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The Alexander Sarcophagus is misnamed — it did not hold my remains. It held the remains of Abdalonymus, whom I installed as king of Sidon after taking the city in 333 BC. He had the sarcophagus carved with battle scenes from my campaigns as a memorial to the man who had given him his throne.

The figure hunting lions on the narrow end — wearing the lion-scalp helmet of Heracles — is me. The battle scene on the long face also shows me, though the artists who carved it may not have seen me in person. What they captured was the manner: the forward lean, the absence of a shield, the position of someone whose strategy was always to get into the middle of the fighting rather than directing it from behind.

I believed that an army would do things for a commander they had seen at the front that they would not do for one they had only seen in dispatches. I was right. I had the scars to prove it.