...
In his
diet, also, he was most temperate, as appears, omitting many
other circumstances, by what he said to Ada,
whom he adopted, with the title of mother, and afterwards
created Queen of Caria. For when she, out of kindness,
sent him every day many curious dishes and sweetmeats, and
would have furnished him with some cooks and pastry-men, who were thought to have great skill, he told her he wanted none of them, his
preceptor, Leonidas, having already given him the best,
which were a night march to prepare for breakfast, and a
moderate breakfast to create an appetite for supper.
Leonidas also, he added, used to open and search the furniture of his chamber and his wardrobe, to see if his mother had left him
anything that was delicate or superfluous. He was much
less addicted to wine than was generally believed; that
which gave people occasion to think so of him was, that
when he had nothing else to do, he loved to sit long and talk,
rather than drink, and over every cup hold a long conversation. For when his affairs called upon him, he would not be detained, as
other generals often were, either by wine, or sleep,
nuptial solemnities, spectacles, or any other diversion
whatsoever; a convincing argument of which is, that in the
short time he lived, he accomplished so many and so great actions. When he was free from employment, after he was up, and had
sacrificed to the gods he used to sit down to breakfast,
and then spend the rest of the day in hunting, or writing
memoirs, giving decisions on some military questions, or
reading. In marches that required no great haste, he would practise shooting as he went along, or to mount a chariot and alight from
it in full speed. Sometimes, for sport's sake, as his
journals tell us, he would hunt foxes and go fowling. When
he came in for the evening, after he had bathed and was
anointed, he would call for his bakers and chief cooks, to
know if they had his dinner ready. He never cared to dine till it was pretty late and beginning to be dark, and was wonderfully
circumspect at meals that every one who sat with him
should be served alike and with proper attention: and his
love of talking, as was said before, made him delight to
sit long at his wine. And then, though otherwise no prince's conversation was ever so agreeable, he would fall into a temper of ostentation
and soldierly boasting, which gave his flatterers a great
advantage to ride him, and made his better friends very
uneasy. For though they thought it too base to strive who
should flatter him most, yet they found it hazardous not to
do it; so that between the shame and the danger, they were in a great strait how to behave themselves. After such an entertainment, he
was wont to bathe, and then perhaps he would sleep till
noon, and sometimes all day long. He was so very temperate
in his eating, that when any rare fish or fruits were sent
him, he would distribute them among his friends, and often
reserve nothing for himself. His table, however, was always magnificent, the expense of it still increasing with his good fortune, till it
amounted to ten thousand drachmas a day, to which sum he
limited it, and beyond this he would suffer none to lay
out in any entertainment where he himself was the guest.
After
the battle of Issus, he sent to Damascus to seize upon the money
and baggage, the wives and children, of the Persians, of which spoil the Thessalian horsemen had the greatest share; for he had taken
particular notice of their gallantry in the fight, and
sent them thither on purpose to make their reward suitable
to their courage. Not but that the rest of the army had so
considerable a part of the booty as was sufficient to enrich them
all. This first gave the Macedonians such a taste of the Persian wealth and women and barbaric splendour of living, that they were ready
to pursue and follow upon it with all the eagerness of
hounds upon a scent. But Alexander, before he proceeded
any further, thought it necessary to assure himself of the
sea-coast. Those who governed in Cyprus
put that island into his possession, and Phoenicia, Tyre
only excepted, was surrendered to him. During the siege of
this city, which, with mounds of earth cast up, and battering
engines, and two hundred galleys by sea, was carried on for seven months together, he dreamt that he saw Hercules upon the walls,
reaching out his hands, and calling to him. And many of
the Tyrians in their sleep fancied that Apollo told them
he was displeased with their actions, and was about to
leave them and go over to Alexander. Upon which, as if the god
had been a deserting soldier, they seized him, so to say, in the act, tied down the statue with ropes, and nailed it to the pedestal,
reproaching him that he was a favourer of Alexander.
Another time Alexander dreamed he saw a satyr mocking him
at a distance, and when he endeavoured to catch him, he
still escaped from him, till at last with much perseverance, and running about after him, he got him into his power. The
soothsayers, making two words of Satyrus, assured him that
Tyre should be
his own. The inhabitants at this time show a spring of water,
near which they say Alexander slept when he fancied the
satyr appeared to him.
While
the body of the army lay before Tyre, he made an excursion against
the Arabians who inhabit the Mount Antilibanus, in which he hazarded his life extremely to bring off his master Lysimachus, who would
needs go along with him, declaring he was neither older
nor inferior in courage to Phoenix, Achilles's guardian.
For when, quitting their horses, they began to march up
the hills on foot, the rest of the soldiers outwent them a
great deal, so that night drawing on, and the enemy near, Alexander was fain to stay behind so long, to encourage and help up the lagging
and tired old man, that before he was aware he was left
behind, a great way from his soldiers, with a slender attendance,
and forced to pass an extremely cold night in the dark,
and in a very inconvenient place; till seeing a great many
scattered fires of the enemy at some distance, and trusting to
his agility of body, and as he was always wont by undergoing toils and labours himself to cheer and support the Macedonians in any
distress, he ran straight to one of the nearest fires, and
with his dagger despatching two of the barbarians that sat
by it, snatched up a lighted brand, and returned with it
to his own men. They immediately made a great fire, which so
alarmed the enemy that most of them fled, and those that assaulted them were soon routed and thus they rested securely the remainder of
the night. Thus Chares writes.
But to
return to the siege, it had this issue. Alexander, that he
might refresh his army, harassed with many former encounters, had led only a small party towards the walls, rather to keep the enemy
busy than with any prospect of much advantage. It happened
at this time that Aristander, the soothsayer, after he had
sacrificed, upon view of the entrails, affirmed confidently
to those who stood by that the city should be certainly taken that
very month, upon which there was a laugh and some mockery among the soldiers, as this was the last day of it. The king, seeing him in
perplexity, and always anxious to support the credit of
the predictions, gave order that they should not count it
as the thirtieth, but as the twenty-third of the month,
and ordering the trumpets to sound, attacked the walls more seriously
than he at first intended. The sharpness of the assault so inflamed the rest of his forces who were left in the camp, that they could
not hold from advancing to second it, which they performed
with so much vigour that the Tyrians retired, and the town
was carried that very day. The next place he sat down
before was Gaza, one of the largest cities of Syria, when
this accident befell him. A large bird flying over him let
a clod of earth fall upon his shoulder, and then settling
upon one of the battering engines, was suddenly entangled
and caught in the nets, composed of sinews, which protected
the ropes with which the machine was managed. This fell out exactly according to Aristander's prediction, which was, that Alexander
should be wounded and the city reduced.
From
hence he sent great part of the spoils to Olympias, Cleopatra, and the rest of his friends, not omitting his preceptor Leonidas,
on whom he bestowed five hundred talents' weight of
frankincense and an hundred of myrrh, in remembrance of
the hopes he had once expressed of him when he was but a
child. For Leonidas, it seems, standing by him one day while he
was sacrificing, and seeing him take both his hands full of incense to throw into the fire, told him it became him to be more sparing
in his offerings, and not to be so profuse till he was
master of the countries which those sweet gums and saying,
come from. So Alexander now wrote to him, saying, "We
have sent you abundance of myrrh and frankincense, that for
the future you may not be stingy to the gods." Among the treasures and other booty that was taken from Darius, there was a very
precious casket, which being brought to Alexander for a
great rarity, he asked those about him what they thought
fittest to be laid up in it; and when they had delivered their
various opinions, he told them he should keep Homer's Iliad in it. This is attested by many credible authors, and if what those of Alexandria tell us, relying upon the authority of Heraclides, be true, Homer
was neither an idle nor an unprofitable companion to him
in his expedition. For when he was master of Egypt,
designing to settle a colony of Grecians there, he
resolved to build a large and populous city, and give it his own name. In order to which, after he had measured and staked out the ground
with the advice of the best architects, he chanced one
night in his sleep to see a wonderful vision; a
grey-headed old man, of a venerable aspect, appeared to
stand by him, and pronounce these verses: - "An island lies,
where loud the billows roar, Pharos they call it, on the
Egyptian shore."
Alexander
upon this immediately rose up and went to Pharos, which, at
that time, was an island lying a little above the Canobic mouth of the river Nile, though it has now
been joined to the mainland by a mole. As soon as he saw
the commodious situation of the place, it being a long neck of
land, stretching like an isthmus between large lagoons and shallow waters on one side and the sea on the other, the latter at the end of it
making a spacious harbour, he said, Homer, besides his
other excellences, was a very good architect, and ordered
the plan of a city to be drawn out answerable to the
place. To do which, for want of chalk, the soil being black, they laid out their lines with flour, taking in a pretty large compass
of ground in a semi-circular figure, and drawing into the
inside of the circumference equal straight lines from each
end, thus giving it something of the form of a cloak or
cape; while he was pleasing himself with his design, on a sudden
an infinite number of great birds of several kinds, rising like a black cloud out of the river and the lake, devoured every morsel
of the flour that had been used in setting out the lines;
at which omen even Alexander himself was troubled, till
the augurs restored his confidence again by telling him it
was a sign the city he was about to build would not only abound
in all things within itself, but also be the nurse and feeder of many nations. He commanded the workmen to proceed, while he went
to visit the temple
of Ammon.
This
was a long and painful, and, in two respects, a dangerous journey;
first, if they should lose their provision of water, as for several days none could be obtained; and, secondly, if a violent south
wind should rise upon them, while they were travelling
through the wide extent of deep sands, as it is said to
have done when Cambyses led his army that way, blowing the
sand together in heaps, and raising, as it were, the whole desert
like a sea upon them, till fifty thousand were swallowed up and destroyed by it. All these difficulties were weighed and
represented to him; but Alexander was not easily to be
diverted from anything he was bent upon. For fortune
having hitherto seconded him in his designs, made him resolute
and firm in his opinions, and the boldness of his temper raised a sort of passion in him for surmounting difficulties; as if it
were not enough to be always victorious in the field,
unless places and seasons and nature herself submitted to
him. In this journey, the relief and assistance the gods
afforded him in his distresses were more remarkable, and obtained greater belief than the oracles he received afterwards, which,
however, were valued and credited the more on account of
those occurrences. For first, plentiful rains that fell
preserved them from any fear of perishing by drought, and,
allaying the extreme dryness of the sand, which now became moist
and firm to travel on, cleared and purified the air. Besides this, when they were out of their way, and were wandering up and down,
because the marks which were wont to direct the guides
were disordered and lost, they were set right again by
some ravens, which flew before them when on their march,
and waited for them when they lingered and fell behind; and the
greatest miracle, as Callisthenes tells us, was that if any of the company went astray in the night, they never ceased croaking and
making a noise till by that means they had brought them
into the right way again. Having passed through the
wilderness, they came to the place where the high priest,
at the first salutation, bade Alexander welcome from his father Ammon. And being asked by him whether any of his father's
murderers had escaped punishment, he charged him to speak
with more respect, since his was not a mortal father. Then
Alexander, changing his expression, desired to know of him
if any of those who murdered Philip were yet unpunished, and
further concerning dominion, whether the empire of the world was reserved for him? This, the god answered, he should obtain, and that
Philip's death was fully revenged, which gave him so much
satisfaction that he made splendid offerings to Jupiter,
and gave the priests very rich presents. This is what most
authors write concerning the oracles. But Alexander, in a letter to his mother, tells her there were some secret answers, which at
his return he would communicate to her only. Others say
that the priest, desirous as a piece of courtesy to
address him in Greek, "O Paidion," by a slip in
pronunciation ended with the s instead of the n, and said "O
Paidios," which mistake Alexander was well enough
pleased with, and it went for current that the oracle had
called him so.
Among
the sayings of one Psammon, a philosopher, whom he heard in
Egypt,
he most approved of this, that all men are governed by God, because in everything, that which is chief and commands is divine. But
what he pronounced himself upon this subject was even more
like a philosopher, for he said God was the common father
of us all, but more particularly of the best of us. To the
barbarians he carried himself very haughtily, as if he
were fully persuaded of his divine birth and parentage; but to the Grecians more moderately, and with less affectation of
divinity, except it were once in writing to the Athenians
about Samos, when he tells them that he should not himself
have bestowed upon them that free and glorious city;
"You received it," he says, "from the bounty of him who at that
time was called my lord and father," meaning Philip.
However, afterwards being wounded with an arrow, and feeling
much pain, he turned to those about him, and told them,
"This, my friends, is real flowing blood, not Ichor-
"Such
as immortal gods are wont to shed." And another time, when it thundered so much that everybody was afraid, and Anaxarchus,
the sophist, asked him if he who was Jupiter's son could
do anything like this, "Nay," said Alexander,
laughing, "I have no desire to be formidable to my friends, as you would have me, who despised my table for being furnished
with fish, and not with the heads of governors of
provinces." For in fact it is related as true, that
Anaxarchus, seeing a present of small fishes, which the king sent
to Hephaestion, had used this expression, in a sort of irony, and disparagement of those who undergo vast labours and encounter
great hazards in pursuit of magnificent objects which
after all bring them little more pleasure or enjoyment
than what others have. From what I have said upon this
subject, it is apparent that Alexander in himself was not foolishly affected, or had the vanity to think himself really a god, but
merely used his claims to divinity as a means of
maintaining among other people the sense of his
superiority.
At his
return out of Egypt into Phoenicia, he
sacrificed and made solemn processions, to which were added
shows of lyric dances and tragedies, remarkable not merely
for the splendour of the equipage and decorations, but for
the competition among those who exhibited them. For the kings of Cyprus were
here the exhibitors, just in the same manner as at Athens those who are
chosen by lot out of the tribes. And, indeed, they showed the greatest emulation to outvie each other; especially Nicocreon, King of
Salamis, and Pasicrates of Soli, who furnished the chorus,
and defrayed the expenses of the two most celebrated
actors, Athenodorus and Thessalus, the former performing
for Pasicrates, and the latter for Nicocrean. Thessalus was most
favoured by Alexander, though it did not appear till Athenodorus was declared victor by the plurality of votes. For then at his going
away, he said the judges deserved to be commended for what
they had done, but that he would willingly have lost part
of his kingdom rather than to have seen Thessalus
overcome. However, when he understood Athenodorus was fined by
the Athenians for being absent at the festivals of Bacchus, though he refused his request that he would write a letter in his behalf, he
gave him a sufficient sum to satisfy the penalty. Another
time, when Lycon of Scarphia happened to act with great
applause in the theatre, and in a verse which he
introduced into the comic part which he was acting, begged for a present of ten talents, he laughed and gave him the money.
Darius
wrote him a letter, and sent friends to intercede with him, requesting
him to accept as a ransom of his captives the sum of a thousand talents, and offering him in exchange for his amity and alliance
all the countries on this side the river Euphrates,
together with one of his daughters in marriage. These
propositions he communicated to his friends, and when Parmenio
told him that, for his part, if he were Alexander, he should readily embrace them, "So would I," said Alexander, "if I
were Parmenio." Accordingly, his answer to Darius
was, that if he would come and yield himself up into his
power he would treat him with all possible kindness; if not, he was resolved immediately to go himself and seek him. But the death of
Darius's wife in childbirth made him soon after regret one
part of this answer, and he showed evident marks of grief
at thus deprived of a further opportunity of exercising
his clemency and good nature, which he manifested, however, as
far as he could, by giving her a most sumptuous funeral.
Among
the eunuchs who waited in the queen's chamber, and were taken prisoners
with the women, there was one Tireus, who, getting out of the camp,
fled away on horseback to Darius, to inform him of his wife's death. He, when he heard it, beating his head, and bursting into tears
and lamentations, said, "Alas! how great is the
calamity of the Persians! Was it not enough that their
king's consort and sister was a prisoner in her lifetime, but she
must, now she is dead, also be but meanly and obscurely buried?"
"O king," replied the eunuch, "as to her
funeral rites, or any respect or honour that should have
been shown in them, you have not the least reason to
accuse the ill fortune of your country; for to my knowledge neither your queen Statira when alive, nor your mother, nor children,
wanted anything of their former happy condition, unless it
were the light of your countenance, which I doubt not but
the lord Oromasdes will yet restore to its former glory.
And after her decease, I assure you, she had not only all due funeral ornaments, but was honoured also with the tears of your very
enemies; for Alexander is as gentle after victory as he
is terrible in the field." At the bearing of these
words, such was the grief and emotion of Darius's mind,
that they carried him into extravagant suspicions; and taking Tireus aside into a more private part of his tent, "Unless thou
likewise," said he to him, "hast deserted me,
together with the good fortune of Persia, and art become
a Macedonian in thy heart; if thou yet ownest me for thy master
Darius, tell me, I charge thee, by the veneration thou payest the light of Mithras, and this right hand of thy king, do I not
lament the least of Statira's misfortunes in her
captivity and death? Have I not suffered something more
injurious and deplorable in her lifetime? And had I not been
miserable with less dishonour if I had met with a more severe and inhuman enemy? For how is it possible a young man as he is should
treat the wife of his opponent with so much distinction,
were it not from some motive that does me disgrace?"
Whilst he was yet speaking, Tireus threw himself at his
feet, and besought him neither to wrong Alexander so much, nor
his dead wife and sister, as to give utterance to any such thoughts, which deprived him of the greatest consolation left him in his
adversity, the belief that he was overcome by a man whose
virtues raised him above human nature; that he ought to
look upon Alexander with love and admiration, who had
given no less proofs of his continence towards the Persian women, than of his valour among the men. The eunuch confirmed all he
said with solemn and dreadful oaths, and was further
enlarging upon Alexander's moderation and magnanimity on
other occasions, when Darius, breaking away from him into
the other division of the tent, where his friends and courtiers were, lifted up his hands to heaven and uttered this prayer, "Ye
gods," said he, "of my family, and of my
kingdom, if it be possible, I beseech you to restore the
declining affairs of Persia, that I may leave them in as flourishing
a condition as I found them, and have it in my power to make a
grateful return to Alexander for the kindness which in my adversity he has shown to those who are dearest to me. But if, indeed, the
fatal time be come, which is to give a period to the
Persian monarchy, if our ruin be a debt that must be paid
to the divine jealousy and the vicissitude of things,
then I beseech you grant that no other man but Alexander may sit
upon the throne of Cyrus." Such is the narrative given by the
greater number of the historians.
But to
return to Alexander. After he had reduced all Asia on this side
the Euphrates, he advanced towards Darius, who
was coming down against him with a million of men. In his
march a very ridiculous passage happened. The servants
who followed the camp for sport's sake divided themselves into
two parties, and named the commander of one of them Alexander, and the other Darius. At first they only pelted one another with
clods of earth, but presently took to their fists, and at
last, heated with contention, they fought in good earnest
with stones and clubs, so that they had much ado to part
them; till Alexander, upon hearing of it, ordered the two captains to decide the quarrel by single combat, and armed him who bore
his name himself, while Philotas did the same to him who
represented Darius. The whole army were spectators of
this encounter, willing from the event of it to derive an
omen of their own future success. After they had fought stoutly
a pretty long while, at last he who was called Alexander had the better, and for a reward of his prowess had twelve villages given
him, with leave to wear the Persian dress. So we are told
by Eratosthenes.
But the
great battle of all that was fought with Darius was not, as
most writers tell us, at Arbela, but at Gaugamela, which, in their
language, signifies the camel's house, forasmuch as one
of their ancient kings having escaped the pursuit of his
enemies on a swift camel, in gratitude to his beast,
settled him at this place, with an allowance of certain villages and rents for his maintenance. It came to pass that in the month
Boedromion, about the beginning of the feast of Mysteries
at Athens,
there was an eclipse of the moon, the eleventh night
after which, the two armies being now in view of one
another, Darius kept his men in arms, and by torchlight took a
general review of them. But Alexander, while his soldiers slept, spent the night before his tent with his diviner, Aristander,
performing certain mysterious ceremonies, and sacrificing
to the god Fear.
…
(Плутарх: АЛЕКСАНДАР ВЕЛИКИ)
