Description:

The historian Diodorus Siculus tells us that Alexander left a memorandum with his last orders. These included a supply of warships for a campaign against the Carthaginians, the construction of a road along the coast of Libya to the Straits of Gibraltar, the establishment of six temples, the joining together of peoples in Asia and Europe, and an extravagant tomb to his father Philip. Various scholars have interpreted these “last plans” either as a later invention with no historical foundation or as proof of Alexander’s universal aims. The talk will show that they are a Diodoran construct, placing Alexander in the center of a historically determined line that derived from the mythological hero Heracles and concluded with the apex of Roman history as Diodorus knew it: the time of Augustus.