of this passage illustrates the contradictory nature of historical judgement on Alexander. How this came to pass is as important to any assessment of Alexander's career as the facts themselves.
It is a commonplace of opinion among modern historians that, traditionally, history is written by the victors. Chronological "victory" sometimes means "he who lives longer." Alexander died young. On his death, battles for succession shook the territories embraced by his conquests - with pretenders, rebels, loyalists and a spectrum of political affiliations to the memory of Alexander in between. Ptolemy: loyal general, friend since childhood, possible half-brother (?), and founder of a dynastic ruling house carved from Alexander's popular conquests in Egypt - this historian considered the dead Conqueror his benefactor and recorded their exploits together with appropriate admiration. In Athens, where resentment of the Macedonian repeatedly plagued Alexander during his lifetime, those grabbing for power after his death had an opposite criteria for evaluation. The Lyceum of Athens, repository of learning and education, interpreted Alexander's career in negative terms related to their own lost democracy and prestige among the Greek city-states. Meanwhile, throughout the former Persian Empire, various power groups - lords, generals, satraps, governors - created or destroyed records of Alexander's achievements as the occasion fit their immediate political needs in the ensuing wars of succession. Legends grew alongside "history."
When Rome assimilated Hellenic culture and overwhelmed the Greeks with their own empire, new criteria of historical evaluation arose. The Romans, though sending their sons to Greece for literary and aesthetic polish, looked upon their predecessors as lesser in all other matters: a not unusual attitude the conqueror feels toward the conquered. Rome had its own set of changing standards with which to interpr...