Alexander the Great shaped the end of Classical Greece and yielded the beginning of the Hellenistic world. His deeds and success, along with his failures and autocracy during the Graeco-Macedonian conquest of Asia, made him the main historical figure of that period— ‘the Age of Alexander’. However, under the shadow of Alexander’s greatness lived many others: there are famous, less-known, or even anonymous people mentioned passingly by a variety of sources, whose stories often go forgotten as History is written by victors and by the ‘big man’.
The purpose of this conference is to focus on the lesser-known characters or groups in the Age of Alexander and to piece together their lives from our sources, but also to reinstate main characters who lived in the age right before and after Alexander and have received little scholarly attention as they were overshadowed by his greatness.
This conference is part of the informal chain of conferences (following Daniel Ogden’s words in his ‘Preface’ to the Cambridge Companion to Alexander the Great), that began a long time ago in Newcastle (New South Wales) thanks to the efforts of Brian Bosworth and Elizabeth Baynham in 1997, with a stunning continuity (Calgary 2002 and 2005, organized by Waldemar Heckel; Otago 2007, organized by Pat Wheatley; Clemson 2008, organized by Elizabeth Carney; La Coruña 2010, organized by Victor Alonso Troncoso; Grahamstown 2011, organized by Philip Bosman; Sydney 2013, organized by John Walsh and Elizabeth Baynham; Salt Lake City 2014, organized by Lindsay Adams; Milano 2015, organized by Franca Landucci-Gattinoni; Edmonton 2018, organized by Frances Pownall; and Omaha 2024, organized by Graham Wrightson and Jeanne Reames).
This conference is organised by Guen Taietti and Marc Mendoza (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). Secretary: Raúl Navas. Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya only hosts the event.
