Concerning the fortune or virtue of Alexander the Great. (1.1-1.2)

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg087.perseus-eng4:1.1-1.2

Refs	`{'start': {'reference': '1.1', 'human_reference': 'Chapter 1 Section 1'}, 'end': {'reference': '1.2', 'human_reference': 'Chapter 1 Section 2'}}`
Ancestors	`[{'reference': '1'}]`
Children	`[]`

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This is the oration of Fortune, asserting and challenging Alexander to be her masterpiece, and hers alone. In contradiction to which it behooves us to say something on the behalf of philosophy, or rather in the defence of Alexander himself, who cannot choose but spurn away the very thought of having received his empire as a gift at the hands of Fortune, knowing that it was so dearly bought with the price of his lost blood and many wounds, and that in gaining it,

Full many a bloody day

In toilsome fight he spent,

And many a wakeful night

In battle’s management;

[*]

and all this in opposition to armies almost irresistible, numberless nations, rivers before impassable, and rocks impenetrable; choosing, however, for his chiefest guides and counsellors prudence, endurance, fortitude, and steadiness of mind.

And now, methinks, I hear him speaking thus to Fortune, when she signalizes herself with his successes:—

Envy not my virtue, nor go about to detract from my honor. Darius was a fabric of thy own rearing, who of a servant and the king’s courier was by thee advanced to be monarch of all Persia. The same was Sardanapalus, who from a comber of purple wool was raised by thee to wear the

royal diadem. But I, subduing as I marched, from Arbela forced my passage even to Susa itself. Cilicia opened me a broad way into Egypt; and the Granicus, o’er which I passed without resistance, trampling under foot the slain carcasses of Mithridates and Spithridates, opened the way into Cilicia. Pamper up thyself, and boast thy kings that never felt a wound nor ever saw a finger bleed; for they were fortunate, it is true,—thy Ochi and thy Artaxerxes, —who were no sooner born but they were by thee established in the throne of Cyrus. But my body carries many marks of Fortune’s unkindness, who rather fought against me as an enemy than assisted me as her friend. First, among the Illyrians I was wounded in the head with a stone, and received a blow in the neck with an iron mace. Then, near the Granicus my head was a second time gashed with a barbarian scimitar; at Issus I was run through the thigh with a sword; at Gaza I was shot in the ankle with a dart; and not long after, falling heavy from my saddle, I forced my shoulder out of joint. Among the Maracadartae my shinbone was split with an arrow. The wounds I received in India and my strenuous acts of daring courage will declare the rest. Then among the Assacani I was shot through the shoulder with another arrow. Encountering the Gandridae, my thigh was wounded; and one of the Mallotes drew his bow with that force, that the welldirected arrow made way through my iron armor to lodge itself in my breast; besides the blow in my neck, when the scaling-ladders brake that were set to the walls, and Fortune left me alone, to gratify with the fall of so great a person not a renowned or illustrious enemy, but ignoble and worthless barbarians. So that had not Ptolemy covered me with his shield, and Limnaeus, after he had received a thousand wounds directed at my body, fallen dead before me; or if the Macedonians, breathing nothing but courage and their prince’s rescue, had not opened a

timely breach, that barbarous and nameless village might have proved Alexander’s tomb.

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