This chapter discusses the crises Alexander faced leading up to his succession to his father, Philip II: his dispute with Attalus at Philip’s wedding to Cleopatra, its causes, significance and aftermath; and the Pixodarus affair. It then turns to the crisis of the succession itself: the circumstances of Philip’s assassination at the hands of Pausanias, Alexander’s movements at the time of it, and the steps by which he secured the throne himself and legitimated himself as Philip’s successor.

This chapter provides an overview of Alexander’s wealth by examining the sources of his income and his expenditure. In connection to the expenditure, the chapter provides an overview of Alexander’s coinage. The chapter suggests that while Alexander’s campaigns brought tremendous wealth to the king, much of his useable wealth was absorbed by the army necessary for the campaigns.

Chapter 1 introduces tactical air power (TAP) theory to explain why, how and when modern air power works. After World War II, two technologies changed the character of air warfare. In the Cold War the proliferation of thermonuclear weapons and the exorbitant costs anticipated from nuclear war deterred the United States and the Soviet Union. The second technology was the proliferation of radar- and infra-guided air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles, which increased the lethality of the air domain and with it the United States shifted from the bomber to tactical aircraft (tacair) as its primary combat platform. This book examines modern US air power in the Vietnam War. In Vietnam and the modern air wars that followed, US air power has been more effective in directly attacking enemy fielded forces, rather than by independent strategic bombing and air interdiction. Joint air–ground operations place the enemy on the horns of a dilemma: to mass and maneuver only to be susceptible to air attack or disperse and hide and be vulnerable to an opposed army’s attack. With the right combination of air superiority, air-to-ground capability, and a capable ground force, under the right environmental conditions, air power can disrupt an enemy’s strategy.

Chapter 7 examines the Easter Offensive and the Linebacker I & II air campaigns. When the NVA launched the offensive, the question remained whether the ARVN could incorporate air–ground coordination lessons from Lam Son 719. The ARVN held on two of three fronts but faltered along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Effective US air power and resolute ARVN forces, coordinated by US military advisors and air liaison officers, held off further NVA advances as the ARVN regrouped to launch a counteroffensive to retake Quang Tri. In May, the United States launched Linebacker I to interdict enemy lines of communication, which failed to weaken the NVA as it fought through the summer. Instead, in September the ARVN and US air forces combined arms offensive retook Quang Tri. The decisive defeat of the NVA convinced Hanoi to accept a peace treaty. However, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Thieu, excluded from the secret talks, balked at any deal that allowed NVA troops to remain in the country. After the November 1972 election, President Nixon ordered Linebacker II, the bombing of Hanoi, which compelled the North Vietnamese to return to Paris, but only to sign an agreement they had accepted in October following their defeat in the Easter Offensive.

Chapter 2 provides a historical account of the development of tactical air power during the interwar period and World War II in Germany, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States. Air and ground force coordination has largely been ignored in peacetime, and only in combat has a sense of urgency arisen for developing and refining joint doctrine. Even then, the focus has been on defining air and ground command relationships and improving the coordination between an air force’s tactical air control systems (TACS) and the army’s air–ground systems (AAGS). These doctrinal efforts increased the efficiency of allocating and controlling air power to support ground operations. However, largely left unspoken and unwritten has been an understanding of why, how, and when tactical air power works. TAP theory answers these questions by asserting that air power’s asymmetric advantage is its ability to locate and attack massed and maneuvering armies. With air superiority secured, lethal air-to-ground forces threaten armies, causing them to disperse and hide. The enemy’s reaction, in turn, provides friendly ground forces an advantage in conducting both offensive and defensive operations. Unfortunately, a theory explaining the primary impact of air power in modern warfare has been absent until now.

Plutarch devotes two speeches and a biography specifically to Alexander. Current scholarship prioritizes the author over his subject. The erudite Plutarch employs numerous Alexander sources for his own writerly purposes. In the speeches he argues that Alexander’s successes are due to his own efforts rather than gifted by fortune. It is to be doubted that Plutarch had a serious polemical or philosophical point to prove; his epideictic oratory aims at rhetorical display and furnishing evidence from ready knowledge. The Life is similarly moulded by generic requirements. Plutarch provides an episodic birth-to-death account of Alexander, in which he presents himself as a competent interpreter and adviser. He quotes early sources, in particular from a collection of letters by Alexander, to render his depiction more authentic. Focusing on the ‘signs of the soul’, Plutarch is most interested in court politics and personal morals. His Alexander is determined by his physical make-up and greatness of soul on the one hand, and how effectively education and philosophy direct his ambition on the other. His biography is not apologetic; rather he wishes to educate his readership on how personal morality impacts on governance. References to his own context, if at all present, are oblique.

The chapter collects what may be known of Alexander’s life up until the battle of Chaeronea, for which the source of primary importance is Plutarch’s biography. It attempts to sift what may plausibly regarded as historical from embellishments of various kinds (contemporary and subsequent, propagandist, folkloric or mythologyzing). Particular attention is given to: Alexander’s three birth myths; his education at the hands of Lysimachus of Acarnania, Leonidas of Epirus and Aristotle; Aeschines’ vignette of him as nine-year-old boy; the intriguing traditions bearing upon his horse Bucephalas; his regency during the Byzantine campaign, his foundation of Alexandropolis and his dealings with the Persian ambassadors; his role in the battle at Chaeronea.

Women were interwoven into the politics of Alexander’s itinerant court. Alexander’s mother Olympias and his full sister Cleopatra played the most important and enduring roles at court, even though they remained in the Greek peninsula and never saw Alexander again. His half-sisters Cynnane and Thessalonice and his niece Adea-Eurydice (also all resident in the Greek peninsula during Alexander’s reign) only grew to some level of importance after his death. His first wife, the Bactrian Roxane, mother of Alexander IV, played more of a role, though a still limited one, than his two Achaemenid wives. Though he never married the half-Persian Barsine, he fathered a son by her. Men and women worked together, not infrequently for violent ends. Women’s access to information, their participation in information networks covering great distances, their attempts to influence events and decisions, and their ability to exercise patronage to their own ends is striking. The violent deaths of all the female Argeads (by birth or marriage) resemble those of male Argeads and many of the Successors. All these women were, in the end, killed because they somehow constituted a problem, a threat to others, just as the men did.

We appraise Alexander’s court. We ask what constituted a ‘court’, as well as considering problems with assessing Alexander’s and those of the earlier Macedonian kings. A brief bibliographic survey follows, with salient literature about the court and institutions, Macedonian prosopography, and related topics. We then examine elite offices, specifically the Hetairoi or Companions, the Royal Pages or King’s Boys, the Royal Bodyguard, and specialized army units populated by the elite, such as the Royal Hypaspists. Finally, we consider two institutions exploited by the kings to engage with the Companions and read their mood: the royal symposium and the royal hunt.

This chapter examines the religious role of Alexander as king and military commander in the Greek world and the territory of the Achaemenid empire. It explores how he used sanctuaries of the gods to develop his relationship with the Greek cities, as locations for the meetings of associations of Greek cities, and as sites for making dedications. It considers the honours offered to Alexander by the Greek cities, arguing that these were offered spontaneously, and were not a response to any request from Alexander. It discusses his use of diviners and other religious experts while on campaign. It considers the extent to which Alexander engaged with the religious practices and expectations of the territories he conquered, including in particular Egypt and Babylon. It discusses the evidence that Alexander consciously attempted to emulate Heracles and Dionysus, and suggests that this is unlikely to reflect any historical reality. It then explores the story of Alexander’s visit to the oracle of Ammon/Amun at the Siwah oasis, suggesting that while Alexander was aware of the significance of his pharaonic titulary, including the phrase ‘son of Amun’, this did not lead to claims of divine filiation beyond Egypt.