Dialogues of the Dead (11.5-12.3)

DIOGENES

But, most excellent son of Amphitryon, you would be right enough, if you were a body, but in fact you are a bodiless wraith. So it looks as if you’re now making Heracles triple.

HERACLES

How triple?

DIOGENES

Like this. If there’s one of him in heaven, and one here with us (that’s you the wraith), and there’s his body on Oeta, now dust, he’s now become three. You’d better start thinking what third father you’ll invent for your body.

HERACLES

You’re an impudent quibbler. Who the blazes are you?

DIOGENES

I’m the wraith of Diogenes of Sinope, but Diogenes himself isn’t “among the gods that know not death”, [*] no indeed, but in the company of the finest of the ghosts, laughing at Homer and nonsensical stories like this.

PHILIP

You can’t deny being my son now, Alexander; you wouldn’t be dead, if you were the son of Ammon.

ALEXANDER

I knew quite well myself, father, that I was the son of Philip, the son of Amyntas, but I accepted the oracle, because I thought it useful for my purposes.

PHILIP

What! Useful to allow yourself to be cheated by the prophets?

ALEXANDER

Not that, but the barbarians were terrified of me, and nobody resisted me any more; they thought they were fighting against a god, so that I conquered them the more easily.

PHILIP

What enemies did you conquer that were worth fighting? Your adversaries were always cowards, and armed with nothing better than bows and bucklers and wicker shields. But conquering Greeks, conquering Boeotians, Phocians and Athenians was a real task, and subduing Arcadian heavy troops, Thessalian horse, javelin men of Elis, and light troops from Mantinea, or Thracians, Illyrians

or Paeonians was a great achievement. But as for Medes, Persians and Chaldaeans, effeminate creatures bedecked in gold—you weren’t the first to conquer them. Don’t you know how Clearchus did so, going inland with a mere ten thousand men, and they didn’t even wait to fight at close quarters, but fled before they were in bow-shot?

ALEXANDER

But, father, the Scythians and the elephants of the Indians are not to be despised, and yet I won my victories over them without sowing dissension, or using bribery and treachery. I never went back on an oath or a promise, or broke faith to gain a victory, and, though I took over most of the Greeks without bloodshed, perhaps you’ve heard how I punished the Thebans.

PHILIP

I know all that; I was told by Clitus, whom you killed at dinner, by running him through with a spear, because he dared to praise me rather than your achievements.