Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
biggest and handsomest lion that he kept, and killed him by a
kick. And one day after he had undressed himself to be anointed,
and was playing at ball, just as they were going to bring his
clothes again, the young men who played with him perceived a man
clad in the king's robes, with a diadem upon his head, sitting
silently upon his throne. They asked him who he was, to which he
gave no answer a good while, till at last coming to himself, he
told them his name was Dionysius, that he was of Messenia, that
for some crime of which he was accused, he was brought thither
from the sea-side, and had been kept long in prison, that Serapis
appeared to him, had freed him from his chains, conducted him to
that place, and commanded him to put on the king's robe and
diadem, and to sit where they found him, and to say nothing.
Alexander, when he heard this, by the direction of his
soothsayers, put the fellow to death, but he lost his spirits, and
grew diffident of the protection and assistance of the gods, and
suspicious of his friends. His greatest apprehension was of
Antipater and his sons, one of whom, Iolaus, was his chief
cupbearer; and Cassander, who had lately arrived, and had been
bred up in Greek manners, the first time he saw some of the
barbarians adore the king, could not forbear laughing at it aloud,
which so incensed Alexander, that he took him by the hair with
both hands, and dashed his head against the wall. Another time,
Cassander would have said something in defense of Antipater to
those who accused him, but Alexander interrupting him said, "What
is it you say? Do you think people, if they had received no
injury, would come such a journey only to calumniate your father?"
To which when Cassander replied, that their coming so far from the
evidence was a great proof of the falseness of their charges,
Alexander smiled, and said those were some of Aristotle's
sophisms, which would serve equally on both sides; and added, that
both he and his father should be severely punished, if they were
found guilty of the least injustice towards those who complained.
All which made such a deep impression of terror in Cassander's
mind, that long after when he was king of Macedonia, and master of
Greece, as he was walking up and down at Delphi, and looking at
the statues, at the sight of that of Alexander he was suddenly
struck with alarm, and shook all over, his eyes rolled, his head
grew dizzy, and it was long before he recovered himself.
When once Alexander had given way to fears of supernatural
influence, his mind grew so disturbed and so easily alarmed, that
if the least unusual or extraordinary thing happened, he thought
it a prodigy or a presage, and his court was thronged with
diviners and priests whose business was to sacrifice and purify
and foretell the future. So miserable a thing is incredulity and
contempt of divine power on the one hand, and so miserable, also,
superstition on the other, which like water, where the level has
been lowered, flowing in and never stopping, fills the mind with
slavish fears and follies, as now in Alexander's case. But upon
some answers which were brought him from the oracle concerning
Hephaestion, he laid aside his sorrow, and fell again to
sacrificing and drinking; and having given Nearchus a splendid
entertainment, after he had bathed, as was his custom, just as he
was going to bed, at Medius's request he went to supper with him.
Here he drank all the next day, and was attacked with a fever,
which seized him, not as some write, after he had drunk of the
bowl of Hercules; nor was he taken with any sudden pain in his
back, as if he had been struck with lance, for these are the
inventions of some authors who thought it their duty to make the
last scene of so great an action as tragical and moving as they
could. Aristobulus tells us, that in the rage of his fever and a
violent thirst, he took a draught of wine, upon which he fell into
delirium, and died on the thirtieth day of the month Daesius.
But the journals give the following record. On the eighteenth of
the month, he slept in the bathing-room on account of his fever.
The next day he bathed and removed into his chamber, and spent
his time in playing dice with Medius. In the evening he bathed
and sacrificed, and ate freely, and had the fever on him through
the night. On the twentieth, after the usual sacrifices and
bathing, he lay in the bathing-room and heard Nearchus's narrative
of his voyage, and the observations he had made in the great sea.
The twenty-first he passed in the same manner, his fever still
increasing, and suffered much during the night. The next day the
fever was very violent, and he had himself removed and his bed set
by the great bath, and discoursed with his principal officers
about finding fit men to fill up the vacant places in the army.
On the twenty-fourth he was much worse, and was carried out of his
bed to assist at the sacrifices, and gave order that the general
officers should wait within the court, whilst the inferior
officers kept watch without doors. On the twenty-fifth he was
removed to his palace on the other side the river, where he slept
a little, but his fever did not abate, and when the generals came
into his chamber, he was speechless, and continued so the
following day. The Macedonians, therefore, supposing he was dead,
came with great clamors to the gates, and menaced his friends so
that they were forced to admit them, and let them all pass through
unarmed along by his bedside. The same day Python and Seleucus
were dispatched to the temple of Serapis to inquire if they should
bring Alexander thither, and were answered by the god, that they
should not remove him. On the twenty-eighth, in the evening, he
died. This account is most of it word for word as it is written
in the diary.
At the time, nobody had any suspicion of his being poisoned, but
upon some information given six years after, they say Olympias put
many to death, and scattered the ashes of Iolaus, then dead, as if
he had given it him. But those who affirm that Aristotle
counseled Antipater to do it, and that by his means the poison was
brought, adduce one Hagnothemis as their authority, who, they say,
heard king Antigonus speak of it, and tell us that the poison was
water, deadly cold as ice, distilling from a rock in the district
of Nonacris, which they gathered like a thin dew, and kept in an
ass's hoof; for it was so very cold and penetrating that no other
vessel would hold it. However, most are of opinion that all this
is a mere made-up story, no slight evidence of which is, that
during the dissensions among the commanders, which lasted several
days, the body continued clear and fresh, without any sign of such
taint or corruption, though it lay neglected in a close, sultry
place.
Roxana, who was now with child, and upon that account much honored
by the Macedonians, being jealous of Statira, sent for her by a
counterfeit letter, as if Alexander had been still alive; and when
she had her in her power, killed her and her sister, and threw
their bodies into a well, which they filled up with earth, not
without the privity and assistance of Perdiccas, who in the time
immediately following the king's death, under cover of the name of
Arrhidaeus, whom he carried about him as a sort of guard to his
person, exercised the chief authority Arrhidaeus, who was Philip's
son by an obscure woman of the name of Philinna, was himself of
weak intellect, not that he had been originally deficient either
in body or mind; on the contrary, in his childhood, he had showed
a happy and promising character enough. But a diseased habit of
body, caused by drugs which Olympias gave him, had ruined not only
his health, but his understanding.
CAESAR
After Sylla became master of Rome, he wished to make Caesar put
away his wife Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, the late sole ruler
of the commonwealth, but was unable to effect it either by
promises or intimidation, and so contented himself with
confiscating her dowry. The ground of Sylla's hostility to
Caesar, was the relationship between him and Marius; for Marius,
the elder, married Julia, the sister of Caesar's father, and had
by her the younger Marius, who consequently was Caesar's first
cousin. And though at the beginning, while so many were to be
put to death and there was so much to do, Caesar was overlooked
by Sylla, yet he would not keep quiet, but presented himself to
the people as a candidate for the priesthood, though he was yet
a mere boy. Sylla, without any open opposition, took measures
to have him rejected, and in consultation whether he should be
put to death, when it was urged by some that it was not worth
his while to contrive the death of a boy, he answered, that they
knew little who did not see more than one Marius in that boy.
Caesar, on being informed of this saying, concealed himself, and
for a considerable time kept out of the way in the country of
the Sabines, often changing his quarters, till one night, as he
was removing from one house to another on account of his health,
he fell into the hands of Sylla's soldiers, who were searching
those parts in order to apprehend any who had absconded.
Caesar, by a bribe of two talents, prevailed with Cornelius,
their captain, to let him go, and was no sooner dismissed but he
put to sea, and made for Bithynia. After a short stay there
with Nicomedes, the king, in his passage back he was taken near
the island Pharmacusa by some of the pirates, who, at that time,
with large fleets of ships and innumerable smaller vessels
infested the seas everywhere.
When these men at first demanded of him twenty talents for his
ransom, he laughed at them for not understanding the value of
their prisoner, and voluntarily engaged to give them fifty. He
presently dispatched those about him to several places to raise
the money, till at last he was left among a set of the most
bloodthirsty people in the world, the Cilicians, only with one
friend and two attendants. Yet he made so little of them, that
when he had a mind to sleep, he would send to them, and order
them to make no noise. For thirty-eight days, with all the
freedom in the world, he amused himself with joining in their
exercises and games, as if they had not been his keepers, but
his guards. He wrote verses and speeches, and made them his
auditors, and those who did not admire them, he called to their
faces illiterate and barbarous, and would often, in raillery,
threaten to hang them. They were greatly taken with this, and
attributed his free talking to a kind of simplicity and boyish
playfulness. As soon as his ransom was come from Miletus, he
paid it, and was discharged, and proceeded at once to man some
ships at the port of Miletus, and went in pursuit of the
pirates, whom he surprised with their ships still stationed at
the island, and took most of them. Their money he made his
prize, and the men he secured in prison at Pergamus, and made
application to Junius, who was then governor of Asia, to whose
office it belonged, as praetor, to determine their punishment.
Junius, having his eye upon the money, for the sum was
considerable, said he would think at his leisure what to do with
the prisoners, upon which Caesar took his leave of him, and went
off to Pergamus, where he ordered the pirates to be brought
forth and crucified; the punishment he had often threatened them
with whilst he was in their hands, and they little dreamed he
was in earnest.
In the meantime Sylla's power being now on the decline, Caesar's
friends advised him to return to Rome, but he went to Rhodes,
and entered himself in the school of Apollonius, Molon's son, a
famous rhetorician, one who had the reputation of a worthy man,