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as you did, and entertaining an excessive affection for Hephæstion. One circumstance only that I have heard I commend your keeping your hands off the wife of Dareius, who was a beautiful woman, and your taking care of his mother and his daughters: for that was conduct becoming a prince.

Alexander. But my eagerness to incur dangers, father, do you not praise, and the fact that at Oxydrake I was the first to leap down within the fortifications, and received so many wounds ? 3

Philip. I don't commend this conduct, Alexander, not because I don't think it to be honourable for the king sometimes to get wounded, and to incur danger on behalf of his army, but because such conduct least of all suited your character. For if, with the reputation of being divine, you had ever received a wound, and they had seen you carried out of the battle in a litter, flowing with blood, groaning by reason of the pain from the wound, that had been subject for ridicule to the spectators, how even

of this display of courage was pardoned by his king. Curtius (De Rebus Gestis Alex. viii.) assigns the origin of the legend to an encounter of Lysimachus with a lion of heroic size in Syria. Justin (Hist. Philip, xv. 3), a later writer, credits the more sensational account.

1 With Roxana, the Baktrian princess, captured in the Fort of Sogdiana (327 B.C.). His second wife, Stateira, a daughter of the Persian king Dareius, was afterwards treacherously murdered at Babylon by her rival Roxana, who herself, with her son, was murdered by Kassander in 311 B.C.

2 A native of Pella in Macedonia, one of the two especial "favourites" of Alexander, with whom he had been brought up as a foster-brother. He died at Ekbatana, in 325. The extravagance of the grief and mourning of Alexander is well known. Horses were shorn, the walls of cities pulled down, and the physician whose accidental neglect had caused or hastened the favourite's death was crucified. Upon his tomb 10,000 talents (about two millions and a half) were expended. The other chief favourite, Kraterus, between whom and Hephæstion frequent quarrels arose, as related by Plutarch (’Aλégardpoç) served as a principal medium between his royal patron and the Macedonian officers, as Hephæstion for the Orientals.

3 Oxydrake, a people of Hindustan inhabiting what is now called the Punjaub. Arrian (vi. 11) rejects the story. Diodorus and Plutarch join together the Malli and Oxydraka on the occasion. Plutarch tells us that the breaking of the scaling-ladder forced Alexander to leap down into the midst of the enemy, who were so much alarmed by the flashing of his armour that they took to flight.

Ammon had been convicted of being a mere juggler and false prophet, and the prophets of being mere flatterers. Or who would not have laughed at seeing the son of Zeus swooning, begging the aid of his physicians? For now, when you are dead in fact, do you not suppose there are many who make cutting sarcasms upon that pretension of yours, when they see the corpse of the god lying stretched out, already clammy with decay and swollen out, according to the law of all bodies? Besides, even that, which you were saying was of service to you, Alexander, the fact of your easily conquering by this means-it deprived you of much of the glory of your actual successes; for, thought to be achieved by a divine being, anything would appear to fall short of what it ought to have been.

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Alexander. These are not the thoughts men have about me-on the contrary, they put me in rivalry with Herakles and Dionysus; indeed, I was the only one to conquer that famous Aornos,2 neither of them having got possession of it.

Philip. Do you observe that you are talking of these exploits as though you were son of Ammon, in comparing yourself with Herakles and Dionysus? And do you not blush, Alexander, and will you not unlearn even that puffedup pride of yours, and know and perceive yourself to be

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now a mere dead man ? 3

1 Because those divinities had preceded him in the invasion of India. From the Nysa in the Punjaub, Dionysus, according to some authorities, derived his name.

2 A hill-fort on the Indus, ǹ äoрvoç πέтрa, "the rock inaccessible to birds." See Curtius, De Gestis Alex. viii. 11.

Among the modern imitators of Lucian, Fontenelle and Lord Lyttelton have treated this subject not unworthily of their master. In the dialogue, Alexandre et Phrine (Phryne), the celebrated original of the Aphrodite Anadyomene, after a comparison of her conquests to those of her quondam admirer, concludes: "Quand on ne veut que faire du bruit, ce ne sont pas les caractères les plus raisonables qui y sont les plus propres." She also makes the, perhaps, too philosophic reflection : "Si je retranchois de votre gloire ce qui ne vous en appartient pas, si je donnois à vos soldats, à vos capitaines, au hazard même, la part qui leur en est düe, croyez-vous que vous n'y perdissiez guère?"-Dialogues des Morts. Cf. Lyttelton's Alexander the Great and Charles XII.

XV.

ANTILOCHUS, THE SON OF NESTOR (ONE OF THE GREEK HEROES WHO FELL DURING THE SIEGE OF ILIUM), REMONSTRATES WITH HIS FRIEND ACHILLEUS FOR HAVING GIVEN UTTERANCE TO THE WORDS PUT INTO HIS MOUTH BY THE POET OF THE ODYSSEY-THAT HE WOULD RATHER BE A SLAVE ON EARTH THAN KING IN HADES-SHOWS HIM THE USELESSNESS OF REGRETS IN THE UNDER-WORLD, AND, AT THE SAME TIME, ATTEMPTS TO CONSOLE HIM WITH THE REFLECTION THAT HE IS FAR FROM BEING ALONE IN HIS FATE. ACHILLEUS TAKES THE ADMONITION OF HIS FRIEND IN GOOD PART, BUT REFUSES TO BE COMFORTED.

Antilochus and Achilleus.

Antilochus. What sort of language was that, Achilleus, you addressed to Odysseus the day before yesterday about death; how ignoble and unworthy of both your teachers, Cheiron and Phoenix! 1 For I overheard you, when you were saying that you would wish to be a servant, bound to the soil, in the house of any poor man "whose means of support were small," rather than to be king over all the dead. These sentiments, indeed, some abject Phrygian, cowardly, and dishonourably clinging to life, might, perhaps, be allowed to utter, but for the son of Peleus, the most rashly daring of all heroes, to entertain so ignoble thoughts about himself, is a considerable disgrace, and a contradiction to your actions in life; you who, though you might

1 Cheiron, the most renowned of the Kentaurs, had instructed the father of Achilleus also in the art of obtaining an immortal wife, Thetis. He was slain accidentally by Herakles with his poisoned arrows. Phoenix, the Dolopian prince, who had been forced to flee from his country on account of having seduced his father's mistress, and had found refuge at the court of Peleus, was appointed by him his son's

tutor.

2 An allusion to the confession of Achilleus to Odysseus in Hades :Βουλοίμην κ ̓ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ ̓Ανδρὶ παρ' ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη, *Η πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.

Od. xi. 488-490; Cf. Æn. vi.; Plato, ПIoλ. iii. (ad init.), deprecates the sentiment.

have reigned ingloriously a length of time in Pthiotis, of your own accord preferred death with fair fame.1

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Achilleus. But, O son of Nestor, at that time I was still unacquainted with the state of things here, and was ignorant which of those two conditions was the better, and used to prefer that wretched paltry glory to existence; but now I already perceive how profitless it is, even though the people above ground shall parrot-like sing its praises to the utmost of their power. With the dead there is perfect sameness of dignity; and neither those good looks of mine, Antilochus, nor my powers of strength are here: but we lie all alike under the same murky gloom, and in no way superior one to the other; and neither the dead of the Trojans have fear of me, nor do those of the Achæans pay me any court: but there is complete and entire equality in address, and a dead man is the same all the world over"both the coward and the brave." 3 These thoughts cause me anguish, and I am grieved that I am not alive and serving as a hireling.

Antilochus. Yet what can one do, Achilleus ? For such is the will of Nature-that all certainly die: so one must abide by her ordinance, and not be grieved at the constituted order of things. Besides, you observe how many of us, your friends, are about you here. And, after a short space of time, Odysseus, too, will certainly arrive; and community in misfortune, and the fact that one is not alone in suffering, brings comfort. You see Herakles and Meleager;*

1 Yet the invulnerable hero of the Iliad frequently bewails his apportioned brief career-μινυνθάδιον περ ἔοντα.

2 Elsewhere termed by Lucian iσoriuía. Cf. Ecclesiastes, passim. Seneca, De Ira, iii. 43. "Venit ecce Mors, quæ nos pares faciat. Ridere solemus," he proceeds, "inter matutina arenæ spectacula, tauri et ursi pugnam inter se colligatorum: quos cum alter alterum vexârit, suus confector expectet. Idem facimus: aliquem nobiscum alligatum lacessimus, &c."

3 Ἐν δὲ ἰῇ τιμῇ ἡμὲν κακος ἠδὲ καὶ ἐσθλός, the words of Achilleus to Odysseus ('IX. ix. 319).

The principal hero in the famous Calydonian hunt of the wild boar, whose conquest needed all the chivalry of Hellas; who in fleetness, if not in prowess, were surpassed by the virgin Atalanta, with whom at first they had refused to associate in that arduous enterprise. The Calydonian prince had, also, been one of the Argonautic heroes. See Apollonius, "Apy. i. and cf. "IX. ix. 525-600.

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and other admired heroes, who, I imagine, would not accept the offer of a return to the upper regions, if one were to send them back to be hired servants to starvelings and beggars.

Achilleus. Your exhortation is friendly and well meant: but, I know not how, the remembrance of things in life troubles me, and I imagine it does each one of you, too. However, if you do not confess it openly, you are in that respect worse off, in that you endure it in silence.

Antilochus. No, rather better off, Achilleus, for we see the uselessness of speaking about it. And we have come to the resolution to keep silence, and to bear, and put up with it, not to incur ridicule, as you do, by indulging such wishes.

XVI.

DIOGENES, THE CYNIC, EXPRESSES HIS ASTONISHMENT TO HERAKLES AT SEEING THE SON OF ZEUS IN HADES, LIKE THE REST. THAT HERO PRETENDS THAT HIS ACTUAL SELF IS IN HEAVEN, WHILE IT IS HIS eidolon, OR PHANTOM, WHICH IS AMONG THE DEAD.

Diogenes and Herakles.

Diogenes. Is not this Herakles? It is, indeed, no other, by Herakles!-the bow, the club, the lion's skin, the bulk -it is Herakles all over. Then, with all his being son of Zeus, has he died for good and all? Tell me, "O glorious victor," 1 are you a dead man ? for I used to offer sacrifice to you above ground, as if you were divine.

Herakles. And you did perfectly right; for the true

1 Καλλίνικε. So called from a hymn to him by Archilochus, sung at the Olympic Games, beginning with Καλλίνικ ̓ ἄναξ Ηράκλεις. Bourdin.

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