Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
day in hunting, or writing memoirs, giving decisions on some
military questions, or reading. In marches that required no great
haste, he would practice 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 everyone 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 splendor 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 hand, 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 favorer of Alexander. Another time, Alexander
dreamed he saw a Satyr mocking him at a distance, and when he
endeavored 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 he 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 labors himself to cheer and
support the Macedonians in any distress, he ran straight to one of
the nearest fires, and with his dagger dispatching 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
vigor, 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, where 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 a 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 be so profuse till he was master of the
countries which those sweet gums and spices came 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 main land
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
harbor, 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 semicircular 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
traveling 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