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Review of: Jona Lendering, Alexander de Grote. De ondergang van het Perzische Rijk (90.253.3144.0; Amsterdam 2004; reprint 2005; Alexander the Great. The Fall of the Persian EmpireIt is tricky to write this review of the book by Lendering (=L). In the first place, I am German and although I can read Dutch, perhaps I have failed to recognise details. In the second place, I never visited Asia, so I can not check L when he is discussing topography, a subject he clearly likes. This means that I am perhaps not the best of all possible reviewers. Yet someone has to write a review. Recently, we have experienced a lot of Lendering-bashing at the Pothos Forum, especially by people who admitted they hadnGÇÖt read the book or LGÇÖs website. It is some sort of indignation that causes me to write, and this is maybe a third complication.I fail to understand why LGÇÖs ideas provoke so much anger. His book is, like his website, well-researched and the author explains how he treats the sources. His method is not unlike that of Arrian and his modern successors: L has two sources (Arrian and the Vulgate), and assumes that where they are in agreement, we can accept their information (page 13). He always sticks to this principle and carefully notes disagreements. For example, on page 146, L tells that the Vulgate mentions the murder of the Persian commander of Gaza, adds that Arrian ignores this, and summarises that we can not know what happened. It is interesting to compare this unadorned treatment with that by Bosworth, who says more or less the same and suddenly adds that GÇ£the fact that the episode is singularly revolting is no argument against its historicityGÇ¥ [1]. This type of innuendo is absent from LGÇÖs book. Whatever certain Pothos members want to say about L, he is less biased than Bosworth.In his methodological section (page 13), L adds that even agreement of his main, Greek sources is insufficient to establish what really happened. We must also study texts from Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, and India. Although this seems obvious, it is still something new. In other recent books about Alexander, oriental texts are conspicuous by absence. Using oriental sources, L achieves some interesting results, e.g.:GǪ He makes it clear that the reign of Artaxerxes IV Arses was marked by civil war, offering the Macedonians an irresistible opportunity to attack.GǪ He shows that before the battle of Gaugamela, the Persian army was discouraged by a lunar eclipse. Following Va

GǪ He shows that before the battle of Gaugamela, the Persian army was discouraged by a lunar eclipse. Following Van der Spek [2], L argues that the eclipse was a very evil omen indeed and implies that Alexander attacked an army that was just waiting for an opportunity to desert king Darius. I found this the first truly convincing interpretation of what happened at Gaugamela. (This chapter can be found in an English translation at http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_z7.html .)GǪ L suggests that as satrap of Bactria, Bessus officially was the intended successor or GÇ£mathishtaGÇ¥ [3], which explains why he automatically became king after the death of Darius. This can be deduced from the Alexander Chronicle, a cuneiform source that has been dated by Van der Spek to the reign of Alexander [2]; L gives a slightly different but convincing reconstruction. Both agree that Bessus became king immediately and not, as our Greek sources say, several weeks later.GǪ On page 343-354, L reconstructs the circumstances of AlexanderGÇÖs death as they would have appeared to the Babylonian astronomers, who had predicted what was going to happen. The identification of the exact prophecy with a tablet in the Louvre, merely hinted at by Van der Spek [2], is in my view, a triumph. These pages are, to the best of my knowledge, the first successful attempt in the GÇ£alexandrographyGÇ¥ to use an eastern perspective.Admittedly, L is sometimes a bit too optimistic about the possibilities of the oriental sources. I am not yet convinced that his date of the battle of Issus (ca. 6 November 333; page 109 and 382) can be deduced from the Astronomical Diaries. (L has a more convincing astronomical argument.) Nor do I believe that the brief remark in the Astronomical Diaries that gold arrived in Babylon in August 325 necessarily refers to gold from India that was guarded by Macedonian soldiers (page 314). On the other hand, it must be said that precisely because of the scarcity of eastern sources L is right to squeeze every possible drop of information from them. And it must be added that L is careful to introduce his suggestions with caveats like GÇ£maybeGÇ¥.Of course the book is essentially a biography, but L sometimes steps aside from this road and focuses on a detail. He presents the sources, explains the complications, offers a solution (when possible), and returns to his main narrative. The result of this Herodotean approach is that the book is a real page-turner. I learned th

I learned thatGǪGǪ DiodorusGÇÖ statement that the defenders of Tyre GÇ£fashioned shields of bronze and iron and, filling them with sand, roasted them ... and made the sand red hotGÇ¥ is GÇô in LGÇÖs words GÇô GÇ£one of the mysteries ancient metallurgyGÇ¥: before the sand would have turned red, the shield should already have melted (page 142).GǪ one of the motives for founding Egyptian Alexandria was to blackmail Athens: the price of grain was artificially kept high (page 158).GǪ AlexanderGÇÖs invasion of Iran took place in a GÇ£little ice ageGÇ¥ (page 201-202); in an earlier posting at Pothos, L mentioned that 330 was the coldest winter in the past seventy-five centuries.The digressions are nice, although some are unnecessary. On page 318, thereGÇÖs an amusing catalogue of fish from the Indian Ocean, which serves to prove that the Fish Eaters of the Makran were not really poor but is also a bit too long. The illustrations are sometimes too fine for the paper that is used, and the table of contents is remarkably unhelpful. LGÇÖs bibliography is incomplete [cf. note 3].On the other hand, L introduces several really new sources. He uses the oriental information to challenge the now common opinion GÇô once proposed by Badian and accepted by Bosworth and Worthington GÇô that Alexander was some sort of tyrant, or even suffering from a mental illness. As L indicates, many erratic acts (like the cruel punishment of Bessus) can be understood when we take into account that Alexander had Iranian subjects who expected him to punish a regicide in an Iranian style.LGÇÖs disagreement with the current orthodoxy does not mean that he returns to GÇ£the old AlexanderGÇ¥ of Tarn, Lane Fox and Hammond. In fact, L appears to be looking for a third way. In his view, it seems, the conqueror is not just forcing his will on the conquered, but is also being changed by his subjects. I think this is right. I have seen how the Russian occupiers of Berlin adapted themselves to the Germans they had conquered. L is the first Alexander historian who seems to have fully understood how conquest is a process that transforms both the occupied and the occupier. His book is not perfect, but Alexander de Grote. De ondergang van het Perzische Rijk is the best book on the Macedonian conquest of Asia in a decade or two.Heinrich M++ller
Berlin, Germany(Many thanks to Alexander Meeuws for checking if I had really understood LGÇÖs Dutch book.)
NOTES[1]
A.B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire (Cambridge

NOTES[1]
A.B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire (Cambridge 1988) page 68.[2]
R.J. van der Spek, GÇÿDarius III, Alexander the Great, and Babylonian scholarshipGÇÖ in Achaemenid History 13 (2003) 289-346. According to the acknowledgements of LGÇÖs book and Van der SpekGÇÖs article, the two authors have closely collaborated.[3]
The relevant arguments are derived from a book by H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (Yauna en Persai. Grieken en Perzen in een ander perspectief, Groningen 1980), which is not mentioned in LGÇÖs book, but see LGÇÖs website http://www.livius.org/man-md/mathishta/mathishta.html.

Heinrich,Superb - thank you very much.The problem is that now I *really* want to read Jona's book!One thing I'd like to take issue with I'll start on another thread ...All the bestMarcus

It is of course unusual when an author replies to a review, but it would be rather incredible if I pretended not to have read this, so one quick note:thanks Heinrich. You have done a lot of study and have seen a lot; you are the first reviewer who has noted that Bert van der Spek and I are not in complete agreement.Jona