Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Do I Study Alexander Because He's Cute?


The finest nose:
Alexander the Great on his
horse Bucephalos
by Charles le Brun 1673 (detail)

AN EGGHEAD'S IDEA OF A POP STAR

born 356 B.C. --  died 323 B.C.

= 2300 years older than me

Why does a historian choose a particular subject and hold to it for a lifetime? Why did Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox, and historical fiction writer Mary Renault, for example, choose to "spend so much time with" Alexander the Great? What is there in an historical figure that pulls the researcher on, year after year?