Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
However, his violent thirst after and passion for learning, which
were once implanted, still grew up with him, and never decayed; as
appears by his veneration of Anaxarchus, by the present of fifty
talents which he sent to Xenocrates, and his particular care and
esteem of Dandamis and Calanus.
While Philip went on his expedition against the Byzantines, he
left Alexander, then sixteen years old, his lieutenant in
Macedonia, committing the charge of his seal to him; who, not to
sit idle, reduced the rebellious Maedi, and having taken their
chief town by storm, drove out the barbarous inhabitants, and
planting a colony of several nations in their room, called the
place after his own name, Alexandropolis. At the battle of
Chaeronea, which his father fought against the Grecians, he is
said to have been the first man that charged the Thebans' sacred
band. And even in my remembrance, there stood an old oak near the
river Cephisus, which people called Alexander's oak, because his
tent was pitched under it. And not far off are to be seen the
graves of the Macedonians who fell in that battle. This early
bravery made Philip so fond of him, that nothing pleased him more
than to hear his subjects call himself their general and Alexander
their king.
But the disorders of his family, chiefly caused by his new
marriages and attachments, (the troubles that began in the women's
chambers spreading, so to say, to the whole kingdom,) raised
various complaints and differences between them, which the
violence of Olympias, a woman of a jealous and implacable temper,
made wider, by exasperating Alexander against his father. Among
the rest, this accident contributed most to their falling out. At
the wedding of Cleopatra, whom Philip fell in love with and
married, she being much too young for him, her uncle Attalus in
his drink desired the Macedonians would implore the gods to give
them a lawful successor to the kingdom by his niece. This so
irritated Alexander, that throwing one of the cups at his head,
"You villain," said he, "what, am I then a bastard?" Then Philip
taking Attalus's part, rose up and would have run his son through;
but by good fortune for them both, either his over-hasty rage, or
the wine he had drunk, made his foot slip, so that he fell down on
the floor. At which Alexander reproachfully insulted over him:
"See there," said he, "the man, who makes preparations to pass out
of Europe into Asia, overturned in passing from one seat to
another." After this debauch, he and his mother Olympias withdrew
from Philip's company, and when he had placed her in Epirus, he
himself retired into Illyria.
About this time, Demaratus the Corinthian, an old friend of the
family, who had the freedom to say anything among them without
offense, coming to visit Philip, after the first compliments and
embraces were over, Philip asked him, whether the Grecians were at
amity with one another. "It ill becomes you," replied Demaratus,
"to be so solicitous about Greece, when you have involved your own
house in so many dissensions and calamities." He was so convinced
by this seasonable reproach, that he immediately sent for his son
home, and by Demartatus's mediation prevailed with him to return.
But this reconciliation lasted not long; for when Pixodorus,
viceroy of Caria, sent Aristocritus to treat for a match between
his eldest daughter and Philip's son Arrhidaeus, hoping by this
alliance to secure his assistance upon occasion, Alexander's
mother, and some who pretended to be his friends, presently filled
his head with tales and calumnies, as if Philip, by a splendid
marriage and important alliance, were preparing the way for
settling the kingdom upon Arrhidaeus. In alarm at this, he
dispatched Thessalus, the tragic actor, into Caria, to dispose
Pixodorus to slight Arrhidaeus, both as illegitimate and a fool,
and rather to accept of himself for his son-in-law. This
proposition was much more agreeable to Pixodorus than the former.
But Philip, as soon as he was made acquainted with this
transaction, went to his son's apartment, taking with him
Philotas, the son of Parmenio, one of Alexander's intimate friends
and companions, and there reproved him severely, and reproached
him bitterly, that he should be so degenerate, and unworthy of the
power he was to leave him, as to desire the alliance of a mean
Carian, who was at best but the slave of a barbarous prince. Nor
did this satisfy his resentment, for he wrote to the Corinthians,
to send Thessalus to him in chains, and banished Harpalus,
Nearchus, Erigyius, and Ptolemy, his son's friends and favorites,
whom Alexander afterwards recalled, and raised to great honor and
preferment.
Not long after this, Pausanias, having had an outrage done to him
at the instance of Attalus and Cleopatra, when he found he could
get no reparation for his disgrace at Philip's hands, watched his
opportunity and murdered him. The guilt of which fact was laid
for the most part upon Olympias, who was said to have encouraged
and exasperated the enraged youth to revenge; and some sort of
suspicion attached even to Alexander himself, who, it was said,
when Pausanias came and complained to him of the injury he had
received, repeated the verse out of Euripides's Medea: --
On husband, and on father, and on bride.
However, he took care to find out and punish the accomplices of
the conspiracy severely, and was very angry with Olympias for
treating Cleopatra inhumanly in his absence.
Alexander was but twenty years old when his father was murdered,
and succeeded to a kingdom beset on all sides with great dangers,
and rancorous enemies. For not only the barbarous nations that
bordered on Macedonia, were impatient of being governed by any but
their own native princes; but Philip likewise, though he had been
victorious over the Grecians, yet, as the time had not been
sufficient for him to complete his conquest and accustom them to
his sway, had simply left all things in a general disorder and
confusion. It seemed to the Macedonians a very critical time; and
some would have persuaded Alexander to give up all thought of
retaining the Grecians in subjection by force of arms, and rather
to apply himself to win back by gentle means the allegiance of the
tribes who were designing revolt, and try the effect of indulgence
in arresting the first motions towards revolution. But he
rejected this counsel as weak and timorous, and looked upon it to
be more prudence to secure himself by resolution and magnanimity,
than, by seeming to buckle to any, to encourage all to trample on
him. In pursuit of this opinion, he reduced the barbarians to
tranquility, and put an end to all fear of war from them, by a
rapid expedition into their country as far as the river Danube,
where he gave Syrmus, king of the Triballians, an entire
overthrow. And hearing the Thebans were in revolt, and the
Athenians in correspondence with them, he immediately marched
through the pass of Thermopylae, saying that to Demosthenes who
had called him a child while he was in Illyria and in the country
of the Triballians, and a youth when he was in Thessaly, he would
appear a man before the walls of Athens.
When he came to Thebes, to show how willing he was to accept of
their repentance for what was past, he only demanded of them
Phoenix and Prothytes, the authors of the rebellion, and
proclaimed a general pardon to those who would come over to him.
But when the Thebans merely retorted by demanding Philotas and
Antipater to be delivered into their hands, and by a proclamation
on their part, invited all who would assert the liberty of Greece
to come over to them, he presently applied himself to make them
feel the last extremities of war. The Thebans indeed defended
themselves with a zeal and courage beyond their strength, being
much outnumbered by their enemies. But when the Macedonian garrison
sallied out upon them from the citadel, they were so hemmed in on
all sides, that the greater part of them fell in the battle; the
city itself being taken by storm, was sacked and razed,
Alexander's hope being that so severe an example might terrify the
rest of Greece into obedience, and also in order to gratify the
hostility of his confederates, the Phocians and Plataeans. So
that, except the priests, and some few who had heretofore been the
friends and connections of the Macedonians, the family of the poet
Pindar, and those who were known to have opposed the public vote
for the war, all the rest, to the number of thirty thousand, were
publicly sold for slaves; and it is computed that upwards of six
thousand were put to the sword. Among the other calamities that
befell the city, it happened that some Thracian soldiers having
broken into the house of a matron of high character and repute,
named Timoclea, their captain, after he had used violence with
her, to satisfy his avarice as well as lust, asked her, if she
knew of any money concealed; to which she readily answered she
did, and bade him follow her into a garden, where she showed him a
well, into which, she told him, upon the taking of the city she
had thrown what she had of most value. The greedy Thracian
presently stooping down to view the place where he thought the
treasure lay, she came behind him, and pushed him into the well,
and then flung great stones in upon him, till she had killed him.
After which, when the soldiers led her away bound to Alexander,
her very mien and gait showed her to be a woman of dignity, and of
a mind no less elevated, not betraying the least sign of fear or
astonishment. And when the king asked her who she was, "I am,"
said she, "the sister of Theagenes, who fought the battle of
Chaeronea with your father Philip, and fell there in command for
the liberty of Greece." Alexander was so surprised, both at what
she had done, and what she said, that he could not choose but give
her and her children their freedom to go whither they pleased.
After this he received the Athenians into favor, although they had
shown themselves so much concerned at the calamity of Thebes that
out of sorrow they omitted the celebration of the Mysteries, and
entertained those who escaped with all possible humanity. Whether
it were, like the lion, that his passion was now satisfied, or
that after an example of extreme cruelty, he had a mind to appear
merciful, it happened well for the Athenians; for he not only
forgave them all past offenses, but bade them to look to their
affairs with vigilance, remembering that if he should miscarry,
they were likely to be the arbiters of Greece. Certain it is,
too, that in after-time he often repented of his severity to the
Thebans, and his remorse had such influence on his temper as to
make him ever after less rigorous to all others. He imputed also
the murder of Clitus, which he committed in his wine, and the
unwillingness of the Macedonians to follow him against the
Indians, by which his enterprise and glory was left imperfect, to
the wrath and vengeance of Bacchus, the protector of Thebes. And
it was observed that whatsoever any Theban, who had the good
fortune to survive this victory, asked of him, he was sure to
grant without the least difficulty.
Soon after, the Grecians, being assembled at the Isthmus, declared
their resolution of joining with Alexander in the war against the
Persians, and proclaimed him their general. While he stayed here,
many public ministers and philosophers came from all parts to
visit him, and congratulated him on his election, but contrary to
his expectation, Diogenes of Sinope, who then was living at
Corinth, thought so little of him, that instead of coming to
compliment him, he never so much as stirred out of the suburb
called the Cranium, where Alexander found him lying along in the