Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
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 color,
passing into ruddiness in his face and upon his breast.
Aristoxenus in his Memoirs tells us that a most agreeable odor
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 adjust temperament of
his body. For sweet smells, Theophrastus conceives, are produced
by the concoction of moist humors 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 he 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
engraved 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, into the field,) that they were struck with
admiration of him, and looked upon the ability so much famed of
Philip, to be nothing in comparison with the forwardness and high
purpose that appeared thus early in his son. Whenever he heard
Philip had taken any town of importance, or won any signal
victory, instead of rejoicing at it altogether, he would tell his
companions that his father would anticipate everything, and leave
him and them no opportunities of performing great and illustrious
actions. For being more bent upon action and glory than either
upon pleasure or riches, he esteemed all that he should receive
from his father as a diminution and prevention of his own future
achievements; and would have chosen rather to succeed to a kingdom
involved in troubles and wars, which would have afforded him
frequent exercise of his courage, and a large field of honor, than
to one already flourishing and settled, where his inheritance
would be an inactive life, and the mere enjoyment of wealth and
luxury.
The care of his education, as it might be presumed, was committed
to a great many attendants, preceptors, and teachers, over the
whole of whom Leonidas, a near kinsman of Olympias, a man of an
austere temper, presided, who did not indeed himself decline the
name of what in reality is a noble and honorable office, but in
general his dignity, and his near relationship, obtained him from
other people the title of Alexander's foster father and governor.
But he who took upon him the actual place and style of his
pedagogue, was Lysimachus the Acarnanian, who, though he had
nothing specially to recommend him, but his lucky fancy of calling
himself Phoenix, Alexander Achilles, and Philip Peleus, was
therefore well enough esteemed, and ranked in the next degree
after Leonidas.
Philonicus the Thessalian brought the horse Bucephalas to Philip,
offering to sell him for thirteen talents; but when they went into
the field to try him, they found him so very vicious and
unmanageable, that he reared up when they endeavored to mount him,
and would not so much as endure the voice of any of Philip's
attendants. Upon which, as they were leading him away as wholly
useless and untractable, Alexander, who stood by, said, "What an
excellent horse do they lose, for want of address and boldness to
manage him!" Philip at first took no notice of what he said; but
when he heard him repeat the same thing several times, and saw he
was much vexed to see the horse sent away, "Do you reproach," said
he to him, "those who are older than yourself, as if you knew
more, and were better able to manage him than they?" "I could
manage this horse," replied he, "better than others do." "And if
you do not," said Philip, "what will you forfeit for your
rashness?" "I will pay," answered Alexander, "the whole price of
the horse." At this the whole company fell a laughing; and as
soon as the wager was settled amongst them, he immediately ran to
the horse, and taking hold of the bridle, turned him directly
towards the sun, having, it seems, observed that he was disturbed
at and afraid of the motion of his own shadow; then letting him go
forward a little, still keeping the reins in his hand, and
stroking him gently when he found him begin to grow eager and
fiery, he let fall his upper garment softly, and with one nimble
leap securely mounted him, and when he was seated, by little and
little drew in the bridle, and curbed him without either striking
or spurring him. Presently, when he found him free from all
rebelliousness, and on]y impatient for the course, he let him go
at full speed, inciting him now with a commanding voice, and
urging him also with his heel. Philip and his friends looked on
at first in silence and anxiety for the result, till seeing him
turn at the end of his career, and come back rejoicing and
triumphing for what he had performed, they all burst out into
acclamations of applause; and his father, shedding tears, it is
said, for joy, kissed him as he came down from his horse, and in
his transport, said, "O my son, look thee out a kingdom equal to
and worthy of thyself, for Macedonia is too little for thee."
After this, considering him to be of a temper easy to be led to
his duty by reason, but by no means to be compelled, he always
endeavored to persuade rather than to command or force him to
anything; and now looking upon the instruction and tuition of his
youth to be of greater difficulty and importance, than to be
wholly trusted to the ordinary masters in music and poetry, and
the common school subjects, and to require, as Sophocles says,
The bridle and the rudder too,
he sent for Aristotle, the most learned and most cerebrated
philosopher of his time, and rewarded him with a munificence
proportionable to and becoming the care he took to instruct his
son. For he repeopled his native city Stagira, which he had
caused to be demolished a little before, and restored all the
citizens who were in exile or slavery, to their habitations. As a
place for the pursuit of their studies and exercises, he assigned
the temple of the Nymphs, near Mieza, where, to this very day,
they show you Aristotle's stone seats, and the shady walks which
he was wont to frequent. It would appear that Alexander received
from him not only his doctrines of Morals, and of Politics, but
also something of those more abstruse and profound theories which
these philosophers, by the very names they gave them, professed
to reserve for oral communication to the initiated, and did not
allow many to become acquainted with. For when he was in Asia,
and heard Aristotle had published some treatises of that kind, he
wrote to him, using very plain language to him in behalf of
philosophy, the following letter. "Alexander to Aristotle
greeting. You have not done well to publish your books of oral
doctrine; for what is there now that we excel others in, if those
things which we have been particularly instructed in be laid open
to all? For my part, I assure you, I had rather excel others in
the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power
and dominion. Farewell." And Aristotle, soothing this passion
for preeminence, speaks, in his excuse for himself, of these
doctrines, as in fact both published and not published: as
indeed, to say the truth, his books on metaphysics are written in
a style which makes them useless for ordinary teaching, and
instructive only, in the way of memoranda, for those who have been
already conversant in that sort of learning.
Doubtless also it was to Aristotle, that he owed the inclination
he had, not to the theory only, but likewise to the practice of
the art of medicine. For when any of his friends were sick, he
would often prescribe them their course of diet, and medicines
proper to their disease, as we may find in his epistles. He was
naturally a great lover of all kinds of learning and reading; and
Onesicritus informs us, that he constantly laid Homer's Iliads,
according to the copy corrected by Aristotle, called the casket
copy, with his dagger under his pillow, declaring that he esteemed
it a perfect portable treasure of all military virtue and
knowledge. When he was in the upper Asia, being destitute of
other books, he ordered Harpalus to send him some; who furnished
him with Philistus's History, a great many of the plays of
Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, and some dithyrambic odes,
composed by Telestes and Philoxenus. For awhile he loved and
cherished Aristotle no less, as he was wont to say himself, than
if he had been his father, giving this reason for it, that as he
had received life from the one, so the other had taught him to
live well. But afterwards, upon some mistrust of him, yet not so
great as to make him do him any hurt, his familiarity and friendly
kindness to him abated so much of its former force and
affectionateness, as to make it evident he was alienated from him.