Plutarch: On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander
Moreover, the much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field. This Zeno wrote, giving shape to a dream or, as it were, shadowy picture of a well-ordered and philosophic commonwealth; but it was Alexander who gave effect to the idea. For Alexander did not follow Aristotle's advice to treat the Greeks as if he were their leader, and other peoples as if he were their master; to have regard for the Greeks as for friends and kindred, but to conduct himself toward other peoples as though they were plants or animals; for to do so would have been to cumber his leadership with numerous battles and banishments and festering seditions. But, as he believed that he came as a heaven-sent governor to all, and as a mediator for the whole world, those whom he could not persuade to unite with him, he conquered by force of arms, and he brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men's lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life. He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked; they should not distinguish between Grecian and foreigner by Grecian cloak and targe, or scimitar and jacket; but the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue, and that of the foreigner in iniquity; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children.
Now Demaratus the Corinthian, one of Philip's intimate friends, when he had seen Alexander in Susa, exclaimed with tears of joy that all the Greeks who had died before that hour had been deprived of a great joy, since they had not seen Alexander seated on the throne of Darius. But I swear that for my part I feel no envy because of this spectacle toward them that saw it, for it was but the handiwork of Fortune, and the lot of other kings as well. But methinks I would gladly have been a witness of that fair and holy marriage-rite, when he brought together in one golden-canopied tent an hundred Persian brides and an hundred Macedonian and Greek bridegrooms, united at a common hearth and board. He himself, crowned with garlands, was the first to raise the marriage hymn as though he were singing a song of truest friendship over the union of the two greatest and most mighty peoples; for he, of one maid the bridegroom, and at the same time of all the brides the escort, as a father and sponsor united them in the bonds of wedlock. Indeed at this sight I should have cried out for joy, "O dullard Xerxes, stupid fool that spent so much fruitless toil to bridge the Hellespont! This is the way that wise kings join Asia with Europe; it is not by beams or rafts, nor by lifeless and unfeeling bonds, but by the ties of lawful love and chaste nuptials and mutual joy in children that they join the nations together."
Considering carefully this order of affairs, Alexander did not favour the Median raiment, but preferred the Persian, for it was much more simple than the Median. Since he deprecated the unusual and theatrical varieties of foreign adornment, such as the tiara and the full-sleeved jacket and trousers, he wore a composite dress adapted from both Persian and Macedonian fashion, as Eratosthenes has recorded. As a philosopher what he wore was a matter of indifference, but as sovereign of both nations and benevolent king he strove to acquire the goodwill of the conquered by showing respect for their apparel, so that they might continue constant in loving the Macedonians as rulers, and might not feel hate toward them as enemies. Conversely it were the mark of an unwise and vainglorious mind to admire greatly a cloak of uniform colour and to be displeased by a tunic with a purple border, or again to disdain those things and to be struck with admiration for these, holding stubbornly, in the manner of an unreasoning child, to the raiment in which the custom of his country, like a nurse, had attired him. When men hunt wild animals, they put on the skins of deer, and when they go to catch birds, they dress in tunics adorned with plumes and feathers; they are careful not to be seen by bulls when they have on red garments, nor by elephants when dressed in white; for these animals are provoked and made savage by the sight of these particular colours. But if a great king, in taming and mollifying headstrong and warring nations, just as in dealing with animals, succeeded in soothing and stilling them by wearing a garb familiar to them and by following their wonted manner of life, thereby conciliating their rough natures and smoothing their sullen brows, can men impeach him? Must they not rather wonder at his wisdom, since by but a slight alteration of his apparel he made himself the popular leader of all Asia, conquering their bodies by his arms, but winning over their souls by his apparel? And yet men marvel at the disciple of Socrates, Aristippus, that whether he wore a threadbare cloak or a fine Milesian robe he retained his gentility in either; but they impeach Alexander because, although paying due respect to his own national dress, he did not disdain that of his conquered subjects in establishing the beginnings of a vast empire. For he did not overrun Asia like a robber nor was he minded to tear and rend it, as if it were booty and plunder bestowed by unexpected good fortune, after the manner in which Hannibal later descended upon Italy, or as earlier the Treres descended upon Ionia and the Scythians upon Media. But Alexander desired to render all upon earth subject to one law of reason and one form of government and to reveal all men as one people, and to this purpose he made himself conform. But if the deity that sent down Alexander's soul into this world of ours had not recalled him quickly, one law would govern all mankind, and they all would look toward one rule of justice as though toward a common source of light. But as it is, that part of the world which has not looked upon Alexander has remained without sunlight.
Therefore, in the first place, the very plan and design of Alexander's expedition commends the man as a philosopher in his purpose not to win for himself luxury and extravagant living, but to win for all men concord and peace and community of interests.
And, in the second place, let us examine his sayings too, since it is by their utterances that the souls of other kings and potentates also best reveal their characters. The elder Antigonus remarked to a certain sophist who put in his hands a treatise on justice, "You are a fool to say anything about justice when you see me smiting other people's cities." The despot Dionysius remarked that one should trick children with dice, but men with oaths. Upon the tomb of Sardanapalus is written,
These are still mine — what I ate, and my wanton love-frolics.
Who would not own that by these several sayings are revealed Sardanapalus's love of pleasure, Dionysius's impiety, and Antigonus's injustice and greed? But if you subtract from Alexander's sayings his crown, his relationship with Ammon, and his noble birth, they will appear to you as the utterances a Socrates or a Plato or a Pythagoras. Let us, then, pay no heed to the proud boasts which the poets inscribed upon his portraits and statues, studying, as they were, to portray, not Alexander's moderation, but his power:
Eager to speak seems the statue of bronze, up to Zeus as it gazes:
"Earth I have set under foot; Zeus, keep Olympus yourself."
And another man makes Alexander say, "I am the son of Zeus." These expressions, then, as I have said, the poets addressed to Alexander in flattery of his good fortune.
But of the genuine sayings of Alexander we might first review those of his youth. Since he was the swiftest of foot of all the young men of his age, his comrades urged him to enter the Olympic games. He asked if the competitors were kings, and when his friends replied that they were not, he said that the contest was unfair, for it was one in which a victory would be over commoners, but a defeat would be the defeat of a king.
When the thigh of his father Philip had been pierced by a spear in battle with the Triballians, and Philip, although he escaped with his life, was vexed with his lameness, Alexander said, "Be of good cheer, father, and go on your way rejoicing, that at each step you may recall your valour." Are not these the words of a truly philosophic spirit which, because of its rapture for noble things, already revolts against mere physical encumbrances? How, then, think you, did he glory in his own wounds, remembering by each part of his body affected a nation overcome, a victory won, the capture of cities, the surrender of kings? He did not cover over nor hide his scars, but bore them with him openly as symbolic representations, graven on his body, of virtue and manly courage.
And in the same spirit if ever there chanced to be in hours of ease or at a banquet a comparison of the verses of Homer, each man choosing his favourite line, Alexander always judged this verse to be the greatest of all:
Both things is he: both a goodly king and a warrior mighty.
This praise, which at the time it was written another had received, Alexander conceived to be a law for himself, so that he said of Homer that in this same verse he had honoured the manly courage of Agamemnon and prophesied that of Alexander. Accordingly when he had crossed the Hellespont, he went to see the site of Troy, imagining to himself the heroic deeds enacted there; and when one of the natives of the country promised to give him the lyre of Paris, if he wished it, Alexander said, "Of his lyre I have no need; for I already possess Achilles' lyre to the accompaniment of which, as he rested from his labours,
he sang the famed deeds of heroes.
But the lyre of Paris gave forth an altogether weak and womanish strain to accompany his love songs." Thus it is the mark of a truly philosophic soul to be in love with wisdom and to admire wise men most of all, and this was more characteristic of Alexander than of any other king. His attitude toward Aristotle has already been stated; and it is recorded by several authors that he considered the musician Anaxarchus the most valuable of all his friends, that he gave ten thousand gold pieces to Pyrrhon of Elis the first time he met him, that he sent to Xenocrates, the friend of Plato, fifty talents as a gift, and that he made Onesicritus, the pupil of Diogenes the Cynic, chief pilot of his fleet.
But when he came to talk with Diogenes himself in Corinth, he was so awed and astounded with the life and the worth of the man that often, when remembrance of the philosopher came to him, he would say, "If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes," that is to say: "If I did not actively practise philosophy, I should apply myself to its theoretical pursuit." He did not say, "If I were not a king, I should be Diogenes," nor "If I were not rich and an Argead"; for he did not rank Fortune above Wisdom, nor a crown and royal purple above the philosopher's wallet and threadbare gown. But he said, "If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes"; that is to say: "If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me, Diogenes, that I imitate Heracles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysus, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Caucasus. Even there it is said that there are certain holy men, a law unto themselves, who follow a rigid gymnosophy and give all their time to God; they are more frugal than Diogenes since they have no need of a wallet. For they do not store up food, since they have it ever fresh and green from the earth; the flowing rivers give them drink and they have fallen leaves and grassy earth to lie upon. Because of me even those faraway sages shall come to know of Diogenes, and he of them. And I also, like Diogenes, must alter the standard of coinage and stamp foreign states with the impress of Greek government."
Very well. Do Alexander's actions, then, reveal the caprice of Fortune, the violence of war, the might of conquest, or do they rather reveal the great courage and justice, the great restraint and mildness together with the decorous behaviour and intelligence, of one who did all things with sober and sane judgement? For, by Heaven, it is impossible for me to distinguish his several actions and say that this betokens his courage, this his humanity, this his self-control, but everything he did seems the combined product of all the virtues; for he confirms the truth of that principle of the Stoics which declares that every act which the wise man performs is an activity in accord with every virtue; and although, as it appears, one particular virtue performs the chief rôle in every act, yet it but heartens on the other virtues and directs them toward the goal. Certainly one may observe that in Alexander the warlike is also humane, the mild also manly, the liberal provident, the irascible placable, the amatory temperate, his relaxation not idle, and his labours not without recreation. Who but he combined festivals with wars, campaigns with revels, Bacchic rites and weddings and nuptial songs with sieges and battle-fields? Who was ever more hostile to wrongdoers or kinder to the unfortunate? Who more stern to his opponents or more indulgent to petitioners?
It occurs to me to introduce here an incident touching Porus. For when Porus was brought as a captive before Alexander, the conqueror asked how he should treat him. "Like a king, Alexander," said Porus. When Alexander asked again if there were nothing else, "No," said he, "for everything is included in that word." And it naturally occurs to me also to exclaim over each of Alexander's deeds, "Like a philosopher!" For in this is included everything. He became enamoured of Roxanê, the daughter of Oxyartes, as she danced among the captive maidens; yet he did not offer any violence to her, but made her his wife. "Like a philosopher!" When he saw Darius pierced through by javelins, he did not offer sacrifice nor raise the paean to indicate that the long war had come to an end; but he took off his own cloak and threw it over the corpse as though to conceal the divine retribution that waits upon the lot of kings. "Like a philosopher!" Once when he was reading a confidential letter from his mother, and Hephaestion, who, as it happened, was sitting beside him, was quite openly reading it too, Alexander did not stop him, but merely placed his own signet-ring on Hephaestion's lips, sealing them to silence with a friend's confidence. "Like a philosopher!" For if these actions be not those of a philosopher, what others are?
But let us compare the actions of men who are admitted to be philosophers. Socrates forbore when Alcibiades spent the night with him. But when Philoxenus, the governor of the coast-lands of Asia Minor, wrote to Alexander that there was in Ionia a youth, the like of whom for bloom and beauty did not exist, and inquired in his letter whether he should send the boy on to him, Alexander wrote bitterly in reply, "Vilest of men, what deed of this sort have you ever been privy to in my past that now you would flatter me with the offer of such pleasures?" We admire Xenocrates because he would not accept the gift of fifty talents which Alexander sent him. But shall we not admire the giving of it? Or do we think that he who does not welcome a gift and he who bestows it are not at one in their contempt for money? Because of philosophy Xenocrates had no need of wealth and because of philosophy Alexander had need of wealth that he might lavish it upon such men. How many times has Alexander said this when forcing an attack amid a shower of missiles? And yet we believe that all men are endowed with the capacity to form right judgements. For Nature of herself is prone to lead men toward the Good. But philosophers differ from common persons in having their powers of judgement strong and firm to face danger, since the common man is not fortified by conceptions such as these: "Best is one omen" and "Death is the end for all men"; but crises destroy all his calculations in the face of danger, and the fantastic imaginings of perils close at hand dispel his powers of judgement. For not only does "fear," as Thucydides says, "drive out memory," but it also drives out every purpose and ambition and impulse, unless philosophy has drawn her cords about them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Translator's Notes:
Cf. Cambridge Ancient History, vol. vii p225; Moralia, 653 E; Life of Lycurgus, xxxi (59 A); Cicero, De Legibus, i.7-11 (21-32); De Officiis, i.7 (22); Diogenes Laertius, vii.32-34, 121, 129, 131.
Aristotle's name is not elsewhere linked with this advice; cf. Strabo, i.4.9 (p66), or Aristotle, Frag. 658 (ed. V. Rose).
Cf. Arrian, Anabasis, vii.11.8-9.
Cf. Moralia, 70 C; Life of Alexander, chap. ix (669 C).
Ibid. chaps. xxxvii (687 A), lvi (696 F); Life of Agesilaüs, chap. xv (604 A).
Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. lxx (703 E); Arrian, Anabasis, vii.4; Diodorus, xvii.107.6; Athenaeus, 538 B-E; Aelian, Varia Historia, viii.7; but the number is not elsewhere given as 100.
Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. xlv (690 E-691 A); Diodorus, xvii.77.
Presumably in the treatise referred to by Strabo, i.4.9 (p66).
Cf. Moralia, 144 D.
Cf. Horace, Epistles, i.17.23-29 "personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque."
Cf. Strabo, i.3.21; xi.8.4.
Cf. Herodotus, i.15, 103-106.
Cf. Moralia, 172 D.
Attributed elsewhere to Lysander; cf. Moralia, 229 B, and the note (Vol. III p373).
Cf. Palatine Anthology, vii.325; xv.27: a full list of citations portraying Sardanapalus in ancient popular philosophy is given by W. Capelle, Hermes, lx p394; see also W. Headlam, Journal of Philosophy, xxvi p98.
Cf. 335 B, infra; T. Preger, Inscriptiones Graecae Metricae, pp183-187. The epigram is more completely given in the Anthology, xvi.120, where it is attributed to Archelaüs or Asclepiades. Probably, as Ouvré has seen, it belongs to the latter.
Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. xxvii (680 F).
Cf. Moralia, 179 D; Life of Alexander, chap. iv (666 D).
Attributed to a Spartan woman in Moralia, 241 E, where see the note.
Iliad, iii.179; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia, iii.2.2.
Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. xv (672 B); Aelian, Varia Historia, ix.38.
Homer, Il. ix.189.
327 F, supra; cf. Life of Alexander, chaps. vii, viii (668 A-F).
Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, i.282.
Cf. 333 B, infra, and Moralia, 181 E.
Cf. Life of Alexander, chaps. lxv, lxvi (701 C, 702 A); Arrian, Anabasis, vi.2.3, vii.5.6; Diogenes Laertius, vi.84.
Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. xiv (671 D); Diogenes Laertius, vi.32; Valerius Maximus, iv.3.4; Juvenal, xiv.311-314. Cf. also Moralia, 782 A-B.
Cf. Arrian, Anabasis, iv.10.6; Rhein. Mus. liv.470.
Cf. 326 B, supra.
Cf. Life of Alexander, chaps. lxiv, lxv (700 F-701 F) for Alexander's dealings with the Gymnosophists.
Cf. Diogenes Laertius, vi.20, 21.
Cf. Moralia, 181 E, and 458 B; Life of Alexander, chap. lx (669 C); Arrian, Anabasis, v.19.2.
Cf. 338 D, infra; Life of Alexander, chap. xlvii (691 E); Arrian, iv.19; Curtius, viii.4.
Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. xliii (690 B).
Cf. Moralia, 180 D, and the note.
Cf. Plato, Symposium, 218 C; Diogenes Laertius, ii.31.
Cf. Moralia, 1099 D; Life of Alexander, chap. xxii (676 F).
Cf. 331 E, supra.
Alexander's remark that he needed money to give to others may be compared to the remark which Plutarch quotes in his Life of Alexander, chap. lx (698 E), when Alexander was risking his life in crossing the swollen Hydaspes: "O Athens, can you possibly believe what dangers I undergo to win good repute among you?" Others think that the remark has been lost from the MSS.
Homer, Il. xii.243 ei[j oi0wno\j a!ristoj a)mu/nesqai peri\ pa/trhj.
Cf. Moralia, 166 F; Demosthenes, De Corona, 97.
Thucydides, ii.87.