AT THE AGE OF 25, ALEXANDER the Great was accorded the title “King of the World”. In the preceding year, he had successfully liberated Egypt and defeated Darius III, the Persian “King of Kings”, dealing a fatal blow to the largest empire in history, which he would soon conquer in its entirety. The Harvard classicist Ernst Badian, reflecting on the fruits of a life defined by scheming, murdering, and warring, wrote 2,295 years later that procuring epoch-defining success had resulted in Alexander discovering with “startling clarity the ultimate loneliness of supreme power”.
Loneliness and alienation pervaded Alexander’s adult life. During one balmy evening, the young king found that he had suffered one too many insults from a general, took up a nearby sarissa, and ran his drunken companion through with the…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2022