75 AD
ALEXANDER
356-323 B.C.
by Plutarch
translated by John Dryden
ALEXANDER
IT being my purpose to write the lives of Alexander the
king, and of
Caesar, by whom Pompey was destroyed, the multitude of their great
actions affords so large a field that I were to blame if I should
not by way of apology forewarn my reader that I have chosen rather
to epitomize the most celebrated parts of their story, than to
insist at large on every particular circumstance of it. It must be
borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but
lives. And
the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the
clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of
less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their
characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges,
the greatest
armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as
portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the
face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the
body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular
attention to the
marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavour by
these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty
matters and great battles to be treated of by others.
It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander
descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus
on the mother's side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when
he was quite young, fell in love there with Olympias, in company
with whom he was initiated in the religious ceremonies of
the country,
and her father and mother being both dead, soon after, with the
consent of her brother, Arymbas, he married her. The night before
the consummation of their marriage, she dreamed that a thunderbolt
fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose divided flames
dispersed themselves all about, and then were extinguished. And
Philip, some time after he was married, dreamt that he sealed up his
wife's body with a seal, whose impression, as be fancied, was the
figure of a lion. Some of the diviners interpreted this as a warning
to Philip to look narrowly to his wife; but Aristander of Telmessus,
considering how unusual it was to seal up anything that was empty,
assured him the meaning of his dream was that the queen was
with child
of a boy, who would one day prove as stout and courageous as a lion.
Once, moreover, a serpent was found lying by Olympias as she slept,
which more than anything else, it is said, abated Philip's
passion for
her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress, or thought she had
commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as excluded, he was
ever after less fond of her conversation. Others say, that the women
of this country having always been extremely addicted to the
enthusiastic Orphic rites, and the wild worship of Bacchus
(upon which
account they were called Clodones, and Mimallones), imitated in many
things the practices of the Edonian and Thracian women about Mount
Haemus, from whom the word threskeuein seems to have been derived,
as a special term for superfluous and over-curious forms of
adoration;
and that Olympias, zealously, affecting these fanatical and
enthusiastic inspirations, to perform them with more barbaric dread,
was wont in the dances proper to these ceremonies to have great tame
serpents about her, which sometimes creeping out of the ivy in the
mystic fans, sometimes winding themselves about the sacred
spears, and
the women's chaplets, made a spectacle which men could not look upon
without terror.
Philip, after this vision, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to consult
the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform
sacrifice, and henceforth pay particular honour, above all
other gods,
to Ammon; and was told he should one day lose that eye with which he
presumed to peep through that chink of the door, when he saw the
god, under the form of a serpent, in the company of his wife.
Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his
way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his
birth, and bade him behave himself with courage suitable to
his divine
extraction. Others again affirm that she wholly disclaimed any
pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, "When will Alexander
leave off slandering me to Juno?"
Alexander was born the sixth of Hecatombaeon, which month the
Macedonians call Lous, the same day that the temple of Diana at
Ephesus was burnt; which Hegesias of Magnesia makes the occasion of
a conceit, frigid enough to have stopped the conflagration. The
temple, he says, took fire and was burnt while its mistress was
absent, assisting at the birth of Alexander. And all the Eastern
soothsayers who happened to be then at Ephesus, looking upon the
ruin of this temple to be the forerunner of some other calamity, ran
about the town, beating their faces, and crying that this day had
brought forth something that would prove fatal and destructive to
all Asia.
Just after Philip had taken Potidaea, he received these three
messages at one time, that Parmenio had overthrown the Illyrians in
a great battle, that his race-horse had won the course at the
Olympic games, and that his wife had given birth to Alexander; with
which being naturally well pleased, as an addition to his
satisfaction, he was assured by the diviners that a son, whose birth
was accompanied with three such successes, could not fail of being
invincible.
The statues that gave the best representation of Alexander's
person were those of Lysippus (by whom alone he would suffer
his image
to be made), those peculiarities which many of his successors
afterwards and his friends used to affect to imitate, the
inclination of his head a little on one side towards his left
shoulder, and his melting eye, having been expressed by this artist
with great exactness. But Apelles, who drew him with thunderbolts in
his hand, made his complexion browner and darker than it was
naturally; for he was fair and of a light colour, passing into
ruddiness in his face and upon his breast. Aristoxenus in his
Memoirs tells us that a most agreeable odour exhaled from his skin,
and that his breath and body all over was so fragrant as to perfume
the clothes which he wore next him; the cause of which might
probably be the hot and adust temperament of his body. For sweet
smells, Theophrastus conceives, are produced by the concoction of
moist humours by heat, which is the reason that those parts of the
world which are driest and most burnt up afford spices of the best
kind and in the greatest quantity; for the heat of the sun exhausts
all the superfluous moisture which lies in the surface of bodies,
ready to generate putrefaction. And this hot constitution, it may
be, rendered Alexander so addicted to drinking, and so choleric. His
temperance, as to the pleasures of the body, was apparent in him in
his very childhood, as he was with much difficulty incited to them,
and always used them with great moderation; though in other things
be was extremely eager and vehement, and in his love of
glory, and the
pursuit of it, he showed a solidity of high spirit and
magnanimity far
above his age. For he neither sought nor valued it upon every
occasion, as his father Philip did (who affected to show his
eloquence
almost to a degree of pedantry, and took care to have the
victories of
his racing chariots at the Olympic games engraven on his coin), but
when he was asked by some about him, whether he would run a race in
the Olympic games, as he was very swift-footed, he answered,
he would,
if he might have kings to run with him. Indeed, he seems in
general to
have looked with indifference, if not with dislike, upon the
professed
athletes. He often appointed prizes, for which not only
tragedians and
musicians, pipers and harpers, but rhapsodists also, strove to
outvie one another; and delighted in all manner of hunting and
cudgel-playing, but never gave any encouragement to contests
either of
boxing or of the pancratium.
While he was yet very young, he entertained the
ambassadors from the
King of Persia, in the absence of his father, and entering much into
conversation with them, gained so much upon them by his affability,
and the questions he asked them, which were far from being
childish or
trifling (for he inquired of them the length of the ways, the nature
of the road into inner Asia, the character of their king, how he
carried himself to his enemies, and what forces he was able to bring
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