orphans.15 He soon grew tired of impressing Greek culture upon the Persians and attempted to impress Persian culture upon the Greeks. In an argument about this, he killed his friend Clitus, who had twice saved his life in battle. Then he wept for forty-eight hours. Alexander seldom killed his close friends unless he was drunk, and he always had a good cry afterwards.16 He was always weeping about something.17
Bucephalus died of old age and overwork in India, and the soldiers, who thought the whole business was nonsense, refused to march any farther.18 Three fourths of the soldiers died of starvation while returning through the Gedrosian Desert, but some of them finally got back to Susa and broke training. At this point Alexander and Hephæstion felt it was time to stop fooling around and get married, and they decided to marry sisters, so that their children would be cousins. Wasn’t that romantic?
The girls they chose were Statira and Drypetis, the daughters of Darius, who had been waiting around ever since the old Issus days nine years before. I never heard how these marriages turned out. All of Alexander’s biographers say that his nature was cool, if not perfectly frigid.19 He is said to have sinned occasionally, but he never quite got the hang of it. He was not unattractive, if you care for undersized blonds.20 His physique was reported to be all right, what there was of it.21 I have found no description of Hephæstion’s looks, but I gather he was tall, dark, and handsome.
Nothing much happened after the doings at Susa. Hephæstion died a few months later of drink and fever. Alexander passed away in Babylon from the same causes in the following year, 324 B.C. He was not quite thirty-three, and he had been away from home eleven years. He might have lived longer if he had not crucified his physician for failing to cure Hephæstion. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Alexander’s death left Macedonia rather at sixes and sevens. Roxana, Alexander’s Bactrian wife, had Statira and Hephæstion’s widow murdered and thrown down a well, and Sisygambis starved herself to death. Olympias executed Alexander’s illegitimate and feeble-minded half brother Arrhidæus and forced his wife to hang herself. Cassander executed Olympias, others murdered others, and it was all quite a mess.
Alexander’s empire fell to pieces at once, and nothing remained of his work except that the people he had killed were still dead. He accomplished nothing very constructive.22 True, he cut the Gordian Knot instead of untying it according to the rules. This was a silly thing to do, but the Gordian Knot itself was pretty silly. He also introduced eggplant into Europe.
Just what this distressing young man thought he was doing, and why, I really can’t say. I doubt if he could have clarified the subject to any appreciable extent. He had a habit of knitting his brows. And no wonder.
1 That is what the Macedonians called the month of Hecatombæon, Plutarch says, and he ought to know.
2 Professor F.A. Wright, in his Alexander the Great, goes so far as to call him “the greatest man that the human race has as yet produced.”
3 He spoke what was known as Attic Greek.
4 After Philip’s death, Olympias had one of his wives boiled alive. Shows what she thought of her.
5 Having real snakes at home does an alcoholic no good. It just complicates matters.
6 He got so that he believed it himself.
7 Some years later, when Aristotle asked his former pupil to find out what caused the rising of the Nile, Alexander answered correctly, stating that it was caused by rain. This pleased Aristotle very much, as he had worried about it for years and had almost given up in despair.
8 The Thebans were only Boeotians, generally regarded as oafs. Plutarch, however, denies this with some heat. Plutarch was a Boeotian.
9 He had also connived at the liquidation of Philip.
10 “He boldly proclaimed the brotherhood of man.” – F.A. Wright.
11 The Uxians, or Huxians, may have been the ancestors of the Loories.
12 The name Bagoas is a shortened form of Bagadata, meaning Given by God. It was often applied to eunuchs for reasons I have been unable to check.
13 Xerxes I was poisoned by the eunuch Aspamithres. Eunuchs were widely employed as royal advisers, as they had more time to think.
14 Among the Persians, sixty or any multiple of sixty was regarded as lucky.
15 He was often extremely brutal to his captives, whom he sold into slavery, tortured to death, or forced to learn Greek.
16 He evened an old score by hanging the historian Callisthenes, a grand-nephew of Aristotle. Callisthenes refused to prostrate himself in the Persian fashion, then Alexander refused to kiss him, and things went from bad to worse.
17 Alexander did not conquer the world, by any means, since he had never been in Italy, Gaul, or Spain, to mention a few places. He might have spared the tears about that.
18 Alexander had always been kind to Bucephalus, after whom he named a city. He named another after his dog Peritas and seventeen after himself.
19 “From the weaknesses of the flesh, to which many great men have been subject, he was almost entirely immune.” – F.A. Wright.
20 There is probably no truth in that story about Alexander and Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons. Still, Thalestris usually got her own way.
21 He is said to have smelled like violets. I heard different.
22 But see F.A. Wright on Alexander’s work “above all as an apostle of world peace.”
HANNIBAL
ROME AND Carthage were the most important cities in the world around 300 B.C. Rome was where it always was and Carthage was on the northern coast of Africa. They had been neighbors for years without having a good fight, so it was only a question of time. They were spoiling for the First, Second, and Third Punic Wars. Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus, a baby who was suckled by a she-wolf and guarded by a black woodpecker. Carthage was founded about a hundred years earlier by Elissa, daughter of Mutton I, King of Tyre. Later on, she was identified with Dido, the lady who was so fond of Aeneas. It’s a strange world we live in.
The Romans and Carthaginians were very different in character and temperament. The Carthaginians had no ideals. All they wanted was money and helling around and having a big time. The Romans were stern and dignified, living hard, frugal lives and adhering to the traditional Latin virtues, gravitas, pietas, simplicitas, and adultery.1
The Romans were a nation of homebodies. When they bestirred themselves at all, it was only to go and kill some other Italians. They had finished off the Sabines and the Etruscans in the early days, and since then had conquered most of Italy.2 The Romans were ready for better things, especially in a financial way. Though they were too polite to say so, they thought it would be pleasant to own the Carthaginian part of Sicily, too.
Meanwhile the Carthaginians grew richer and richer by peddling linens, woolen goods, dyestuffs, glassware, porcelains, metalwork, household supplies, porch furniture, and novelties all along the Mediterranean. They used a system of barter to start with,
