Alexander the Great: Man and Myth

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Alexander the Great is one of the most famous figures from history. Legends and fantastical versions of his life were told almost immediately upon his death, often merging fact with fiction. Through his interaction, both good and bad, with so many different empires and societies, Alexander the Great is viewed through many a lense; hero, villain, demi-god - the list goes on.

Despite dying at a young age, his achievements have been immortalised throughout history, with the help of some extraordinary tales, Alexander the Great is intertwined with more cultures and religions than you would expect.

In this episode, Tristan interviews Dr Peter Toth, the curator of the new British Library Exhibition on Alexander the Great. Together they discuss the idea of an Alexander Romance culture, and the layers of Alexander's mythical past that have helped keep this giant of history alive.

Edited by Thomas Ntinas

For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Alex Under the Great is one of the most famous figures from the whole of history and he's
0:18.0	been the subject of several ancient podcast episodes over the past couple of years.
0:22.7	You might know that I have a particular fascination in the events, the chaotic events that follow
0:27.6	his death in 323BC. But another extraordinary aspect of Alexander's story is his mythical
0:34.1	afterlife. How his story evolves in the centuries following his passing and is embraced by so many
0:41.5	different cultures but often with lots of fictional mythical exploits attached. Exploits
0:48.9	that include Alexander venturing to the bottom of the sea in a submarine, another where he
0:53.7	saw was into the sky in an ancient flying contraption, another where he combats mythical beasts
0:59.5	in India. Various romantic mythical versions of Alexander the Great emerge in cultures across
1:08.5	the world in the millennia in the many centuries following his death. So much so that by the time
1:15.4	he reached the medieval period these romance stories of Alexander have become medieval best
1:22.0	sellers. And what's so extraordinary about them is as hinted there are so many different versions
1:28.3	of this Alexander romance that emerge in the centuries. You have a version for instance that
1:35.6	associates Alexander with the Christian tradition, you have another which associates this conqueror
1:41.6	with the Jewish tradition and another where he also interacts with the Islamic world too. He becomes
1:48.3	a hero of so many different cultures across the world he is embraced by so many different parts of
1:54.5	the world for their own purposes including impagion. This mythical afterlife Alexander is so extraordinary
2:02.0	so I'm delighted we're doing a podcast episode on this and with the British Library who have just
2:07.8	released a new exhibition all about the mythical afterlife of Alexander the Great, their exhibition
2:13.2	which is called Alexander the Great, the Making of a Myth. A few weeks back I headed to the British
2:18.9	Library to interview this exhibition's curator Dr. Peter Toff it was a wonderful chat and we delve
2:24.6	into so many of these mythical exploits that become attached to Alexander's story in the centuries
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.