Furthermore, you discarded the Macedonian cloak, they tell me, for a Median doublet, and took to a tiara worn upright on your head, and expected Macedonians, free men, to bow down before you. And, most ridiculous thing of all, you aped the habits of your defeated foes! I won’t mention your other activities—how you locked up educated This happened to Lysimachus according to Justin, XV, 3, etc. Curtius, however, VIII, 1, 17 is sceptical. The scholiast on the following dialogue says this was the cause of the death of Callisthenes, but cf. Plutarch, Alexander, 56, 4, Arrian, Anabasis, IV, 14, 3. men along with lions, all your weddings, and your inordinate affection for Hephaestion. I’ve only heard of one thing I can praise; you kept your attentions away from Darius’ beautiful queen, Statira. and looked after his mother Sisygambis. and his daughters. He married one of these, Statira the younger, or Barsine. That was conduct befitting a king.

Don’t you praise me for my adventurous spirit, father, and for being first man to leap into the fort of the Oxydracae, and for receiving so many wounds?

I don’t. Not that I think it’s a bad thing for a king to suffer an occasional wound and to face dangers at the head of his army; but that wasn’t at all the sort of thing for you. For you were supposed to be a god, and any time you were wounded and seen being carried out of the fighting on a litter, streaming with blood and groaning from your wound, the onlookers were amused to see how Ammon was being shown up as an impostor whose forecasts were false, and his prophets as mere flatterers. Who wouldn’t have been amused to see the son of Zeus fainting and calling for the assistance of the doctors? For now that you’re dead, don’t you think that there are many who wax witty about that pretence of yours, now that they see the corpse of the “god ‘” lying at full length, clammy and swollen like any other body? Besides, this policy, which you said was so useful, Alexander, the policy of gaining easy victories in this way, greatly diminished the glory of your successes. For everything seemed disappointing, when regarded as the work of a god.

People don’t think like that about me, but put me on a par with Heracles and Dionysus. And yet I alone have subdued the famous Aornos, a place captured by neither of them.

Don’t you see how you’re speaking just now like the son of Ammon, in comparing yourself to Heracles and Dionysus? Aren’t you ashamed, Alexander? Won’t you learn to forget your pride, and know yourself, and realise that you’re now dead?