At some point, probably not long after Alexander the Great died, people started expanding on his life. Some of the expansions were reasonable and building on things he did or said he was, and some of them…were not. Then at some point, somewhere (before 300 CE, probably in Alexandria) these things were compiled into a text. After a thousand years of telephone, we get this text–or rather, several texts, because everyone liked to add their own variations.

(Special shoutout to the island of Rhodes, though, which went on a 4 paragraph digression in Alexander’s will about how special they were.)

Stoneman does his best with some very divergent manuscripts, although there are definitely points where inclusions/exclusions are by author fiat rather than any other reason (his footnotes are periodically commentaries on the text’s writing quality). Which is valid! But you’re not so much reading one text as a chimera of three (or more).

Translation is very readable. The text itself is insane but that’s the whole point.