I was asked to prepare a review of The History Channel's production of "The True Story Of Alexander" for all the middle school teachers who are teaching history in my state. I thought it might be of interest here as well.

The True Story Of Alexander The Great

It is important to remember that despite its length, this is a succinct version of the life of Alexander The Great which for entertainment value, focuses upon the more dramatic versions of the existing ancient sources in a Television production edited to present the facts in their most theatrical form. Although there are no outright historical inaccuracies, the history/entertainment is blatantly slanted towards the sensational. A good example would be its implication of queen Olympias in the assassination of her husband, Philip II of Macedon. The motive stated in the film is her jealousy over her husbands marriage to another, younger woman, Cleopatra. Although this may seem quite feasible to us here and now and be very dramatic, it is senseless in context and deliberately misleads. The writers obscure one fact by omitting an inconvenient other fact. Philip had five or six wives. Olympia was his second and she got along quite well with all the others as well as her husbands many paramours both male and female. Still, the eternal triangle sells a lot better. They should have listened to their consultant, Peter Green who states quite flatly in another part of the film that Olympias had but one passion in her life and that was to see her son on the throne of Macedon. The film deliberately misleads for effect. There are other ways in which a student may be mislead by this production. The line where Alexander wonders if Greece will accept him as king is certain to create a misconception especially as it is delivered over a map which shows the influence of Macedon and includes what is now Greece. The line should read, “king of Macedon” as students will think it means king of Greece as well. There was no political entity called Greece until 1829 and no king until after that. What the film calls Greece in the 4th century BCE was no more than a group of culturally related independent city states and none of them had a king. This fact is most important to the study of Alexander. The anglicization of all the proper names in the film is annoying and without any good reason. When names like Alexander are a part of the English vernacular there is good reason to use them rather than the more proper Alexandros; it is custom, but when new names are introduced it would be good to learn the proper pronunciation from the beginning. The Latin Æ has long been mispronounced as a long e and caused a lot of trouble for students for years. Linguistic scholars are all in agreement now that the proper pronunciation should be like eye and it is time that this came into use in educating the young. It will save students a lot of future trouble with pronouncing and spelling. Thus the name of the ancient capitol of Macedon which is pronounced eeeguy throughout the film should be taught from the beginning as eyeguy. This is the proper transliteration from the Greek without the stopovers in Latin and English and will save a lot of trouble in years to come. The same is true of the great battle of Chæronea which is mispronounced throughout the film as well. It may seem a triviality, but it will be a big help to students who go on to further study. The film can be a good study tool, but must be used selectively and requires some modifying explanations to be accurate. There is no one like Alexander to interest the young in ancient history. A great many scholars have come to lives of the study of ancient history through him. It is an old academic joke that no one fills the ancient history classes like Alexander. He remains our best recruiting officer.

The best web source of information on Alexander The Great remains “Undying Glory” http://alexanderthegreat.fws1.com/