Plutarch: Alexander

First published by Oxford University Press in 1969, Hamilton’s work remains the definitive commentary in English on Plutarch’s Life of Alexander. It is based on Ziegler’s revised (Teubner) text and devotes most of its space to historical matters, comparing Plutarch’s narrative at every point with our sources (most notably Arrian and Diodorus 17). At the same time Hamilton is eminently conscious that he is dealing with literary biography as well as the history of Alexander: he includes, for example, comparison between the rhetorical Alexander of the de Alexandri fortuna and the Alexander of the Life, drawing attention to frequent instances where the same incident is treated in quite different ways.
For this first paperback reprint of the original edition, Philip Stadter adds a fresh introduction and select bibliographies, on both Plutarch and Alexander himself.