ABSTRACT
Plutarch recounts how on the day of Alexander’s birth the temple of Artemis in Ephesus was destroyed by fire. Artemis was away supervising Olympias while she gave birth to Alexander. The temple priests interpreted the fire as a prophecy of the grand catastrophe that hung over Asia. Thus from the day of his birth, Alexander’s life was linked to the Wonders of the Ancient World, on the one hand, because he travelled across much of its geography, and on the other because he had visited some of them and was even involved in their reconstruction. However, Alexander also wanted to emulate these wondrous locations and he ordered the construction of a series of buildings that could be considered as being of an equal status, such as the Philippeion of Olympia. He also founded twenty cities in places that had a special meaning for him, and each was given the name Alexandria. In fact, according to Máximo Manfredi, had Dinoctates’s proposed representation of Alexander carved into Mount Athos been carried out, he himself could have become the eighth wonder of the ancient world.
