THE RIVAL KINGS: THE POLITICAL USE OF ALEXANDER THE

GREAT DURING THE ENGLISH RESTORATION

During the Renaissance, Alexander the Great was a mirror into which the
European aristocracy looked for education in generalship, behaviour and policy.
Since Alexanders character encompassed the immoral and the heroic, he was the
perfect complement to an age that sought examples of both virtue and vice from the
great men of antiquity. It is commonplace for modern scholars to note, however,
that during the Restoration and the early-Hanoverian period in England this
mirror was replaced by overwhelmingly negative responses. A polity that had
recently renegotiated the rights and duties of the monarchy looked unkindly upon a
king who was seen to hold pretensions to divinity and absolute power, but little
compunction when abusing the rights and lives of his subordinates. Restoration
tragedians presented Alexander as a tyrant in order to critique the Stuarts; by the
1740s, and particularly in the works of Henry Fielding, Alexander was the
archetypical criminal conqueror.
This paper will examine a set of previously overlooked sources that used
Alexander in Restoration political discourse. After the return of Charles II in 1660,
there was a glut of translations of Quintus Curtius Historiae Alexandri. Each edition
has prefatory material that offered Alexander as a flattering comparison to
contemporary generals and monarchs. These comparisons suggest that two revisions
to the previous scholarly assessment of Alexanders post-Restoration repute. First,
these works formed part of a partisan discourse on the nature of the monarchy that
utilised a wide range of interpretations of Alexanders character. Second, the febrile
politics of the Restoration were crucial in transforming Alexander from a
pedagogical model into a touchstone for British politics.