Alexander –the Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield

The sarissa’s song is a sad song
He pipes it soft and low.
I would ply a gentler trade, says he,
But war is all I know.

Steven Pressfield is solidifying his place in my mind as one of the finest writer of historical novels of this generation. In this book Pressfield tackles the most famous subject in all of the ancient world, Alexander the Great. While his earlier books Gates of Fire and Tides of War still had some awkward sections and some inconsistencies, the Virtues of War is polished, mature book where the author has found his true voice.

Pressfield assumes the role of Alexander himself, as he tells the story of his exploits to a young page named Itanes just before the army of Alexander crosses river Indus to conquer India. This alone makes the book fascinating, for Pressfield takes great care to construct the personality of Alexander so that he does not appear as unfathomable as he does to the students of history. Alexander was famous both for his excess (killing many of his best friends with his own hands in blind rage) as well as his magnanimity and generosity. Pressfield takes the view that in order to achieve what Alexander achieved, a man has to be able to commit the noblest and the most evil deeds.

Countless historical novels have been written about Alexander the Great (more recent offerings including Mannfredi’s Alexander trilogy and the entertaining but flawed Dark Prince by David Gemmel) but Pressfield easily surpasses them. His attention to detail is staggering, and utterly captivating: No-one else describes the toil of carrying weapons, the dust of the road, the art of throwing a javelin or what the rivets of the shields of hoplites are made of with the same love and care. His description of the Theban Sacred Band is one of the best I’ve ever read: it is so easy too see them in your mind’s eye after reading Pressfield’s powerful words on them.

It is not only the description of the historical details that Pressfield excels: the camaraderie of the soldiers, coarse phrases used by the rank-and-file Macedonian soldiers and the deep relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion, all the relationships between comrades-in-arms and their enemies are the real meat and drink of the book. Anyone can go to the library and study the conquests of Alexander, but Pressfield makes these names on dusty pages of history books come alive.

It would be very easy to dismiss Pressfield as an author who glorifies war and violence, but I feel nothing is further from the truth. By telling the tale from the point of view of somebody who loves war and conquest allows reader to draw his own conclusions. Nor does Pressfield just heap praise upon Alexander in the book: It is Porus, king of India that acts as a voice of reason in the book and questions the actions of Alexander: what right does he have to assail nations that have never done any harm to him? Has Alexander ever built anything? Has he not simply razed and destroyed everything before him? Porus offers to take Alexander as his son to teach him how to be a king instead of a conqueror. These are the words that Porus uses to admonish Alexander:

“I said you are no king, Alexander, and I repeat it. You do not rule the lands you have conquered. Neither Persia nor Egypt, nor Greece from whence you came, which hates you and would eat you raw if she could. What offices have you established to promote your people’s weal? None! So we shall have war, Alexander. I see you will stand for nothing else. Perhaps you shall win. Perhaps you are invincible, as all the world attests. But though you stand over my dead body and set your heel upon the throat of my realm, you will not be a king.”

In the end the book’s greatest merit is not really its riveting descriptions of the great battles of Chaeronea, Issus and Gaugamela (as brilliant as they are) but the understanding of men facing death in the battlefield and the way in which even the humblest cook of the Macedonian army is brought alive in these pages. It also describes Alexander as a person who you revere and loathe at same time.

NOTE: A great interview with the author can be found here.

Posted by Dragon at 4 October 17:37, 2004