Alexander

And going directly against my first examples, there is Alexander, the most daring of men, so gracious to those he defeated.

Alexander, angered by what this victory had cost him — two fresh wounds, among other things — said to him:

Alexander, seeing his mute stubbornness, asked:

Yet their virtuous sacrifice did not move Alexander whose thirst for vengeance lasted a day or more.

And more magnanimously still, the great Alexander, to Polypercon who was making the case for taking advantage of the dark of night to attack Darius:

”Same with the kings of Macedon, successors of this mighty Alexander, becoming carpenters and clerks in Rome;

And the greatest man — just a man, he — Alexander, lived to the same age.

which Alexander much more vividly and more roundly manifested in effect, when, having notice by a letter from Parmenio, that Philip, his most beloved physician, was by Darius’s money corrupted to poison him, at the same time he gave the letter to Philip to read, drank off the potion he had brought him.

For the other acts and sciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed commended their excellence and charm, and had them in very great honor and esteem, but not ravished with them to that degree as to be tempted to affect the practice of them In his own person.

Who would not be astonished at so strange a constitution as that of Demophoon, steward to Alexander the Great, who sweated in the shade, and shivered in the sun?

The philosophers themselves do not justify Callisthenes for forfeiting the favor of his master Alexander the Great, by refusing to pledge him a cup of wine.

Alexander saw a nation, where they bury their fruit-trees in winter to protect them from being destroyed by the frost, and we also may see the same.

So that Philip, king of Macedon, having heard that great Alexander his son sing once at a feast to the wonder of the best musicians there:

Who ever looked for safety and rest as greedily as Alexander and Caesar looked for worry and hardship.

The flatterers of Alexander the Great possessed him that he was the son of Jupiter;

Alexander the Great, on the day assigned for that furious battle betwixt him and Darius, slept so profoundly and so long in the morning, that Parmenio was forced to enter his chamber, and coming to his bedside, to call him several times by his name, the time to go to fight compelling him so to do.

We may here further compare him with Alexander in the great and dangerous storm that threatened him by the sedition of the tribune Metellus, who, attempting to publish a decree for the calling in of Pompey with his army into the city at the time of Catiline’s conspiracy, was only and that stoutly opposed by Cato, so that very sharp language and bitter menaces passed betwixt them in the senate about that affair;

Alexander, Caesar, and Lucullus loved to make themselves known in a battle by rich accoutrements and armor of a particular lustre and color:

As nature designed to make of this person, and of Alexander, two miracles of military art, so one would say she had done her utmost to arm them after an extraordinary manner for every one knows that Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, had a head inclining to the shape of a bull;

As nature designed to make of this person, and of Alexander, two miracles of military art, so one would say she had done her utmost to arm them after an extraordinary manner for every one knows that Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, had a head inclining to the shape of a bull;

Alexander fought with a nation called Dahas, whose discipline it was to march two and two together armed on one horse, to the war;

Why should not I judge of Alexander at table, ranting and drinking at the prodigious rate he sometimes used to do?

And therefore Diogenes, who passed away his time in rolling himself in his tub, and made nothing of the great Alexander, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders puffed up with wind, was a sharper and more penetrating, and, consequently in my opinion, a juster judge than Timon, surnamed the Man-hater;

On Smells It has been reported of some, as of Alexander the Great, that their sweat exhaled an odoriferous smell, occasioned by some rare and extraordinary constitution, of which Plutarch and others have been inquisitive into the cause.

No valor can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander:

Alexander, laying siege to a city of the Indies, those within, finding themselves very hardly set, put on a vigorous resolution to deprive him of the pleasure of his victory, and accordingly burned themselves in general, together with their city, in despite of his humanity:

A thousand and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions, among whom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trial Alexander put upon him and the progress of his torture.

or that Alexander or Caesar ever wished to be deprived of the grandeur of their glorious exploits in war, for the convenience of children and heirs, how perfect and accomplished soever.

Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever was, very seldom wore armor, and such among us as slight it, do not by that much harm to the main concern;

for according to the deportments of the soul, whilst it had been in Alexander, they said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, more or less painful, and proper for its condition:

the elephants to draw not only out of their own bodies, and those of their companions, but out of the bodies of their masters too (witness the elephant of King Porus whom Alexander defeated), the darts and javelins thrown at them in battle, and that so dexterously that we ourselves could not do it with so little pain to the patient;

As to magnanimity, it will be hard to exhibit a better instance of it than in the example of the great dog sent to Alexander the Great from the Indies.

and Alexander, arriving at the Indian Ocean, threw several great vessels of gold into the sea, in honor of Thetes;

Alexander writ to his mother the narration of an Egyptian priest, drawn from their monuments, testifying the antiquity of that nation to be infinite, and comprising the birth and progress of other countries.

To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their renown but to fortune?

It was an affectation conformable with his beauty that made Alexander carry his head on one side, and caused Alcibiades to lisp;

and were to be wished that we had the journals of Alexander the Great, the commentaries that Augustus, Cato, Sylla, Brutus, and others left of their actions;

in chastity (of which the whole of his life gave manifest proof) we read the same of him that was said of Alexander and Scipio, that being in the flower of his age, for he was slain by the Parthians at one-and-thirty, of a great many very beautiful captives, he would not so much as look upon one.

’Tis said of Alexander the Great, that being in bed, for fear lest sleep should divert him from his thoughts and studies, he had always a basin set by his bedside, and held one of his hands out with a ball of copper in it, to the end, that, beginning to fall asleep, and his fingers leaving their hold, the ball by falling into the basin, might awake him.

expired in the presence of the whole army of Alexander the Great.

Observations on Julius Caesar’s Methods of Waging War ’Tis related of many great leaders that they have had certain books in particular esteem, as Alexander the Great, Homer;

I find him a little more temperate and considerate in his enterprises than Alexander, for this man seems to seek and run headlong upon dangers like an impetuous torrent which attacks and rushes against everything it meets, without choice or discretion:

to which may be added that Alexander was of a more sanguine, hot, and choleric constitution, which he also inflamed with wine, from which Caesar was very abstinent.

for he loved to march on foot, as also did Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great, having found a rich cabinet among Darius’s spoils, gave order it should be reserved for him to keep his Homer in, saying:

Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ The other is Alexander the Great.

and it cannot be denied that there was more of his own in his exploits, and more of fortune in those of Alexander.

but though Caesar’s ambition had been more moderate, it would still be so unhappy, having the ruin of his country and universal mischief to the world for its abominable object, that, all things raked together and put into the balance, I must needs incline to Alexander’s side.

Of this virtue of his, he has, in my idea, given as ample proof as Alexander himself or Caesar:

Innocence, in this man, is a quality peculiar, sovereign, constant, uniform, incorruptible, compared with which, it appears in Alexander subject to something else subaltern, uncertain, variable, effeminate, and fortuitous.

and the virtue of Alexander appears to me of much less vigor in his great theater, than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment.

I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates, I cannot.

I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates, I cannot.

I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand continual and powerful solicitations.

a murderous imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and strength, that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, and which he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued;

Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act and sleeping;

Alexander marching his army through Hyrcania, Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three hundred light horse of her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left the remainder of a very great, army that followed her behind the neighboring mountains to give him a visit;

Alexander returned her thanks for all the rest;

Why did not so noble a conquest fall under Alexander, or the ancient Greeks and Romans;

Brisson, running against Alexander, purposely missed his blow, and made a fault in his career;

Alexander chid him for it, but he ought to have had him whipped.

Every one of Alexander’s followers carried his head on one side, as he did;

Lyncestes, accused of conspiracy against Alexander, the day that he was brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard as to what he could say for himself, had learned a studied speech, of which, hesitating and stammering, he pronounced some words.

for Alexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him a burgess-ship of their city;

One said to Alexander:

I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot.

the Neorites, a nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies of their dead into the deepest and less frequented part of their woods, on purpose to have them there eaten;

And I find that Cyrus, Alexander, and Caesar, the three masters of the world, never neglected beauty in their greatest affairs;

and we see that Alexander, that great king and philosopher, could not defend himself from them.

When I see both Caesar and Alexander in the thickest of his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, I do not hold that they slackened their souls, but wound them up higher, by vigor of courage, subjecting these violent employment and laborious thoughts to the ordinary usage of life:

as Alexander said, that the end of his labor was to labor:

and I find nothing so humble and mortal in the life of Alexander, as his fancies about his immortalisation.