Reader

PHILIP You can’t deny being my son now, Alexander; you wouldn’t be dead, if you were the son of Ammon. ALEXANDER I knew quite well myself, father, that I was the son of Philip, the son of Amyntas, but I accepted the oracle, because I thought it useful for my purposes. PHILIP What! Useful to allow yourself to be cheated by the prophets? ALEXANDER Not that, but the barbarians were terrified of me, and nobody resisted me any more; they thought they were fighting against a god, so that I conquered them the more easily.

PHILIP

What enemies did you conquer that were worth fighting? Your adversaries were always cowards, and armed with nothing better than bows and bucklers and wicker shields. But conquering Greeks, conquering Boeotians, Phocians and Athenians was a real task, and subduing Arcadian heavy troops, Thessalian horse, javelin men of Elis, and light troops from Mantinea, or Thracians, Illyrians or Paeonians was a great achievement. But as for Medes, Persians and Chaldaeans, effeminate creatures bedecked in gold—you weren’t the first to conquer them. Don’t you know how Clearchus did so, going inland with a mere ten thousand men, and they didn’t even wait to fight at close quarters, but fled before they were in bow-shot?

ALEXANDER But, father, the Scythians and the elephants of the Indians are not to be despised, and yet I won my victories over them without sowing dissension, or using bribery and treachery. I never went back on an oath or a promise, or broke faith to gain a victory, and, though I took over most of the Greeks without bloodshed, perhaps you’ve heard how I punished the Thebans. PHILIP I know all that; I was told by Clitus, whom you killed at dinner, by running him through with a spear, because he dared to praise me rather than your achievements.

PHILIP

Furthermore, you discarded the Macedonian cloak, they tell me, for a Median doublet, and took to a tiara worn upright on your head, and expected Macedonians, free men, to bow down before you. And, most ridiculous thing of all, you aped the habits of your defeated foes! I won’t mention your other activities—how you locked up educated

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men along with lions, all your weddings, and your inordinate affection for Hephaestion. I’ve

only heard of one thing I can praise; you kept your attentions away from Darius’ beautiful queen,

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and looked after his mother

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and his daughters.

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That was conduct befitting a king.

ALEXANDER Don’t you praise me for my adventurous spirit, father, and for being first man to leap into the fort of the Oxydracae, and for receiving so many wounds? PHILIP I don’t. Not that I think it’s a bad thing for a king to suffer an occasional wound and to face dangers at the head of his army; but that wasn’t at all the sort of thing for you. For you were supposed to be a god, and any time you were wounded and seen being carried out of the fighting on a litter, streaming with blood and groaning from your wound, the onlookers were amused to see how Ammon was being shown up as an impostor whose forecasts were false, and his prophets as mere flatterers. Who wouldn’t have been amused to see the son of Zeus fainting and calling for the assistance of the doctors? For now that you’re dead, don’t you think that there are many who wax witty about that pretence of yours, now that they see the corpse of the “god ‘” lying at full length, clammy and swollen like any other body? Besides, this policy, which you said was so useful, Alexander, the policy of gaining easy victories in this way, greatly diminished the glory of your successes. For everything seemed disappointing, when regarded as the work of a god.

ALEXANDER People don’t think like that about me, but put me on a par with Heracles and Dionysus. And yet I alone have subdued the famous Aornos, a place captured by neither of them. PHILIP Don’t you see how you’re speaking just now like the son of Ammon, in comparing yourself to Heracles and Dionysus? Aren’t you ashamed, Alexander? Won’t you learn to forget your pride, and know yourself, and realise that you’re now dead?