Ian Worthington is Frederick A. Middlebush Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He taught for ten years in the Classics departments at the Universities of New England and of Tasmania in Australia before moving to Missouri in 1998. He has published fourteen sole-authored and edited books and over eighty articles on Greek history, epigraphy and oratory, including, most recently, the biographies Alexander the Great: Man and God (2004) and Philip II of Macedonia (2008), as well as the Blackwell Companion to Greek Rhetoric (2006). He is currently writing a book on Demosthenes, editing the Blackwell Companion to Ancient Macedonia, and is Editor-in-Chief of Brill’s New Jacoby, a new edition, with translations and commentaries, of 856 fragmentary Greek historians involving a team of 112 scholars in 16 countries (published in biannual installments, 2007-2013). He has convened a number of national and international conferences, and founded the biennial Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece conference series as well as the biennial Fordyce Mitchel Memorial Lecture Series. In 2008 he finished filming a course on the ancient Greek world for The Teaching Company. In 2005 he won the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creativity in the Humanities, and in 2007 the Student-Athlete Advisory Council Most Inspiring Professor Award, both at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Alexander the Great of Macedonia is one of the most exciting and controversial figures of antiquity. Probably only Jesus Christ is more famous from the ancient world. Alexander was only 20 years old when he became king of Macedonia in 336 BC, and only 33 when he died in Babylon in 323. Yet in that time he fought hard battles against vastly superior numbers to expand the Macedonian empire from mainland Greece to what the Greeks called India (present day Pakistan), including Syria, and Egypt. Alexander was all set to invade Arabia when he died.Alexander facilitated the spread of Greek civilization to the east, broadened contacts between east and west, brought to the Greeks a sense of belonging to a greater world than just the Mediterranean, and was worshipped as a god by some of his subjects while he was still alive. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that he came to believe in his own divinity, given his unparalleled conquests. He was a legend in his own lifetime, and he remains one today, as the outpouring of books about him and even movies prove.But Alexander could not have done anything he did without the achievements of his father Philip II, who became king in 359 and ruled until his bloody assassination in 336. Because without Philip, there would have been no Alexander. Without Philip, and what he did for Macedonia politically, militarily, economically, socially and culturally, no Macedonian king would have been able to undertake the bold venture of invading Asia.
Worthington, Ian Philip II of Macedonia Yale University Press352 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches ISBN 978 0300120790
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