Sir William Woodthorpe Tarn (February 26, 1869–November 7, 1957) was a British classical scholar and a writer. He wrote extensively on the Hellenistic world, particularly on Alexander the Great. He was a Fellow of the British Academy (1928).
Contents |
Tarn made a rather idealistic interpretation of Alexander's conquests, as being essentially driven by his vision of the "unity of mankind", in line with the interpretation of Plutarch (Alexander the Great, Vol. 1).
Dr. Jeanne Reames remarked that "Tarn's portrait of Alexander turned the Macedonian conqueror into a proper Scottish gentleman (as was Tarn himself). Engaging in sometimes elaborate apologetics to explain away Alexander's questionable decisions, Tarn painted him as the original philosopher in armor, a chivalrous young king who brought higher Greek culture to the poor benighted barbarians.(...) [Tarn's] two-volume biography of Alexander and his article in the "Cambridge Ancient History" influenced the popular thinking of future generations even after in scholarly circles his theories had been torpedoed by Harvard's Ernst Badian. In fact, portrayals of Alexander in some high school and college world history text books still reflect Tarn more than anyone who has come after". Reames also saw Tarn's strong influence in Mary Renault's trilogy of historical novels about Alexander - though Renault's acknowledged Alexander's homo-erotic tendencies, while Tarn had regarded references to them in ancient sources as "defamations" which the Macedonian king had to be defended against [1].
He also researched extensively on the history of the Greco-Bactrians and Indo-Greeks, thereby documenting a nearly lost area of history. In his book The Greeks in Bactria and India, Tarn relied on classical Western and Indian sources, as well as numismatics, to give a multi-faceted account of their dynastic rule and conquest.