Hi Dr. Reames! Hope the semester has been treating you well.
I’ve been reading a couple of Graham Wrightson’s reports on Ancient Greek military evolution, and I suddenly recalled how you mentioned a couple of times that Alexander might’ve been left-handed. Curious how that suspicion came about?
Was Alexander Left-handed?
I’m not at all sure where the idea that Alexander was left handed was first born, but I myself first encountered it in a book published in the 1970s that included a list of famous left-handed people. (When I packed up my office, I handed [pun intended] the book off to a friend and colleague who is herself left-handed, so I no longer have it.) Anyway, Alexander was on the list. I read that before I began researching him as a scholar, but found it quite interesting. But the book gave no source for that assertion about ATG.
When I arrived at Penn State, I asked Gene Borza about it. Gene had never heard it before, and said it wasn’t in the sources anywhere that he knew about…but he didn’t necessarily find it implausible. There just wasn’t any ancient evidence.
And there isn’t that I’ve found since. One might expect it to show up in some odd mention in an ancient author’s collection such as Athenaeus, or Plutarch, or Pliny, or even Strabo. I’ve read a lot of those sources but never seen it, and have never spoken to anybody who has. Like a lot of things about Alexander, it appears to be one of those modern myths that somebody said at some point, possibly confusing ATG with Julius Caesar (who has been more plausibly theorized to have been a southpaw)…then it grew legs and just won’t die.
That said, it’s not entirely impossible.
In my search for SOME sort of evidence for it, I took a look at Alexander statuary that shows his full body. (Just as the clues for Caesar also involve physical depictions of him.)
At least some statues do show him holding a spear in the left hand (the Nelidow Alexander, for instance, see below), and there’s a gemstone where he holds a thunderbolt in his left hand…but because his right hand is holding something else. Images of him wearing a scabbard however (including the Pompeii Mosaic) all show it on the left side, which is where one would expect to find it for a right-handed fighter. Also, in the ancient world, the nature of phalanx warfare necessitated learning to carry a spear on the right, so ATG holding it in his left hand is likely just a convention of the artist.
So, there you go. That pretty much concludes the visual clues. There might be a little bit of visual evidence for left-handedness, but it’s overwhelmed by right-handed depictions. Also, again, the nature of ancient warfare meant one had to fight right-handed in the phalanx. It would be similar with a sword, if not as absolutely necessary. Somebody who could fight with a sword in either hand might be, like a baseball pitcher, especially valuable on the field. Keep in mind, many of these statues were made long after his death and the artist probably had no idea what hand he favored, so they would place spears (or swords) in the right hand by default.
I’d already decided to make Alexander a southpaw in the novels, but as I specified in the author’s note there, that’s very much an author’s choice. We have zero evidence from the written sources that he was left-handed. As for evidence that he was right-handed, in his Life of Alexander, Plutarch doesn’t mention anything of the kind. That’s not completely irrelevant, as we are told several other rather oddball bits of detail, such as the fact he walked quickly and had a deep voice. Greeks didn’t much care about hair and eye color, but it’s a bit more reasonable to think they might mention it if he were left-handed. Greek philosophy had an unflattering view of things on the left generally, associating it with being feminine, et al. That’s why I don’t find it unreasonable to think Plutarch might have included left-handedness in his description of Alexander were it true, as he does include several other descriptors (such as “melting” eyes) that were distinctly associated with effeminate men.
Ergo, I think one could build a slightly better case that he was right-handed than left-handed. Why did I make him a leftie? They’re considered to be a bit better at spacial puzzles. Guess what you need to be good at for strategy? Although other aspects of strategic thinking do favor right-handers (left-brained) people. Recent research has called into question the long-standing idea that lefties are superior with spacial skills—yet they remain better at visual puzzles, on average.
In short, the simple answer is: we have no idea what hand Alexander favored for writing. But he almost certainly had to learn to FIGHT right-handed, regardless. If he could switch hands at will on the battlefield, however, he’d have had a leg up on others.
