Jan/O'Brien

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Greetings to everyone in this very special fellowship. I've been laboring on another project that has been time consuming and was thus unable to treat myself to the pleasure of the forum for some time. Jan, thank you for being the first here to recognize one of several complex dimensions to my biography of Alexander. The book is so often summarily dismissed by those who have not read it or have simply glanced through it. It was written as a Greek tragedy based on the protocols for tragedy discussed by Aristotle in his Poetics. The quotations from the Iliad, as well as those from Euripides'Bacchae, serve as a Greek chorus in the work. Alexander knew both works intimately, and Kerenyi has wisely pointed out that tragedy has to do with the intersection of the Dionysian and heroic spheres. Aware of Alexander's reverential attitude towards the Iliad, while spending a summer in Greece, I marked off every passage in that work which could conceivably have struck Alexander in a particular way. For two years I pared down these passages within my text to the point that they were not just a propos, but enhanced the flow of my book rather than impeded it. As a result, I believe that on many occasions, the excerpts cited in my book come as close as we'll ever get to representing the thoughts [from the Iliad] actually passing through Alexander's mind at the time. This is just one unique element in my biography. The laconic assertion, so often seen, that my book is about Alexander's drinking, is as germane and percipient as describing Joyce's Ulysses as a novel about early twentieth century Dublin. The observations of a careful reader like Jan embolden writers to forgo the temptation to succumb to the parochial. Best wishes to all my fellow philosophers in arms. I'll be around for a fortnight or so and happy to reply to any questions you might have about Alexander and/or my book. It is, by the way, now available in both Italian and Greek. Cheers.
John O'Brien

[jan]

John, What a wonderful surprise. I appreciate your kind remarks. Your interpretation of Alexander has shed new insights into my appreciation of his ability and talent. You almost prove that he is "Achilles come again." But I am happy that you have explained that it is really the Greek chorus. I needed that. As you have noticed, I am reading it very carefully as I enjoy the style so much. Excellent and thoughtful approach...Jan

[jan]

Greetings John,Now that I have calmed myself after hearing from a famous author, I must admit that I do have a question for you? Why is it do you believe that Alexander never returns to Greece? Do you believe that it was Olympias? I was pondering that this morning as to why he would send his men back to their families but that he seemed never to want to return himself. Do you have an idea? Thanks for staying around for questions.Faithfully,Jan

[aen]

John,Sadly, I havenGÇÖt yet obtained a copy of your book, but the premiss on which you describe your writing of it is fascinating. I used to lecture on a smattering of things classical in Italy in a painting atelier. One of the texts my Maestro was determined that his prot+¬g+¬s would be familiarised with was Poetics, as he was of the opinion that there is much the figurative painter can learn from it. When I researched that series of lectures, I had the great privilege of using H.D.F. KittoGÇÖs pencil annotated personal text of same. He had passed it on to my Maestro when the other announced that after his degree he would be off to pursue a life as a classical painter in Italy.Aside from the sections on Diction, I always enjoyed Poetics - was there anything Aristotle couldnGÇÖt analyse? But to concentrate on Plot for a moment, as it pertains to Alexander: elements of his story that arouse Pity and Fear are easily discernible, as are numerous incidents of Suffering, but where do you identify the moments of Peripety and Discovery? Apropos Alexander, they donGÇÖt seem to me to be at all obvious in the sense that Aristotle defines them. Also have you identified the moment of Denouement as being the final turning away from the east or the death of Hephaistion, or perhaps something else . . . something earlier?Sorry to ask these questions without reading your text (shall rectify as soon as pos), but IGÇÖm curious? Poetics is so emphatic on the issue of structure in general, and I have never been certain that one can apply it to a real life lived off stage.What a pity the section dealing with Comedy is lost. I suspect large portions of it would prove all too applicable to all of our lives. Perhaps Umberto EcoGÇÖs fanciful reconstruction of what may have befallen it is closer to the truth than we might suppose.All best. Aengus.

[jan]

and one more from me: Dear Mr. O'Brien, as a post script to the question as to why Alexander does not return to Pella. I realize that many may be taking me on for my recent excursion into the life of Alexander, but I am concerned whether that the oracle of Delphi may have told him not to return as similar to the story of Ruth in the Bible, where she is told not to look back or be turned into a pillar of salt, or if it was simply politics, disinterest, fear, or some other hidden defect in Alexander's personality.Explaining myself away, it is that I am rereading Arthur Weigall's book, finding all the places of similarity between myself and Alexander, and your book, which elucidates on events and places in a manner totally distinctly different from Weigall.I am always amazed at how I had felt that Weigall's book was like a script for my life today, and that you are proving that the Iliad is like a script (subconsciously) for Alexander's exploits yesteryear.While I am somewhat defensive also about my position on Alexander, I am aware that your use of the God Dionysus is an important theme of your book. I suspect that the gods were the main source of inspiration and faith for Alexander, but in my travels back to being "in" him, I find that there is an excessive energy present in his person that few historians can understand. Today's athletes have to pump themselves up with steroids to achieve success, but the energy of which I speak about in Alexander is not due to vitamins or drugs.Because I had the actual experience of realizing that energy in myself as a result of tapping in on his "presence" I understand the difference in vital resources of that period compared to this period.His diet probably contributed to this as I read that he ate little, and most of his diet was very nutritional and free of sugar. I recall his aversion to Queen Ada's gifts of excess.I am inclined to believe without having been to Greece yet and drawing only upon my college professor's telling us about how only the hardy could ever live in Greece, that the climate and environment spawned a being whose health and vitality is what contributed most to his success. As we know today, wine is good for the blood so possibly it was considered healthy then as well.At any rate, I welcome any who want to take me on about my own personal experiences as I have been fortified with the pleasure and fun of "being there". I always wonder what attracts people to Alexande

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Dear Jan,
Alexander returning home:
While Alexander refers to going home on several occasions these words are usually uttered when he is urging his men to cross yet another river, vanquish one more foe and - then - go home. Pothos (my license plate in Connecticut) certainly enters into the equation and the penetrating observation of Arrian that "no matter what he [Alexander] had already conquered, he would not have stopped there quietly, not even if he had added Europe to Asia and the Britannic Islands to Europe, but that he would always have searched far beyond for something unknown, in competition with himself in default of any other rival." (A 7.1.1-4) should be borne in mind here. One might also be mindful of the fact that as the expedition progressed, Alexander became less encumbered with the constraints of ancestral Macedonian traditions and increasingly able to act of his own volition, almost without limitations. A return home would bring with it a restoration of his commanders' regional/propertied base of power as well as their likely insistence for a return to traditional governance with the aristocracy playing a larger role than they had of late. Return to Macedonia for anything other than a brief visit? Unthinkable - to my mind Alexander had no intention of walking that way again. On the neverending campaign it was the king, the commander in chief, who controlled the decision making process, enabling him to change the rules of the game from one inning to the next as he moved in and out of alien worlds. Having cult paid to him as a deity in Hellas during the last year of his life was perhaps the penultimate step in a process of Alexander liberating himself from the provincial thinking of lesser creatures - including his own rank and file as well as most of his officer class.Olympias:
In a remarkable speech Arrian attributes to Coenus at the Beas(Hyphasis) River, - among the dubious incentives Coenus employs to convince the king to return home - is "to look on your own mother." (A.5.27.7) My own opinion is that Alexander must have shuddered at the prospect. There was a solid loving bond between the two, but they shared similar personalities and one can imagine the fireworks when a dispute arose between mother and son. On one occasion, Arrian reports a story wherein Alexander turns to Hephaestion, (they have both just read a letter in outer Asia brimming with advice from Olympias to Alexander) - and Alexander says to Hephaestion (you can vi

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(cont.) visualize Alexander shaking his head)paraphrase - "She (mother) charges awfully high rent for the few months she provided lodging for me during her pregnancy." I find more students identifying with this statement than any of Alexander's others.
Best,
John O'Brien

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Dear Aengus,
Magnificent name you brandish there. Granted,in my life of Alexander I am utilizing the precepts of Aristotle intended for a different genre and Alexander's mentor, with his penchant for delineation and classification, may well be rolling over in his grave. Whenever applicable is the operative phrase here. The Prologue in my book, for example, is written with enhanced language to do justice to the subject (a la Aristotle). It foreshadows what is to unfold through a discussion of Pentheus in Euripides' Baccchae, which simultaneously speaks of the destiny awaiting Alexander. The prologue is mirrored in the epilogue where I make the case (in Aristotelian terms) for Alexander as a "tragic hero" or a protaganist in Aristotle's own terms. When you manage to get a copy of the book, with your background, you will be able to identify the peripety (reversal of fortune), although it is a gradual process rather than an abrupt reversal. Anagnorisis (discovery or recognition) I believe occurs when Hephaestion, Alexander's beloved comrade, dies in Ecbatana.They were young lions, and, like Thomas Wolfe's hero, were never going to die. Alexander's extreme response to the lifeless corpse of his second self was, I believe, a reflection of an abrupt and chilling recognition of his own mortality. Reality dissipates illusion. He became visibly depressed thereafter and was never quite the same again. Achilles knew that his death would follow that of Patroclus and Alexander, I believe, was equally certain that his death would follow that of Hephaestion. Tragedy was a Dionysiac experience and there are countless dimensions to the Dionysiac motif in my book. A quote which precedes my Prologue - to roughly translate it from the French -says "Dionysus, god of illusions, god of the incessant mix between reality and appearances, truth and fiction." Vernant & Vidal-Naquet. Aristotle, forgive me, but truth is the victim of categorical thinking. To me it is reminiscent of Procrustes and his iniquitous bed. You'll recall that Procustes would seize those who had inadvertently entered his domain and thrust them upon his bed. Those who were too small to fit exactly were stretched until they did. The oversized had their extremities lopped off to achieve the same purpose. No one (like the truth), fit exactly. Thus, they all perished.
Best,
John

[dean]

Hello,
It is fantastic to have you here on the forum- almost like having a special guest star on a t.v. show.I, similar to Aengus, must confess that I haven't yet read your book and must rectify it a.s.a.p. With the book, what were you attempting to do?I love your work with the Iliad- I think that Alexander knew the Iliad off by heart and I am sure that Mr Eric Berne, renowned psychologist who developed the beginnings of transactional analysis would see in "your" work a similar idea to one of his "life scripts"- or am I mistaken? Did Alexander internalise the Iliad as a life script- given the fact that he even believed that one of his ancestors was the central hero?I have two passions in life- history and psychology and would love to hear what you thought of Alexander from a psychological point of view- what made him tick? I do realise that evaluations made of someone based on fragmentary data is highly conjectural but all the same I would love to hear you opinion.Thanks very much for visiting our group here and please keep in touch.All the best,
Dean.

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Dear Dean,
A pleasure to hear from you. I'm scarcely a celebrity. The closest I ever came to it was when I wrote my original articles on Alexander and wine back in 1980. The New York Times interviewed me and wrote a two page piece on them and all Hades broke loose. That night I was live on the BBC via New York, the next day The Times (of London) had a front page lead article on the subject, I was bombarded by radio and television programs, European magazines (the Australian Weekly's headline was NOW ITS ALEXANDER THE GRAPE), etc. for weeks to come. I received threatening letters from zealots, one of which said that when Socrates was opining on truth, beauty and justice on the agora, people with my name were drinking urine out of human skulls in caves. The dear departed Andy Warhol was right, 15 minutes is enough. Some good did come of it. The New York Times piece was actually printed before the articles came out in The Annals of Scholarship (learned journals are ordinarily well behind schedule). Established experts in various fields all over the world did not hesitate to offer elaborate critiques of and responses to my articles which they could not possibly have read because they had not yet been published!Welcome to the realm of the intellectual.However, all the attention afforded to me convinced me that I ought to write a book about the man and - to boot -a book that could be read and understood by Alexander himself and his contemporaries. What hubris!
Dean, I have an article in the Oxford Classical Dictionary on "Alcoholism" which in its limited framework indicates that the ancient Greeks and Romans were well aware of the fact that aberrational drinking is symptomatic of a complex and deep-seated psychology. My book explores that psychology. Drinking, thus, is the tip of the iceberg. Using Dionysus, the ambivalent god, enabled me to explore the ambivalent nature of our hero. Depending upon the circumstances, he could be superbly virtuous or unconscionably vicious, compassionate or atavistically brutal, supremely loyal or unequivocally treacherous, etc.etc. It is this quality which seems to have eluded others who have written about the great one. I teach a graduate course on Alexander and after fundamentals have been established, the class examines controversial episodes in Alexander's life. They first must read a packet which contains all of the ancient sources extant on that particular topic (e.g., The Assassinaton of Philip II, The Burning of Perse

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Persepolis, Death of Alexander, etc.). Then my students read what Tarn, Wilcken, Burn, Milns, Renault, Green, Lane Fox,Hamilton, Hammond, Bosworth, O'Brien, etc.) have done with the episode in their works. We discuss a topic or two per week and patterns begin to unfold. Some authors (e.g.Renault, Hammond) transparently go to great lengths in each set of circumstances to absolve Alexander of any culpability in regard to the event. Conversely, others (Milns, Green) offer equally persuasive (in and of themselves) accounts which invariably conclude that the responsibility for what transpired lies exclusively with Alexander. Well into the process, students are able to use the bare facts of a future episode to conjecture (through writing as if they were Mary Renault or Peter Green or Robin Lane Fox) what each author will due with that epsiode - and they do so in remarkably accurate fashion. Thus, each treatment eventually becomes predictable, a harrowing revelation indeed when we think of what history is supposed to be. A spectrum unfolds with considerable polarity and only a few authors (e.g. J.R. Hamilton) coming close to a detached and objective approach. The supreme irony here, from my point of view, is that every biographer I know is convinced that he or she is offering as much of the gospel truth as is attainable through the sources in their work. My students dissect the controlling assumptions of the biographer and the manner in which each author's attitude towards his/her Alexander influences the way in which the available sources are understood and utilized. I must, of course, confess that when they get too frisky in regard to O'Brien I occasionally have to remind them in some subtle way from whence their grades come and what a balm superlatives are to all authors. My book was designed to raise questions about the psychology of Alexander rather than to answer them definitively. The fragmentary and contradictory nature of the Alexander sources prohibits much beyond that. My history is a solid synthesis of current Alexander scholarship (as of 1992) as recognized by Eugene Borza, Frank Holt, and many other reviewers; it is the unique orchestration of the material and its unconventional organization that has discouraged some from considering what I have to say. I am once again reminded of Aristotle who said that "no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but every one says something true about the nature

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of things." (Metaph. 993b)Dean, I must say how grateful I am to be able for a limited time to pay my dues on the forum in response to questions anyone might have. I have had truly enjoyed looking in on the forum over the past few years and have learned quite a bit from some of its postings.
Best,
John

[dean]

Hello,The pleasure is ours I can assure you.As you say authors like Renault fall into the trap which you are speaking of- it is such a tempting trap to fall into- always clearing Alexander of all charges so he is never guilty even when there is evidence.That is not to say that Renault didn't do some VERY SERIOUS homework before she put pen to paper- God bless her. She fell hopelessly in love with him and what else could she do?The way you have taken a psychological approach to the historical figure of Alexander is to me fascinating. I read a quite short paper about him which defended a Freudian analysis and even went on to say that Alexander had an unresolved Oedipus complex. But again, it mentioned that we are dealing with a man who lived over two thousand years ago and getting at the "truth" is realistically tricky. However part of the fun for me is putting the pieces together- for sometimes they really do come together!!! I wish you all the best!Dean.

[Nicator]

Hello Mr. O'Brian,
It's great to have someone of your stature to confer with. With that said, I would like to take the opportunity to ask some questions. How did the Persepolis incendiary incident affect the ancient Persian's viewpoint of Alexander (if at all)? Was the burning justified? How did this go over at home and in Greece?What major insights into Alexander's actions and psyche have been revealed in the study of Aristotle? A modern Persian told me that Alexander burned the Persian library. Is there a source which validates this, and if so, how great was the loss (speaking in Alexandrian library terms as the yardstick)?Thanks Nick

[susan]

There's a Zoroastrian tradition that Alexander burned the books of the Zend Avesta. This is unlikely as
1) the books were probably not written down by then
2) one of Alexander's defining traits was respect for other religions, probably for pragmatic as well as religious grounds.The heartland of the Zoroastrian religion was Bactria, so the central Asian revolt in 329-327 was highly significant - this is where the entrenched resistance lay. The Greek historians of the time never really got to grips with the Persian religion, so the details of the revolt are not clear.However, there is the issue of fire and its importance in the Zoroastrian religion - as purifier. Burning would be quite a symbolic act; so it wouldn't be casual destruction or vandalism, if it occurred, but a significant action. There's also the possibility that someone else - a Persian - torched Persepolis rather than see it polluted by Greeks.Susan