Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 · Plutarch
LIFE OF ALEXANDER.
LXVI. Alexander's voyage down the Indus and its tributaries, to the sea-coast, took seven months. On reaching the ocean he sailed to an island which he himself called Skillustis, but which was generally known as Psiltukis. Here he landed and sacrificed to the gods, after which he explored the sea and the coast as far as he could reach. Having done this, he turned back, after praying to the gods that no conqueror might ever transcend this, the extreme limit of his conquests. He ordered his fleet to follow the line of the coast, keeping India on their right hand: and he gave Nearchus the supreme command, with Onesikritus as chief pilot. He, himself, marched through the country of the Oreitæ, where he endured terrible sufferings from scarcity of provisions, and lost so many men that he scarcely brought back home from India the fourth part of his army, which originally amounted to a hundred and twenty thousand foot, and fifteen thousand horse. Most of the men perished from sickness, bad food, and the excessive heat of the sun, and many from sheer hunger, as they had to march through an uncultivated region, inhabited only by a few miserable savages, with a stunted breed of cattle whose flesh had acquired a rank and disagreeable taste through their habit of feeding on sea-fish.
After a terrible march of sixty days, the army passed through this desert region, and reached Gedrosia, where the men at once received abundant supplies of food, which were furnished by the chiefs of the provinces which they entered. LXVII. After he had refreshed his troops here for a little, Alexander led them in a joyous revel for seven days through Karmania.[426] He, himself, feasted continually, night and day, with his companions, who sat at table with him upon a lofty stage drawn by eight horses, so that all men could see them. After the king's equipage followed numberless other waggons, some with hangings of purple and embroidered work, and others with canopies of green boughs, which were constantly renewed, containing the rest of Alexander's friends and officers, all crowned with flowers and drinking wine. There was not a shield, a helmet, or a pike, to be seen, but all along the road the soldiers were dipping cups, and horns, and earthenware vessels into great jars of liquor and drinking one another's healths, some drinking as they marched along, while others sat by the roadside. Everywhere might be heard the sound of flutes and pipes, and women singing and dancing; while with all this dissolute march the soldiers mingled rough jokes, as if the god Dionysus himself were amongst them and attended on their merry procession. At the capital of Gedrosia, Alexander again halted his army, and refreshed them with feasting and revelry. It is said that he himself, after having drunk hard, was watching a contest between several choruses, and that his favourite Bagoas won the prize, and then came across the theatre and seated himself beside him, dressed as he was and wearing his crown as victor. The Macedonians, when they saw this, applauded vehemently, and cried out to Alexander to kiss him, until at length he threw his arms round him and kissed him.
LXVIII. He was now much pleased at being joined by Nearchus and his officers, and took so much interest in their accounts of their voyage, that he wished to sail down the Euphrates himself with a great fleet, and then to coast round Arabia and Libya, and so enter the Mediterranean sea through the pillars of Herakles.[427] He even began to build many ships at Thapsakus, and to collect sailors and pilots from all parts of the world, but the severe campaigns which he had just completed in India, the wound which he had received among the Malli, and the great losses which his army had sustained in crossing the desert, had made many of his subjects doubt whether he was ever likely to return alive, and had encouraged them to revolt, while his absence had led many of his satraps and viceroys to act in an extremely arbitrary and despotic manner, so that his whole empire was in a most critical condition, and full of conspiracies and seditious risings. Olympias and Kleopatra[428] had attacked and driven out Antipater, and had divided the kingdom between themselves, Olympias taking Epirus, and Kleopatra Macedonia. When Alexander heard this, he said that his mother had proved herself the wiser of the two; for the Macedonians never would endure to be ruled by a woman. He now sent Nearchus back to the sea, determining to make war all along the coast, and coming down in person to punish the most guilty of his officers. He killed Oxyartes, one of the sons of Abouletes (the satrap of Susiana) with his own hands, with a sarissa or Macedonian pike. Abouletes had made no preparations to receive Alexander, but offered him three thousand talents of silver. Alexander ordered the money to be thrown down for the horses; and as they could not eat it, he said "What is the use of your having prepared this for me?" and ordered Abouletes to be cast into prison.
LXIX. While Alexander was in Persis[429] he first renewed the old custom that whenever the king came there he should give every woman a gold piece. On account of this custom we are told that many of the Persian kings came but seldom to Persis, and that Ochus never came at all, but exiled himself from his native country through his niggardliness. Shortly afterwards Alexander discovered that the sepulchre of Cyrus had been broken into, and put the criminal to death, although he was a citizen of Pella[430] of some distinction, named Polemarchus. When he had read the inscription upon the tomb, he ordered it to be cut in Greek letters also. The inscription ran as follows: "O man, whosoever thou art, and whencesoever thou comest--for I know that thou shalt come--I am Cyrus, who won the empire for the Persians. I pray thee, do not grudge me this little earth that covereth my body." These words made a deep impression upon Alexander, and caused him to meditate upon the uncertainty and changefulness of human affairs. About this time, Kalanus, who had for some days been suffering from some internal disorder, begged that a funeral pile might be erected for him. He rode up to it on horseback, said a prayer, poured a libation for himself and cut off a lock of his own hair, as is usual at a sacrifice, and then, mounting the pile, shook hands with those Macedonians who were present, bidding them be of good cheer that day, and drink deep at the king's table. He added, that he himself should shortly see the king at Babylon. Having spoken thus he lay down and covered himself over. He did not move when the fire reached him, but remained in the same posture until he was consumed, thus sacrificing himself to the gods after the manner of the Indian philosophers. Many years afterwards another Indian, a friend of Cæsar, did the like in the city of Athens; and at the present day his sepulchre is shown under the name of "the Indian's tomb."
LXX. After Alexander left the funeral pyre, he invited many of his friends and chief officers to dinner, and offered a prize to the man who could drink most unmixed wine. Promachus, who won it, drank as much as four choes.[431] He was presented with a golden crown worth a talent, and lived only three days afterwards. Of the others, Chares, the historian, tells us that forty-one died of an extreme cold that came upon them in their drunkenness. Alexander now celebrated the marriage of many of his companions at Susa. He himself married Statira, the daughter of Darius, and bestowed the noblest of the Persian ladies upon the bravest of his men. He gave a splendid banquet on the occasion of his marriage, inviting to it not only all the newly married couples, but all those Macedonians who were already married to Persian wives. It is said that nine thousand guests were present at this feast, and that each of them was presented with a golden cup to drink his wine in. Alexander entertained them in all other respects with the greatest magnificence, and even paid all the debts of his guests, so that the whole expense amounted to nine thousand eight hundred and seventy talents. On this occasion, Antigenes the one-eyed got his name inscribed on the roll as a debtor, and produced a man who said that he was his creditor. He received the amount of his alleged debt, but his deceit was afterwards discovered by Alexander, who was much enraged, banished him from his court, and took away his command. This Antigenes was a very distinguished soldier. When Philip, was besieging Perinthus, Antigenes, who was then very young, was struck in the eye with a dart, and would not allow his friends to pull it out, nor leave the fight, before he had driven back the enemy into the city. He now was terribly cast down at his disgrace, and made no secret of his intention of making away with himself. The king, fearing that he would carry out his threat, pardoned him, and permitted him to keep the money.
LXXI. Alexander was much pleased with the appearance of the three thousand youths whom he had left to be trained in the Greek manner, who had now grown into strong and handsome men, and showed great skill and activity in the performance of military exercises; but the Macedonians were very discontented, and feared that their king would now have less need for them. When Alexander sent those of them who were sick or maimed back to the sea coast, they said that it was disgraceful treatment that he should send these poor men home to their country and their parents in disgrace, and in worse case than when they set out, after he had had all the benefit of their services. They bade him send them all home, and regard them all as unserviceable, since he had such a fine troop of young gallants at his disposal to go and conquer the world with. Alexander was much vexed at this. He savagely reproached the soldiers, dismissed all his guards, and replaced them with Persians, whom he appointed as his body-guards and chamberlains. When the Macedonians saw him attended by these men, and found themselves shut out from his presence, they were greatly humbled, and after discussing the matter together they became nearly mad with rage and jealousy.
At last they agreed to go to his tent without their arms, dressed only in their tunics, and there with weeping and lamentation offered themselves to him and bade him deal with them as with ungrateful and wicked men. Alexander, although he was now inclined to leniency, refused to receive them, but they would not go away, and remained for two days and nights at the door of his tent lamenting and calling him their sovereign. On the third day he came out, and when he saw them in such a pitiable state of abasement, he wept for some time. He then gently blamed them for their conduct, and spoke kindly to them. He gave splendid presents to all the invalids, and dismissed them, writing at the same time to Antipater with orders, that in every public spectacle these men should sit in the best places in the theatre or the circus with garlands on their heads. The orphan children of those who had fallen he took into his own service. LXXII. After Alexander was come to the city of Ekbatana in Media, and had despatched the most weighty part of his business there, he gave himself up entirely to devising magnificent spectacles and entertainments, with the aid of three thousand workmen, whom he had sent for from Greece. During this time, Hephæstion fell sick of a fever, and being a young man, and accustomed to a soldier's life, did not put himself upon a strict diet and remain quiet as he ought to have done. As soon as Glaukus, his physician, left him to go to the theatre, he ate a boiled fowl for his breakfast, and drank a large jar of cooled wine. Upon this he was immediately taken worse, and very shortly afterwards died.
Alexander's grief for him exceeded all reasonable measure. He ordered the manes of all the horses and mules to be cut off in sign of mourning, he struck off the battlements of all the neighbouring cities, crucified the unhappy physician, and would not permit the flute or any other musical instrument to be played throughout his camp, until a response came from the oracle of Ammon bidding him honour Hephæstion and offer sacrifice to him as to a hero.[432] To assuage his grief he took to war, and found consolation in fighting and man-hunting. He conquered the tribe called Kossæi, and slew their entire male population, which passed for an acceptable offering to the manes of Hephæstion. He now determined to spend ten thousand talents[433] on the funeral and tomb of Hephæstion; and as he wished to exceed the cost by the ingenuity and brilliancy of invention shown in this spectacle, he chose Stasikrates out of all his mechanicians to arrange it, as he was thought to be able both to devise with grandeur and to execute with skill. He on one occasion before this, when conversing with Alexander, told him that of all mountains in the world Mount Athos in Thrace was that which could most easily be carved into the figure of a man; and that, if Alexander would give him the order, he would form Athos into the most magnificent and durable monument of him that the world had ever seen, as he would represent him as holding in his left hand the city of Myriandrus, and with his right pouring, as a libation, a copious river into the sea. Alexander would not, indeed, adopt this suggestion, but was fond of discussing much more wonderful and costly designs than this with his engineers.
LXXIII. Just as Alexander was on the point of starting for Babylon, Nearchus, who had returned with his fleet up the Euphrates, met him, and informed him that some Chaldæans had warned Alexander to avoid Babylon. He took no heed of this warning, but went his way. When he drew near the walls he saw many crows flying about and pecking at one another, some of whom fell to the ground close beside him. After this, as he heard that Apollodorus, the governor of Babylon, had sacrificed to the gods to know what would happen to Alexander, he sent for Pythagoras, the soothsayer, who had conducted the sacrifice, to know if this were true. The soothsayer admitted that it was, on which Alexander inquired what signs he had observed in the sacrifice. Pythagoras answered that the victim's liver wanted one lobe. "Indeed!" exclaimed Alexander, "that is a terrible omen." He did Pythagoras no hurt, but regretted that he had not listened to the warning of Nearchus, and spent most of his time in his camp outside the walls of Babylon, or in boats on the river Euphrates. Many unfavourable omens now depressed his spirit. A tame ass attacked and kicked to death the finest and largest lion that he kept; and one day, as he stripped to play at tennis, the young man with whom he played, when it was time to dress again, saw a man sitting on the king's throne, wearing his diadem and royal robe. For a long time this man refused to speak, but at length said that he was a citizen of Messene, named Dionysius, who had been brought to Babylon and imprisoned on some charge or other, and that now the god Serapis had appeared to him, loosed his chains, and had brought him thither, where he had bidden him to put on the king's diadem and robe, seat himself on his throne, and remain silent.
LXXIV. When Alexander heard this, he caused the man to be put to death, according to the advice of his soothsayers; but he himself was much cast down, and feared that the gods had forsaken him: he also grew suspicious of his friends. Above all he feared Antipater and his sons, one of whom, Iolas, was his chief cup-bearer, while the other, Kassander, had but recently arrived from Greece, and as he had been trained in the Greek fashion, and had never seen any Oriental customs before, he burst into a loud, insolent laugh, when he saw some of the natives doing homage to Alexander. Alexander was very angry, and seizing him by the hair with both hands, beat his head against the wall. Another time he stopped Kassander, when he was about to say something to some men who were accusing his father, Antipater. "Do you imagine" said he, "that these men would have journeyed so far merely in order to accuse a man falsely, if they had not been wronged by him?" When Kassander answered, that it looked very like a false accusation for a man to journey far from the place where his proofs lay, Alexander said with a laugh, "This is how Aristotle teaches his disciples to argue on either side of the question; but if any of you be proved to have wronged these men ever so little, you shall smart for it." It is related that after this, terror of Alexander became so rooted in the mind of Kassander, that many years afterwards, when Kassander was king of Macedonia, and lord of all Greece, he was walking about in Delphi looking at the statues, and that when he saw that of Alexander he was seized with a violent shuddering; his hair stood upright on his head, and his body quaked with fear, so that it was long before he regained his composure.
LXXV. After Alexander had once lost his confidence and become suspicious and easily alarmed, there was no circumstance so trivial that he did not make an omen of it, and the palace was full of sacrifices, lustrations, and soothsayers. So terrible a thing is disbelief in the gods and contempt for them on the one hand, while superstition and excessive reverence for them presses on men's guilty consciences like a torrent of water[434] poured upon them. Thus was Alexander's mind filled with base and cowardly alarms. However when the oracular responses of the gods about Hephæstion were reported to him, he laid aside his grief somewhat, and again indulged in feasts and drinking bouts. He entertained Nearchus and his friends magnificently, after which he took a bath, and then, just as he was going to sleep, Medius invited him to a revel at his house. He drank there the whole of the following day, when he began to feel feverish: though he did not drink up the cup of Herakles at a draught, or suddenly feel a pain as of a spear piercing his body, as some historians have thought it necessary to write, in order to give a dramatic fitness and dignity to the end of so important a personage. Aristobulus tells us that he became delirious through fever, and drank wine to quench his thirst, after which he became raving mad, and died on the thirtieth day of the month Daisius.
LXXVI. In his own diary his last illness is described thus: "On the eighteenth day of Daisius he slept in the bath-room, because he was feverish. On the following day after bathing he came into his chamber and spent the day playing at dice with Medius. After this he bathed late in the evening, offered sacrifice to the gods, dined, and suffered from fever during the night. On the twentieth he bathed and sacrificed as usual, and while reclining in his bath-room he conversed with Nearchus and his friends, listening to their account of their voyage, and of the Great Ocean. On the twenty-first he did the same, but his fever grew much worse, so that he suffered much during the night, and next day was very ill. On rising from his bed he lay beside the great plunge-bath, and conversed with his generals about certain posts which were vacant in his army, bidding them choose suitable persons to fill them. On the twenty-fourth, although very ill, he rose and offered sacrifice; and he ordered his chief officers to remain near him, and the commanders of brigades and regiments to pass the night at his gate. On the twenty-fifth he was carried over the river to the other palace, and slept a little, but the fever did not leave him. When his generals came to see him he was speechless, and remained so during the twenty-fifth, so that the Macedonians thought that he was dead. They clamoured at his palace gates, and threatened the attendants until they forced their way in. When the gates were thrown open they all filed past his bed one by one, dressed only in their tunics. On this day Python and Seleukus, who had been to the temple of Serapis, enquired whether they should bring Alexander thither. The god answered that they must leave him alone. The eight and twentieth day of the month, towards evening, Alexander died."
LXXVII. Most of the above is copied, word for word, from Alexander's household diary. No one had any suspicion of poison at the time; but it is said that six years after there appeared clear proof that he was poisoned, and that Olympias put many men to death, and caused the ashes of Iolas, who had died in the mean time, to be cast to the winds, as though he had administered the poison to Alexander. Some writers say that Antipater was advised by Aristotle to poison Alexander, and inform us that one Hagnothemis declared that he had been told as much by Antipater; and that the poison was as cold as ice, and was gathered like dew, from a certain rock near the city of Nonakris, and preserved in the hoof of an ass: for no other vessel could contain it, because it is so exceedingly cold and piercing. Most historians, however, think that the whole story of Alexander's being poisoned was a fiction; and this view is strongly supported by the fact, that as Alexander's generals began to fight one another immediately after his death, his body lay for many days unheeded, in hot and close rooms, and yet showed no signs of decay, but remained sweet and fresh. Roxana, who was pregnant, was regarded with great respect by the Macedonians, and being jealous of Statira, she sent her a forged letter, purporting to come from Alexander and asking her to come to him. When Statira came, Roxana killed both her and her sister, cast their bodies down a well, and filled up the well with earth. Her accomplice in this crime was Perdikkas, who on the death of Alexander at once became a very powerful man. He sheltered his authority under the name of Arrhidæus, who became the nominal, while Perdikkas was the virtual king of Macedonia. This Arrhidæus was the son of Philip by a low and disreputable woman named Philinna, and was half-witted in consequence of some bodily disorder with which he was afflicted. This disease was not congenital nor produced by natural causes, for he had been a fine boy and showed considerable ability, but Olympias endeavoured to poison him, and destroyed his intellect by her drugs.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.