Is The Lighthouse An Alexander Legacy

[jasonxx]

Lately Ive been watching a programe about the British Coast and all along here and there are lighthouses.

Many moons ago I was once asked what Alexander left and I think I saw a history programe about the Pharos at Alexandria. and it been the first lighthouse in the world so that would be Alexanders legacy But is it as Alexander only said where the city would be and probably never even saw it as a town. So does the lighthouse belong to someone later in Alexandrias building or would a lighthouse have been mentioned in his basic blueprints.

To be honest when we go to the coast and See a lighthouse I wonder does it have Alexanders name on it

kenny

[phoohb]

http://www.pothos.org/alexander.asp?par ... %20Wonders
(Ptolemy's son who began the construction of the lighthouse.)

A building more than 100m tall, must have taken decades to construct. I guess there are no high cliffs at Alexandria. But, its less lunatic project than pyramids.

[dean]

Hello,

So we can say that the lighthouse seen in the closing sequence of the film is yet another historical inaccuracy in the epic film "Alexander-"

Yet did Alexander not have a dream where he saw an old guy in the distance (Homer?) and a lighthouse. Must check out the history of lighthouses. Also I think it is unusual how often Alexander's "dreams" are mentioned in the sources- well, not every page, but nevertheless with remarkable regularity. Such was the significance the ancients gave to their dreams- being prophetic in nature.(this element seems to have been picked up on big time in the bible.) Everybody who is anybody has a "dream" which subsequently has great importance. It must be said that Alexander had dreams at crucial moments when perhaps a good morale boost was just what the doctor ordered- as in Tyre.
Best regards,
Dean

[marcus]

Yet did Alexander not have a dream where he saw an old guy in the distance (Homer?) and a lighthouse.

I don't recall that. Unless you are thinking of the lines of the Odyssey that come to his mind when he gets to the site of Alexandria - the lines mention the island of Pharos.

ATB

[dean]

Hi Marcus,

It is in Plutarch's "Lives"- 26.4

The old man in the "dream" or "vision" isn't asserted to be Homer- but an old man with grey hair- who, in the dream recites the following verse,(which I have clumsily translated into English from my Spanish version)

"There is an island in the great sea, opposite Egypt, known by the name of Pharos"

It is funny because up to now the etymology of lighthouse in Spanish was unknown to me but I have just seen the Spanish form of the island "Pharos" is "Faro" and exactly the same as the word for lighthouse in Spanish "faro."

Best regards,
Dean

[marcus]

It is in Plutarch's "Lives"- 26.4

The old man in the "dream" or "vision" isn't asserted to be Homer- but an old man with grey hair- who, in the dream recites the following verse,(which I have clumsily translated into English from my Spanish version)

"There is an island in the great sea, opposite Egypt, known by the name of Pharos"

I stand corrected - I didn't remember that it was in a dream. But the verse he recites is from Homer (which is, I suppose, why the old man is assumed to be him).

ATB

[abm]

The lighthouse in Alexandria was built by Sostratos of Knidos, a Friend of Ptolemy. The construction probably started in 297 BC and it was (also probably) finished in 282 BC. Not much is known about its construction, so we don't know whose idea it was. It might have been Ptolemy's or Sostratos'. I see no reason why Alexander would have planned it.
Since the Alexandria in the movie is from the time when Ptolemy was an old man writing his history, it might be historically accurate to show the lighthouse: Ptolemy died in 282, so he may have seen the end of it. The question remains, of course, whether he didn't write much earlier, about 320.

regards,
abm

[dean]

Hello,

The lighthouse here was the first in history recorded. I have little information about the island itself but I imagine that many a sailor if not hundreds had lost their lives there before anyone would have "dreamed" up a lighthouse.

In Wikipedia I found the following,

The Pharos of Alexandriaaka was a tower built in the 3rd century BC (between 285 and 247 BC) on the island of Pharos in Alexandria, Egypt to serve as that port's landmark, and later, its lighthouse.

They aren't too specific on the date of the tower's construction.

Also on the same page,

Pharos later became the etymological origin of the word 'lighthouse' in many Romance languages, such as French (phare), Italian (faro), Portuguese (farol), Spanish (faro), Romanian (far) and Greek (φάρος).

I think that it is interesting to see how words have survived over two thousand years and have come directly from the approximate "age" and wanderings of Alexander.


Best regards,
Dean

[abm]

Apparently, then, wikipedia is not really reliable concerning the date of construction of the Pharos. The only sources for it are the Suda (s.v. Pharos) which says it was built in 297 (the year Pyrrhos returned to Epirus) and Eusebius' Chronicle, dating it in 283/2. P.M. Fraser (Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford 1972, I, p. 20) plausibly suggested that these might be the beginning and the end of the construction works.

The basis for the date wikipedia provides is probably the following statement later on in the same article:

The building was finished during the reign of his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphos

The source for this view can only be Eusebius' Chronicle, which, as said, gives the exact date of 283/2, the year when Ptolemy II succeeded to the throne. There is no reason to consider the whole of Ptolemy II's reign as possible date for the construction of the lighthouse.

regards,
abm

[jasonxx]

So I can basically assume to be correct that the Lighthouse is a legacy from Alexander?

And when I see one can put his name to it?
Kenny