Hello Dr. Reames, I was just curious, what do you think of the bust of Alexander by Leochares, do you think that this might be a true/faithful depiction of the king of Macedonia seeing as it was made during his lifetime? Or no?
So, I actually intended a longer answer to this, but I can't return it to the "asks" queue, because I accidentally posted it with a reply meant for another ask. So I'll give the short answer. But first, here is the Leochares bust to which the asker refers. It's perhaps better known as the Akropolis Head (of Alexander). It is, as you can see, the model for the old cover of Dancing with the Lion 1: Becoming.
Medium. It shows what we might today call photoshopping, because it's tweaked to better suit the traditional cannons of male ephebe beauty. The face is oval, the mouth small and bow-shaped, the eyes larger than average.
But it's still clearly an Alexander, not a generic ephebe. The hair is not as tightly coiled, for instance; the chin looks like his in other statues. The eyes, although larger, have similar eyebrows. Compare that statue to the Azara Herm, which may be the closest likeness.
So as long as we recognize it as "idealized" (which was very common in Greek statuary right into the early Hellenistic period), I'd say it's not a bad image. After all, I liked it enough to submit it as a model for the novel. :-)