_Philip. Alexander_
_Phil_. You cannot deny that you are my son this time, Alexander; you
would not have died if you had been Ammon's.
_Alex_. I knew all the time that you, Philip, son of Amyntas, were my
father. I only accepted the statement of the oracle because I thought
it was good policy.
_Phil_. What, to suffer yourself to be fooled by lying priests?
_Alex_. No, but it had an awe-inspiring effect upon the barbarians.
When they thought they had a God to deal with, they gave up the
struggle; which made their conquest a simple matter.
_Phil_. And whom did _you_ ever conquer that was worth conquering? Your
adversaries were ever timid creatures, with their bows and their
targets and their wicker shields. It was other work conquering the
Greeks: Boeotians, Phocians, Athenians; Arcadian hoplites, Thessalian
cavalry, javelin-men from Elis, peltasts of Mantinea; Thracians,
Illyrians, Paeonians; to subdue these was something. But for gold-laced
womanish Medes and Persians and Chaldaeans,—why, it had been done
before: did you never hear of the expedition of the Ten Thousand under
Clearchus? and how the enemy would not even come to blows with them,
but ran away before they were within bow-shot?
_Alex_. Still, there were the Scythians, father, and the Indian
elephants; they were no joke. And _my_ conquests were not gained by
dissension or treachery; I broke no oath, no promise, nor ever
purchased victory at the expense of honour. As to the Greeks, most of
them joined me without a struggle; and I dare say you have heard how I
handled Thebes.
_Phil_. I know all about that; I had it from Clitus, whom you ran
through the body, in the middle of dinner, because he presumed to
mention my achievements in the same breath with yours. They tell me too
that you took to aping the manners of your conquered Medes; abandoned
the Macedonian cloak in favour of the _candys_, assumed the upright
tiara, and exacted oriental prostrations from Macedonian freemen! This
is delicious. As to your brilliant matches, and your beloved
Hephaestion, and your scholars in lions' cages,—the less said the
better. I have only heard one thing to your credit: you respected the
person of Darius's beautiful wife, and you provided for his mother and
daughters; there you acted like a king.
_Alex_. And have you nothing to say of my adventurous spirit, father,
when I was the first to leap down within the ramparts of Oxydracae, and
was covered with wounds?
_Phil_. Not a word. Not that it is a bad thing, in my opinion, for a
king to get wounded occasionally, and to face danger at the head of his
troops: but this was the last thing that you were called upon to do.
You were passing for a God; and your being wounded, and carried off the
field on a litter, bleeding and groaning, could only excite the
ridicule of the spectators: Ammon stood convicted of quackery, his
oracle of falsehood, his priests of flattery. The son of Zeus in a
swoon, requiring medical assistance! who could help laughing at the
sight? And now that you have died, can you doubt that many a jest is
being cracked on the subject of your divinity, as men contemplate the
God's corpse laid out for burial, and already going the way of all
flesh? Besides, your achievements lose half their credit from this very
circumstance which you say was so useful in facilitating your
conquests: nothing you did could come up to your divine reputation.
_Alex_. The world thinks otherwise. I am ranked with Heracles and
Dionysus; and, for that matter, I took Aornos, which was more than
either of them could do.
_Phil_. There spoke the son of Ammon. Heracles and Dionysus, indeed!
You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Alexander; when will you learn to
drop that bombast, and know yourself for the shade that you are?