From a young age, Alexander the Great was groomed to be the leader of Macedonia. The small kingdom in northern Greece was perpetually at war with its neighbours, above all Persia, which meant that Alexander had to learn how to lead armies into battle. When his father was assassinated and Alexander ascended the throne, he quickly exceeded all expectations. Not only did he secure the safety of his kingdom, but he also defeated the entire Persian Empire, conquering a vast realm that stretched from Egypt to northern India.

More like this:

- The subversive heroines children love

- How Harry Potter became a rallying cry

- Why tyrants love to write poetry

Alexander possessed an additional weapon: Homer’s Iliad. He had learned to read and write by studying this text as a young man, and thanks to his teacher, the philosopher Aristotle, he had done so with unusual intensity. When he embarked on his conquests, Homer’s story of an earlier Greek expedition to Asia Minor served as a blueprint, and he stopped at Troy, even though the city had no military significance, to re-enact scenes from the Iliad. For the entire duration of his conquest, he would sleep alongside his copy.

Despite its place in literature, Homer’s epic poem had repercussions far beyond the libraries and campfires of ancient Greece. It helped to shape an entire society, and its ethics. “Homer… paints, among many other things, the ‘thought forms’ of early Greek culture,” writes Howard Cannatella. “This story would indicate… how the community was to embody, live, and enact… [events] were designed to reveal to the audience in an acceptable manner the kind of effect moral choices in life, like being courageous, could have on the general public.”