356–323 BCE · king of Macedon · founder of Alexandria
Alexander the Great
Ἀλέξανδρος
In Alexandria: 331 BCE
Founded the city in 331 BCE between Lake Mareotis and the sea, opposite the island of Pharos. Arrian and Plutarch put the founding before his journey to the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, Diodorus and Curtius after it. He never saw it built. His body, seized by Ptolemy, lay in the Sema at its heart and made Alexandria a city of royal cult.
Their life and work
Arrian tells the founding as the king's own plan: he marked out where the agora should be, which gods should have temples, and where the wall should run (Anabasis 3.1.5). Vitruvius names his architect Deinocrates, Pliny Dinochares. No library and no Mouseion is attested in his lifetime; both belong to the Ptolemies.
His body is the thread that ties him to the city. Ptolemy met the funeral cortege in Syria and brought the body to Egypt (Diodorus 18.28.2–6). In Strabo's day it lay in the Sema in a coffin of glass, a later Ptolemy having taken the gold one (17.1.8), and Augustus came to look on it (Suetonius, Augustus 18). Where the tomb stood has never been found.
Our device: Their emblem is a surveyor's cord and pegs. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
Moments
- 331 BCE · Alexander founds Alexandria Known: attested, disputed
- 321/320 BCE · Ptolemy brings Alexander's body to Egypt Known: attested
In the show
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Sources (11)
- Arrian, Anabasis 3.1.5–3.2.2
- Plutarch, Alexander 26.3–10 (opens in a new tab)
- Diodorus Siculus 17.49–52
- Curtius Rufus 4.7–4.8.2
- Strabo, Geography 17.1.6–8 (opens in a new tab)
- Vitruvius, On Architecture 2 preface 1–4
- Pliny, Natural History 5.62
- Diodorus Siculus 18.28.2–6
- Suetonius, Augustus 18.1
- P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)
- J. McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, c. 300 BC to AD 700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)