Alexander   

ALEXANDER

IT being my purpose to write the lives of Alexander the king, and of
Caesar, by whom Pompey was destroyed, the multitude of their great
actions affords so large a field that I were to blame if I should
not by way of apology forewarn my reader that I have chosen rather
to epitomize the most celebrated parts of their story, than to
insist at large on every particular circumstance of it. It must be
borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives. And
the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the
clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of
less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their
characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest
armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as
portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the
face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the
body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the
marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavour by
these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty
matters and great battles to be treated of by others.
It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander
descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus
on the mother's side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when
he was quite young, fell in love there with Olympias, in company
with whom he was initiated in the religious ceremonies of the country,
and her father and mother being both dead, soon after, with the
consent of her brother, Arymbas, he married her. The night before
the consummation of their marriage, she dreamed that a thunderbolt
fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose divided flames
dispersed themselves all about, and then were extinguished. And
Philip, some time after he was married, dreamt that he sealed up his
wife's body with a seal, whose impression, as be fancied, was the
figure of a lion. Some of the diviners interpreted this as a warning
to Philip to look narrowly to his wife; but Aristander of Telmessus,
considering how unusual it was to seal up anything that was empty,
assured him the meaning of his dream was that the queen was with child
of a boy, who would one day prove as stout and courageous as a lion.
Once, moreover, a serpent was found lying by Olympias as she slept,
which more than anything else, it is said, abated Philip's passion for
her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress, or thought she had
commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as excluded, he was
ever after less fond of her conversation. Others say, that the women
of this country having always been extremely addicted to the
enthusiastic Orphic rites, and the wild worship of Bacchus (upon which
account they were called Clodones, and Mimallones), imitated in many
things the practices of the Edonian and Thracian women about Mount
Haemus, from whom the word threskeuein seems to have been derived,
as a special term for superfluous and over-curious forms of adoration;
and that Olympias, zealously, affecting these fanatical and
enthusiastic inspirations, to perform them with more barbaric dread,
was wont in the dances proper to these ceremonies to have great tame
serpents about her, which sometimes creeping out of the ivy in the
mystic fans, sometimes winding themselves about the sacred spears, and
the women's chaplets, made a spectacle which men could not look upon
without terror.
Philip, after this vision, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to consult
the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform
sacrifice, and henceforth pay particular honour, above all other gods,
to Ammon; and was told he should one day lose that eye with which he
presumed to peep through that chink of the door, when he saw the
god, under the form of a serpent, in the company of his wife.
Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his
way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his