At Issus he was run through the thigh with a sword by Darius (as Chares
relates), who encountered him hand to hand. Alexander also himself,
writing the truth with all sincerity to Antipater, said, It was my
fortune to be wounded with a poniard in the thigh, but no ill symptoms
attended it either when it was newly done or afterwards during the
cure. Another time, among the Malli he was wounded with an arrow two
cubits in length, that went in at his breast and came out at his neck,
as Aristobulus relates. Crossing the Tanais against the Scythians and
winning the field, he pursued the flying enemy a hundred and fifty
furlongs, though at the same time laboring with a dysentery”.
10. “Well contrived, vain Fortune! to advance and aggrandize Alexander
by lancing, broaching, boring every part of his body. Not like
Minerva,—who, to save Menelaus, directed the dart against the most
impenetrable parts of his armor, blunting the force of the weapon with
his breastplate, belt, and scarf, so that it only glanced upon his
skin, and drew forth two or three drops of blood,—but contrariwise,
thou hast exposed his principal parts naked to mischief, driving the
wounds through the very bones, rounding every corner of his body,
besieging the eyes, undermining the pursuing feet, stopping the
torrent of victory, and disappointing the prosecution of noble designs.
For my part, I know no prince to whom Fortune ever was more unkind,
though she has been envious and severe enough to several. However,
other princes she destroyed with a swift and rapid destruction, as with
a whirlwind; but in her hatred against Alexander she prolonged her
malice, and persisted still implacable and inexorable, as she showed
herself to Hercules. For what Typhons and monstrous giants did she not
oppose against him? Which of his enemies did she not fortify with store
of arms, deep rivers, steep mountains, and the foreign strength of
massy elephants? Now had not Alexander been a personage of transcending
wisdom, actuated by the impulse of a more than ordinary virtue, but had
he been supported only by Fortune, he would have trusted to her as her
favorite, and spared himself the labor and the turmoil of ranging so
many armies and fighting so many battles, the toil of so many sieges
and pursuits, the vexations of revolting nations and haughty princes
not enduring the curb of foreign dominion, and all his tedious marches
into Bactria, Maracanda, and Sogdiana, among faithless and rebellious
nations, who were ever breaking out afresh with new wars, like the
Hydra putting forth a new head so soon as one was cut off.”
11. And here I may seem to utter an absurdity, but I will venture to
speak it, as being an undoubted truth; that it was by Fortune that
he came very near losing the reputation of being the son of Jupiter
Ammon. For who but one sprung from the Gods, Hercules excepted, would
ever have undertaken and finished those hazardous and toilsome labors
which he did? Yet what did Hercules do but terrify lions, pursue wild
boars, and scare birds; enjoined thereto by one evil man, that he
might not have leisure for those greater actions of punishing Antaeus
and putting an end to the murders of Busiris. But it was virtue that
enjoined Alexander to undertake that godlike labor, not covetousness
of the golden burden of ten thousand camels, not the possession of the
Median women or glorious ornaments of Persian luxury, not greediness of
the Chalybonian wine or the fish of Hyrcania, but that he might reduce
all mankind as it were into one family, under one form of government
and the same custom of intercourse and conversation. This love of
virtue was thoroughly inbred, and increased and ripened as he grew in
years; so that once being to entertain the Persian ambassadors in his
father’s absence, he never asked them any questions that savored of
boyish imbecility,—never troubled them to answer any questions about
the golden vine, the pendent gardens, or what habit the king wore,—but
still desired to be satisfied in the chiefest concerns of the empire,
what force the Persians brought into the field, and in what part of the
army the king fought; as Ulysses asked,
Where are the magazines of arms? And where
The barbed steeds provided for the war?[210]
He also enquired which were the nearest roads for them that travelled
from the sea up into the country; at all of which the ambassadors
were astonished, and said, This youth is a great prince, but ours a
rich one. No sooner was Philip interred, but his resolution hurried
him to cross the sea; and having already grasped it in his hopes
and preparations, he made all imaginable haste to set foot in Asia.
But Fortune opposed him, diverted him, and kept him back, creating
a thousand vexatious troubles to delay and stop him. First, she
contrived the Illyrian and Triballic wars, exciting to hostility the
neighboring barbarians. But they, after many dangers run and many
terrible encounters, being at length chased even as far as Scythia
beyond the river Ister, he returned back to prosecute his first
design. But then again spiteful Fortune stirred up the Thebans against
him, and entangled him in the Grecian war, and in the dire necessity of
defending himself against his fellow-countrymen and relations with fire
and sword and hideous slaughter. Which war being brought to a dreadful
end, away he presently crossed into Asia,—as Phylarchus relates, with
only thirty days’ provision; as Aristobulus reports, with seventy
talents,—having before sold and divided among his friends his own
revenues and those of his crown. Only Perdiccas refused what he offered
him, asking him at the same time what he had left for himself. And when
Alexander replied, Nothing but hopes, Then, said he, we will be content
with the same; for it is not just to accept of thy goods, but we must
wait for those of Darius.
12. What were then the hopes with which Alexander passed into
Asia? Not a vast power mustered out of populous cities, nor fleets
sailing through mountains; not whips and fetters, the instruments of
barbarians’ fury, to curb and manacle the sea. But in his small army
there was surpassing desire of glory, emulation among those of equal
age, and a noble strife to excel in honor and virtue among friends.
Then, as for himself, he carried with him all these great hopes,—piety
towards the Gods, fidelity to his friends, generous frugality,
temperance, beneficence, contempt of death, magnanimity, humanity,
decent affability, candid integrity, constancy in counsel, quickness
in execution, love of precedence in honor, and an effectual purpose
to follow the steps of virtue. And though Homer, in describing the
beauty of Agamemnon, seems not to have observed the rules of decorum or
probability in any of his three similitudes,—
Like thundering Jove’s, his awful head and eyes
The gazing crowd with majesty surprise;
In every part with form celestial graced,
His breast like Neptune’s, and like Mars his waist;[211]
yet as for Alexander, if his celestial parents formed and composed
him of several virtues, may we not conclude that he had the wisdom of
Cyrus, the temperance of Agesilaus, the foresight of Themistocles, the
skill of Philip, the daring courage of Brasidas, the shrewdness and
political skill of Pericles? Certainly, if we compare him with the most
ancient heroes, he was more temperate than Agamemnon, who preferred
a captive before his lawful wife, though but newly wedded, while
Alexander, before he was legally married, abstained from his prisoners.
He was more magnanimous than Achilles, who accepted a small sum of
money for the redemption of Hector’s dead body, while Alexander spared
no expense to adorn the funeral of Darius. Achilles accepted gifts and
bribes from his friends, as the atonement of his wrath; Alexander,
when once a victor, enriched his enemies. He was much more pious than
Diomede, who scrupled not to fight against the Gods, while Alexander
ascribed to Heaven all his successes. Finally, he was more bewailed
of his relations than Ulysses, whose mother died for grief, while the
mother of Alexander’s enemy, out of affection, bare him company in his
death.
13. In short, if Solon proved so wise a ruler by Fortune, if Miltiades
led his armies by Fortune, if Aristides was so renowned for his
justice by Fortune, then there is nothing that can be called the
work of virtue. Then is virtue only an airy fiction, and a word that
passes with some show of glory through the life of man, but feigned
and magnified by Sophists and lawgivers. But if every one of these
whom we have mentioned was wealthy or poor, weak or strong, deformed
or beautiful, long or short lived, by Fortune, but made himself a
great captain, a great lawgiver, famous for governing kingdoms and
commonwealths, by virtue and reason; then in God’s name let us compare
Alexander with the best of them. Solon by a law made a great abatement
upon the payment of the Athenians’ private debts, which he called his
burden-easing law; Alexander discharged the debts of his Macedonians at
his own expense. Pericles, laying a tax upon the Greeks, expended the
money in building temples to beautify the citadel of Athens; Alexander
sent home ten thousand talents out of the spoils of the barbarians, for
the building of temples to the Gods all over Greece. Brasidas advanced
his fame all over Greece, by breaking through the enemy’s army lying
encamped by the seaside near Methone; but when you read of that daring
jump of Alexander’s (so astonishing to the hearers, much more to them
that beheld it) when he threw himself from the walls of the Oxydracian
metropolis among the thickest of the enemy, assailing him on every
side with spears, darts, and swords, tell me where you meet with such
an example of matchless prowess, or to what you can compare it but to
a gleam of lightning violently flashing from a cloud, and impetuously
driven by the wind? Such was the appearance of Alexander, as he leaped
like an apparition to the earth, glittering in his flaming armor. The
enemy, at first amazed and struck with horror, retreated and fell back;
till seeing him single they came on again with a redoubled force.
Now was not this a great and splendid testimony of Fortune’s kindness,
to throw him into an inconsiderable and barbarous town, and there
to enclose and immure him a prey to worthless enemies? And when his
friends made haste to his assistance, to break the scaling-ladders,
and to overthrow and cast them down? Of three that got upon the walls
and flung themselves down in his defence, endearing Fortune presently
despatched one; the other, pierced and struck with a shower of darts,
could only be said to live. Without, the Macedonians foamed and filled
the air with helpless cries, having no engines at hand. All they could
do was to dig down the walls with their swords, tear out the stones
with their nails, and almost to rend them out with their teeth. All
this while, Alexander, Fortune’s favorite, whom she always covered with
her protection, like a wild beast entangled in a snare, stood deserted
and destitute of all assistance, not laboring for Susa, Babylon,
Bactria, or to vanquish the mighty Porus. For to miscarry in great and
glorious attempts is no reproach; but so malicious was Fortune, so kind
to the barbarians, such a hater of Alexander, that she aimed not only
at his life and body, but at bereaving him of his honor and sullying
his renown. For Alexander’s fall had never been so much lamented had he
perished near Euphrates or Hydaspes by the hand of Darius, or by the
horses, swords, and axes of the Persians fighting with all their might
and main in defence of their king, or had he tumbled from the walls of
Babylon, and all his hopes together. Thus Pelopidas and Epaminondas
fell; whose death was to be ascribed to their virtue, not to such a
poor misfortune as this. But what was the singular act of Fortune’s
favor which we are now enquiring into? What indeed, but in the farthest
nook of a barbarous country, on the farther side of a river, within
the walls of a miserable village, to pen up and hide the lord and
king of the world, that he might there perish shamefully at the hands
of barbarians, who should knock him down and pelt him with whatever
came next to hand? There the first blow he received with a battle-axe
cleft his helmet and entered his skull; at the same time another shot
him with an Indian arrow in the breast near one of his paps, the head
being four fingers broad and five in length, which, together with the
weight of the shaft which projected from the wound, did not a little
torment him. But, what was worst of all, while he was thus defending
himself from his enemies before him, when he had laid a bold attempter
that approached his person sprawling upon the earth with his sword, a
fellow from a mill close by came behind him, and with a great iron
pestle gave him such a bang upon the neck as deprived him for the
present both of his senses and his sight. However, his virtue did not
yet forsake him, but supplied him still with courage, infusing strength
withal and speed into those about him. For Ptolemy, Limnaeus, and
Leonnatus, and some others who had mounted or broken through the wall,
made to his succor, and stood about him like so many bulwarks of his
virtue; out of mere affection and kindness to their sovereign exposing
their bodies, their faces, and their lives in his defence. For it is
not Fortune that overrules men to run the hazard of death for brave
princes; but the love of virtue allures them—as natural affection
charms and entices bees—to surround and guard their chief commander.
What person then, at that time beholding in security this strange
adventure, would not have confessed that he had seen a desperate combat
of Fortune against virtue, and that the barbarians were undeservedly
superior through Fortune’s help, but that the Greeks resisted beyond
imagination through the force of virtue? So that if the barbarians had
vanquished, it had been the act of Fortune or of some evil genius or
divine retribution; but as the Greeks became the victors, they owed
their conquest to their virtue, their prowess, their friendship and
fidelity to each other. For these were all the life-guard Alexander had
at that time; Fortune having interposed a wall between him and all his
other forces, so that neither fleets nor armies, cavalry nor infantry,
could stand him in any stead. Therefore the Macedonians routed the
barbarians, and buried those that fell under the ruins of their own
town. But this little availed Alexander; for he was carried off with
the dart sticking in his breast, having now a war in his own bowels,
while the arrow in his bosom was a kind of cord, or rather nail, that
was driven through his breast-plate and fastened it to his body. When
they went about to dress him, the forked shape of the iron head would
not permit the surgeons to draw it forth from the root of the wound,
being fixed in the solid parts of the breast that fortify the heart.
Nor durst they attempt to cut away the shaft that stuck out, fearing
they should put him to an excess of torment by the motion of the iron
in the cleft of the bone, and cause a new flux of blood not easy to be
stopped. Alexander, observing their hesitation and delay, endeavored
himself with a little knife to cut off the shaft close to the skin;
but his hand failed him, being seized with a heavy numbness by reason
of the inflammation of the wound. Thereupon he commanded the surgeons
and those that stood about him to try the same thing themselves and not
to be afraid, giving them all the encouragement he could. Those that
wept he upbraided for their weakness; others he called deserters, that
refused him their assistance in such a time of need. At length, calling
to his friends, he said: Let no one of you fear for me; for how shall I
believe you to be contemners of death, when you betray yourselves to be
afraid of mine?[212]