ALEXANDER AND ACHILLES: FROM THE HERO TO THE HUMAN

Abstract

The speeches the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great, part of the overall Plutarch’s Moral Works, are constituted of an Alexander’s portrait, from which, the aspect of Alexander’s draw as a warrior, in this study, is more notable. For this, an analysis was made in contrast with Alexander’s Life and the Homeric works, seeking to enhance how the Chaeronese draws Alexander’s characteristics as a warrior in the images and adds to him the colours which Homer painted Achilles with. It was concluded that, litterarly, as we make Alexader get closer to Homer’s Achilles, a human hero, gifted with virtues and vices, we take advantage of the myth’s plastic capacity and we unite the Macedonian to a historical tradition that shows the hero as a fallible man, capable of comitting the error (amartia), due to human fragility, which explains his decline.