Alexander

Name: Alexander
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Christopher Pelling
ISBN: 9798894866475

Author: Christopher Pelling, Plutarch

Narrator: Christopher Pelling

Unabridged: 3 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 08/19/2025

Categories: Fiction, Classic, World Literature

Synopsis

Plutarch: Alexander is the essential companion to Plutarch's Caesar, the life paired with Alexander in Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This new English version of Alexander is followed by an Afterword about Plutarch’s Parallel Lives by the translator, Christopher Pelling, Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University. Plutarch composed his Lives in parallel pairs, and one choice must have seemed obvious: Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, two dominating and colourful figures who each changed the world they lived in, Alexander by bringing down the Persian Empire and Caesar by winning the war which ended the Roman Republic and prepared for the rule of the emperors. It is their personalities that interested Plutarch most, as he uses ‘little things, a word or a jest or a playful moment’ to show what the men were really like. Alexander is seen to be a great soldier, full of spirit and ambition, gradually coarsened by his own successes until his final months at Babylon in a court full of superstition, terror, and dread; Caesar too is a brilliant figure, loved and admired by soldiers and people, letting nothing stand in his way until finally he lies dead, stricken down by his former friends on the Ides of March. This dynamic audiobook is available in two parts, bringing together Plutarch: Alexander with its sister volume, Caesar. A new Afterword offers listeners a rare opportunity to explore the striking parallels and profound contrasts between these two titans of history.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Glenn on December 06, 2018

The biographer/philosopher Plutarch (45 AD - 120 AD) begins his life of Alexander by stating, "It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a mat......more

Goodreads review by Paul on September 01, 2022

The age of Alexander the Great was a splendid time for warlike kings and generals – for all those would-be emperors who liked nothing better than overrunning large stretches of other people’s territory, and spilling vast amounts of blood in the process. On the other hand, it was a terrible time for......more

Goodreads review by Ave on February 03, 2016

Spengler once wrote that Mozart would cease to be heard not when his music was no longer played, but when its meaning was no longer understood. Something of this fate is also shared by Plutarch in an age where the study of history remains distorted by positivist ideology (see some other reviews on t......more

Goodreads review by Peter on July 16, 2022

The Life of Alexander by Plutarch. [URL not allowed]-re... This is another text I read for the Online Great Books program. Alexander has had great press. In our OGB Zoom seminar, Alexander was picked as "favorite" by a plurality of the group. The general consensus was that he was "awes......more

Goodreads review by Locky on April 21, 2019

It is such a joy to read Plutarch. Having lived 300 odd years after Alexander the Great's time, we cannot know for certain what is fact or fiction, but this biography reads as something a little more legitimate than other books of the time as it does not delve too deeply into mythology. On a side not......more