Nicholas Conquers Alexander’s
Adventures
Empire
of Ashes:
A Novel of Alexander the Great
by Nicholas Nicastro
on WSKG
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After 2,339 years the world is still fascinated
with the conquests of Alexander,
King of Macedonia
and ruler of most of the known world. Starting
from Athens, Alexander and his armies spread
through Asia Minor, conquered territory in the
Middle East that we currently see in every
day’s headlines, marched as far as India and
then back to Egypt.
He was a brilliant military strategist and a
driven, complex individual. Some of his
subjects considered Alexander the Great
to be a god.
There are allusions to Alexander the Great in the
Bible (Daniel 8: 20,21) and the Qur’an
(Surah 18: 86). He has been credited with
everything from the rise of Christianity to
inspiring the United Nations. For an
individual who left little in the way of personal
documentation, there is a vast amount of
scholarship – both ancient and modern –
about his life and exploits. He has
inspired poems and stories, scholarly and popular
works. There is even a new feature
film about him.
The exploits of Alexander occurred during a
lifetime of less than 34 years, and even the
conditions of his dying nourish both history and
myth. His demise as Alexander was attaining
his greatest power is at the center of the new
novel by Nicholas Nicastro, Empire of
Ashes.
Nicastro’s setting is a courtroom in Athens.
A jury of 500 is hearing the case of Machon, a
fictional character depicted as one of
Alexander’s closest comrades but now accused
of complicity in the emperor’s death. As
a water clock drips away his allotted time,
Machon defends his actions in detailed (and
historically accurate) eyewitness accounts of the
expedition that led to conquest and tragedy.
In the course of this testimony we meet generals
and courtesans, priests interpreting entrails and
conquered people outwitting their conquerors.
The death of Alexander the Great followed that of
his life-long friend Hephaestion,
with whom it was said Alexander had a homosexual
relationship. Alexander also suffered at
the end of his life from a serious illness
that has never been satisfactorily identified.
The monarch who some considered a deity was
revealed as quite human and vulnerable. Machon
was charged with undermining this quasi-religious
belief, a capital offense.
Nicholas
Nicastro lives in Ithaca. His academic
background is in psychology and archeology, he is
a film-maker and critic, and Empire of Ashes
is his third historical novel. He
previously wrote two books about Admiral John
Paul Jones, Between
Two Fires and The
Eighteenth Captain.
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