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Historical person
c. 360s BCE–c. 280s BCE
Ptolemy I Soter was one of Alexander the Great’s generals and founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. He secured Egypt after Alexander’s death and helped turn Alexandria into a major centre of Hellenistic power and learning.
Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven places Ptolemy I Soter within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty, court politics and dynastic power, and political ambition and government. Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s Child of a Dream places Ptolemy I Soter within a narrative shaped by court politics and dynastic power, family, marriage and personal loyalty, and military command and battlefield decision-making. Other novels featuring Ptolemy I Soter include Robert Fabbri’s To the Strongest, Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy, Mary Renault’s Funeral Games, Christian Cameron’s Tyrant: Funeral Games, and Christian Cameron’s Tyrant: King of the Bosporus.
In non-fiction, Ptolemy I Soter is discussed in Diodorus Siculus’s The Library, Books 16-20 and Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander. Diodorus Siculus’s The Library, Books 16-20 approaches the subject through military command and battlefield decision-making, court politics and dynastic power, and empire, conquest and resistance.
Series
The Tyrant series is set around the Black Sea during the conquests of Alexander the Great and the wars among his successors. It begins with the Athenian soldier Kineas and the Scythian leader Srayanka, then continues through their children Satyrus and Melitta as Macedonian generals compete to divide…
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The Alexander trilogy follows Alexander from childhood at the Macedonian court through the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire and into the violent struggle that followed his death. Fire from Heaven concentrates on his formation under Philip II, Olympias and Aristotle; The Persian Boy narrates the later campaigns through…
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Alexander’s Legacy follows the violent struggle for power after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. The sequence is not about Alexander’s conquests themselves but about the generals, royal women, heirs and soldiers left to divide an empire too large for any single successor to control.…
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The Alexander Trilogy follows Alexander of Macedon from his childhood at Philip II's court to the creation of an empire stretching from Greece and Egypt to Central Asia and India. The first volume traces the family, education and political violence that form the young prince; the later books…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
