He left neither structure nor formal successors. Like a glorious comet, Alexander the Great (356-323BC) crossed the sky - and died. Here, in a book for which a more fitting title would be After Alexander, Green examines his legacy. The 300 years that followed Alexander, until the battle of Actium in 31BC gave Rome world dominion, are known as the Hellenistic Age. The received view that they pall before the prior paradigm of Periclean Athens is, Green proves, a superficial and simplistic one.

Like Norman Stone among modern historians, Green is wonderfully rebarbative. This professor of classics is not afraid to take a view. He may be wrong at times, but my goodness he makes you think. “In 169 [BC] the [Roman] Senate was investigating the tax-farmers; by the end of the century, it was hand in glove with them.” And if he is iconoclastic, he is delightfully droll. Of Aristotle's hugely influential Poetics, for example, he says that although it is “no parody, at times one wishes it were”.

The prose has its moments of pretension. Never before have I seen the adjective “banausic” (meaning commonplace or artisanal) in a book. Not only does Green use it twice, he even manages “antibanausic”. Such quirks do not undo this considerable and challenging contribution to our understanding of Alexander's legacy. Evident in, among other things, the Turkish state and in hero worship, that comet burns on today.

Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age by Peter Green
Phoenix, £8.99 Buy the book here

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