• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 558 0

sent Leonidas “five hundred talents’ weight of frankincense and an hundred of myrrh.” Alexander conquered Persia and Egypt, and led his army as far as India and Afghanistan. At the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, he is supposed to have asked whether any of Philip’s murderers had gone unpunished, and whether Philip was really his father. He strove to synthesize Eastern and Western cultures, adopting Persian dress and manners. His behaviour during his long campaigns became increasingly erratic: he drank heavily, suffered fits of violent rage followed by crippling depression and guilt, and refused to go home. He took two wives, and died in Babylon of a stomach ailment at the age of thirty-two. Ptolemy became one of Alexander’s greatest generals and later ruled Egypt, where he established the Ptolemaic line of rulers that ended, in Roman times, with the death of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter from the bite of an asp. Hephaestion remained Alexander’s constant companion and died in battle scant weeks before Alexander himself. Callisthenes accompanied Alexander on his campaigns as a historian, but lost favour after criticizing Alexander for accepting obeisance from his soldiers in the Eastern fashion. The ancient biographer Diogenes Laërtius says Callisthenes was “confined in an iron cage and carried about until he became infested with vermin through lack of proper attention; and finally he was thrown to a lion and so met his end.” Arrhidaeus became regent of Macedonia during Alexander’s long absence in Asia, and king after his death. He was assisted by the aging general Antipater. Olympias quarrelled frequently with Antipater and eventually had Arrhidaeus murdered so she herself could serve as regent.

Aristotle returned to Athens to direct his own school, the Lyceum, until a rise in anti-Macedonian sentiment following Alexander’s death forced him to leave that city a second time. He spent his final year at the Macedonian garrison at Chalcis in Euboea, where he died at the age of sixty-one.

Aristotle’s will survives:

All will be well; but, in case anything should happen, Aristotle has made these dispositions. Antipater is to be executor in all matters and in general; but, until Nicanor shall arrive, Aristomenes, Timarchus, Hipparchus, Dioteles and (if he consent and if circumstances permit him) Theophrastus shall take charge as well of Herpyllis and the children as of the property. And when the girl [his daughter Pythias] shall be grown up she shall be given in marriage to Nicanor; but if anything happen to the girl (which heaven forbid and no such thing will happen) before her marriage, or when she is married but before there are children, Nicanor shall have full powers, both with regard to the child and with regard to everything else, to administer in a manner worthy both of himself and of us. Nicanor shall take charge of the girl and of the boy Nicomachus as he shall think fit in all that concerns them as if he were father and brother. And if anything should happen to Nicanor (which heaven forbid!) either before he marries the girl, or when he has married her but before there are children, any arrangements that he may make shall be valid. And if Theophrastus is willing to live with her, he shall have the same rights as Nicanor. Otherwise the executors in consultation with Antipater shall administer as regards the daughter and the boy as seems to them to be best. The executors and Nicanor, in memory of me and of the steady affection which Herpyllis has borne towards me, shall take care of her in every other respect and, if she desires to be married, shall see that she be given to one not unworthy; and besides what she has already received they shall give her a talent of silver out of the estate and three handmaids whomsoever she shall choose besides the maid she has at present and the man-servant Pyrrhaeus; and if she chooses to remain at Chalcis, the lodge by the garden, if in Stageira, my father’s house. Whichever of these two houses she chooses, the executors shall furnish with such furniture as they