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think proper and as Herpyllis herself may approve. Nicanor shall take charge of the boy Myrmex, that he be taken to his own friends in a manner worthy of me with the property of his which we received. Ambracis shall be given her freedom, and on my daughter’s marriage shall receive 500 drachmas and the maid whom she now has. And to Thale shall be given, in addition to the maid whom she has and who was bought, a thousand drachmas and a maid. And Simon, in addition to the money before paid to him towards another servant, shall either have a servant purchased for him or receive a further sum of money. And Tycho, Philo, Olympias, and his child shall have their freedom when my daughter is married. None of the servants who waited upon me shall be sold but they shall continue to be employed; and when they arrive at the proper age they shall have their freedom if they deserve it. My executors shall see to it when the images which Gryllion has been commissioned to execute are finished, that they be set up, namely that of Nicanor, that of Proxenus, which it was my intention to have executed, and that of Nicanor’s mother; also they shall set up the bust which has been executed of Arimnestus, to be a memorial of him seeing that he died childless, and shall dedicate my mother’s statue to Demeter at Nemea or wherever they think best. And wherever they bury me, there the bones of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her own instructions. And to commemorate Nicanor’s safe return, as I vowed on his behalf, they shall set up in Stageira stone statues of life size to Zeus and Athena the Saviours.

Acknowledgements

MANY THANKS TO Denise Bukowski and Anne Collins. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.

The following books were particularly helpful: for Macedonian history, Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, N.G.L. Hammond and G. T. Griffith’s A History of Macedonia Volume II: 550–336 BC and The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume IV: The Fourth Century BC; for ancient medicine, Hippocratic Writings, G.E.R. Lloyd, editor, translated by J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann; for Aristotle’s life and thought, Werner Jaeger’s Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, translated by Richard Robinson; Jonathan Barnes’s Aristotle: A Brief Introduction; W. T. Jones’s A History of Western Philosophy: The Classical Mind; and Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. For translations of Aristotle’s work, I have relied primarily on the Loeb Classical Library series and Penguin Classics. The translation of Aristotle’s will, above, is R. D. Hick’s (Loeb Classical Library).

For a fictional account of Aristotle’s time in Macedon from Alexander’s perspective, see Mary Renault’s excellent 1969 novel Fire from Heaven.

The translations I have quoted directly are Meno by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett; Bacchae by Euripides, translated by Kenneth Cavander; and Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. The epigraph is from Plutarch’s Lives: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume, Dryden translation, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. Carolus, Philes, Illaeus, Athea, the medics, the horses, and the groom are fictional creations. Scholars will note that I have omitted the philosopher Theophrastus, a follower of Aristotle, who is thought to have accompanied him to Macedonia. Scholars will note, too, that I have delayed Speusippus’s death for the sake of narrative convenience. Scholars will turn purple over my sending Aristotle to Chaeronea. There is no evidence, in his or any other writings, of his presence there.

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A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANNABEL LYON’S short-story collection, Oxygen, and book of novellas, The Best Thing for You, were published in Canada to wide acclaim. Her juvenile novel, All-Season Edie, has been translated into three languages. Her first novel, The Golden Mean,