Indian Philosophers and Alexander the Great – Reality and Myth

Political and literary considerations alike suggest that the Alexandra dates from about 190 BC and that its closing sections celebrate the victory of the Roman consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus over Philip V of Macedon at the battle of Kynoskephalai in 197 BC. Lykophron’s world is essentially the Mediterranean and Black Sea zones. It ranges from Spain across to Phoenicia. All the kingdoms which succeeded Alexander the Great are featured in the poem, but the Seleukids less prominently than the rest. The poem’s Spartan and Theban myths are shown to have resonance for the Hellenistic period. Only Athens is regarded as a place of memory. Some great federations, notably the Boiotian, Aitolian, and Lokrian, are traceable in the poem, and with a particularly Hellenistic twist.

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Corruption and Anticorruption in Democratic Athens

10.1093/oso/9780198809975.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Claire Taylor

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Participatory Democracy ◽

Collective Decision ◽

Civic Culture ◽

Collective Decision Making ◽

Alexander The Great ◽

Political Equality ◽

Individual Judgment ◽

Collective Judgment ◽

Hidden Knowledge

The chapter examines a major corruption scandal that involved the Athenian orator Demosthenes and an official of Alexander the Great. This episode reveals how tensions between individual and collective decision-making practices shaped Athenian understandings of corruption and anticorruption. The various and multiple anticorruption measures of Athens sought to bring ‘hidden’ knowledge into the open and thereby remove information from the realm of individual judgment, placing it instead into the realm of collective judgment. The Athenian experience therefore suggests that participatory democracy, and a civic culture that fosters political equality rather than reliance on individual expertise, provides a key bulwark against corruption.

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The Indian Invasion of Alexander and the Emergence of Hybrid Cultures

Indian Historical Review ◽

10.1177/03769836211009651 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 037698362110096

Author(s):

Chandima S. M. Wickramasinghe

Keyword(s):

Survival Strategies ◽

Alexander The Great ◽

Indian Culture ◽

The West ◽

Archaeological Evidence ◽

Achaemenid Empire ◽

Return Home ◽

Cultural Features

Alexander the Great usurped the Achaemenid Empire in 331 bc, captured Swat and Punjab in 327 bc, and subdued the region to the west of the Indus and fought with Porus at the Hydaspes in 326 bc. But he was forced to return home when the army refused to proceed. Some of his soldiers remained in India and its periphery while some joined Alexander in his homeward journey. When Alexander died in 323 bc his successors ( diodochoi) fought to divide the empire among themselves and established separate kingdoms. Though Alexander the Great and related matters were well expounded by scholars the hybrid communities that emerged or revived as a result of Alexander’s Indian invasions have attracted less or no attention. Accordingly, the present study intends to examine contribution of Alexander’s Indian invasion to the emergence of Greco-Indian hybrid communities in India and how Hellenic or Greek cultural features blended with the Indian culture through numismatic, epigraphic, architectural and any other archaeological evidence. This will also enable us to observe the hybridity that resulted from Alexander’s Indian invasion to understand the reception the Greeks received from the locals and the survival strategies of Greeks in these remote lands.

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