In my Alexander book I tried to cover all possible bases, to pay due tribute to all the many friends and colleagues, especially Greek, who had in any way contributed to my formation as a historian of Greece and the Middle East in the later fourth century. I shall not repeat those tributes here. But I must add the names of two friends. The first, Tom Holland, is not a colleague in the technical sense but a master-historian all the same, from whom I have derived much key inspiration over the past year or so, since we met at the Alexander launch-party in Daunt’s wonderful book-shop in Marylebone High Street, London. Tom Holland’s Persian Fire, too, has, I hope, ignited some latent sparks of inspiration in me, as well as in his many thousands of other avid readers. The other, Peter Green, is the nonpareil of ancient historians, formidable alike in his thematic range, his acuteness of judgement and his fluency of expression.
I must also repeat, with pleasure and pride, the debts I owe to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, Pan Macmillan and Overlook Press of New York City, in the personal shapes of George Morley, Kate Harvey and Rebecca Lewis (Macmillan) and Peter Mayer (Overlook). It is also a delight to acknowledge the expert job done on the paperback of Alexander by Andrew Miller of Vintage (NY), as, previously, on the paperback of my Spartans book. In the same hall of fame I include my agent and friend Julian Alexander, but for whom (almost) none of this would have been possible. On a more personal note, I must thank my Laconological collaboratrix and friend, the broad-caster Bettany Hughes, and Dr Janet Parker of the Open University, archaeologist, critic and classicist, who once again has proved the most ideal of ideal readers. For generous help towards understanding how a modern Iranian might view the pre-Islamic heritage of her country, I am indebted to Farah Nayeri of the Bloomberg Corporation.
I must also thank the Mayor and Council of the modern demos (municipality) of Sparta for bestowing on me the huge honour of honorary citizenship. It is a sobering thought that, if I were a citizen of ancient Sparta, I would still, just, be eligible for compulsory military service (not necessarily in the front line of battle, perhaps), but yet not alas old enough, quite, to be eligible for election to the Spartans’ massively honorific governing body, the Gerousia (Senate, minimum age sixty, the twenty-eight ordinary members apart from the two kings being elected for life).
Further thanks are in order regarding the Epilogue, the original oral version of which was delivered on 6 February 2003 in the Great Hall of King’s College London, as the Thirteenth [Sir Steven] Runciman Lecture. For the invitation to deliver the lecture and for the accompanying resplendent hospitality I am deeply grateful to Matti and Nicholas Egon, the very models of enlightened benefaction. For other services related to the lecture I must also thank most warmly my friends and colleagues Professor Judith Herrin, lately Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s, her successor Dr Karim Arafat and, not least, his and my former doctoral supervisor at Oxford, Professor Sir John Boardman, himself a noted expert on both Classical Greece and the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Likewise, Appendix 3 has its origins in an oral presentation: it was first delivered on 19 May 2005 at the Museum of the History of the University of Athens, which is situated in the Plaka immediately below the Acropolis. For the kind invitation to help launch on that memorable occasion the book of essays on Herodotus published under the aegis of the En Kuklôi group, I must thank the group’s Director, Dr Mairi Yossi of the University of Athens.
The book is dedicated, finally, to the assistant staff of my Cambridge Faculty, the faculty administrative officer, the faculty clerk, the librarians, the computer officer, the assistant museum curator, the secretarial assistants, the faculty photographer, the assistant keeper of the photographic archive and, not least, to the memory of the latter’s sister, who was murdered in the terrorist outrage in London on 7 July 2005.