Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 131 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.
Today’s excerpt is from Alexander the Great by Paul Cartledge
This paragraph deals with Alexander’s growing pursuit of more.
Nor, perhaps was the Exiles’ Decree the only assault on Greek political sensitivities and sensibilities that Alexander chose to launch. For at about this time he also either explicitly demanded, or – in the softer version – let it be known that he would welcome, his own deification by the Greeks. The official divinization of a living human being was not exactly unprecedented (and will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 11). But a formal request for it – if indeed Alexander made one – certainly would have been. Such a request following hot on the heels of the Exiles’ Decree would have served to convince many Greeks, at any rate in Old Greece, that Alexander no longer had their best interests at heart. It is very striking that even cities whose governing regimes were on balance well disposed to Alexander were unable to view the Exiles’ Decree as a beneficent, let alone benevolent, act.
Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.
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