Good morning Dr. Reames I wanted to ask you, what do you think that Christian Cameron compared Alexandros with Hitler, do you think it is a fair comparison? That is, there will be traits that all leaders must share to motivate a large number of people to follow them and come to power, but is it really true that Alexandros was the Hitler of his time?
First, let me say that Chris Cameron and I share some mutual author friends, so I know him “adjacent,” but we have never had a conversation. Let me also say that while I’m not a fan of his God of War novel about Alexander, I assume he’d equally dislike Dancing with the Lion (assuming he’s even read it). Authors are allowed to have different visions.
So, that stated, I had some pretty serious issues with God of War (GoW), in terms of both his reading of Alexander as well as his historiography. In GoW, he Mary-Sued Ptolemy at the expense of Alexander (and Hephaistion and Olympias, for that matter). Compare his “can do no wrong” Ptolemy (which seems to swallow Arrian’s history whole-hog) with Kate Elliott’s Persephone/Ptolemy in the Sun Chronicles…a much more nuanced portrayal, where—surprise!—Persephone/Ptolemy *lies* when it suits her…like the historical Ptolemy, who was establishing a dynasty, so he carefully curated his history. Basically, Cameron’s historiography is problematic as it doesn’t show much awareness of the tropes and themes present in ancient literature, and doesn’t properly “interrogate” the ancient sources for bias.
GoW is a very “het” novel although I don’t think he considers himself homophobic. Nonetheless, parts of GoW read as homophobic, and misogynistic too. Or it may just be that his sifting of the sources isn’t, IMO, nuanced enough to recognize the misogyny in the ancient sources. I doubt he likes (or perhaps has not even read) Beth Carney on Olympias. And I’m sorry, but calling a character presented as primarily homosexual (Hephaistion) a “bitch queen” can’t be anything BUT homophobic, unless there’s a counterbalance gay character somewhere in the (800-page) text, and there’s not. Having a gay character in another novel elsewhere really doesn’t count (and that gay character has other moral issues).
He has a military history audience, and he doesn’t dare alienate them. I’m not convinced he fully gets the problems in what he’s written for LGBTQ representation OR misogyny OR complex historiography generally.
As for ATG as Hitler, there are OH, so many problems with that. He’s read a little too much Ian Worthington and Peter Green (and Brian Bosworth and Ernst Badian, maybe), then taken it further. ATG was not the ancient Hitler. That doesn’t mean he was necessarily a good guy, or that conquest should be elevated in the modern world. But just as Cameron doesn’t seem aware of the various tropes in ancient sources and their impact on historiography, he also doesn’t seem to understand how to analyze ancient expectations.
There is, IMO, a middle road between simply condemning Alexander on modern grounds, versus undue elevation of Alexander and the “conquest narrative” found throughout the ancient world. Basically, Alexander pursued what he grew up to understand as a noble aspiration. Virtually nobody in HIS world would have critiqued that, only how he went about achieving it. That doesn’t mean we can’t critique it, but critiques that expect ancient people to think like moderns hitch on anachronism.
This is something I think Classics/ancient history generally is struggling with at present. How do we avoid making conquest into a thing to emulate, versus applying modern moral standards to ancient people?
