Darius I

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:

I would need a system, like Darius, who did not want to forget the Athenians’ offense against him and had a page tell him three times to his ears every time he sat down to eat:

Regarding the Scythians, it is said that when Darius went off to conquer them, he conveyed his great displeasure to their king for constantly moving away from him and for sidestepping instead of fighting.

Darius asking certain Greeks what they would take to assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them a better nor more noble sepulture than to bury them in their own bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the world should hire them to do it;

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.

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.

for, being closely grappled in combat with a lord of Persia, Darius coming in sword in hand, and fearing to strike lest he should kill Gobrias, he called out to him boldly to fall on, though he should run them both through at once.

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: