'The Great' King of Macedonia and famously conqueror of the known world from Greece east to India by the age of 32. Alexander gave Greek culture throughout the ancient world and brought Eastern culture West. When, 'Alexandrian' culture is a reference to wide dissemination, but also the attendant, Socratic turn of cultural scholarship to the mere accumulation of information (symbolised by the library at Alexandria). Thus, what are needed now are a series of 'anti-Alexanders' who concentrate and purify. Alexander is already a caricature of early Greek civilisation, exaggerated and simplified, although still displaying their deep-rooted cruelty ('Homer’s Contest’). The story of Alexander cutting the Gordian knot is a commonly used image.