Alexander der Große am Granikos

The volume contains a foreword, eleven papers, a bibliography, and an index and was initiated by a field trip of Osnabrück University to the Troad in 2015. In spring 334 B. C., Alexander the Great’s first battle with the Persians took place at the River Granicus in what is now North-Western Turkey. Although some of the ancient writers’ narratives are diametrically opposed to each other with regard to military action, they agree on the fact that the king personally gained a great military success. Researchers have followed this interpretation for a long time and focussed their debates regarding the battle on the questions of the course of fighting and the location of the battlefield. The authors of the present volume investigate - in this long historical perspective - the production of knowledge on the conflict, which started with Alexander himself, and illuminate a multifaceted landscape of conflict. The individual papers are closely related to each other and demonstrate that the real events only form a fractional amount of this production of meaning and knowledge. What is much more significant, is the recent and time-transcending conflicts with which it is charged and for which it is exploited.