Alexander

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language

In composing, within this book, our account of King Alexander and of that Caesar who brought Pompey down, we will, given the sheer number of the deeds that lie before us, say nothing else by way of preface except to ask our readers, if we do not report every single one of the celebrated actions in full detail but instead abridge most of them, not to find fault with us for it.

For we are not writing histories, but lives; nor do the most illustrious actions always reveal virtue or vice, but often a small thing, a word, or a jest makes plainer a man's character than battles with tens of thousands of dead, and the greatest pitched engagements, and sieges of cities.

Just as painters draw the likeness from the face and the features around the eyes, in which character is shown, taking very little care over the rest of the body, so we must be allowed to dwell more on the signs of the soul, and through these to portray the life of each man, leaving to others the great deeds and the contests.

That Alexander was, on his father's side, a Heraclid descended from Caranus, and on his mother's side an Aeacid descended from Neoptolemus, is among the things most firmly believed. It is said that Philip, having been initiated together with Olympias into the mysteries in Thrace, fell in love with her while he himself was still a young man and she a girl orphaned of both parents, and so arranged the marriage, persuading her brother Arymbas.

Now the bride, on the night before they were shut together in the bridal chamber, dreamed that a thunderbolt fell upon her womb amid a peal of thunder, and that from the blow a great fire was kindled, which then broke apart into flames carried in every direction, and so was dispersed. Philip, some time after the marriage, saw in a dream that he was setting a seal upon his wife's womb; and the device carved upon the seal,

as he thought, bore the image of a lion. And when the other seers viewed the vision with suspicion, as if it required that Philip keep closer watch over the marriage, Aristander of Telmessus declared that she must be with child — since no seal is set upon an empty thing — and that she bore within her a child of spirited temper and a lion's nature.

Once, too, a serpent was seen stretched out along the body of Olympias as she slept; and they say that this above all dimmed Philip's passion and affection for her, so that he no longer often came to lie beside her, whether because he feared some sorceries and drugs from the woman, or because he shrank from intimacy with her as one who was now consorting with something greater than himself.

There is another story told about these things: that all the women of that region, being from very ancient times given over to the Orphic rites and the orgiastic worship of Dionysus, and bearing the names Klodones and Mimallones, performed rites much like those practiced by women of Edonia and by the Thracian women near Mount Haemus — and from this, it seems, the very verb 'to practice religious rites' came to be applied to elaborate and excessive sacred observances —

and Olympias, more zealous than the others in these possessions and ecstasies, and carrying them out in a more barbaric fashion, would bring great tame serpents into the processions, which often, gliding up out of the ivy and the mystic winnowing-baskets and coiling around the women's wands and garlands, terrified the men who watched.

Nevertheless, they say that Philip, after the apparition, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to Delphi, and received back an oracle from the god commanding him to sacrifice to Ammon and to hold that god in especial reverence; and that he lost one of his eyes — the one with which he had looked through the crack of the door and seen the god, in the shape of a serpent, lying with his wife.

Olympias, as Eratosthenes says, when she was sending Alexander off on his campaign and had told to him alone the secret about his conception, bade him think thoughts worthy of his birth; but others say that she disavowed it and would say, "Will Alexander never stop slandering me to Hera?"

Alexander, then, was born on the sixth day of the month Hecatombaeon, which the Macedonians call Loüs, on the very day on which the temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burned down — an event on which Hegesias of Magnesia hung a quip cold enough to have put out that very fire itself, for he said it was only natural that the temple of Artemis burned, since the goddess was busy attending Alexander's delivery.

But all the magi who happened to be residing at Ephesus, taking the disaster to the temple as a sign of some other calamity, ran about beating their faces and crying out that that day had brought forth ruin and a great catastrophe for Asia. To Philip, who had just captured Potidaea, there came three

messages at the same time: one, that the Illyrians had been defeated in a great battle through Parmenio; another, that his horse had won at Olympia in the horse-race; and a third, concerning the birth of Alexander. As he rejoiced at these, as was natural, the seers raised his spirits still further, declaring that the boy, born together with three victories, would be unconquerable.

As for the form of his body, the statues of Lysippus display it best of all, the very sculptor by whom alone Alexander himself thought it fitting to be modeled. For those features which many of his successors and friends later tried to imitate — the upward tilt of the neck, turned gently toward the left, and the melting quality of his eyes — this craftsman preserved with great precision.

Apelles, however, when painting the Thunderbolt-Bearer, did not reproduce his true coloring, but made it too dark and swarthy. He was, in fact, fair-skinned, they say, and his fairness took on a ruddiness especially about the chest and face. That his skin gave off a most pleasant fragrance, and that a sweet odor pervaded his mouth and his whole flesh, so that his tunics were filled with it — this is what Aristoxenus records in his memoirs.

The cause of this is perhaps the constitution of his body, which was very hot and fiery; for fragrance arises from the concoction of moist humors by heat, as Theophrastus supposes, which is why the dry and sun-scorched regions of the inhabited world bear the greatest and finest spices — for the sun draws off the moisture that lies upon bodies like the material of corruption.

Alexander's bodily heat, it seems, also made him fond of drink and quick-tempered. Yet even as a child his self-control was evident in this, that although he was headlong and violently carried away in everything else, he was hard to move toward the pleasures of the body, and touched such things with great moderation,

while his ambition kept his spirit grave and great-souled beyond his years. For he did not care for glory of every kind or from every source, as Philip did, priding himself sophist-like on his cleverness in speech and having his chariot victories at Olympia engraved on his coinage; rather, when those around him tried him out by asking whether he would be willing to compete in the footrace at Olympia — for he was swift of foot — he said, "Yes, if I were to have kings as my rivals."

He appears, indeed, on the whole to have looked unfavorably on the entire breed of athletes; certainly, although he founded a great many contests — not only for tragic actors, flute-players, and lyre-singers, but even for rhapsodes, and for hunting of every kind, and for fighting with staves — he never with any earnestness set up a prize for boxing or the pankration.

When the ambassadors from the Persian king arrived while Philip was abroad, Alexander entertained them and grew familiar with them, and won them over through his warmth and through questions that were never childish or petty, asking instead about the lengths of the roads and the manner of the journey inland, and about the king himself, what sort of man he was in war, and what was the strength and might of the Persians — so that they marveled, and came to think that the much-talked-of cleverness of Philip was nothing beside the ambition and greatness of purpose of the boy.

At any rate, whenever it was reported that Philip had taken some famous city or won some celebrated battle, Alexander was not at all pleased to hear it, but would say to his companions of the same age, "Boys, my father will forestall everything, and will leave nothing great and splendid for me to accomplish with you."

For it was not pleasure that he emulated, nor wealth, but virtue and glory; and he reckoned that the more he received from his father, the less he would accomplish through himself. So, believing that as his father's affairs grew, achievements would be spent on him, he wished to inherit a rule not full of money nor of luxuries and enjoyments, but full of contests and wars and occasions for ambition.

There were, naturally, many people concerned with his upbringing — tutors, attendants, and teachers, as they were called — but presiding over all of them was Leonidas, a man of stern character and a kinsman of Olympias, who did not himself shun the name of tutor, since it involved a fine and splendid task, but who, because of his standing and his kinship, was called by others 'Alexander's foster-father and mentor.'

The man who took on the shape and title of tutor was Lysimachus, an Acarnanian by birth, who had nothing else refined about him except that he called himself Phoenix, called Alexander Achilles, and Philip Peleus; for this he was well liked and held second place.

When Philonicus the Thessalian brought Bucephalas to sell to Philip for thirteen talents, they went out to the plain in order to put the horse through its paces, and the animal proved troublesome and wholly unmanageable, letting no one mount him and tolerating not a single one of Philip's attendants who spoke to him, rearing instead against every man there. Philip was displeased

and ordered the horse led away as entirely wild and unruly. But Alexander, who was present, said, "What a horse they are losing, for lack of skill and courage to handle him!" At first Philip said nothing; but when Alexander kept repeating this and showing his distress, he said, "Do you find fault with your elders, as though you knew more than they, or were better able to handle a horse?"

"This one, at any rate," he said, "I could handle better than anyone else." "And if you cannot, what penalty will you pay for your rashness?" "By Zeus," he said, "I will pay the price of the horse." At this there was laughter, and then an agreement between them over the money; and Alexander at once ran to the horse, took hold of the rein, and turned him toward the sun, having noticed, it seems, that the horse was disturbed by seeing his own shadow falling and shifting before him.

Running beside him for a little while in this fashion, stroking him as he went, once Alexander saw the horse was spirited and keen, he quietly slipped off his cloak and, with a light spring, mounted him safely. Holding the bit lightly with the reins, without striking or tearing at him, he reined him in; but when he saw that the horse had given up his threatening manner and was eager for the run, he let him go and drove him on, now using a bolder voice and a touch of the heel.

Philip and those with him were at first anxious and silent; but when Alexander wheeled the horse round correctly and rode back proud and rejoicing, all the rest broke into shouts, while his father, it is said, actually wept for joy, and when Alexander had dismounted, kissed his head and said, "My boy, seek out a kingdom equal to yourself, for Macedonia is not big enough for you."

Seeing that his son's nature was hard to move by force when he resisted, but was easily led by reason to what was fitting, Philip himself tried to persuade rather than command him, and, not trusting the teachers of music and the ordinary school subjects to have full charge and shaping of him, since this was, as he thought, a greater task, requiring, in Sophocles' words, 'many bits and rudders too,'

he summoned the most renowned and learned philosopher of the age, Aristotle, and paid him a fee both handsome and fitting for the undertaking. As for Stagira, Aristotle's native city, which Philip had earlier razed, he now rebuilt it, bringing back and settling there again the citizens who had fled into exile or fallen into slavery.

As a place of leisure and study for them he set aside the shrine of the Nymphs near Mieza, and even now visitors are shown Aristotle's stone seats and the shaded walks there. Alexander, it seems, received from Aristotle not only ethical and political instruction, but also a portion of those hidden and deeper doctrines that the philosophers, using their own special terms, call "acroamatic" and "epoptic" — teachings they did not spread among the general public.

For once he had already crossed into Asia, and learned that Aristotle had put certain treatises on these subjects into written and public form, he wrote to him a frank letter on the subject of philosophy, a copy of which runs as follows: "Alexander to Aristotle: greetings. It was wrong of you to make public the doctrines meant only for oral instruction; for in what shall we surpass other men, if the teachings in which we were trained become common property to all? I would rather excel in my command of the best things than in power. Farewell."

Aristotle, soothing this ambition of his, defended himself concerning those treatises, saying they were both published and not published: for indeed the treatise on First Philosophy [Metaphysics] is written in a form that offers no useful instruction for teaching or learning, but serves only as a memorandum for those already trained in these matters.

It seems to me that Aristotle, more than anyone else, instilled in Alexander his love of medicine as well; for he did not merely admire the theory of it, but actually gave aid to his ailing companions, prescribing particular cures and courses of treatment, a fact one can gather from his letters. By nature, too, he was devoted to learning and fond of reading.

And the Iliad, which he regarded and called a viaticum of the art of war, he took with him in the edition corrected by Aristotle, known as "the casket copy," and he kept it always lying under his pillow together with his dagger, as Onesicritus has recorded. And when he had no ready supply of other books in the upper regions of Asia, he ordered Harpalus to send some to him.

And Harpalus sent him the books of Philistus, along with numerous tragic works by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, plus the dithyrambs of Telestes and Philoxenus. Aristotle he admired at first and loved no less, as he himself used to say, than his own father, on the ground that through the one he had life, and through the other a good life; but later he came to regard him with more suspicion — not so far as to do him any actual harm, but his displays of friendship no longer carried that former warmth and affection, and became instead a token of estrangement.

Yet the zeal and longing for philosophy that had grown up in him and been nurtured from the beginning did not drain away from his soul, as is attested by the honor he paid to Anaxarchus, the fifty talents he sent to Xenocrates, and the eager attention he devoted to Dandamis and Calanus.

When Philip was campaigning against the Byzantines, Alexander was sixteen years old, and was left behind in Macedonia as master of affairs and keeper of the royal seal. He subdued the rebellious Maedi, and after capturing their city he drove out the barbarians, settled it with a mixed population, and named it Alexandropolis.

He was present at Chaeronea, joining in the fight waged against the Greek forces, and it is said that he was the first to charge the Sacred Band of the Thebans. Even in our own day an ancient oak by the Cephisus called "Alexander's oak" was pointed out, near which he had then pitched his camp, and the burial mound of the Macedonians is not far off.

For these reasons, as one would expect, Philip loved his son exceedingly, so much so that he was pleased when the Macedonians called Alexander their king and Philip their general. But the troubles in the household, arising from his marriages and love affairs, spread as it were from the women's quarters into the kingdom itself and produced many grievances and great quarrels, which the harsh temper of Olympias — a woman prone to jealousy and given to sulking — made worse still, since she goaded Alexander on.

The most glaring instance of this Attalus provided at the wedding of Cleopatra, whom Philip married after becoming enamored of her despite the difference in their ages. Attalus, her uncle, in his cups at the banquet, called on the Macedonians to pray to the gods that from Philip and Cleopatra a legitimate heir to the kingdom might be born. Alexander, provoked by this, said, "But do you take us, wretch, for bastards?"

And he threw a cup at him, and Philip rose up against Alexander with sword drawn, but fortunately for both of them, from anger and wine, he stumbled and fell. Alexander, mocking him, said, "Look, men — here is someone getting ready to sail from Europe over into Asia, yet he cannot even make it from one couch to the next without being toppled over." After this drunken quarrel he took Olympias and settled her in Epirus, while he himself stayed among the Illyrians.

Meanwhile Demaratus of Corinth, a guest-friend of the house who enjoyed freedom of speech, came to Philip. After the first greetings and courtesies, when Philip asked him how the Greeks stood in concord with one another, he said, "It surely befits you, Philip, to be concerned for the harmony of Greece, when you have filled your own household with so much strife and evil." Philip, brought to his senses by this, sent for Alexander and, through Demaratus's persuasion, brought him back home.

When Pixodarus, satrap of Caria, hoping to worm his way through a marriage tie into partnership with Philip, wished to marry off his eldest daughter to Philip's son Arrhidaeus, and sent Aristocritus to Macedonia about the matter, once again rumors and slanders reached Alexander from his friends and his mother, to the effect that Philip, through a brilliant marriage and important connections, was setting Arrhidaeus up for the throne.

Disturbed by these reports, Alexander dispatched Thessalus, the actor of tragedies, to Caria so he might treat with Pixodarus, urging that he should set aside the bastard son, who was moreover not of sound mind, and transfer the marriage alliance to Alexander instead. This proposal pleased Pixodarus considerably more than the earlier one; but Philip, learning of it, went to Alexander's chamber, taking with him one of Alexander's friends and companions, Philotas son of Parmenio, and rebuked him harshly,

and reviled him bitterly as ignoble and unworthy of the advantages he possessed, if he was content to become son-in-law to a Carian, a man who was slave to a barbarian king. As for Thessalus, he wrote to the Corinthians to send him back bound in chains. Of the other companions he banished Harpalus and Nearchus from Macedonia, and also Erigyius and Ptolemy — men whom Alexander later, upon recalling them, held in the highest honor.

When Pausanias, having been outraged at the instigation of Attalus and Cleopatra and denied justice, killed Philip, most people laid the blame chiefly on Olympias, holding that she had stirred up and driven on the enraged young man; but some suspicion touched Alexander as well. The story goes that Pausanias, once he had suffered that outrage, encountered Alexander and voiced his complaint, whereupon Alexander quoted the line of Medea: "the giver, and the bridegroom, and the bride." Nevertheless, he sought out and punished those who had shared in the conspiracy, and he was indignant that Olympias, during his absence abroad, treated Cleopatra with such cruelty.

So he came to the throne at the age of twenty, a kingdom beset with great envy, fierce hatreds, and dangers on every side. For the barbarian peoples bordering Macedonia would not bear their subjection, longing for their ancestral kingships, and Philip, though he had subdued Greece by arms, had not had time to yoke and tame it, but had merely upset and thrown affairs into confusion, leaving them in a great swell and agitation from the unaccustomed change.

The Macedonians feared the crisis and thought that Alexander ought to give up entirely on Greek affairs and not press them by force, and that he should call back the barbarian peoples who were rebelling by gentle means and attend to the early stages of the unrest. Alexander, however, moving from the opposite line of reasoning, resolved through boldness and greatness of spirit to secure safety and stability for his affairs, on the ground that if he were seen yielding even a little of his resolve, everyone would set upon him.

The barbarian uprisings and the wars there he quickly put down by marching swiftly with his army as far as the Danube, where he defeated Syrmus, king of the Triballi, in a great battle. When word reached him that the Thebans had risen and the Athenians stood with them, he marched his troops at once through the Gates, remarking that although Demosthenes had dubbed him a boy during his time among the Illyrians and Triballians, and a mere youth once he reached Thessaly, he meant to prove himself a man in front of Athens's walls.

When he approached Thebes, still allowing room for repentance for what had been done, he called for Phoenix and Prothytes to be handed over, and announced a pardon for any who deserted to his cause. But the Thebans, for their part, called on him to hand over Philotas and Antipater, and proclaimed that all who wished to join in liberating Greece should array themselves with them. So it was that he turned the Macedonians to war.

The Thebans fought beyond their strength, with courage and eagerness, arrayed against enemies many times more numerous; but when the Macedonian garrison abandoned the Cadmea and fell upon them from behind, most of them, surrounded, fell in the battle itself, and the city was captured, plundered, and razed to the ground — Alexander expecting on the whole that the Greeks, struck with terror at so great a calamity, would cower and remain quiet, but also wishing to make a show of gratifying the accusations of his allies; for indeed the Phocians and Plataeans had brought charges against the Thebans.

He spared the priests, every household bound to the Macedonians by ties of hospitality, Pindar's descendants, and whoever had opposed the uprising with their vote; everyone else was sold as a slave, some thirty thousand in number; and those who had died were more than six thousand.

Amid the many terrible sufferings that gripped the city, a band of Thracians forced their way into the home of Timoclea, a woman of good reputation and self-restraint; while they plundered her property, their commander forced himself on the woman and violated her, and then questioned her whether she had any gold or silver hidden away. She admitted that she did,

and, leading him alone into the garden, showed him a well, saying that there, when the city was being captured, she herself had thrown down her most precious valuables. As the Thracian bent over and peered into the place, she pushed him from behind, and hurling down many stones upon him, killed him.

When she was brought bound before Alexander by the Thracians, at once from her look and her bearing she appeared a woman of dignity and high spirit, following her captors without fear or dismay. Then, when the king inquired which woman among them she was, she answered that she was the sister of Theagenes, who had drawn up his forces against Philip on behalf of the freedom of the Greeks, and had fallen at Chaeronea while serving as general. Alexander, marveling both at her answer and her deed, ordered that she go free with her children.

With the Athenians he was reconciled, although they had not borne the disaster at Thebes with any moderation; indeed, they had been in the midst of celebrating the festival of the Mysteries when they let it lapse out of grief, and they extended every kindness to those who had fled to their city for refuge.

But whether it was that his anger was already sated, like that of lions, or that he wished to set an act of clemency beside one so savage and grim, he not only released them from all blame, but also instructed the city to attend to its own governance, since it would rule Greece should misfortune ever befall him. Later, however, it is said that the disaster of the Thebans often distressed him and made him gentler to no few people.

In general, he attributed both the affair of Cleitus, which happened over wine, and the Macedonians' refusal to advance further against the Indians — as though they were abandoning his campaign and his glory unfinished — to the wrath and vengeance of Dionysus. And there was no surviving Theban who, on meeting him afterward and making a request, failed to obtain it from him. So much for the affairs at Thebes.

When the Greeks gathered at the Isthmus and voted to campaign against the Persians together with Alexander, he was proclaimed their leader. And when many statesmen and philosophers came to him and offered their congratulations, he hoped that Diogenes of Sinope, who was living near Corinth, would do the same.

But when Diogenes, paying very little regard to Alexander, remained at his leisure in the Craneum, Alexander went to him himself. He happened to be lying in the sun, and he raised himself up a little as so many people approached, and fixed his eyes on Alexander. When Alexander greeted him and asked if he needed anything,

"Just this," he said, "stand a little out of my sunlight." It is said that Alexander was so affected by this, and so admired the arrogance and greatness of the man in scorning him, that when those around him, as they were leaving, laughed and mocked Diogenes, he said, "But truly, were I not Alexander, Diogenes is what I would wish to be."

Wishing to consult the god about the campaign, he came to Delphi; and as it happened to be among the forbidden days, on which it is not the custom to give oracles, at first he sent asking the priestess to come. But when she refused and pleaded the law, he himself went up and dragged her by force toward the temple, whereupon she, as though overcome by his eagerness, said, "You are invincible, my child." Hearing this, Alexander said he no longer needed any other prophecy, but had from her the very oracle he wanted.

When he set out on the campaign, other signs too are said to have come from the divine, and in particular a cypress-wood statue of Orpheus standing at Leibethra broke out in heavy sweat during those days. While everyone else was afraid of the sign, Aristander bade them take courage, since Alexander would accomplish deeds worth singing of and widely renowned, deeds that would give poets and musicians much toil and sweat in celebrating them with hymns.

As to the size of the army, those who give the smallest number record thirty thousand foot and four thousand horse, while those who give the largest put it at five thousand cavalry alongside forty-three thousand infantrymen. For provisions for these Aristobulus records that he had no more than seventy talents; Duris says only thirty days' worth of food; and Onesicritus says that he was actually in debt two hundred talents besides.

But although setting out from such small and narrow means, he did not board the ship before he had looked into the affairs of his companions and had assigned to one an estate, to another a village, to another the revenue of some township or harbor. And when nearly all the royal property had been used up and allotted, Perdiccas said, "But for yourself, O King, what are you leaving?" And when he replied that it was his hopes, Perdiccas said, "Then we too, who campaign with you, shall share in these."

When Perdiccas turned down the share assigned to him, and several of his other companions followed suit, he freely gave gifts to those who did accept and request them, and by thus giving away most of what he possessed in Macedonia he exhausted it entirely. With such eagerness and such a frame of mind he crossed the Hellespont.

He journeyed up to Ilium, where he offered sacrifice to Athena and poured out libations for the heroes. He anointed Achilles' gravestone with oil and, following custom, ran naked around it together with his companions, then crowned it, calling Achilles fortunate because in life he had won a loyal companion, and in death, a mighty proclaimer of his renown. While touring the city and taking in its sights, he was asked whether he cared to view the lyre that had belonged to Paris, and he answered that he thought little of that instrument, but was searching instead for the one Achilles had used to sing of the noble deeds of brave men.

Meanwhile, Darius's generals had gathered a great force and drawn it up at the crossing of the Granicus, so that a battle was in a sense unavoidable, fought virtually at the very threshold of Asia, with entry into it and dominion over it at stake; but most of the Macedonians feared the depth of the river and the roughness and unevenness of the banks on the far side, over which they would have to make their landing under attack, and some also thought it necessary to observe

the custom regarding the month (for the kings of the Macedonians were not accustomed to lead out the army in the month Daisius). This he corrected by ordering that it be called a second Artemisius; and when Parmenio, since the hour was late, would not allow him to run the risk, he said that the Hellespont would be ashamed of him if he feared the Granicus after having crossed that strait, and he plunged into the current with thirteen squadrons of cavalry.

Advancing against opposing missiles and rugged places fenced about with arms and horses, and through a current that swept and swirled around them, he seemed to be exercising generalship more like a man possessed by madness and desperation than by good judgment. Nevertheless, clinging to the crossing and mastering the ground with difficulty and hardship, since the footing was slippery and treacherous from the mud, he was at once forced to fight in confusion and grapple man to man with those bearing down on him, before those crossing over could form into any order,

for the enemy pressed on with shouting, and setting horse against horse they used their spears, and then their swords when the spears were shattered. As many pressed upon him — for he was conspicuous by his shield and by the crest of his helmet, on either side of which stood a plume marvelous for its whiteness and size — a javelin cast struck him under the joint of his breastplate but did not wound him; and when Rhoesaces and Spithridates, the generals, bore down upon him together, he avoided the one, and striking first at Rhoesaces, who was armored, he shattered his spear upon him and rushed upon him with his dagger.

As they closed with one another, Spithridates, wheeling his horse from the side and rising up eagerly along with it, brought down upon him a barbarian scimitar: he sheared off the crest together with one of the plumes, and the helmet held out against the stroke by the narrowest margin, so that only the topmost hairs of his head were grazed by the blade's edge; but as Spithridates was raising it again for another blow, Cleitus the Black got there first and drove his spear-shaft through the middle of him, and at the same moment Rhoesaces too fell, struck by Alexander's sword.

While the cavalry battle was thus in danger and struggle, the Macedonian phalanx was crossing the river, and the infantry forces closed with one another; but the enemy did not hold firm strongly nor for long, but turned and fled, except for the Greek mercenaries, who, gathering together on a certain hill, asked Alexander for terms of safety.

But he, acting more from anger than from calculation, charged in first, and lost his horse, which was killed by a sword-thrust through the ribs (it was a different horse, not Bucephalas); and it was there that most of those who died or were wounded happened to fall into danger, grappling with men who were desperate and warlike. It is said that twenty thousand of the barbarian infantry and two thousand five hundred of the cavalry fell. As for Alexander's men, Aristobulus puts the total dead at thirty-four, nine of them infantrymen,

and for these he ordered bronze statues to be set up, which Lysippus fashioned. Sharing the victory with the Greeks, he sent to the Athenians privately three hundred shields from the captured spoils, and for the rest of the spoils, held in common, he commissioned a highly ambitious inscription: "Alexander son of Philip, together with the Greeks — the Lacedaemonians excepted — dedicate these, taken from the barbarians inhabiting Asia." As for the drinking cups, the purple garments, and any other such Persian belongings he had captured, he sent nearly all of them to his mother, keeping back only a few pieces.

This battle at once produced a great change of fortune in Alexander's favor, so that even Sardis, the very showpiece of the barbarians' dominion over the sea, was taken over, along with everything else submitting to him. Only Halicarnassus and Miletus resisted, which he took by storm and, having subdued all that lay around them, was of two minds in his judgment as to the rest,

and often he was eager to meet Darius and risk everything at once for the whole issue, but often too he intended first to train and strengthen himself, as it were, on the affairs and resources along the coast, and only then to go up against him. There is a spring in Lycia near the city of the Xanthians, which is said at that time to have overturned of its own accord and, overflowing from its depths, cast up a bronze tablet bearing the impressions of ancient letters, in which it was declared that the empire of the Persians would come to an end, destroyed by the Greeks.

Encouraged by this, he hastened to clear the coastline as far as Phoenicia and Cilicia, and his passage along Pamphylia has become for many historians a subject for vivid writing, for astonishment and grandiloquence, as though by some divine fortune the sea made way for Alexander, though it was otherwise always rough as it came in from the deep, rarely at any time laying bare a slender and narrow passage beneath the steep and broken cliffs of the mountainous coast.

Menander too shows this in a comedy, playing on the paradox as being now proverbially "Alexander-like": "And if I seek someone, this fellow will appear of his own accord; and if indeed I need to pass through some place by way of the sea, this will be passable for me." But Alexander himself, in his letters, without indulging in any such marvel-mongering, says that setting out from Phaselis, he made his way through by means of what is called the Ladder, a road he had constructed there.

For this reason he spent several days in the city, during which time, when Theodectes had died — he was a native of Phaselis — Alexander, seeing a statue of him set up in the marketplace, after dinner went in a drunken revel and threw upon it many garlands, rendering, in a not ungraceful piece of play, honor to the intimacy that had come about with the man through Aristotle and philosophy.

After this he overcame those of the Pisidians who resisted, and subdued Phrygia, and taking over the city of Gordium, said to have been the home of the Midas of legend, he saw the celebrated wagon bound with cornel bark, and heard the story believed among the barbarians concerning it, that it was fated for whoever should loose the knot to become king of the inhabited world.

Now most say that, since the ends of the cords were hidden and the cords were carried through one another repeatedly in crooked coils, Alexander, unable to find a way to loose it, severed the knot with a stroke of his blade, and that once it was cut, many loose ends came into view. But Aristobulus says that the loosing was quite easy for him: he drew out the pin, as it is called, from the shaft that held the yoke's linkage in place, and thus drew off the yoke.

From there, having brought over the Paphlagonians and Cappadocians, and having heard of the death of Memnon, who among Darius's generals on the coast was expected to give Alexander much trouble and countless obstacles and occupations, he was strengthened all the more in his resolve for the campaign into the interior.

By now Darius too was coming down from Susa, elated both by the size of his forces — for he led six hundred thousand men — and by a dream that the magi read in a way more flattering than plausible: he had dreamed that fire blazed over the whole Macedonian phalanx, and that Alexander served him while dressed in the very robe Darius himself had once worn as a royal courier; and that Alexander then walked into the temple of Belus and disappeared from view.

By these things, it seems, it was being suggested by the god that the affairs of the Macedonians would become brilliant and conspicuous, and that Alexander would master Asia, just as Darius had mastered it after becoming king from a courier, but that he would quickly leave life, though with glory.

Darius took courage all the more, having judged Alexander's long stay in Cilicia to be cowardice. But the delay was owing to illness, which some say fell upon him from exertion, others say from bathing in the freezing current of the Cydnus.

None of the other physicians dared to attempt treatment, for they thought the danger stronger than any help could overcome, and feared the blame that would fall on them from the Macedonians if they failed; but Philip the Acarnanian, seeing that his condition was grave, yet trusting in his friendship, and thinking it a terrible thing not to share the risk of one in danger by helping and staking himself to the utmost trial, undertook to give him a medicine, and persuaded him to endure it and drink it, since Alexander was eager to be restored to strength for the war.

Meanwhile Parmenio sent a letter from the camp, urging him to be on guard against Philip, as one who had been persuaded by Darius, with great gifts and marriage to his daughter, to kill Alexander. Alexander, having read the letter and shown it to none of his friends, put it under his pillow. When the moment arrived and Philip came in with his attendants, cup of medicine in hand, Alexander passed him the letter while himself taking the draught without hesitation or suspicion,

so that it was a marvelous and theatrical sight — the one reading, the other drinking, and then the two looking at each other, though not in like manner: Alexander, with a bright and open face, showing his goodwill and trust toward Philip, while Philip, distraught at the accusation, at one moment called upon the gods and stretched his hands toward heaven, at another fell upon the couch and urged Alexander to be of good cheer and to trust him.

For the medicine, mastering his body at first, as it were thrust back and sank his strength into the depths, so that his voice failed and his senses became dim and altogether faint, a swoon having come upon him. Nevertheless he was quickly restored by Philip and, having recovered, showed himself to the Macedonians; for they would not stop grieving until they saw Alexander.

There was a certain man in Darius's army, a Macedonian who had fled from Macedonia, Amyntas, not unacquainted with Alexander's nature. Seeing Darius eager to advance within the narrow passes against Alexander, he begged him to remain in his position, in plains that had breadth and were open, so as to fight against a lesser number with so great a multitude.

But when Darius answered that he feared his enemies would slip away and escape before Alexander could be caught, Amyntas said, "But for that at least, O King, take courage, for he will march against you, and indeed is already nearly on his way." Speaking thus, Amyntas failed to persuade him; instead Darius rose up and marched into Cilicia, and in that same period Alexander was marching toward Syria to meet him,

and in the night, missing one another, they turned back again — Alexander pleased at the turn of events and hastening to meet him at the narrow passes, Darius wishing to resume his former camp and to draw his forces out of the narrows. For by now he had realized that he had thrown himself, against his own advantage, into terrain unfit for cavalry, boxed in with mountains rising on one flank and the sea pressing against the other, the river Pinarus running across the middle of it, broken up in many places, and having a position that favored the small numbers of his enemies.

To Alexander fortune gave the ground, but he made better use of the advantages fortune provided than any general in achieving victory: for though he was so vastly outnumbered by the barbarians, he did not allow them to encircle him, but himself, overlapping their left with his right and coming around on their flank, put to flight the barbarians opposed to him, fighting in the front ranks, so that he was wounded in the thigh with a sword—by Darius himself, as Chares says, they having come to close quarters with one another.

But in his letter to Antipater describing the engagement, Alexander never named the man responsible for his wound, saying merely that a dagger had pierced his thigh and that the injury proved of no great consequence. Having won a brilliant victory and cut down more than one hundred and ten thousand of the enemy, he did not capture Darius, who had gained a lead of four or five stades in his flight, but he took his chariot and his bow and returned,

and found the Macedonians carrying and driving off the rest of the wealth from the barbarian camp in overwhelming abundance, although they had come to the battle lightly equipped and had left the greater part of their baggage at Damascus, and they had seized for him Darius's own tent, full of splendid attendants and furnishings and great quantities of money.

So at once, stripping off his armor, he went toward the bath, saying, "Come, let us rinse away the grime of combat in what was once Darius's bath." And one of his companions said, "No, by Zeus, but in Alexander's bath: for the possessions of the vanquished must belong to, and be called after, the conqueror."

And when he caught sight of the bowls, jugs, basins, and flasks, every one of them golden and fashioned with astonishing craftsmanship, and the house was fragrant with a marvelous scent of spices and perfumes, and from there he passed into a tent remarkable in height and size and in the arrangement of its couches and tables and its dining furniture, he looked at his companions and said, "This, it seems, was to be a king."

As he was turning to dinner, someone told him that among the captives being led in were the mother and wife of Darius, and his two unmarried daughters, who, upon seeing his chariot and bow, were beating their breasts and wailing, believing him to be dead. So Alexander, after pausing a long while, being moved with more feeling for their misfortune than for his own, sent Leonnatus, bidding him announce that Darius had not died, nor need they fear Alexander:

for it was against Darius that he was warring for supremacy, but to them everything would be granted that they had enjoyed even while Darius reigned. When these words appeared gentle and kind to the women, still more humane did his actual deeds prove. He allowed them to bury as many of the Persians as they wished, using clothing and adornment from the spoils, and he took away nothing of the attendance and honor they had had, but they enjoyed even greater allowances than before,

and the finest and most royal grace shown them by him was that these women, noble and chaste captives as they were, heard nothing, suspected nothing, expected nothing shameful, but as though they were not in an enemy's camp but guarded in sacred and holy virgins' chambers, they kept a manner of life hidden and unseen by others. Yet the story goes that Darius's own wife surpassed in beauty every other woman of royal blood, just as Darius himself was the tallest and most handsome of men, and that the daughters resembled their parents.

But Alexander, it seems, considering mastery of himself more kingly than conquest of his enemies, neither touched these women nor knew any other woman before marriage, except Barsine. She, having become a widow after the death of Memnon, was taken near Damascus. Being educated in Greek learning and being of a gentle character, and her father Artabazus being the son of a king's daughter, she was known by Alexander—Parmenio, according to Aristobulus's account, having pressed him to take up with a woman of such beauty and noble birth,

but seeing the other captive women outstanding in beauty and stature, Alexander said jokingly that the Persian women were pains to the eyes, and, setting against their beauty the beauty of his own restraint and self-mastery, he walked past them as if they were nothing more than motionless statues.

When Philoxenus, the commander of forces on the coast, wrote that a Tarentine named Theodorus was in his camp offering two boys of extraordinary beauty for sale, and asked whether Alexander cared to purchase them, Alexander was greatly offended, and cried out repeatedly to his friends, asking what act of shame Philoxenus had ever known in him, that he should sit there procuring such reproaches for him; and he himself, in a letter, after heaping much abuse on Philoxenus, ordered him to send Theodorus, cargo and all, to perdition.

He also rebuked Hagnon, who had written to him that he wished to buy and bring to him one Crobylus, who was well thought of in Corinth; and learning that Damon and Timotheus, Macedonians serving under Parmenio, had seduced the wives of some of the mercenary soldiers, he sent Parmenio a directive that, should the men be found guilty, they were to be executed like wild creatures bred only to prey on humankind.

And concerning himself he wrote, word for word, in this letter: "For I would not be found to have seen the wife of Darius, nor to have wished to see her, nor even to have listened when others spoke of how beautiful she was." He was in the habit of remarking that he was most conscious of being mortal from sleep and from sexual intercourse, since both weariness and pleasure arise, he thought, from one and the same weakness of nature.

He was also most temperate in matters of the belly, and this he showed both by many other things and by his remark to Ada, the woman he adopted as mother and installed as ruler of Caria. When, moved by fondness for him, she took to sending him abundant delicacies and sweets each day, and finally the men who seemed to be the most skilled cooks and bakers, he said he had need of none of these:

for he had better cooks, given to him by his tutor Leonidas: for breakfast, a night march; and for dinner, a light breakfast. "And this same man," he said, "used to come and open the chests of my bedding and clothing, examining to see whether my mother had put in anything luxurious or superfluous."

He was also less given to wine than he was thought to be. It seemed so on account of the time he spent over each cup, not drinking so much as talking, always setting forth some long discourse, and this even though there was much leisure available; for as regards his actual undertakings, neither wine nor sleep nor any amusement, nor marriage, nor spectacle, held him back, as they did other generals.

This his life shows, which, though lived altogether but a short span, he filled with the greatest number of the greatest achievements. In his times of leisure, first, once up and having offered sacrifice to the gods, he would sit down at once to eat his morning meal; then he spent the day hunting, or judging cases, or arranging some military matter, or reading. And if he were traveling a road that was not too pressing, he would practice, as he went along, either shooting with the bow or mounting and dismounting from a moving chariot.

Often, too, for sport he would hunt foxes and birds, as one can gather from the journals; and when he had halted and turned to bathing or anointing himself, he would question those in charge of the bakers and cooks whether things were ready for dinner. And he would begin dining late, when it was already dark, reclining at table; and wondrous was his care and watchfulness at table, that nothing be distributed unequally or carelessly; but the drinking, as has been said, he prolonged at great length because of his talkativeness.

And in other respects being the most agreeable of all kings to be with, and lacking in no charm, at such times he became unpleasant with boastfulness and altogether too much the soldier, himself being carried away toward vainglory and giving himself over to be ridden by his flatterers, by whom the more refined of those present were vexed, not wishing either to compete with the flatterers or to fall short of the same praises, for the one course seemed shameful, the other carried danger.

After the drinking, having bathed, he would often sleep until midday; and there were times when he even spent the whole day sleeping. He himself was temperate even in delicacies, so that though the rarest fruits and fish brought to him from the sea were often sent to him, he would send them around, one to each of his companions, and leave nothing for himself alone:

his dinner, however, was always magnificent, and as his fortunes increased, the expense grew along with them, until finally it reached ten thousand drachmas. There it stopped, and this was the sum fixed for those who entertained Alexander to spend.

Following the engagement at Issus, he dispatched a force to Damascus, seizing the treasure, the baggage train, and the Persians' children and wives. And the cavalry of the Thessalians profited most: for these men, having proven themselves exceptionally brave in the battle, he sent on purpose, wishing them to profit; and the rest of the army too was filled with abundance.

And the Macedonians, then for the first time tasting gold and silver and women and barbarian luxury, rushed off, like hounds picking up a trail, to hunt down and lay hold of the Persians' riches. Nevertheless, Alexander thought it best first to secure the coastal regions. So the kings of Cyprus at once came, putting the island into his hands, and Phoenicia surrendered too, except for Tyre.

While besieging Tyre for seven months with mounds and engines and two hundred triremes from the sea, he saw in a dream Heracles standing atop the wall, hailing him and beckoning him near. And to many of the Tyrians in their sleep it seemed that Apollo said he was going away to Alexander, for he was not pleased with what was being done in the city.

But they themselves, as though they had caught the god in the very act of deserting to the enemy, threw cords around his colossal statue and nailed it down to its base, calling him "an Alexandrist." And Alexander saw another vision in his sleep.

A satyr appeared to him and seemed to play with him from a distance, then, when he wished to catch it, it slipped away; but finally, after much entreaty and running around, it came into his hands. And the seers, dividing the name, said, not implausibly, to him: "Tyre shall be yours (sa Tyros)." And they show a certain spring, near which he seemed in his sleep to see the satyr.

In the midst of the siege, having marched against the Arabs who dwelt near Antilibanus, he came into danger because of his tutor Lysimachus: for this man followed along with him, saying he was no worse nor older than Phoenix; and when, having drawn near to the mountainous region, he left the horses behind and went on foot, the rest went on far ahead,

but he himself, with dusk already settling in and the foe close at hand, could not bring himself to abandon Lysimachus, who was giving out and growing heavy, but calling him on and helping him along, was without noticing it drawn away from the army with a few men, and spent the night, amid darkness and violent cold together, in a rugged place.

He saw, then, far off many fires burning scattered about, belonging to the enemy; and trusting in the nimbleness of his body, and by his own exertion continually encouraging the helplessness of the Macedonians with him, he ran to the nearest fire that was burning: and striking down with his dagger two barbarians who sat around the fire, and snatching up a firebrand, he came back carrying it to his own men; and having kindled a great fire, they at once frightened some into flight, and routed those who came against them, and encamped safely without danger. This, then, is what Chares has recorded.

The siege had this outcome: while Alexander was resting the greater part of his force from the many struggles that had gone before, and was bringing up only a few men to the walls, so that the enemy might not be idle, Aristander the seer offered sacrifice, and upon seeing the signs, declared with some boldness to those present that the city would certainly be taken within that very month.

There arose mockery and laughter, since the month's final day had already arrived; and the king, noticing his seer's dismay, and always eager to support the diviners' predictions, ordered that day to be reckoned no longer as the thirtieth, but as the third from the end; and having given the signal with the trumpet, he made a more vigorous assault upon the walls than he had originally intended. And when a brilliant attack developed, and even those left in the camp did not hold back, but ran together and joined in the assault, the Tyrians gave up: and he took the city on that very day.

After this, while he was besieging Gaza, the greatest city of Syria, a clod of earth fell upon his shoulder, dropped from above by a bird, and the bird, having settled on one of the siege engines, had unknowingly become entangled in the sinew netting which they used for the traction of the ropes.

And the sign came out just as Aristander had foretold: Alexander was wounded in the shoulder, and he took the city. He sent back a great part of the spoils to his mother Olympias, to Cleopatra, and to the rest of his friends, and to Leonidas his old tutor he separately dispatched his old tutor five hundred talents of frankincense and a hundred of myrrh, remembering a boyhood hope.

For Leonidas, it seems, had once at a sacrifice, when Alexander scooped up incense with both hands and threw it on the fire, said, "When you have conquered the land that bears these spices, Alexander, then you may burn incense so lavishly; for now, use what you have sparingly." So now Alexander wrote to him: "We have sent you frankincense and myrrh in abundance, so that you may stop being stingy toward the gods."

When a certain chest was brought to him, which appeared to those receiving Darius's treasures and baggage to be the most costly thing there, he asked his friends what they thought most worth storing in it. Many suggested many things, but he himself said he would keep the Iliad safe by placing it there.

This is attested by no small number of trustworthy witnesses. And if what the Alexandrians say, trusting Heracleides, is true, then Homer seems to have been no idle or useless companion to him on campaign. For they say that after conquering Egypt he wished to found a great and populous Greek city and leave it named after himself, and that he had already, on the advice of his architects, marked out and enclosed a certain site.

Then one night as he slept he saw a marvelous vision: a man gray-haired and quite venerable in appearance seemed to stand beside him and speak these lines aloud: "An isle lies yonder in the heaving deep, fronting Egypt, and Pharos is its name." At once he rose and made his way to Pharos, which back then was still separated from land by water, lying a short distance north of the Canobic mouth of the Nile, though today a causeway ties it to the shore.

As soon as he saw the place, remarkable for what nature had given it—for it forms a neck of land not unlike an isthmus, of a good breadth, running between a broad lake and the open sea and closing at a spacious harbor—he declared that Homer, apart from his other wonders, had proven himself a supremely skilled builder too, and he commanded that the city's layout be sketched out so as to fit the ground.

And since no chalk was at hand, they took barley meal and traced with it in the black-soiled plain a circular enclosure, whose inner curve straight lines took up from the borders, like the folds of a cloak, drawing together evenly to a point. The king was delighted with the design, when suddenly birds from the river and the lake, countless in number and of every kind and size, swooped down on the place in cloud-like swarms and devoured every last scrap of the traced barley, leaving nothing behind, a sign that unsettled Alexander himself.

Nevertheless, when the seers urged him to take heart—for they said the city being founded by him would be most abundantly supplied and would nourish people of every nation—he ordered the overseers to get to work, while he himself set out for the shrine of Ammon, a long journey, full of much toil and hardship, and with two dangers: one from lack of water, through which the land lies waterless for many days' travel, the other, should a violent south wind fall upon them as they walked through the deep and boundless sand, as is said to have happened once long ago to the army of Cambyses, when it raised a great dune and turned the plain into waves, burying and destroying fifty thousand men.

Nearly everyone reckoned on all these dangers, but it was hard to turn Alexander from anything he had set his mind on. For fortune, yielding to his undertakings, made his resolve strong, and his spirited temper carried his ambition, unconquered, right through to action, forcing its way not only against enemies but against places and circumstances as well.

At any rate, on that journey the help that came from the god amid their difficulties won more credit than the later oracles did, and in a way it was from these events that faith in the oracles itself arose. For first, a great rain sent from Zeus and lasting showers dispelled the fear of thirst, and by quenching the dryness of the sand—which became moist and packed together—they made the air fresher and clearer to breathe. Then, when the guides' bearings became confused,

and there was wandering, and the travelers were scattered from ignorance of the way, ravens appeared and took over the guidance of the march, flying ahead of those who followed and hurrying them on, and waiting for those who lagged and fell behind. And what was most amazing,

as Callisthenes says, they called out to those who strayed at night, croaking, and set them back on the track of the march. When he had passed through the desert and reached the place, the prophet of Ammon greeted him on behalf of the god as "O son," as from a father; and Alexander, in turn, asked whether any among those who had killed his father had gotten away without punishment.

The prophet bade him speak more reverently, for he had no mortal father; so Alexander changed his question and asked whether he had punished all the murderers of Philip. Then, about his empire, whether the god granted him to become lord of all mankind. When the god responded that this too was granted, and that Philip had received full satisfaction, he presented the god with splendid offerings and gave money to the priests.

This is how most writers describe the oracle's utterances; yet Alexander, writing to his own mother, states that particular secret responses had been given to him, ones he would reveal to her and no one else once he returned home. Others report that the priest, meaning to greet him warmly in Greek as "O paidion" [O child], stumbled over the foreign word and let a sigma slip out where a nu belonged, ending up with "O paidios" instead; Alexander, far from minding, welcomed this mispronunciation, and word spread afterward that the god had hailed him as "son of Zeus."

It is also said that, after hearing the philosopher Psammon in Egypt, he most approved the saying that all men are ruled by god: for that which rules and has mastery in each person is divine. And still more, he himself held and expressed a rather more philosophical view on these matters—that god is the common father of all men, but makes his own, in a special sense, the best of them.

In general, toward the barbarians he was overbearing, and behaved as one thoroughly persuaded of his birth and descent from a god, but toward the Greeks he made claims to divinity moderately and with restraint. Except when writing to the Athenians about Samos, he says: "I would not have given you that free and famous city; you hold it as a gift from him who was then your lord and was called my father"

meaning Philip. Later, after he was struck by an arrow and was in great pain, he said, "What you see running here, my friends, is plain blood, not the ichor that flows in the veins of the blessed gods." On another occasion, a loud peal of thunder terrified everyone present, and Anaxarchus the sophist, standing nearby, said to him, "Could you, the son of Zeus, produce such a thing yourself?" Alexander laughed and said, "I have no wish to inspire dread in those close to me the way you'd have me do—you who mock my dinner table, because you see fish laid on it, not the heads of satraps."

Indeed it is said that when some small fish were sent by the king to Hephaestion, Anaxarchus made this remark, mocking and ridiculing those who pursue with great toil and danger things admired by all, as though they possessed little or nothing more than others in the way of pleasures and enjoyments. Alexander himself, in any case, is clear from these very sayings not to have been affected or puffed up by such things, but rather to have enslaved others through the reputation of his divinity.

Returning to Phoenicia from Egypt, he performed sacrifices to the gods and processions, and held contests of cyclic and tragic choruses, made splendid not only by their staging but also by the rivalry involved. The kings of Cyprus furnished the choruses, in the same manner as those Athenian tribal representatives selected by lottery, and they competed against one another with amazing eagerness. Nicocreon of Salamis and Pasicrates of Soli contended most fiercely of all.

For these two happened to be assigned to fund the most celebrated actors—Pasicrates for Athenodorus, Nicocreon for Thessalus, in whom Alexander himself took a keen interest, though he did not reveal his preference until Athenodorus had been proclaimed the winner by vote. Then, as it seems, on leaving he said that he approved of the judges, but that he himself would gladly have given up part of his kingdom rather than see Thessalus defeated.

When Athenodorus, having been fined by the Athenians because he failed to appear for the contest of the Dionysia, asked the king to write on his behalf, Alexander did not do this, but instead sent the fine from his own funds. And when Lycon of Scarphe, doing well in the theater, inserted into his comedy a line requesting ten talents, Alexander laughed and gave it to him.

When Darius sent a letter to him, along with friends who begged him to accept ten thousand talents in exchange for the captives, to retain everything he held west of the Euphrates river, and to become his friend and ally through marriage to one of his daughters, Alexander shared this with his companions. And when Parmenio said, "If I were Alexander, I would accept these terms," Alexander replied, "So would I, by Zeus, if I were Parmenio." To Darius he wrote that he would lack nothing kind if he came to him; but if not, he himself would march against him at once.

He soon regretted it, however, when Darius's wife died in childbirth, and he was visibly grieved, feeling that he had been deprived of no small chance to show kindness. So he buried the woman, sparing no expense. Then one of the eunuchs who attended the bedchamber, who had been captured along with the women, escaped from the camp and, riding to Darius, reported to him the death of his wife—his name was Tireus.

When Darius struck his head and cried out, "Alas for the fortune of the Persians, if the king's wife and sister, not only was made a captive while living, but even in death lies deprived of a royal burial!" the eunuch, taking up the reply, said, "But as for burial, O king, and every honor and all that is fitting, you have no cause to blame the evil fortune of the Persians.

For while your mistress Stateira, your mother, and your children were alive, they lacked none of the good and beautiful things they had before, except to see your light—which the lord Oromasdes will again cause to shine forth. Nor, in dying, has she gone without adornment, but has even been honored by the tears of her enemies. For Alexander is as kind in victory as he is fearsome in battle."

When Darius heard this, his agitation and grief drove him to strange suspicions, and taking the eunuch further inside the tent, he said, "If you are not siding with Macedon along with the fortune of the Persians, but I am still your master Darius, tell me, by the great light of Mithras and by the king's right hand—am I not weeping over the least of Stateira's misfortunes, and did we not suffer things more pitiable while she lived, and would we not have deserved our misfortune more had we fallen into the hands of a cruel and grim enemy? For what decency does a young man show toward his enemy's wife, to go so far as such honor?"

Before he could finish, Tireus fell down at his feet, pleading with him to speak no ill, and neither to wrong Alexander nor to shame his dead sister and wife, nor to take from himself the greatest comfort in his misfortunes—that he seemed to have been defeated by a man greater than human nature allows—but rather to marvel at Alexander, who had shown more self-control toward the Persian women than the Persians themselves had shown courage.

At the same time, as the eunuch swore fearsome oaths concerning these things and spoke of Alexander's self-restraint and greatness of soul in other matters as well, Darius went out to his companions, and raising his hands to heaven, prayed: "Gods of my birth and of my kingdom, grant above all that I may restore the fortune of the Persians upright again to the state in which I received it, so that in victory I may repay Alexander the kindness he showed toward those dearest to me in my misfortune. But if indeed this fated time has now come,

owed to retribution and change, that the rule of the Persians should end, let no other man sit upon the throne of Cyrus except Alexander." This, most historians say, is how it happened and what was said.

Alexander, now holding as his own everything up to the Euphrates, set out against Darius, who was advancing with an army a million strong. One of his companions mentioned to him, as an amusing story, that the camp followers, purely in jest, had split into two rival bands, each with its own commander, one nicknamed Alexander and the other Darius.

It started with clods of dirt thrown back and forth, moved on to fists, and eventually grew so fierce that stones and cudgels came into play, drawing in many participants who proved hard to separate. On learning of it, Alexander ordered the two mock-leaders to settle matters in single combat, arming the man called Alexander himself while Philotas armed the one called Darius. The entire army looked on, reading the outcome as a sign of what lay ahead. The fight was hard-fought, but the man playing Alexander prevailed, earning as his prize a dozen villages and permission to don Persian garb. Eratosthenes is the source for this story.

Yet the decisive battle with Darius was actually fought, contrary to what most authors claim about Arbela, at a place called Gaugamela; and they say the name means in that language "house of the camel," since one of the kings of old, fleeing his enemies on a swift camel, settled it there, assigning certain villages and revenues for its upkeep.

The moon underwent an eclipse in the month of Boedromion, near the time when the Athenian Mysteries began, and eleven nights after that eclipse, when the two camps had come into view of each other, Darius kept his forces under arms, going about the ranks by torchlight, while Alexander, while the Macedonians rested, spent the time himself before his tent with the seer Aristander, performing certain secret rites and offering sacrifice to Fear.

The older of his companions, and especially Parmenio, since the entire plain stretching from Mount Niphates to the Gordyaean range could be seen ablaze with the barbarian fires, and an indistinct sound mingled with tumult came from their camp as though from a vast sea,

were astonished at their numbers and said to one another that it would be a great and difficult task to meet and push back so great a war in the open day, and so, coming to the king when he had finished the sacrifices, they urged that he fall upon the enemy under cover of darkness and conceal the most fearful part of the coming struggle in night,

but he made the answer that is remembered, "I do not steal my victory" — to some this seemed a childish and empty reply, as though he were joking in the face of so great a danger, but to others it seemed that he was both taking courage in the present situation and judging the future correctly, giving Darius no excuse, if defeated, to take heart again for another attempt by blaming the night and the darkness, as he had earlier blamed the mountains, the narrow passes, and the sea.

For Darius, he said, would not stop making war for lack of weapons or men, having so great a force and so great a country behind him, but only when he had lost his confidence and his hope, being refuted decisively by a manifest defeat.

When these men had left, Alexander is said to have lain down in his tent and to have been overtaken by a deep sleep for the rest of the night, contrary to his custom, so that when the officers came to him at dawn they were astonished, and acting on their own initiative issued orders for the soldiers to eat breakfast first; then, since time was pressing, Parmenio came in, stood by his bed, and called his name two or three times, and when Alexander was thus roused, he asked what had come over him that he should sleep as though he had already won, and not like someone on the verge of fighting his greatest battle of all,

to which Alexander, smiling, replied, "Why, do we not seem to have already won, now that we are freed from wandering about and chasing after Darius through a vast and ravaged country, since he refuses to fight?" And not only before the battle but even right in the thick of the danger he displayed greatness and composure, trusting to his own reasoning and confidence.

For the battle underwent a setback and disturbance on the left wing under Parmenio, when the cavalry of Bactria charged into the Macedonian lines with tremendous force and violence, and Mazaeus sent horsemen around outside the phalanx to attack those guarding the baggage. Troubled by both these things, Parmenio sent messengers to Alexander telling him that the camp and the baggage were lost unless he sent strong help quickly from the front to those behind,

Now it happened that at that very moment Alexander was giving the signal for an attack to those about him, but when he heard the message from Parmenio he said that Parmenio was not in his right mind, nor within the bounds of reasoning, but had forgotten in his confusion that those who win will also gain possession of their enemies' goods, while those who are defeated must think not of money or slaves but of how to die nobly and gloriously fighting.

Having sent this reply to Parmenio, he put on his helmet, having already taken the rest of his armor from his tent — a Sicilian tunic girded about him, and over it a doubled linen breastplate, part of the plunder won at Issus. Though made of iron, his helmet gleamed like burnished silver, the work of Theophilus, and fitted to it was a neck-guard, likewise of iron,

set with precious stones. He also carried a sword, remarkable for how well it was tempered and how light it was, given to him by the Citian king, and he had made a habit of using this very sword extensively in his battles. The clasp of his cloak was more elaborately crafted than any other piece of his armor — it had been made long ago by Helicon, a gift bestowed on him by the city of Rhodes —

and this too he used for his battles. Now as long as he was arranging some part of the phalanx, or giving orders, or instructing, or riding along to inspect, he used another horse, sparing Bucephalas, who was by now past his prime; but when he was about to go into action, that horse was brought to him, and as soon as he had mounted him he would begin the charge.

At that time, after speaking at length to the Thessalians and to the other Greeks, and when their shouts had urged him onward to lead the charge against the barbarians, he moved his lance to his left hand and with his right called upon the gods, as Callisthenes says, praying, if he were truly born of Zeus, to defend and lend added strength to the Greeks,

while the seer Aristander, wearing a white cloak and a golden crown, rode along pointing out an eagle hovering above Alexander's head and directing its flight straight at the enemy, so that great courage arose in those who saw it, and out of this confidence, as they encouraged one another, the cavalry surged forward at a run against the enemy and the phalanx came billowing after,

but before the front ranks had closed the barbarians gave way, and there was a great pursuit, Alexander driving the defeated troops toward the center, where Darius was. For from a distance he had caught sight of him through the ranks drawn up before him, deep within the royal squadron, a handsome and tall man standing upon a high chariot, fenced about by many splendid horsemen closely massed around the chariot and arrayed to receive the enemy.

But Alexander, appearing terrible close at hand, drove the fleeing men in upon those who stood their ground, threw them into confusion, and scattered the greater part of them; the bravest and noblest of them, however, were slain before the king and fell one upon another, hindering the pursuit as they lay entangled and writhing together with their horses.

Darius, with all these horrors before his eyes and the forces drawn up in front of him collapsing back upon him, since it was not easy to turn the chariot about and drive it clear — the wheels were caught fast, choked with such a mass of corpses, and the horses, hemmed in and hidden by the multitude of the dead, reared up and threw the driver into confusion — abandoned the chariot and his weapons, and mounting a mare, newly foaled, as they say, fled.

He would not, indeed, have escaped even then, had not other horsemen come again from Parmenio, calling Alexander back, on the ground that a great force of the enemy still stood firm there and would not give way. Indeed, in general, men blame Parmenio for having been sluggish and slow to act in that battle, whether because age was already taking something from his boldness, or because, as Callisthenes says, he resented and was jealous of the power and greatness of Alexander's position.

At that time, then, the king, vexed at being called back, did not tell his soldiers the truth, but, as though restraining them from further slaughter and since it was growing dark, gave the signal for recall; but as he rode toward the threatened section of the line, word reached him en route that the enemy had suffered total defeat and were fleeing.

When that battle had thus come to its end, the empire of the Persians seemed to have been altogether destroyed, and Alexander, proclaimed king of Asia, offered magnificent sacrifices to the gods and gave his friends wealth, houses, and governorships; and eager for the good opinion of the Greeks, he wrote that all tyrannies were to be abolished and that the cities should govern themselves under their own laws, and in particular that the Plataeans' city should be rebuilt, because their fathers had furnished their land for the

Greeks to fight for freedom upon; and he also dispatched a portion of the spoils to the people of Croton in Italy, honoring the zeal and virtue of Phayllus the athlete, who, at the time of the Persian Wars, when the other Italian Greeks had given up on the cause of the Greeks, sailed to Salamis with a ship fitted out at his own expense, wishing to share in the danger. So kindly disposed was he toward every kind of virtue, and so much a guardian and kinsman of noble deeds.

As he advanced through the whole of Babylonia, which came under his power at once, he was struck with particular wonder by the chasm out of which fire rose continuously as though from a fountain, and by the flow of naphtha, which, because of its great quantity, forms a pool not far from the chasm; this in other respects resembles asphalt, but is so susceptible to fire that, before the flame even touches it, it is kindled by the mere radiance surrounding the light and often sets the intervening air ablaze along with it.

Wishing to demonstrate its nature and power, the natives sprinkled the narrow street leading to the king's lodging lightly with the substance, then, standing at the far end, applied their torches to the places thus wetted, for it was already growing dark. As soon as the first spots caught fire, the flame took no perceptible time to spread, but in an instant reached the other end, and the whole street had become a continuous sheet of fire.

Among those who used to look after the king's body with oil and bathing, and to guide his mind gently toward relaxation, was a man named Athenophanes, an Athenian. This man, when a boy of no particular distinction and rather ridiculous in appearance, called Stephanus, was standing by Alexander in the bath at the time, singing charmingly, said, "Do you wish, O king, that we make trial of the substance on Stephanus? For if it catches on him and is not quenched, I would say its power is altogether irresistible and terrible."

The boy readily offered himself for the test, and as soon as he was smeared with the substance and it touched him, so great a flame burst from his body and he was so entirely seized by fire that Alexander fell into utter distress and fear; and had it not been that, by chance, many were present carrying vessels of water for the bath in their hands, the help would not have come in time to overtake the spreading fire.

Even so, they barely managed to put out the fire that had taken hold of the boy's whole body, and afterward he was in a bad state for some time. It is reasonable, then, that some, reconciling the myth with the truth, say that this was the substance of Medea's drug, with which she anointed the crown and robe made famous in tragedy. For, they say, the fire did not blaze up of itself out of those objects, nor spontaneously, but when a flame was set near them beforehand, a swift attraction and contact, imperceptible to the senses, took place,

for the rays and streams of fire coming from a distance simply cast light and heat upon other bodies, but upon those that possess a dry, breath-like quality, or an oily and lasting moisture, they gather and, kindling fire, quickly transform the material. It raised a question, however, whether the origin — or rather the fuel — of the flame is the liquid that flows out from the earth, which has by nature an oily and fire-generating quality.

For Babylonia is exceedingly fiery, so much so that barley grains often spring off the ground and skip away, as though those spots were throbbing with some fever, and the people sleep in the heat upon skins filled with water.

Harpalus, who had been left behind as overseer of the region and who was fond of adorning the palace grounds and walks with Greek plantings, succeeded with the rest, but the ivy the soil not only failed to sustain but constantly destroyed, unable to bear the mixture — the one being fiery, the other loving cold. Of such digressions, provided they keep due measure, perhaps the more exacting critics will complain less.

Alexander, having become master of Susa, took possession in the palace of forty thousand talents of coined money, and other furnishings and luxury beyond description. There, they say, purple dye from Hermione was found to the amount of five thousand talents, laid up for nearly two hundred years, yet still preserving its bloom fresh and undimmed,

the reason for this, they say, being that the purple dyes are made with honey, and the white ones with white oil; for these too, after an equal length of time, are seen to keep their brightness clear and gleaming. Deinon also says that the kings used to have water brought from the Nile and from the Ister, along with other things, and stored in their treasury, as if thereby confirming the greatness of their empire and their mastery over all things,

Persia itself, difficult to enter owing to its rugged terrain and defended by the finest of the Persians (since Darius had by then fled), a guide came to him — this happening within not a long circuit of time — a man of two languages, born of a Lycian father and a Persian mother, of whom it is said that, while Alexander was still a boy, the Pythia foretold that a wolf would be Alexander's guide on his expedition against the Persians,

It happened that there was much slaughter of those captured, for he himself writes that, believing this would be advantageous to him, he ordered the men killed. As for coined money, they say they found as much as at Susa, and that the remaining furnishings and treasure needed five thousand camels and ten thousand mule-teams to haul away.

Seeing a great statue of Xerxes that had been carelessly knocked over by the crowd pressing into the palace, he stopped before it, and, addressing it as if it were alive, said, "Shall we pass you by, lying there, because of your campaign against the Greeks, or shall we set you upright again because of your greatness of spirit and virtue in other respects?" At last, after standing a long while in silence with himself, he passed on. Wishing to let his soldiers recover their strength—for it was winter—he spent four months there.

It is said that when he first sat down on the royal throne under the golden canopy, Demaratus the Corinthian, a well-disposed man and a friend of Alexander's father, wept as old men do, and said that those Greeks who had perished without living to watch Alexander take his place upon Darius's throne had missed out on a wonderful joy.

After this, being about to march out against Darius, he happened to give himself over to some drinking and amusement with his companions, so that women too came to the revel to drink with their lovers. Among these the most celebrated was Thaïs, the courtesan of Ptolemy who was later king, an Athenian by birth. Partly praising him tunefully, partly jesting with Alexander, she was led on, together with the drink, to make a speech suited to the character of her homeland, but grander than befit her own station,

for she said that of all she had endured wandering through Asia, she was being repaid by this day's luxury in the proud palaces of the Persians, and that she would take even greater pleasure in going in revel to burn down the house of Xerxes, who had burned Athens, setting the fire herself with the king watching, so that it might be said among men that the women who followed Alexander exacted a greater penalty from the Persians on behalf of Greece than did those famous generals by sea and land.

As soon as she had spoken these words, there arose clapping and uproar, and the companions urged him on with eager rivalry. The king, swept along, leapt up, and taking a garland and a torch, led the way.

Those who followed with revelry and shouting surrounded the palace, and the rest of the Macedonians, hearing of it, ran together with torches, rejoicing; for they hoped that this burning and destruction of the palace was a sign that he had his mind set on home and did not intend to go on living among barbarians. Some say it happened this way, others that it was done deliberately; but it is agreed that he quickly repented and ordered the fire put out.

Being by nature most generous, he gave still more lavishly as his fortunes grew; and to this was added a graciousness, with which alone those who give truly do a favor. I shall recall a few instances. Ariston, the leader of the Paeonians, having killed an enemy and shown Alexander the head, said, "This gift, O king, is honored among us with a cup of gold."

Alexander, laughing, said, "An empty one—but I shall drink to you with one full of unmixed wine." One of the common Macedonian soldiers was driving a royal mule laden with gold; when the animal grew weary, he himself took up the burden and carried it. Seeing him greatly distressed and learning the reason, the king, just as the man was about to set the load down, said, "Don't grow weary, but carry it the rest of the way to your own tent,

keep it as your own, since you brought it this far." In general he was more displeased with those who did not take than with those who asked. And to Phocion he wrote a letter saying he would no longer treat him as a friend if he kept refusing his favors. To Serapion, one of the young men who played ball with him, he gave nothing, because Serapion never asked for anything. So when it was Serapion's turn at ball, he passed it always to the others instead; and when the king asked, "Won't you give it to me?" Serapion answered, "Because you never ask." At this Alexander laughed a great deal and gave him many gifts.

Against a certain Proteas, a man not without wit at jesting and drinking, he seemed to be angry; and when his friends begged for him, and Proteas himself wept, Alexander said he was reconciled. "Well then, O king," said Proteas, "give me some pledge of trust first." So he ordered five talents to be given to him. As to the wealth distributed to his friends and bodyguards, how great its bulk was is shown by a letter Olympias wrote to him.

"Otherwise," she says, "do well by your friends and hold them in honor, but now you are making them all equal to kings and providing them with great followings of friends, while leaving yourself isolated." Though Olympias wrote such things often, he kept her letters to himself, with a single exception: Hephaestion, following his usual habit, once read alongside him a letter already unsealed; Alexander made no move to stop him, but took off his own ring and pressed the seal to Hephaestion's lips.

To the son of Mazaeus, who had been the greatest man at Darius's court, he added a second satrapy, greater than the one he already held; but the man declined it, saying, "O king, then there was one Darius, but now you have made many Alexanders." To Parmenio he gave the house of Bagoas near Susa, in which it is said clothing worth a thousand talents was found. And he wrote to Antipater ordering him to keep bodyguards, since he was being plotted against.

To his mother he gave and sent many gifts, but he would not allow her to meddle in affairs or interfere in military matters; and when she complained, he bore her harshness gently. Only once, when Antipater wrote a long letter against her, after reading it he said Antipater did not know that one tear from a mother wipes out ten thousand letters.

When he saw that those around him had become altogether soft and were burdensome in their extravagant living and expenses—so that Hagnon of Teos wore silver nails in his boots, and Leonnatus had dust brought from Egypt on many camels for his wrestling exercises, and Philotas had hunting-nets made a hundred stadia long, and men who used to anoint themselves with oil went instead to their rubbing and bathing using perfumed oil, and were attended by masseurs and men to put them to bed—he rebuked them gently and philosophically,

saying he wondered that men who had fought so many great contests did not remember that those who have subdued others sleep more sweetly than those they subdued, nor did they see, comparing their own lives to those of the Persians, that luxury is most slavish, but toil most kingly. "And yet how," he said, "could one tend his own horse, or drill with spear or helmet, once his hands have lost the habit of serving his own precious body? Do you not know," he said,

"that the very limit of mastery over others is not to do the same things as those we have mastered?" So he drove himself all the more in campaigns and hunts, enduring hardship and exposing himself to danger, so much so that a Spartan envoy, present when he brought down a great lion, said: "Well done, Alexander—you have fought nobly against the lion for the kingship."

Craterus dedicated this hunt at Delphi, having bronze images made of the lion and the dogs, and of the king grappling with the lion, and of himself coming to his aid; of these, some were shaped by Lysippus, others by Leochares.

Alexander, then, in training himself and at the same time spurring on the others to virtue, took risks; but his friends, wishing now, because of their wealth and status, to live in luxury and ease, grew weary of the wanderings and campaigns, and little by little went so far as to speak ill and slander him. He, in the beginning, took this very gently, saying that it was a king's part to be spoken ill of while doing good.

And yet the smallest of the things he did for his intimates were tokens of great goodwill and honor; I shall set out a few of them. He wrote to Peucestas, finding fault with him because, having been bitten by a bear, he had written to others about it but had not told him. "But now at least," he says, "write and tell me how you are, and whether any of your fellow-hunters abandoned you, so that they may pay the penalty."

To Hephaestion's circle, absent on some errand, he wrote that during a game of mongoose-hunting, Craterus, falling upon Perdiccas's javelin, had been wounded in the thighs. And when Peucestas recovered from an illness, he wrote to Alexippus the doctor in thanks. And when Craterus was ill, having seen a vision in his sleep, he himself offered certain sacrifices on his behalf and ordered Craterus to sacrifice as well.

He also wrote to Pausanias the doctor, who wished to purge Craterus with hellebore, partly anxious, partly advising him how to use the drug. And the first men to report Harpalus's flight and escape, Ephialtes and Cissus, he had put in chains, as though they were lying about the man,

and when he was sending home those of his men who were sick or elderly, Eurylochus of Aegae enrolled himself among the sick; but being found out to have nothing wrong with him, he admitted that he was smitten with Telesippa and meant to trail her to the coast, since she was leaving. Alexander asked what sort of woman she was; on learning she belonged among the freeborn courtesans, he said, "Well then, Eurylochus, count me your partner in this romance—let us work together to win Telesippa over, whether through persuasion or through presents, seeing that she is her own mistress."

One may marvel at him for finding time, amid all this, even for such letters to his friends as the one he wrote ordering a search made for Seleucus's slave-boy who had run off to Cilicia; and praising Peucestas for capturing Nicon, a slave of Craterus's; and writing to Megabyzus about the servant who had taken sanctuary in the temple, telling him to seize the man outside the temple if he could, by luring him out, but not to lay hands on him while he was within the sanctuary.

It is said that in judging capital cases at first he would place his hand over one ear while the accuser spoke, so that his judgment might be kept clean and unprejudiced toward the man in danger. But later on he was made harsher by the many slanders, which found their way through the true ones to the false. And especially when he heard himself spoken ill of, he lost his self-possession and became harsh and implacable, since he valued his reputation more than his life and his kingdom.

At that time he marched out against Darius, expecting to fight again; but hearing of his seizure by Bessus, he sent the Thessalians home, adding a gift of two thousand talents to their pay. As for the pursuit, it was grueling and long—for in eleven days he rode three thousand three hundred stadia—and most of his men gave out, especially because of the lack of water.

There some Macedonians met him carrying water from the river in skins on mules; and seeing Alexander, since it was now noon, suffering badly from thirst, they hastily poured some into a helmet and carried it over to him. When he asked whom they were carrying it for, they said, "For our own sons—but so long as you live we will make other sons, even if we lose those."

Hearing this, he took the helmet in his hands; but looking around and seeing all the horsemen around him with their heads bowed and their eyes fixed on the drink, he gave it back without drinking, but praised the men, saying, "For if I alone drink,

these men will lose heart." Seeing his self-control and greatness of spirit, the horsemen cried out for him to lead on with confidence, and whipped their horses; for it seemed to them, with a king like this leading them, that they were incapable of weariness or thirst, or even of dying.

The eagerness, then, was the same in all; but they say only sixty men managed to burst into the enemy's camp along with him, where, stepping over quantities of silver and gold thrown down, and passing by many wagons full of children and women with no drivers left, drifting about, they pursued those in the lead, thinking Darius was among them. With difficulty they found his body lying in a wagon, riddled with many javelin wounds, close to death.

Even so he asked for something to drink, and having drunk cold water, said to Polystratus, who gave it to him: "Stranger, this is the final measure of my whole misfortune, that I am unable to repay kindness with kindness; but Alexander will repay you the favor, and the gods will repay Alexander for his kindness to my mother and my wife and my children—to him I give this right hand, through you." Saying this, and taking hold of Polystratus's hand, he died.

When Alexander came up, he was plainly grieved at what had happened, and, loosening his own cloak, threw it over the body and covered it. And Bessus, whom he later found, he tore apart, bending straight trees together and fastening one part of the body to each, then releasing them so that, driven by their force, each took the share belonging to it. As for Darius's body, adorned in royal fashion, he sent it to his mother, and he took the brother, Exathres, among his own companions.

He himself, with the freshest part of his force, descended into Hyrcania. And seeing a gulf of the sea that appeared no smaller than the Pontus, but sweeter than the rest of the sea, he could learn nothing certain about it, but guessed chiefly that it was a backwater of the Maeotic Lake.

And yet the truth had not escaped the natural philosophers, but many years before Alexander's campaign they had recorded that, of four gulfs running in from the outer sea, this is the most northerly one, called the Hyrcanian and Caspian sea alike. There some of the barbarians, unexpectedly falling in with the men leading his horse Bucephalas, seized him.

He took this hard, not moderately, but sent a herald and threatened to kill them all, together with their children and wives, if they did not send back the horse. But when they came bringing the horse and handing over their cities besides, he treated them all humanely, and gave a ransom for the horse to those who had taken him.

From there he marched up into Parthia, and, having leisure, first put on the barbarian dress — whether because he wished to accustom himself to the customs of the region, on the ground that shared habit and kinship of race contribute greatly to the civilizing of men, or because this was in fact an attempt, put forward tentatively, at the matter of prostration before the Macedonians, so that they might grow accustomed little by little to bear his change of manner and way of life,

he did not, however, adopt that Median dress entirely, which was barbaric and outlandish, nor did he take the trousers, or the candys, or the tiara, but mixed together, rather skillfully, something between the Persian and the Median styles, less ostentatious than the latter, but more stately than the former. And he wore it at first only when meeting with the barbarians and his companions at home, and then later he was seen riding out and conducting business before the multitude dressed this way.

And the sight was distressing to the Macedonians, but since they admired his other virtues, they felt he deserved some concessions for what pleased and honored him — he who, besides all his other feats, had lately taken an arrow in the shin, by which the bone of the fibula was broken off and came out, and had been struck again by a stone on the neck, so that a mist even spread over his eyesight,

which lingered no small time; yet nevertheless he did not stop exposing himself recklessly to dangers, but even made his way across the Orexartes river, a stream he took to be the Tanais itself, and, having routed the Scythians, pursued them for a hundred stadia, though troubled by dysentery.

There, most say, the Amazon came to him — among them Cleitarchus, and Polyclitus, and Onesicritus, and Antigenes, and Ister; but Aristobulus, and Chares the court usher, and Ptolemy, and Anticleides, and Philo the Theban, and Philip of Theangela, and besides these Hecataeus of Eretria, and Philip of Chalcis, and Duris of Samos say that this was an invention.

And Alexander himself seems to bear witness to them. For writing everything precisely to Antipater, he says that the Scythian proposed giving him his daughter to wed, yet says nothing at all of any Amazon. And it is said that Onesicritus, long afterward, was reading the fourth book of his history aloud to Lysimachus, by then a king, at the point where the Amazon episode was recounted, and Lysimachus, with a quiet smile, asked, "And where was I at the time?" These things, then, one might neither disbelieve nor believe the more, and still marvel at Alexander.

Fearing that the Macedonians might grow weary before the remainder of the campaign, he let the rest of the multitude stay where they were, but kept his finest soldiers with him in Hyrcania — some twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry — and told them that, for the moment, the barbarians regarded them as figures glimpsed in a dream, but that if they merely threw Asia into confusion and then departed, the barbarians would fall upon them at once as though upon women.

Nevertheless he did allow those who wished to depart to go, calling them to witness that, though he was conquering the whole known world on Macedonia's behalf, he found himself left with none but his friends and those still willing to fight at his side. This is written almost in these very words in his letter to Antipater, and also that, when he said this, all cried out that he should lead them wherever in the inhabited world he wished; and once these had accepted the test, it was no longer difficult to bring the mass of the army along, but it followed readily.

So then he assimilated his own manner of life still more to that of the natives, and drew them in turn closer to Macedonian customs, thinking that by mixture and partnership he would establish affairs more securely through goodwill than through force, now that he was setting off far away. For this reason too he selected thirty thousand boys and ordered them to learn Greek letters and to be trained in Macedonian arms, appointing many overseers.

And the affair concerning Roxane was brought about by love — she having been seen, beautiful and in the bloom of youth, in a dance at a drinking party — yet it seemed not out of keeping with the circumstances then prevailing. For the barbarians took heart at this partnership of marriage, and loved Alexander all the more, because, being most self-controlled in such matters, he had not endured to touch even the one woman by whom he was conquered, without the sanction of law.

And when he saw, among his greatest friends, that Hephaestion approved and shared in adopting his new manner, while Craterus held fast to their ancestral customs, he conducted his dealings with the barbarians through the former, and with the Greeks and Macedonians through the latter; and altogether he loved the one most, but honored the other, holding to the view, which he voiced again and again, that Hephaestion was devoted to Alexander the man, whereas Craterus was devoted to the king,

and so, being covertly at odds with one another, they often clashed; and once, in India, they even came to blows, drawing their swords, and as the friends of each rushed to help, Alexander rode up and openly rebuked Hephaestion, calling him reckless and mad if he did not understand that, if anyone should take Alexander from him, he would be nothing; and privately he also berated Craterus bitterly.

And bringing them together and reconciling them, he swore by Ammon and the other gods that he loved them, indeed, above all men, but warned that should he catch them quarreling again, he would put to death both of them, or at minimum whichever one had started it. From then on, it is said, they never said or did anything against each other, even in jest.

Philotas, son of Parmenio, held great standing among the Macedonians — for he was thought both brave and enduring — and no one, after Alexander himself, was so generous or so fond of his companions. It is said, for instance, that once a close friend asked him for a sum of money, and he gave orders that it be granted; and when his steward said he had none, he said, "What are you saying?",

"Have you not even a cup or a cloak?" But by the weight of his pride, the heaviness of his wealth, and the care and manner of living he indulged concerning his body — more burdensome than befits a private citizen — and since at that time he imitated dignity and loftiness not gracefully but gracelessly, in an awkward and affected manner, he incurred suspicion and envy, so that even Parmenio was once moved to tell him, "Son, be a lesser man."

And in fact he had for a very long time been the object of slanders against him with Alexander himself. For when the property at Damascus was captured, after Darius' defeat in Cilicia, and many persons were brought to the camp, there was found among the captives a young woman, Pydnaean by birth, comely in appearance, called Antigone,

and Philotas got her. And as a young man does with his beloved, and over wine, speaking with much soldierly and boastful frankness, he declared the greatest of the deeds to be his own and his father's, and called Alexander a mere boy who through them enjoyed the mere name of rule.

As the woman repeated these things to one of her acquaintances, and he in turn, as is likely, to another, word of it eventually reached Craterus, who seized the young woman and delivered her in secret before Alexander. And he, on hearing this, ordered her to keep company with Philotas as before, and to report to him whatever she should learn from him, coming to him each time.

So Philotas, unaware that he was thus being watched, continued his liaison with Antigone, letting fall many words in anger and boastfulness, and unsuitable speeches against the king.

And Alexander, although a strong proof had come to hand against Philotas, restrained himself and kept silent, whether because he trusted in Parmenio's goodwill toward him, or because he feared their reputation and power. At that time there was a Macedonian named Limnus, from Chalaestra, who, plotting against Alexander, invited a certain Nicomachus, one of the young men toward whom he himself had an erotic attachment, to share in the deed.

When Nicomachus refused him, but instead reported the approach to his brother Cebalinus, the latter went to Philotas and asked him to bring them in to Alexander, on the ground that they had urgent and important matters to bring to him. But Philotas — whatever came over him, for it is unclear — did not bring them in, on the grounds that the king was occupied with other, greater matters; and he did this twice.

They, now scorning Philotas, turned to another, and through him were brought to Alexander. First they reported the matter of Limnus, and then they gently indicated Philotas' part, namely that he had neglected them though they had come to him twice. And this greatly provoked Alexander; and when the man sent to arrest Limnus killed him as he resisted seizure, Alexander grew even more troubled, believing that the evidence needed to confirm the conspiracy had slipped from his grasp.

And being bitterly disposed toward Philotas, he drew in those who had long hated him, who now openly said that it was folly on the king's part to suppose that Limnus, a man of Chalaestra, would dare so great an undertaking on his own; rather, he was a mere agent, or instrument, let loose from a greater authority, and the plot ought to be sought among those to whom it was most advantageous that this remain hidden,

and by such words and suspicions, once the king's ears were opened, they now brought forward countless charges against Philotas. As a result he was arrested and interrogated, with the Companions standing over the torture, and Alexander listening from outside, behind a curtain drawn across — at which time, it is said, he himself remarked, hearing Philotas' piteous and abject cries and pleas addressed to Hephaestion and his men, "Being so soft and unmanly, Philotas, did you undertake affairs of such magnitude?"

And when Philotas was dead, he sent at once and had Parmenio killed too, in Media — a man who had accomplished much together with Philip, and who alone, or most of all among the older friends, had urged Alexander to cross over into Asia; and of the three sons he had had on campaign, he had already seen two die before this, and was now destroyed together with the third.

Once these events had taken place, they left many of Alexander's friends afraid of him, none more so than Antipater, who secretly sent pledges to and received them from the Aetolians. For the Aetolians feared Alexander because of the destruction of the Oeniadae, which, on learning of it, he said he would avenge — not on behalf of the children of the Oeniadae, but he himself would exact punishment from the Aetolians.

Not long after, the affair concerning Cleitus also came to pass — which, put simply for those who merely hear of it, seems more savage in the telling than the matter of Philotas; yet when we put together at once the cause and the occasion, we find that this was done by the king not out of deliberate purpose, but by a kind of misfortune, anger and drunkenness having furnished an occasion for Cleitus' evil genius.

It came about this way. Some men arrived bringing Greek fruit from the sea to the king, and he, marveling at how fresh and lovely it was, summoned Cleitus, wanting him to see it and take a share for himself. Cleitus happened to be in the middle of a sacrifice, but he broke it off and came, and three sheep already anointed with the libation trailed along behind him.

Learning of this, the king consulted the seers Aristander and Cleomantis the Laconian. When they said the sign was evil, he ordered a sacrifice of atonement to be made quickly on Cleitus' behalf. For he himself, on the third day before, had seen in his sleep a strange vision: he thought he saw Cleitus sitting together with the sons of Parmenio, in black garments, all of them dead.

Cleitus, however, had not yet completed his sacrifice, yet he hurried to the banquet all the same, since the king had already made his offering to the Dioscuri. As the drinking turned unruly, men sang songs that a certain Pranichus had written—or, as some tell it, Pierion—songs aimed at mocking and shaming the generals who had lately suffered defeat at the hands of the barbarians.

While the older men were displeased and railed against both the poet and the singer, Alexander and those around him listened with pleasure and urged the man to go on; Cleitus, already drunk and by nature harsh-tempered and headstrong, grew especially indignant, declaring that it was wrong for people surrounded by hostile foreigners to mock Macedonians who, misfortune notwithstanding, far surpassed in worth the men now laughing at them.

When Alexander said that Cleitus was pleading his own case by calling cowardice misfortune, Cleitus rose up and said, "Yet it was this very cowardice of mine that saved you, when you already owed your life to a god, by turning your back to Spithridates' sword; and it was by the blood and the wounds of Macedonians that you became so great as to disown Philip and adopt Ammon as your father."

Provoked, Alexander said, "Is this what you always say about us, you wretch, stirring up strife among the Macedonians? Do you think you will get away with it?" "No indeed, Alexander," he said, "not even now do we get away unscathed, receiving such rewards for our labors; and we count blessed those who are already dead, before they had to see Macedonians beaten with Median rods, and begging the Persians in order to gain audience with their king."

As Cleitus spoke thus with such frankness, and Alexander's companions rose up against him and abused him in turn, the older men tried to check the uproar. Alexander then looked to two men present, Xenodochus of Cardia and Artemius of Colophon, and remarked, "Do the Greeks not seem to you like demigods moving among wild beasts, when they walk among Macedonians such as these?"

But Cleitus would not yield; instead he bade Alexander say openly whatever he wished, or else stop inviting to his table those who were outspoken and unafraid to speak their minds—better, he said, to surround himself with barbarians and slaves ready to bow before his Persian sash and pale-striped robe. Alexander, no longer able to bear his anger, snatched one of the apples lying nearby, threw it at him, struck him, and began looking for his dagger.

But Aristophanes, one of the bodyguards, had already managed to slip it away, and the others crowded around him and begged him to stop; he leapt up and shouted in Macedonian, calling for his shield-bearers—this being the signal of great alarm—and ordered the trumpeter to sound the call, and struck him with his fist when he lingered and seemed unwilling. This man later won renown as the one most responsible for preventing the camp from falling into disorder. As for Cleitus, since he would not give way, his friends with difficulty pushed him out of the men's hall.

But he came in again by another door, very carelessly and boldly reciting these iambic lines from Euripides' Andromache: "Alas, how badly things are ordered in Greece." Whereupon Alexander, taking a spear from one of the guards, pulled back the curtain that hung across the doorway, met Cleitus as he stepped forward, and drove the spear through him.

As he fell with a groan and a roar, Alexander's rage at once left him; and coming to himself and seeing his friends standing there speechless, he snatched the spear out of the corpse and, rushing to strike himself in the throat, was restrained, the bodyguards seizing his hands and carrying his body by force into his chamber.

After he had passed the night in bitter weeping, and on the following day, worn out with crying and lamenting, lay speechless, drawing heavy groans, his friends, fearing this silence, forced their way in. He would not receive the words of the others, but once Aristander the seer brought up the earlier vision concerning Cleitus and the accompanying omen, as though these events had been fated long in advance, he appeared to relent.

For this reason they brought in the philosopher Callisthenes, kin to Aristotle, along with Anaxarchus of Abdera. Callisthenes attempted a gentle, ethical approach, easing his argument in gradually and handling the grief painlessly so as to get hold of it; Anaxarchus, however, who had pursued his own distinct philosophical path from the outset and had earned a name for scorning and disdaining those around him, burst straight in and exclaimed, "This is Alexander,

upon whom the whole inhabited world now looks—yet here he lies, sobbing as a slave would, cowering before law and the judgment of other men, though it is he who should stand as law and measure of justice for them, since he has won the right to rule and command rather than serve as a slave to hollow opinion.

Do you not know," he said, "that Zeus has Justice and Right seated beside him, so that whatever is done by one who has power is lawful and just?" By using such arguments Anaxarchus did indeed lighten the king's suffering, but he made his character in many respects more vain and lawless, while ingratiating himself remarkably, and he also slandered Callisthenes' company, which was not otherwise particularly pleasant on account of its severity.

It is said that once at dinner, when there was talk about the seasons and the mixture of the surrounding air, Callisthenes, siding with those who said that conditions there were colder and more wintry than in Greece, and Anaxarchus opposing him and arguing the point, said, "Surely, though, you will concede this much: the cold bites harder here than back home; there you got through winter wrapped in a single cloak, yet here you lie buried under three blankets." This too provoked Anaxarchus still further.

Callisthenes was a source of vexation to the other sophists and flatterers, being courted by the young men for his gift of speech, and equally agreeable to their elders for a manner of living that was orderly, dignified, and self-sufficient, one that lent credibility to the reason he gave for making the journey—namely, that ambition to restore his fellow citizens and resettle his native city had led him to join Alexander.

Being envied for his reputation, he gave his detractors some grounds against himself, refusing most invitations, and, when he did join company, by his gravity and silence seeming not to approve or take pleasure in what was going on, so that Alexander himself said of him, "I hate a wise man who is not wise for himself."

It is said that once, when many guests had been invited to dinner, Callisthenes was bidden to deliver, over the wine cup, a eulogy of the Macedonians, and he did so with such flowing eloquence on the subject that the guests rose up applauding and threw their garlands upon him; whereupon Alexander said that, in the words of Euripides, it is no great feat to speak well when one has been given fine material for one's speech:

"But show us your own power," he said, "by speaking against the Macedonians, so that they may learn their faults and become better men." So the man, turning to a palinode of sorts, spoke with much frankness against the Macedonians, declaring that the Greek civil strife had been the cause of Philip's rise and power: "and in time of civil discord even the utter villain gains honor"—by which he stirred up bitter and heavy hatred among the Macedonians toward him, and Alexander said that Callisthenes had given proof not of his cleverness but of his ill will toward the Macedonians.

This, then, is what Hermippus says the reader of Callisthenes, Stroebus, related to Aristotle; and that Callisthenes, perceiving the king's estrangement from him, on two or three occasions when leaving him quoted, "Patroclus too has died, who was far better than you." So it seems Aristotle spoke not amiss when he said that Callisthenes was powerful and great in speech, but had no sense.

But indeed, having firmly and philosophically rejected the practice of prostration, and being the only one to say openly what all the best and oldest of the Macedonians resented in secret, he freed the Greeks from great shame, and Alexander from an even greater one, by turning him away from requiring prostration—but he destroyed himself, seeming to force the king rather than to persuade him.

Chares of Mytilene says that Alexander, having drunk from a cup at the banquet, held it out to one of his friends; the man, receiving it, rose toward the household altar, and after drinking, first made obeisance, then kissed Alexander, and reclined again.

As all the others did this in turn, Callisthenes took the cup while the king was not paying attention, being in conversation with Hephaestion, and, after drinking, approached to kiss him; but Demetrius, surnamed the son of Pheidon, said, "Take his kiss not, my king—he alone among us failed to bow before you." So Alexander turned his face away from the kiss, and Callisthenes, speaking loudly, said, "Well then, I go away the poorer by one kiss."

As this estrangement was thus growing, first Hephaestion gained credit for saying that Callisthenes, having agreed with him to perform the prostration, had broken his promise; then men like Lysimachus and Hagnon attacked him further, claiming that the sophist strutted about full of self-regard as though he were about to topple a tyranny, and that the young men gathered around him and paid him court as though he alone were free among so many thousand others.

For this reason, when the conspiracy of Hermolaus and his companions against Alexander was discovered, those who slandered Callisthenes seemed to be making charges that resembled the truth: for to one who had asked how a man might become most famous, he was said to have replied, "By killing the most famous man"; and in urging Hermolaus on to the deed, he told him not to fear the golden couch, but to bear in mind that the man he approached could fall ill or be wounded just as any other person.

And yet none of Hermolaus' associates, even under the utmost compulsion, accused Callisthenes. Indeed Alexander himself, writing at once to Craterus, Attalus, and Alcetas, states that the boys confessed under torture to having acted on their own, with no one else sharing knowledge of the plot. But later, writing to Antipater and now implicating Callisthenes as well, he says, "The boys

died by stoning at the hands of the Macedonians, but the sophist I will deal with myself, together with those who sent him out and those cities that shelter men who conspire against me"—here at least he shows plainly enough his true feeling toward Aristotle, for Callisthenes had grown up in his household through their kinship, being the son of Hero, a niece of Aristotle.

As to his death, some say he was hanged by order of Alexander; others, that he was bound in fetters and fell ill; but Chares reports that following his arrest he remained in chains for seven months, held so that he could face trial before the council with Aristotle present, and that he died around the time Alexander suffered his wound in India, by then grown extremely fat and overrun with lice.

These things, then, took place later. Demaratus of Corinth, already an old man, was eager to go up and visit Alexander, and having beheld him said that the Greeks who had died before seeing Alexander seated upon the throne of Darius had been deprived of a great pleasure. He did not, however, enjoy the king's goodwill much longer, but died of illness and was buried with great magnificence, and the army heaped up over him a huge tomb, eighty cubits high in circumference; and his remains were carried down to the sea on a splendidly adorned four-horse chariot.

As he was about to cross over into India, seeing that the army, laden with a great quantity of spoils, had already become heavy and hard to move, at daybreak, once the wagons had been loaded, he first set fire to his own and those of his companions, and after these ordered fire to be put also to those of the Macedonians. And the plan seemed, when it came to it, a greater and more formidable thing than the deed itself.

It vexed only a few; but most of the men, with shouting and cries of enthusiasm, sharing what was necessary with those in need, and themselves burning and destroying whatever exceeded their needs, filled Alexander with eagerness and zeal. By now he was also a fearsome and unforgiving punisher of wrongdoing. Indeed, he had appointed a certain Menander, one of his companions, to command a garrison, and when that man refused to stay at his post, Alexander had him killed; and among the barbarians who rose in revolt, he personally shot down Orsodates with an arrow.

When a sheep gave birth to a lamb that had about its head the shape and color of a tiara, with two testicles on either side of it, he was disgusted by the sign and was purified by the Babylonians, whom he kept with him by custom for such matters; and he told his friends that he was troubled not for his own sake but for theirs, lest, if he should fail, providence should transfer his power to some ignoble and feeble man. However, a better sign that followed relieved his despondency.

For the Macedonian in charge of the royal bed-chamber attendants, a man named Proxenus, while digging out a spot for the royal tent near the Oxus river, struck a spring of oily, greasy liquid; once the initial flow had been drawn off, oil came up already pure and clear, apparently no different from ordinary oil in smell or taste, and matching it fully in sheen and richness—remarkable, given that the land did not even grow olive trees.

It is said, then, that the Oxus itself is a most gentle water, such that bathers come out of it with smoother, sleeker skin. Yet Alexander was clearly extraordinarily delighted, as is evident from what he writes to Antipater, ranking this among the greatest of the things that had come to him from the god; while the seers made it a sign of a glorious campaign, but a toilsome and difficult one, for oil, they said, had been given to men by the god as a relief from toils.

Now many dangers befell him in his battles, and he met with severe wounds, but the greatest destruction of his army was wrought by scarcity of necessities and by the harsh extremes of climate; while he himself, striving with daring to surpass fortune and with valor to surpass his own power, thought that nothing was unconquerable for those who dared, nor secure for those who lacked courage.

It is said that while besieging the rock of Sisimithres, which was inaccessible and sheer, and while his soldiers were losing heart, he asked Oxyartes what sort of man Sisimithres himself was in his soul. When Oxyartes said he was the most cowardly of men, Alexander said, "Then you yourself say that the rock is capturable by us, for its commander is not secure."

This rock, then, he took by frightening Sisimithres. And when he attacked another rock likewise sheer, he urged on the younger of the Macedonians, and addressing one who was named Alexander, he said, "But it is fitting for you at least to play the man, even because of your name." And when the young man fell fighting brilliantly, Alexander was not moderately stung by it.

At the place called Nysa, when the Macedonians were hesitant to advance—for there was a deep river beside it—he stood there and said, "What then? Have I, wretch that I am, not learned to swim?" and, holding his shield as he already was, he wished to cross over. But when, after he had halted the fighting, envoys came from the besieged cities to make entreaty, at first, being seen unattended in his armor, he struck them with amazement; then, when a cushion was brought to him, he ordered the eldest of them to take it and sit down—his name was Acuphis.

Acuphis, marveling at his splendor and kindness, asked what he wished them to do to be counted his friends. When Alexander said, "That you set yourselves up you as their ruler, and send to us a hundred of your best men," Acuphis laughed and said, "But I shall rule better, O king, if I send you the worst rather than the best."

Taxiles is said to have held a portion of India not inferior in size to Egypt, one especially rich in pasturage and fine fruits; he was also said to be a wise man, and when he greeted Alexander he said, "What need is there of wars and battle between us, Alexander, if you have not come to seize our water or our essential food—the sole possessions over which sensible men would feel driven to fight to the death?

As for everything else that goes by the name of wealth or property, I am glad to give freely if I hold the stronger position; but should I be the weaker one, I do not shrink from being grateful for good received." Alexander, delighted, clasped his hand and said, "Do you really suppose that our meeting will end without a battle, after such words and such friendliness? No, you will gain nothing thereby—for I shall contend against you and fight it out with you in acts of kindness, so that you may not surpass me in generosity."

And having received many gifts and given more in return, at last he drank to him a toast of a thousand talents of coined money. By this he grieved his friends exceedingly, but made many of the barbarians more kindly disposed toward him. But when the most warlike of the Indians, serving as mercenaries, kept going about among the cities defending them vigorously and doing Alexander much harm, he agreed to a truce with them within one particular city, and afterward, overtaking the whole company on the road as they marched away, he had them killed,

and this, like a stain, clings to his warlike deeds, though in other respects he waged war lawfully and in kingly fashion. No less trouble than these did the philosophers give him, reviling those kings who attached themselves to him, and inciting the free peoples to revolt; wherefore he hanged many of these also.

The events concerning Porus he himself has recorded in his letters as they took place. He says that between the two camps, with the Hydaspes flowing between, Porus kept stationing his elephants on the opposite bank and continually watching the crossing-point. He himself, therefore, made a noise and much commotion in the camp every day, accustoming the barbarians not to be afraid;

but on a stormy and moonless night, taking a portion of his infantry, and of the cavalry the strongest, and advancing far from the enemy, he crossed over to a small island. There, when a violent rainstorm poured down, and many thunderbolts and lightning-flashes came down upon the camp, nevertheless, seeing that some were perishing and being consumed by the lightning, he set out from the little island and made for the opposite banks.

And the Hydaspes, made rough and swollen by the storm as it came on, made a great breach, and a large part of the current was carried off that way; and they themselves received the middle part insecurely, since it was already sliding away and being broken apart around them. There, they say, he said, "O Athenians, would you believe what dangers I am undergoing for the sake of reputation among you?"

But this Onesicritus has recorded; he himself, however, says that they let go the rafts and crossed the breach along with their arms, wet up to the chest, and having crossed, rode ahead of the infantry for twenty stadia, calculating that should the foe come at him with horsemen he would win easily, whereas if they brought their phalanx forward instead, his own foot soldiers would reach him in time—and it was this second outcome that actually occurred.

For having routed a thousand of the cavalry and sixty of the chariots who fell upon him, he captured every one of the chariots and slew four hundred horsemen; and thus Porus, realizing that Alexander himself had crossed over, advanced with all his force, except for as much as he left behind to hinder the Macedonians who were crossing. Fearing the beasts and the multitude of the enemy, he himself charged against one wing, and ordered Coenus to attack the right,

and when a rout occurred on both sides, those who were forced back kept retreating always toward the beasts and huddling together, whence the battle already became confused, and scarcely by the eighth hour did the enemy give up. This, then, is what the author of the battle himself has recorded in his letters. But most of the historians agree that Porus, exceeding four cubits and a span in height, was in no way inferior in proportion to his elephant, by reason of the size and bulk of his body,

and yet the elephant was very large, and displayed wondrous intelligence and care for the king: while the king still had strength, it defended him vigorously against those attacking and beat them off, but once it sensed him growing faint under the weight of so many spear-casts and injuries, worried that he might slide off its back, it slowly knelt and lowered itself to the ground, and with its trunk taking hold of each of the spears gently, drew them one by one out of his body,

and when Porus was taken, Alexander asked him how he wished to be treated. "Like a king," he said; and when asked further whether he had anything else to say, he said, "Everything is contained in 'like a king.'" So Alexander not only allowed him to rule what he had ruled before, calling him satrap, but also added territory, having subdued the independent tribes—in which, they say, there were fifteen nations, five thousand notable cities, and very many villages; and yet other territory three times as much, over which he appointed Philip, one of his Companions, as satrap.

From the battle with Porus, Bucephalas also died—not at once, but later, as most say, while being treated for his wounds, but as Onesicritus says, from old age, having become worn out; for he died at thirty years of age. Alexander was severely stung by this, feeling the loss to be nothing short of a comrade and a friend; and founding a city in the horse's honor beside the Hydaspes, he named it Bucephalia. It is also said that after the death of his dog Peritas, an animal he himself had raised from a pup and loved dearly, he likewise founded a city bearing its name. This Sotion says he heard from Potamon of Lesbos.

The struggle against Porus, however, made the Macedonians more sluggish, and checked their further advance into India. For having with difficulty pushed back that man, who had drawn up twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry in battle array, they resisted strongly when Alexander tried to force them to cross the river Ganges as well, learning that its width was thirty-two stadia and its depth a hundred fathoms, and that the opposite banks were hidden by multitudes of arms and horses and elephants,

for it was said that the kings of the Gandaritai and the Praisioi were waiting with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand infantry, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand war-elephants. And there was no boasting in this. For Androcottus, who reigned not long after, gave Seleucus five hundred elephants as a gift, and, marching six hundred thousand troops across the whole of India, brought it entirely under his control.

At first, then, out of despondency and anger, he withdrew into his tent and remained lying there, feeling no gratitude for what had been accomplished if he should not cross the Ganges, but regarding the withdrawal as an admission of defeat. But when his friends consoled him with fitting words, and the soldiers, standing at the doors with weeping and shouting, made supplication to him, he relented and struck camp, contriving many deceptive and sophistical devices for the sake of reputation.

For he had larger arms and mangers for horses and heavier bits made, and left them behind and scattered them about; and he set up altars of the gods, which even to this day the kings of the Praisioi, when they cross over, honor and offer Greek sacrifices upon. Androcottus, while still a youth, saw Alexander himself, and it is said that he often said afterward that Alexander came within a little of gaining control of affairs, since the king was hated and despised for his baseness and low birth.

Setting out from there, Alexander was eager to view the outer sea, and having built many oared ferry-boats and rafts, he was conveyed, borne along leisurely by the rivers. And the voyage was neither idle nor unwarlike, but attacking the cities and disembarking he subdued everything; and against the people called the Malloi, reputed to be the fiercest fighters among the Indians, he very nearly lost his life.

For he scattered the men with missiles from the walls, and being first to mount the wall by a ladder that had been set up, when the ladder broke and the barbarians, standing beneath by the wall, kept striking him from below, being nearly alone, he gathered himself together and leapt down among the enemy, and by chance landed standing upright.

And as he shook his weapons, the barbarians thought that a kind of flash and apparition was carried before his body; wherefore at first they fled and scattered. But when they saw him with only two shield-bearers, they rushed upon him, and some, fighting him hand to hand while he fought back, wounded him again and again with swords and spears despite his armor, while another man, positioned somewhat farther away, loosed an arrow from a bow drawn so hard and forcefully that it pierced his breastplate and stuck fast in the bones of his chest.

And as he gave way and bent his body under the blow, the one who had shot him ran up, drawing a barbarian sword, but Peucestas and Limnaeus stood in front of him; of these, when both were struck, one of them died while Peucestas managed to hold his ground, and Alexander killed the barbarian. Alexander sustained wound after wound, and finally, hit on the neck by a club, he propped his body against the wall, looking toward the enemy,

and meanwhile, the Macedonians pouring around him, he was snatched up, already unconscious of what was happening around him, and carried to his tent. And immediately there was a report in the camp that he was dead; but with great difficulty and much toil they sawed off the arrow, which was of wood, and when the breastplate had thus with difficulty been removed, they set about cutting out the arrowhead, which had sunk into one of the bones. It is said that its breadth was three fingers, and its length four.

Wherefore, being brought near to death by his faintings as it was being extracted, still he rallied, and having escaped the danger, though still weak and for a long time keeping himself to diet and treatments, when he perceived the Macedonians outside making an uproar in their longing to see him, he took a cloak and came forward, and having sacrificed to the gods he put to sea again and was carried onward, subduing much territory and great cities.

Of the Gymnosophists, taking ten of those most responsible for urging Sabbas into rebellion and for giving the Macedonians the greatest amount of trouble, men who were thought to be clever and terse in their answers, he put to them difficult questions, saying that he would kill first the one who did not answer rightly, and then in order the rest; and he ordered the eldest of them to be the judge.

The first, then, being asked whether he thought the living were more numerous or the dead, said the living, for the dead no longer exist. The second, asked whether the earth or the sea nourished larger beasts, said the earth, for the sea is a part of it. The third, asked what animal is the most cunning, said, "The one that man has not yet come to know."

The fourth, being questioned as to what reasoning he had used to make Sabbas revolt, answered, "Wishing him to live well or to die well." The fifth, being asked whether he thought the day or the night came first, said, "The day, by one day"—and he added this, when the king marveled, that of necessity the answers to difficult questions must themselves be difficult.

Turning then to the sixth, he asked how a man might best be loved. "If," he said, "being most powerful, he is not feared." Of the remaining three, one, asked how a man might become a god out of a mere man, said, "By doing something which it is not possible for a man to do." The one asked about life and death, which was stronger, answered that life was, since it bears so many evils.

The last one, asked up to what point it is good for a man to live, said, "Until he no longer regards dying as preferable to living." With that answer given, he addressed the judge and told him to render his verdict. And when the judge said that each had answered worse than the other, "Well then," said Alexander, "you shall die first, for judging thus." "Not so, O king," the man said, "unless you are lying in saying that you would kill first the one who answered worst."

These men, then, he let go, having given them gifts; but to those who lived in the greatest repute and by themselves in quiet, he sent Onesicritus, asking them to come to him. Onesicritus was a philosopher, one of those who had studied with Diogenes the Cynic.

And he says that Calanus, very insolently and roughly, ordered him to take off his garment and hear his words while unclothed, adding that he would refuse to speak with him under any other condition, even had he been sent down from Zeus; but that Dandamis was gentler, and having heard about Socrates and Pythagoras and Diogenes, said that the men seemed to him to have been well endowed by nature, but to have lived too much in reverence of their laws.

Others say that Dandamis said nothing except this much only: "For what reason has Alexander come so great a journey to this place?" Calanus, however, was persuaded by Taxiles to go to Alexander. He was called Sphines, but since in the Indian tongue he greeted those he met with "kale" instead of "chaire," he was named Calanus by the Greeks. This man is also said to have set before Alexander the example of his rule.

For casting down in the middle a certain dry and hardened hide, he stepped upon its edge; and it, being pressed down at one point, rose up at the other parts. And going around it in a circle and pressing it at each point, he showed this happening, until, stopping in the middle, he held it down, and all was thus at rest. His point in the demonstration was that Alexander should above all bear down on the center of his dominion instead of ranging too far afield.

The passage down through the rivers to the sea consumed a time of seven months. Having put his ships out into the Ocean, he made for an island to which he personally gave the name Scillustis, though others call it Psiltucis. There he disembarked and sacrificed to the gods, and surveyed the nature of the open sea and of the coastline as far as it was possible to reach. Then, having prayed that no man after him should cross the bounds of his expedition, he turned back.

The ships he ordered to sail around keeping India on their right, appointing Nearchus as commander and Onesicritus as chief pilot; while he himself, marching by land through the country of the Oreitae, was brought into the utmost distress and lost a great number of men, so that he did not bring back even a fourth of his fighting force from India. And yet the infantry had been a hundred and twenty thousand, and the cavalry up to fifteen thousand.

But grievous diseases and wretched fare and scorching heat, and above all famine, destroyed the greater number, as they marched through an unsown country of men living wretched lives, possessing few and paltry sheep, which, being accustomed to feed on sea-fish, had flesh that was foul and evil-smelling. So it was with difficulty that in sixty days he passed through this country, and on reaching Gedrosia he was at once in the midst of abundance of everything, the nearest satraps and kings having made provision for it.

Gathering his troops there, he departed and turned his passage through Carmania into a seven-day carousal. He himself was borne along at a leisurely pace by eight horses, feasting continually day and night with his companions upon a raised platform built above a stage, in a lofty and conspicuous frame; and countless wagons followed, some shaded with purple and embroidered coverings, others with fresh green boughs continually renewed, bearing his other friends and commanders, crowned with garlands and drinking. You would not have seen a shield there,

nor a helmet, nor a sarissa; but along the whole road the soldiers, dipping with cups and drinking-horns and Thericlean bowls from great jars and mixing-bowls, pledged one another's health, some as they went along walking, others reclining. And a great volume of music from pipes and flutes, of song and of the lyre, and of Bacchic revelry of women, filled every place.

And along with the disorderly and straggling march there followed also the sportive license of Bacchic riot, as though the god himself were present and were escorting the revel. And when he came to the royal seat of Gedrosia, he again refreshed his army with festivity.

It is said that, being drunk, he watched contests of choruses, and that his beloved Bagoas, having danced and won, crossed through the theater in his festive dress and sat down beside him; and the Macedonians, seeing this, clapped and shouted for him to kiss the boy, until he embraced and kissed him.

There, when Nearchus and his men came up to him, he was delighted, and having heard about their voyage, he himself set out with the intention of sailing down the Euphrates with a great fleet, then, being carried around by Arabia and Libya, of entering the inner sea through the Pillars of Heracles; and ships of every kind were being built about Thapsacus, and sailors and pilots were being gathered from every quarter.

The march up-country, which had proved difficult, and the wound received among the Malli, and the great loss of his force that was reported, made men despair of his safety, and this stirred the subject peoples toward revolts, and produced in his generals and satraps much injustice and greed and insolence, and altogether a wave of unrest and revolution ran through everything,

insomuch that even Olympias and Cleopatra, at odds with Antipater, split the domain between themselves, Olympias claiming Epirus while Cleopatra held Macedonia. And when Alexander heard of this, he said his mother had counseled the better course; for the Macedonians would not endure being ruled by a woman. On account of these things he sent Nearchus again to the sea, having resolved to fill the whole coast with wars, while he himself, going down, punished the

wicked among the generals. Of the sons of Abuletes, one, Oxyartes, he himself killed by running him through with a sarissa; and since Abuletes had made none of the necessary provisions but had brought him instead three thousand talents of coined money, he ordered the silver to be thrown to the horses. And when they would not taste it, he said, "What use, then, is your provision to us?" and had Abuletes imprisoned.

In Persia he first restored to the women the money custom, as the kings had been accustomed, whenever they came to Persia, to give each woman a piece of gold; and for this reason, they say, some kings did not often come to Persia, and Ochus never came even once, having through stinginess made himself an exile from his own country.

Next, finding the tomb of Cyrus dug open, he put to death the man who had done the wrong, though he was a man of Pella not without distinction, named Polymachus. And having read the inscription, he gave orders for it to be carved a second time, rendered into Greek characters. Its wording was this: "Whoever you are, man, and from wherever you have come — for come you will, I know it well — I am Cyrus, the one who won for the Persians their empire. So do not resent my having this small plot of ground that covers my body."

These things made Alexander exceedingly moved, taking to heart the uncertainty and mutability of things. And Calanus, having at that time not been long troubled by a disorder of the bowels, asked that a pyre be made for him; and being carried to it on horseback, and having prayed and poured a libation of himself and offered the first-cutting of his hair, he greeted, as he mounted, the Macedonians present, and urged them to turn that day into a festive one and to drink themselves merry alongside the king; and he said that he himself would see the king again in a short time, in Babylon.

Having said this, he lay down and covered himself, and did not move as the fire drew near, but keeping the same posture in which he had lain down, he offered himself up as a sacrifice according to the ancestral custom of the sages of that land — a thing which, many years later, another Indian, in the company of Caesar at Athens, likewise did; and to this day the monument is shown, called the Indian's Tomb.

Alexander, on returning from the pyre, gathered together many of his friends and officers for a banquet, and proposed a contest and a crown for the heaviest drinking of unmixed wine. Promachus, who drank the most, went as far as four choes, and, taking the prize, a crown worth a talent, lived three days more; but of the others, as Chares says, forty-one died from the drinking, so severe a cold set in after the drunkenness.

Celebrating also the marriages of his companions at Susa, taking himself to wife Statira, the daughter of Darius, and distributing the noblest women to the noblest men, and giving a common wedding feast for the other Macedonians who had already been married, at which, they say, of the nine thousand who had been invited to the banquet, a golden cup was given to each for the libations, he displayed magnificence in every other respect as well, and himself discharged the debts owed by the debtors to the lenders, the whole expenditure amounting to less than ten thousand talents by a hundred and thirty talents.

But when Antigenes the one-eyed had falsely registered himself as a debtor, and, having produced someone claiming to have lent him money, at the bank, had the silver paid out, and was then detected in his falsehood, the king, in anger, drove him from the court and took away his command. Yet Antigenes had been distinguished in warfare, and while still young, when Philip was besieging Perinthus, a catapult bolt having struck him in the eye, he would not let those who wished to remove it do so, nor did he give way, before he had driven back the enemy in the fighting and shut them within their wall.

So then he bore the disgrace immoderately, and it was plain that he was going to make away with himself out of grief and heaviness of heart. And the king, fearing this, let go his anger and bade him keep the money.

As for the thirty thousand youths whom he had earlier left in place to be trained and instructed, when they appeared manly in body and comely in looks, and moreover displayed a wonderful readiness and agility in their exercises, he himself was delighted, but the Macedonians felt discouragement and fear, thinking that the king would now attend to them less.

For this reason, when he sent down to the sea those of his own men who were weak and maimed, they said it was an outrage and an insult, that, having used men up for everything, he was now shamefully discarding them and sending them home to their birthplaces and their families, no longer the same men he had originally recruited. They therefore urged him to dismiss every one of them and to regard all Macedonians as worthless, now that he possessed these youthful dancing-warriors, with whose help he would proceed to subdue the whole inhabited world.

At this Alexander was greatly angered, and he reviled them much in his wrath, and, driving off their guards, he handed the duty over to Persians and appointed from these his spearmen and staff-bearers; and seeing themselves excluded and treated with contempt by these men, while he was escorted by them, they were humbled, and upon reflection found that they had come near to being driven mad by jealousy and anger.

At last, coming to their senses together, they went unarmed and in single tunics to his tent, with shouting and weeping surrendering themselves and bidding him deal with them as with base and ungrateful men. But he would not receive them, though he was already softening. Yet they did not withdraw, but for two days and nights stood there so, lamenting and calling upon their lord, and endured it.

On the third day, coming forth and seeing them pitiable and humbled, he wept for a long time; then, having reproached them moderately and addressed them kindly, he dismissed the useless ones, giving them magnificent gifts, and wrote to Antipater that in all contests and theaters they should sit crowned, having the seat of honor. And the children of those who had died, being orphans, he made recipients of pay.

Once he had arrived at Ecbatana in Media and dealt with the urgent business there, he once more occupied himself with theatrical shows and celebrations, for three thousand performers had journeyed to join him from Greece. It happened that about those days Hephaestion had a fever; and being young and a soldier, not enduring a strict diet, as soon as the physician Glaucus had gone off to the theater, he, at about breakfast time, ate a boiled fowl and drank down a great cooler of wine, and fared ill, and after a little while died.

Alexander bore this misfortune with no reasoning at all, but immediately ordered all the horses and mules to be shorn in mourning, and tore down the battlements of the surrounding cities, and crucified the wretched physician, and silenced the flutes and every kind of music throughout the camp for a great while, until word came from Ammon's oracle directing him to pay Hephaestion the honors and offerings due to a hero.

Using war as a consolation for his grief, he went out as though on a hunt and manhunt for men and subdued the nation of the Cossaeans, slaughtering all of military age; and this was called the funeral offering for Hephaestion. He intended to complete a tomb and burial and the surrounding adornment for him at a cost of ten thousand talents, and to surpass the expense with the artistry and extravagance of the construction, and he longed above all for the craftsman Stasicrates, who promised some grandeur and daring and boastfulness in his innovations.

For this man, having met with him previously, said that of the mountains Thracian Athos most of all could receive the shaping and form of a man; and so, if he should order it, he would fashion Athos into the most enduring and most conspicuous of statues, holding in his left hand a populous city of ten thousand inhabitants, and in his right pouring out a generous stream of a river flowing off into the sea. These plans, then, he declined, but at that time he spent his days devising and contriving with the craftsmen things far stranger and more costly than these.

As he advanced toward Babylon, Nearchus arrived — for he had again sailed in to the Euphrates by way of the great sea — and said that certain Chaldaeans had met with him, urging that Alexander keep away from Babylon. But he paid no heed, and went forward; and coming near the walls he saw many crows fighting with one another and striking each other, some of which fell down beside him,

and then, when information was given against Apollodorus, the governor of Babylon, that he had made a sacrifice concerning him, he summoned Pythagoras the seer. When the man did not deny the act, he asked about the manner of the sacred rites, and when he said that the liver was lobeless, "Ah," he said, "a powerful sign," and did Pythagoras no harm. He was troubled, however, that he had not obeyed Nearchus, and spent most of his time camped outside Babylon and sailing about on the Euphrates. Many signs troubled

him; for a tame donkey attacked the largest and finest of the lions kept there and killed it with kicks. And once, when he had stripped for anointing and was playing at ball, the young men who were playing ball with him, when it was time to take up their garments again, saw a man sitting silently on the throne, wearing the diadem and the royal robe.

When this man was questioned as to who he was, he was for a long time speechless; but at last, coming to himself, he answered that Dionysius was his name, a native of Messenia: on account of some charge brought against him he had been carried off from the coast and kept in fetters a long while; and just now Serapis had appeared before him, loosed his fetters, and led him to this very place, bidding him to put on the robe and diadem and to sit there in silence.

On hearing this Alexander, as the seers advised, made the man disappear; but he himself grew despondent and was distrustful now toward the divine and suspicious toward his friends. He feared Antipater most of all, and his sons, of whom Iolas was chief cupbearer, while Cassander had arrived only recently; and having seen certain barbarians doing obeisance, since he had been raised in the Greek manner and had never before seen such a thing, he laughed rather rashly.

Alexander was enraged, and seizing him hard by the hair with both hands struck his head against the wall. Again, when Cassander wished to say something against those who were accusing Antipater, cutting him off Alexander said, "What are you saying? That men should come so great a distance, doing no wrong, but bringing false charges?"

When Cassander replied that this very fact — that they had come far from the proofs — was a sign of false accusation, Alexander laughed aloud and said, "These are those sophistries of Aristotle's, good for arguing either side of a case, for which men will grieve if they are shown to have done even a little wrong to others."

And in general they say that such a terrible and indelible fear entered and took hold of Cassander's soul that, long afterward, when he was already king of the Macedonians and master of Greece, walking about in Delphi and viewing the statues, when an image of Alexander appeared, he was suddenly struck and shuddered, his body trembled, and he barely recovered himself, made dizzy by the sight.

Alexander, then, since he had at that time given way and become disturbed and fearful in his thinking toward matters divine, there was nothing so small among unusual and strange occurrences that he did not make a portent and a sign of it; rather, the palace was full of men sacrificing and purifying and prophesying.

So terrible a thing is distrust of the divine and contempt for it, and terrible again is superstition, which, like water always flowing down toward what is low, filled Alexander, once he had become full of folly, with fear. Nevertheless, after oracles concerning Hephaestion had been brought from the god, he set aside his grief and was again occupied with sacrifices and drinking.

After entertaining Nearchus and his companions splendidly, then bathing, as was his custom, meaning to go to sleep, at Medius's request he went off to revel with him; and there, having drunk through the whole of the following day, he began to run a fever — not from draining the cup of Heracles, nor from being suddenly seized with pain in the back as though struck by a spear, but these are things some thought they ought to write as though fashioning the tragic and pathetic finale of some great drama.

Aristobulus says that, raging with fever and being very thirsty, he drank wine, and as a result his mind grew disordered, and he died when the month of Daesius had reached its thirtieth day.

In the daily journals the matters concerning his illness are recorded thus. On Daesius the eighteenth, gripped by fever, he took his rest in the bathing-room. The following day, once bathed, he withdrew to his bedchamber and passed the hours throwing dice with Medius. Later, after bathing once more, he offered sacrifice to the gods, took food, and ran a fever through the night.

On the twentieth, once more after bathing, he carried out the usual sacrifice, and reclining in the bathing-room he whiled away the hours with Nearchus and his companions, hearing them tell of their voyage upon the great sea. On the tenth day counting from the month's end, the same routine having been followed, his fever burned hotter, and the night went badly for him; the next day a violent fever seized him, and when he was moved he took his place beside the great pool, and there he discussed with his officers which posts in the army stood empty, so that they might be filled once suitable men had been examined.

On the seventh day from the end, burning with fever, he had himself carried out to perform the sacrifices; and he ordered the most important of his officers to remain in the courtyard, but the captains of battalions and companies to spend the night outside. Having been carried across to the palace on the other side, on the sixth day he slept a little, but the fever did not abate. When his officers came to him he was speechless,

and likewise on the fifth day; and so it seemed to the Macedonians that he had died, and they came shouting to the doors, and threatened his companions until they forced their way in, and when the doors had been opened to them, one by one, in their tunics, they all filed past beside his bed. On this same day Python and Seleucus and their companions, sent to the temple of Serapis, asked whether they should carry Alexander there; but the god gave an oracle that they should let him remain where he was. On the third day from the end, toward evening, he died.

Most of these details are recorded word for word in this manner in the daily journals. Of poisoning, no one at the time had any suspicion; but they say that some six years later, once information had come to light, Olympias executed a number of men and had the bones of Iolas, by then dead, thrown out of their tomb, charging that he had administered the poison.

Those who claim that Aristotle had been Antipater's adviser in the deed, and that the poison was procured through him altogether, say that a certain Hagnothemis reported this, having heard it from King Antigonus — and that the poison was cold water, icy, from a certain rock in Nonacris, which they collect like a thin dew and store in the hoof of a donkey; for no other vessel could hold it, but it would break through because of its coldness and sharpness.

But most think that the whole story about the poisoning is entirely fabricated; and no small proof of this for them is the fact that, when the officers were quarreling for many days, the body, lying untended in places that were hot and stifling, showed no sign of any such corruption, but remained clean and fresh.

Roxane, as it happened, was pregnant, and for this reason was honored among the Macedonians; and being jealous of Stateira, she deceived her by means of a forged letter into coming to her, and having drawn her in along with her sister, killed them, and threw the bodies into a well and covered it over, with Perdiccas knowing of this and cooperating in it.

For he was immediately in the greatest power, dragging Arrhidaeus along as a kind of bodyguard of the kingship — a man born of an obscure and common woman, Philinna, and deficient in understanding because of a bodily illness that had not befallen him by nature nor of its own accord; rather, they say that when he was a boy he showed a charming and not ignoble disposition, but was afterward ruined in his mind, having been harmed by drugs administered by Olympias.

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