Valerio Massimo Manfredi · 1998 · coming-of-age

The first volume of Manfredi's Alexandros trilogy: the making of Alexander. Born at Pella to Philip of Macedon and the sorceress-queen Olympias, who dreamed that a serpent fathered him, the boy is schooled by Aristotle at Mieza, masters the black stallion Bucephalas, and leads his father's cavalry at Chaeronea at eighteen - until a murder at a wedding feast puts the crown on his head and turns him east.

1. 1
   Pella

   The Macedonian capital. Olympias dreams of a serpent in her bed, and the priests of Dodona tell her the child will be a son of Zeus, like Achilles before him. Here the boy is raised hard under Leonidas with the friends who will conquer the world beside him - Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Perdiccas - and here alone he can master the black horse Bucephalas.

2. 2
   Mieza

   The gardens where Philip installs Aristotle to teach his thirteen-year-old son philosophy, medicine, botany and the shape of the world; three years that make Alexander as surely as any battle will.

3. 3
   Chaeronea

   At eighteen he leads the Companion cavalry against the Sacred Band of Thebes and breaks it, and Greece belongs to his father.

4. 4
   Epirus

   His mother's Molossian country, whose oracle at Dodona had read her dream. Alexander takes refuge at his uncle's court after Attalus insults Olympias at Philip's wedding feast and son quarrels with father before the whole court.

5. 5
   Aegae

   The old royal capital, where Philip is cut down by an assassin at his own daughter's wedding and Alexander, twenty years old, is raised on the shields as king.

6. 6
   Thessaly

   Doubted at home and unwanted abroad, the young king marches south and turns the vale of Tempe by way of the flank of Mount Ossa; Thessaly submits without a battle. The first of a long sequence of victories, and the road east opens.