page_title: Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great / Literature
caption_attribution_description: English: Alexander the Great conquering the air
context_page_description: Alexander the Great's accomplishments and legacy have been preserved and depicted in many ways. Alexander has figured in works of both "high" and popular culture from his own era to the modern day. Some of these are highly fictionalized accounts, such as the Alexander Romance.
context_section_description: Dante talks well about him in the Convivio and De Monarchia; the position of Alexander in the Divine Comedy, though, is more uncertain, for though there is a reference to an Alexander being punished in the Circle of the Violent (Canto XII), it is not explicit as to whether this is in fact Alexander the Great himself. Alexander, however, is notably absent from Dante's depiction of virtuous pagans (Canto IV).
  Alexandre le Grand, tragedy in five acts by Jean Racine, first staged 1665.
  In the late 1830s, Letitia Elizabeth Landon wrote three major poems on Alexander, beginning with  Death Bed of Alexander the Great. in 1835, which was followed by  The Dream in the Temple of Serapis. (1836) and  Alexander on the Banks of the Hyphasis. in 1837, the latter being one of her Subjects for Pictures.
  In 1868 Tchaikovsky contemplated writing an opera featuring Alexander the Great, taking place in Greece and Babylon and centering on the relations between Hebrews and Greeks. The plot would have featured a Jewish woman falling in love with Alexander and for his sake leaving her Jewish lover, who eventually becomes a prophet. However, though surviving Tchaikovsky letters include details of this planned opera, its plot and characters, he finally abandoned this plan and chose instead for an opera with a Russian background.
  Rudyard Kipling's story "The Man Who Would Be King" provides some glimpses of Alexander's legacy.  Made into a movie of the same title in 1975, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.
  Dutch writer Louis Couperus' Iskander. De roman van Alexander den Groote (1920) is a historical novel about Alexander after his invasion of Asia. Largely based on the Alexander historians Quintus Curtius Rufus, Arrian, and Plutarch, the novel thematises Alexander's psychological condition during the last years of his life.
  Alexander appears in "A Trooper of the Thessalians" (1926), a short story by Arthur D. Howden Smith.
  In 1949, Terence Rattigan's play Adventure Story, based on Alexander the Great, premiered in London.
  Robert Payne published a novel in 1954 about Alexander's life, Alexander the God (not to be confused with the Druon novel, below).
  In 1958, Maurice Druon  wrote a novel about Alexander, Alexandre le Grand (1958). It was translated into English as Alexander the God (1960) by Humphrey Hare.
  From 1969 to 1981, Mary Renault wrote a historical fiction trilogy on the life of Alexander: Fire From Heaven (about his early life), The Persian Boy (about his conquest of Persia, his expedition to India, and his death, seen from the viewpoint of Bagoas, a Persian eunuch and Alexander's eromenos), and Funeral Games (about the events following his death). Alexander also appears briefly in Renault's novel The Mask of Apollo, and is alluded to directly in The Last of the Wine and indirectly in The Praise Singer. In addition to the fiction, Renault also wrote a non-fiction biography, The Nature of Alexander.
  Science fiction writer Poul Anderson wrote an alternate history story, "Eutopia" (1967), featuring a timeline where Alexander the Great lived to an old age and established a stable empire that endured to modern times as an enlightened, peaceful and advanced Greek-speaking world culture. Similar "Alexandrian timelines" also appear in several other alternate histories by various writers.
  Ivan Efremov wrote a historical novel Thais of Athens about the life of hetaera Thaïs, as she follows Alexander in his campaigns. Alexander and Thaïs have a love relationship in the novel.
  French writer Roger Peyrefitte wrote a trilogy about Alexander the great which is regarded as a masterpiece of erudition: La Jeunesse d'Alexandre, Les Conquêtes d'Alexandre and Alexandre le Grand.
  In Alan Moore's Watchmen, one of the main characters, Ozymandias, goes into detail about how he followed in Alexander the Great's footsteps in order to achieve enlightenment.
  A further trilogy of novels about Alexander was written in Italian by Valerio Massimo Manfredi and subsequently published in an English translation, entitled Child of a Dream, The Sands of Ammon and The End
caption: Alexander the Great conquering the air. Jean Wauquelin, Les faits et conquêtes d'Alexandre le Grand, Flander, 1448-1449.
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