Alexander's Persian Pillow and Plutarch's Cultured Commander

Abstract

This paper investigates the famous story, preserved by Plutarch (Alex. 8), that Alexander kept a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. Given the physical properties of ancient bookrolls and pillows, the anecdote cannot be accepted at face value; instead, I argue, Alexander's “pillow” was a storeroom, reflecting a Persian idiom preserved by Chares of Mytilene and underscoring Alexander's adoption of Persian court ceremonial. Plutarch's omission of this Persian origin, however, allows the anecdote to play a notable part in the larger process by which he recasts the military general as a literary connoisseur who would be perfectly at home in the culture of the Second Sophistic.