Alexander and Persia: Film and Reality

Lecture: Alexander and Persia: Film and Reality
When: 10 November 2005, 18:30
Where: Clore Education Centre, British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG
Organised by: The British Museum and the Iran Heritage Foundation
Lecturer: Robin Lane Fox, New College, University of Oxford

Introduction
When Oliver Stone began preparing his new film he turned to Robin Lane Fox for historical advice. However, the horse-mad scholar only agreed on one condition - the director must give him a place on horseback in the front ten of every major cavalry charge by Alexander's cavalrymen to be filmed by Oliver Stone in location. The film director knew he had to leave out many major events in Alexander's restless career. But cleverly, he used Ptolemy, reminiscing and as 'voice-over', who could hint at things the film could not show. And he designed the script as a drama, hung round Alexander's turbulent youth and his present actions, with Ptolemy speaking for the future. These 'parallel stories' are not flashbacks: they are a dramatic, closely woven web, of Oliver Stone's design, whose aim is a powerful drama. Of course, some events had to be brought forward in time or place and merged with similar ones, so as to be all shown on one (expansive!) location.

The director knew that he was not making a documentary. He was making an epic drama, but the drama is unusually rooted in history. It has scope, though not the total story. And the major characters have a real dramatic power. These characters are all historical people and broadly they play in their main historical roles--as father, mother, tutor, wife, eunuch, general, and so forth. But they are actors in a drama, not a history book.

Robin Lane-Fox has been Fellow and Tutor at the University of Oxford's New College in Ancient History since 1977 and University Reader in Ancient History since 1990. His books and articles include major works on Alexander the Great and the relation between the pagan and early Christian religions of the Roman Empire. He has taught Greek and Latin literature, Greek and Roman history and early Islamic history in which he held an Oxford Research Fellowship. He is perhaps best known for his books The Search for Alexander and Alexander the Great: A Biography.

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