From Jerusalem to Timbuktu : the appropriation of Alexander the Great by national narratives
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In all cultures and ages the heroes of myths, and even outstanding historical figures, are represented as paradigmatic agents of political unification and ethnic or political identity. Some have served political groups or dynasties as models for justifying their dominance, or as objects of emulation for aspiring political and military leaders. Such were Achilles and Heracles for Alexander the Great, and the latter for Pompey, Julius Caesar and many others. In the abstract sense, their image or related narratives function as epistemological paradigms for political ideologies, even for religious or philosophical doctrines. In recent years Alexander's image and reputation continue to be the disputed symbol for legitimising the respective political identities of Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. Alexander the Great has fulfilled this role for millennia, ever since his relics, corpse, possessions, family connexions and image were contested after his death and appropriated for their own advancement by his marshals and their Hellenistic and Roman successors. Even in countries and among populations with whose cultures and institutions he had no proven relationship, had never visited, and of which he had little or no knowledge, the 'Alexander brand' has served a variety of political purposes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".