Alexander   

However, his violent thirst after and passion for learning, which were
once implanted, still grew up with him, and never decayed; as
appears by his veneration of Anaxarchus, by the present of fifty
talents which he sent to Xenocrates, and his particular care and
esteem of Dandamis and Calanus.
While Philip went on his expedition against the Byzantines, he
left Alexander, then sixteen years old, his lieutenant in Macedonia,
committing the charge of his seal to him; who, not to sit idle,
reduced the rebellious Maedi, and having taken their chief town by
storm, drove out the barbarous inhabitants, and planting a colony of
several nations in their room, called the place after his own name,
Alexandropolis. At the battle of Chaeronea, which his father fought
against the Grecians, he is said to have been the first man that
charged the Thebans' sacred band. And even in my remembrance, there
stood an old oak near the river Cephisus, which people called
Alexander's oak, because his tent was pitched under it. And not far
off are to be seen the graves of the Macedonians who fell in that
battle. This early bravery made Philip so fond of him, that nothing
pleased him more than to hear his subjects call himself their
general and Alexander their king.
But the disorders of his family, chiefly caused by his new marriages
and attachments (the troubles that began in the women's chambers
spreading, so to say, to the whole kingdom), raised various complaints
and differences between them, which the violence of Olympias, a
woman of a jealous and implacable temper, made wider, by
exasperating Alexander against his father. Among the rest, this
accident contributed most to their falling out. At the wedding of
Cleopatra, whom Philip fell in love with and married, she being much
too young for him, her uncle Attalus in his drink desired the
Macedonians would implore the gods to give them a lawful successor
to the kingdom by his niece. This so irritated Alexander, that
throwing one of the cups at his head, "You villain," said he, "what,
am I then a bastard?" Then Philip, taking Attalus's part, rose up
and would have run his son through; but by good fortune for them both,
either his over-hasty rage, or the wine he had drunk, made his foot
slip, so that he fell down on the floor. At which Alexander
reproachfully insulted over him: "See there," said he, "the man who
makes preparations to pass out of Europe into Asia, overturned in
passing from one seat to another." After this debauch, he and his
mother Olympias withdrew from Philip's company, and when he had placed
her in Epirus, he himself retired into Illyria.
About this time, Demaratus the Corinthian, an old friend of the
family, who had the freedom to say anything among them without
offence, coming to visit Philip, after the first compliments and
embraces were over, Philip asked him whether the Grecians were at
amity with one another. "It ill becomes you," replied Demaratus, "to
be so solicitous about Greece, when you have involved your own house
in so many dissensions and calamities." He was so convinced by this
seasonable reproach, that he immediately sent for his son home, and by
Demaratus's mediation prevailed with him to return. But this
reconciliation lasted not long; for when Pixodorus, viceroy of
Caria, sent Aristocritus to treat for a match between his eldest
daughter and Philip's son, Arrhidaeus, hoping by this alliance to
secure his assistance upon occasion, Alexander's mother, and some
who pretended to be his friends, presently filled his head with
tales and calumnies, as if Philip, by a splendid marriage and
important alliance, were preparing the way for settling the kingdom
upon Arrhidaeus. In alarm at this, he despatched Thessalus, the tragic
actor, into Caria, to dispose Pixodorus to slight Arrhidaeus, both
illegitimate and a fool, and rather to accept of himself for his
son-in-law. This proposition was much more agreeable to Pixodorus than
the former. But Philip, as soon as he was made acquainted with this
transaction, went to his son's apartment, taking with him Philotas,
the son of Parmenio, one of Alexander's intimate friends and