reason. The amount of protection was fixed by Aristides the Just.
12 This had nothing to do with the trial for embezzlement. That was something else again.
13 Many persons believe he built the Acropolis on the Parthenon. I have tried to think of some way of preventing this error. There is no way.
14 Pericles was very fond of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides because he could not see jokes either.
15 Euripides passed his last years in Macedonia, his wife having fallen in love with Cephisophon, an actor. Many Greek women were mentally undeveloped.
16 People who talk like that are called philosophers.
17 Back of every great man is always a woman to instruct him in something. Then he does just the opposite.
18 This has been called the Golden Age.
19 Indeed, we had some such movement in our own day. How did that turn out, anyway?
20 The Greeks did nothing to excess, unless they were crazy about it.
21 Women were also admitted to the tragedies at the theatre. They were always late.
22 He had to be legalized by a special vote of the Assembly, all on account of that law his father had passed in 451 B.C. It shows you never know.
23 A correspondent asks why Socrates was always hanging around corners with a bevy of handsome young Greeks. He was waiting for a streetcar.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ALEXANDER III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous.1 He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time.2 He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?3
Alexander’s father was Philip II of Macedonia. Philip was a man of broad vision. He drank a good deal and had eight wives. He subdued the Greeks after they had knocked themselves out in the Peloponnesian War and appointed himself Captain General so that he could uphold the ideals of Hellas. The main ideal of Hellas was to get rid of Philip, but he didn’t count that one. He was assassinated in 336 B.C. by a friend of his wife Olympias.4
Olympias, the mother of Alexander, was slightly abnormal. She was an Epirote. She kept so many sacred snakes in her bedroom that Philip was afraid to go home after his drinking bouts.5 She told Alexander that his real father was Zeus Ammon, or Amon, a Græco-Egyptian god in the form of a snake. Alexander made much of this and would sit up all night boasting about it.6 He once executed thirteen Macedonians for saying that he was not the son of a serpent.
As a child Alexander was like most other children, if you see what I mean. He had blue eyes, curly red hair, and a pink-and-white complexion, and he was small for his age. At twelve he tamed Bucephalus, his favorite horse. In the same year he playfully pushed Nectanebo, a visiting astronomer, into a deep pit and broke his neck while he was lecturing on the stars. It has never been entirely proved that Alexander shoved the old man. The fact remains that they were standing by the pit and all of a sudden Nectanebo wasn’t there any more.
For three years, until he was sixteen, Alexander was educated by Aristotle, who seems to have avoided pits and the edges of roofs. Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons. He also said that the sheatfish is subject to sunstroke because it swims too near the surface of the water. I doubt it. In spite of his vast reputation, Aristotle was not a perfect instructor of youth. He had a tendency to wander, in the classroom and elsewhere. He didn’t keep his eye on the ball.
With a teacher like that, one’s values might well become warped. On the other hand, even Aristotle couldn’t help some people.7 As soon as he had finished reading the Nicomachean Ethics, Alexander began killing right and left. He exterminated the Theban Sacred Band at the Battle of Chæronea while his father was still alive, and then got some fine practice killing Thracians, Illyrians, and such others as he could find around home.8
He was now ready for his real career, so he decided to go to Asia where there were more people and more of a variety. After killing a few relatives who might have claimed the throne,9 he declared war on Persia and crossed the Hellespont to spread Hellenic civilization. The Greeks were embarrassed about this, but they couldn’t stop him. They just had to grin and bear it.
Asia proved to be a regular paradise. In no time at all Alexander had killed Medes, Persians, Pisidians, Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and miscellaneous Mesopotamians.10 One day he would bag some Galatians, the next he would have to be content with a few Armenians. Later, he got Bactrians, Sogdians, Arachosians, and some rare Uxians. Even then, an Uxian, dead or alive, was a collector’s item.11
Alexander put an end to the Persian Empire by defeating Darius in three important battles. This Darius was not the Darius, but only Darius Codomannus, or Darius III, who had been placed on the throne by Bagoas, a eunuch.12 Bagoas had poisoned Artaxerxes III and his son Arses and had in turn been poisoned by Darius, just to be on the safe side.13 Darius was easy to defeat because you could always count on his doing exactly the wrong thing. Then he would whip up his horses and try to escape in his slow-motion chariot. He did this once too often.
The Persian army was all out of date. It relied chiefly upon the Kinsmen, who were allowed to kiss the King, and the Apple Bearers, or royal guard, who had golden apples on the handles of their spears. Darius believed that if he kept adding more Apple Bearers to his army the Persian Empire would never fall. But life is not like that. Apple Bearers are all right, if you know where to stop. After a certain point is reached, however, the law of diminishing returns sets in and you simply have too many Apple Bearers.
Darius also had chariots armed with scythes on each side for mowing down his enemies. These did not work out, since Alexander and his soldiers refused to go and stand in front of the scythes. Darius had overlooked the facts that scythed chariots are effective only against persons who have lost the power of locomotion and that such persons are more likely to be home in bed than fighting battles in Asia.
Alexander’s best men were his Companions, or heavy cavalry, and his Phalangites, or improved Hoplites, who composed the Macedonian phalanx. There was some doubt about what the Hypaspists were expected to do. They acted as Peltasts at times and they could always run errands. Alexander never advanced without covering his rear. The Persians never bothered about that, and you see what happened to them.
At the Battle of Issus, Alexander captured Darius’ wife and two daughters and the royal harem of 360 concubines14 and 400 eunuchs. He snubbed the harem, as did his inseparable friend and roommate Hephæstion, but the soldiers obtained many beautiful rugs. Alexander’s project more than paid for itself, for he acquired valuables worth 160,000 Persian talents, or $280,000,000 in the cities of Susa and Persepolis alone. Unfortunately, much of this was stolen by Harpalus, a cultured Greek serving as imperial treasurer.
Alexander spent the next nine years fighting more battles, marching and countermarching, killing
