of the military art” (Plutarch 8.3). The text was thus a prism through which to view war (Higgins 2010). In the Iliad there are intense descriptions of combat, almost delighting in the slaughter of war. Homeric conflict can bring renown, but may also destroy lives; generate fortunes, but also cause chaos; inflict cruelty, but also create comradeship. At the centre of this maelstrom stands Achilles, who fully embodies the ambivalent nature of war itself. The meaning of the warrior’s life was to rush onward into the maws of danger, earning glory (kleos) (Higgins 2010). In the Iliad, Diomedes gives voice to these ideals when he is urged to turn back (Iliad 5.251–254):

Argue me not toward flight, since I have no thought of obeying you. No, for it would be ignoble for me to shrink back in the fighting or to lurk aside, since my fighting strength stays steady forever.

In this incident, Diomedes exhibits the noble character that Aristotle argued for (On Rhetoric 2.15.3), because the hero trusts in his strength, even in the face of extreme danger (Martin 2012). This is a crossover point between the Iliad and Aristotle’s thinking. A warrior’s reward for exhibiting these traits was glory and fame, as described by Achilles (Iliad 9.412–416):

[I]f I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my fame shall be immortal; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, my distinguished fame is gone, but there will be a long life left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.

During his conquest of the Persian Empire (c. 334–328 BCE), Alexander sought to exhibit this forceful spirit. In May 334 BCE, Alexander reportedly reached Ilium, where he sacrificed to Athena and poured a libation for heroes, after which he visited the tomb of Achilles (Plutarch 15.7). This act created a metaphorical link between the Iliad, a story detailing an ultimately successful Greek conquest of a power in the East, and the very campaign he had just launched.

“Alexander the Great at the Tomb of Achilles” by Giovanni Paolo Panini. From Wikimedia.

At the temple of Athena in Ilium, Alexander would also exchange his own armour for an (allegedly) Trojan-era set of armour, which would henceforth be carried out in front of him prior to battles (Arrian1.11.13). One of the sacred shields of Ilium, believed to have been Achilles’, was used to shield Alexander during his operations in a city of the Malli (326 BCE), during his operations in the Punjab region (Edmunds 1971: 373). The link to the Iliad wasn’t only a fleeting romanticism, but there was a genuine desire to bring icons of the Homeric stories into combat, to absorb their spirit.

In late 326 BCE, at the Hydaspes River, there would occur the first pushback against Alexander’s indefatigable drive, when his soldiers refused to go any further (Martin 2012). Alexander wanted to go beyond his heroes’ conquests, but to his men it looked increasingly like endless labours. During this standoff, Alexander reportedly addressed his army with the following words (Arrian 5.26.4–5):

Exertions and dangers are the price of deeds of prowess, and it is sweet for men to live bravely, and die leaving behind them immortal renown. Or do you not know that it was not by remaining in Tiryns or in Argos or even in the Peloponnese or Thebes that our ancestor attained such renown that from a man he became, or was held, a god?

If this account is to be believed, then the Macedonian king reveals his own drive — to exhibit noble virtues linked with the divine — to his troops, in the hope it would provide inspiration for them. Similar to the heroes of the Iliad (Iliad 5.251–254), Alexander did not want to turn back from a challenge (in this case everything that lay beyond the Hydaspes River); instead, he wanted to test his virtue against unknown opponents (Martin 2012). The Homeric ideal of continually striving for the best permeated through Alexander, but the soldier’s desire to see their homes won out, marking the Hydaspes as the furthest extent of Alexander’s empire.

The Effect of Fandom and Heroes

Fandoms have become a major feature of life in the 20th and 21st centuries. Fan, short for fanatic, is derived from the Latin term fanaticus, which could mean “belonging to the temple, a temple servant, a devotee” (Schulman 2019). A devotion to a variety of topics is possible, from fictional universes to celebrities, and the intensity of the dedication to it can differ from person to person. In the 21st century, ardent fans would become known as “stans” (derived from a 2000 Eminem track, where he raps about a fictional stalker fan) (Schulman 2019).