Christian Cameron: God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

Speaking of friends, I owe a debt or gratitude to Christine Szego, who provides daily criticisms and support from her store, Bakka Phoenix, in Toronto. Thanks Christine!

My interpretation of Alexander and his world – which is also Kineas’s world, and Philokles’s world, and Thais’s world, and Ptolemy’s world – began with my desire to write a book that would allow me to discuss the serious issues of war and politics that are around all of us today. I was returning to school and returning to my first love – Classical history. I am also an unashamed fan of Patrick O’Brian, and I wanted to write a series with depth and length that would allow me to explore the whole period, with the relationships that define men, and women, in war and peace – not just one snippet. The combination – Classical history, the philosophy of war, and the ethics of the world of arête – gave rise to the volume you hold in your hand.

Along the way, I met Professor Wallace and Professor Young, both very learned men with long association to the University of Toronto. Professor Wallace answered any question that I asked him, providing me with sources and sources and sources, introducing me to the labyrinthine wonders of Diodorus Siculus, and finally, to T. Cuyler Young. Cuyler was kind enough to start my education on the Persian Empire of Alexander’s day, and to discuss the possibility that Alexander was not infallible, or even close to it. I wish to give my profoundest thanks and gratitude to these two men for their help in recreating the world of fourth century BC Greece, and the theory of Alexander’s campaigns that underpins this series of novels. Any brilliant scholarship is theirs, and any errors of scholarship are certainly mine. I will never forget the pleasure of sitting in Professor Wallace’s office, nor in Cuyler’s living room, eating chocolate cake and debating the myth of Alexander’s invincibility. Both men have passed on now, since this book was written, but none of the Tyrant books would have been the same without them. They were great men, and great academics – the kind of scholars who keep civilization alive.

I’d also like to thank the staff of the University of Toronto’s Classics department for their support, and for reviving my dormant interest in Classical Greek, as well as the staffs of the University of Toronto Library and the Toronto Metro Reference Library for their dedication and interest. Libraries matter!

I couldn’t have approached so many Greek texts without the Perseus Project. This online resource, sponsored by Tufts University, gives online access to almost all classical texts in Greek and in English. Without it I would still be working on the second line of Medea , never mind the Iliad or the Hymn to Demeter .

I owe a debt of thanks to my excellent editor, Bill Massey at Orion, for giving these books constant attention and a great deal of much needed flattery, for his good humour in the face of authorial dicta, and for his support at every stage. I’d also like to thank Shelley Power, my agent, for her unflagging efforts on my behalf, and for many excellent dinners, the most recent of which, at the world’s only Ancient Greek restaurant, Archeon Gefsis in Athens, resulted in some hasty culinary rewriting. Thanks Shelley!

Finally, I would like to thank the muses of the Luna Café, who serve both coffee and good humour, and without whom there would certainly not have been a book. And all my thanks – a lifetime of them – for my wife Sarah.

If you have any questions, wish to see more or participate (ah, we’re back to that . . . want to be a hoplite? A Persian Immortal?) please come and visit www.hippeis.com. Go to the ‘Agora’ (that’s Greek for forum, folks,) sign in and post to the welcome board. And let me recruit you for re-enacting. We call it living history. It makes history come to life.

And history matters.

Christian Cameron

Toronto, 2011

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christian Cameron is a writer and military historian. He is a veteran of the United States Navy, where he served as both an aviator and an intelligence officer. He lives in Toronto where he is currently writing his next novel while working on a Masters in Classics.

Also by Christian Cameron

THE TYRANT SERIES

Tyrant

Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

Tyrant: Funeral Games

Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

THE KILLER OF MEN SERIES

Killer of Men

Marathon

OTHER NOVELS

Washington and Caesar

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books,

an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

Copyright © Christian Cameron 2012

The moral right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved.