All the references to Alexander in Plutarch's Moralia.
Plutarch’s Morals edited by William W. Goodwin 1878
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/emer ... als-5-vols
The second oration of Plutarch concerning the fortune or virtue of Alexander the Great
In his time flourished the two tragedians, Thessalus and Athenodorus, who contending for the prize, the Cyprian kings supplied the charges of the theatre, and the judges were to be the most renowned captains of the age. But at length Athenodorus being adjudged the victor; I could have wished, said Alexander, rather to have lost a part of my kingdom than to have seen Thessalus vanquished. Yet he neither interceded with the judges nor anywhere disapproved or blamed the judgment; believing it became him to be superior to all others, only to submit to justice. To the comedian Lyco of Scarphe, who had inserted into one of his scenes certain verses in the nature of a begging petition, he gave ten talents, laughing heartily at the conceit. Aristonicus was in the number of the most famous musicians of those times. This man being slain in battle, strenuously fighting to assist and save his friend, Alexander commanded his statue to be made in brass and set up in the temple of Pythian Apollo, holding his harp in one hand and his spear upright in the other, not only in memory of the person, but in honor of music itself, as exciting to fortitude and inspiring those who are rightly and generously bred to it with a kind of supernatural courage and bravery.
Even Alexander himself, when Antigenides played before him in the Harmatian mood, was so transported and warmed for battle by the charms of lofty airs, that leaping from his seat all in his clattering armor he began to lay about him and attack those who stood next him, thereby verifying to the Spartans what was commonly sung among themselves,—
The masculine touches of the well-turned lyre
Unsheathe the sword and warlike rage inspire.
Furthermore, there were also Apelles the painter and Lysippus the statuary both living under the reign of Alexander. The first of which painted him grasping Jupiter’s thunderbolt in his hand, so artfully and in such lively colors, that it was said of the two Alexanders that Philip’s was invincible, but Apelles’s inimitable. Lysippus, when he had finished the first statue of Alexander looking up with his face to the sky (as Alexander was wont to look, with his neck slightly bent), not improperly added to the pedestal the following lines: —
The statue seems to look to Jove and say,
Take thou Olympus; me let Earth obey!
For which Alexander gave to Lysippus the sole patent for making all his statues; because he alone expressed in brass the vigor of his mind, and in his lineaments represented the lustre of his virtue; while others, who strove to imitate the turning of his neck and softness and brightness of his eyes, failed to observe the manliness and lion-like fierceness of his countenance.
Among the great artists of that time was Stasicrates, who never studied elegance nor what was sweet and alluring to the eye, but only bold and lofty workmanship and design, becoming the munificence of royal bounty. He attended upon Alexander, and found fault with all the paintings, sculptures, and cast figures that were made of his person, as the works of mean and slothful artificers. “But I,” said he, “will undertake to fix the likeness of thy body on matter incorruptible, such as has eternal foundations and a ponderosity steadfast and immovable. For the mountain Athos in Thrace, where it rises largest and most conspicuous, having a just symmetry of breadth and height, with members, limbs, and distances answerable to the shape of human body, may be so wrought and formed as to be, not only in imagination and fancy but really, the effigy and statue of Alexander; with his feet reaching to the seas, grasping in his left hand a fair and populous city, and with his right pouring forth an ever-flowing river into the ocean from a bowl, as a perpetual drink-offering. But as for gold, brass, ivory, wood, stained figures, and little wax images, toys which may be bought or stolen, I despise them all.” When Alexander heard this discourse, he admired and praised the spirit and confidence of the artist; “But,” said he, “let Athos alone; for it is sufficient that it is the monument of the vanquished folly and presuming pride of one king already. Our portraiture the snowy Caucasus, and towering Emodon, Tanais, and the Caspian Sea shall draw. They shall remain eternal monuments of our renown.”
thus Alexander’s empire, wanting his enlivening conduct, panted, gasped, and boiled with fever, struggling with Perdiccas, Meleager, Seleucus, and Antigonus, — as with vital spirits still remaining hot, and with irregular and intermittent pulses, — till at length, totally corrupted and putrefied, it produced a sort of degenerate kings and faint-hearted princes, like so many worms. This he himself seemed to prophesy, reproving Hephaestion for quarrelling with Craterus: What power, said he, or signal achievement couldst thou pretend to, should any one deprive thee of thy Alexander?
All these royal qualities Alexander had, whom some accuse of being given to wine. But he was a really great man, who was always sober in action and never drunk with the pride of his conquests and vast power; while others intoxicated with the smallest part of his prosperity have ceased to be masters of themselves.
As for Alexander, he breakfasted by break of day, always sitting; and supped at the shutting in of the evening; he drank when he had sacrificed to the Gods. With his friend Medius he played for diversion when he was sick with a fever. He also played upon the road as he marched, learning between whiles to throw a dart and leap from his chariot. He married Roxana merely for love; but Statira, the daughter of Darius, upon the account of state-policy, for such a conjunction of both nations strengthened his conquest. As to the other Persian women, he excelled them in chastity and continence as far as he surpassed the men in valor. He never desired the sight of any virgin that was unwilling; and those he saw, he regarded less than if he had not seen them; mild and affable to all others, proud and lofty only to fair youth. As for the wife of Darius, a woman most beautiful, he never would endure to hear a word spoken in commendation of her features. When she was dead, he graced her funeral with such a regal pomp, and bewailed her death so piteously, that his kindness cast discredit upon his chastity, and his very courtesy incurred the obloquy of injustice. Indeed, Darius himself had been moved with suspicion at first, when he thought of the power and the youth of the conqueror; for he was one of those who thought Alexander to be only the darling of Fortune. But when he understood the truth, “Well,” said he, “I do not yet perceive the condition of the Persians so deplorable, since the world can never tax us now with imbecility or effeminacy, whose fate it was to be vanquished by such a person.
For the last of these vices Tarrias was particularly noted; and when Alexander set the Macedonians out of debt and paid off all their creditors, Tarrias pretended among the rest to owe a great sum of money, and brought a suborned person to demand the sum as due to him; but being discovered, he would have laid violent hands upon himself, had not Alexander forgiven him and ordered him the money, remembering that at the battle of Perinthus fought by Philip, being shot into the eye with a dart, he would not suffer the head of it to be pulled out till the field was clear of the enemy. Antigenes, when the sick and maimed soldiers were to be sent back into Macedon, made suit to be registered down in the number, pretending himself utterly disabled in the wars; which very much troubled Alexander, who was well acquainted with his valor and knew that he wore the scars about him of many a bloody field. But the fraud being detected, that was concealed under some little present infirmity, Alexander asked him the reason of his design; and he answered, he did it for the love of Telesippe, that he might accompany her to the sea, not being able to endure a separation from her. Presently the King demanded to whom the wench belonged, and who was to be dealt with in regard to her. To which he replied, she was free from any tie. Well, then, said the King, let us persuade her to stay, if promises or gifts will prevail. So ready was he to pardon the dotages of love in others, so rigorous to himself. But Philotas the son of Parmenio exercised his incontinency after a more offensive manner. Antigona was a Pellaean virgin among the captives taken about Damascus, a prisoner before to Autophradates, who took her going by sea into Samothrace. The beauty of this damsel was such as kept Philotas constant to her embraces. Nay, she had so softened and mellowed this man of steel, I know not how, that he was not master of himself in his enjoyments, but told her the very secrets of his breast; among other things he said: What had Philip been, but for Parmenio? And what would Alexander now be, but for Philotas? What would become of Ammon and the dragons, should we be once provoked? These words Antigona prattled to one of her companions, and she told them to Craterus. Craterus brings Antigona privately to Alexander, who forbore to offer her the least incivility, but by her means piercing into Philotas’s breast, he detected the whole. Yet for seven years after he never discovered so much as the least sign of jealousy, either in his wine or in his anger; nor did he ever disclose it to any friend, even to Hephaestion, from whom he never concealed the most inward of his counsels and designs. For it is said that once, when Alexander had just opened a private letter from his mother and was quietly reading it, Hephaestion looked over his shoulder and began to read it likewise; but Alexander forbore to reprove him, and only took off his signet and clapped it to Hephaestion’s mouth.
Another time in Paphos, the king that there reigned being an unjust and wicked tyrant, Alexander resolved to dethrone him, and therefore sought out for another, the race of the Kinyradae seeming to be at an end. They told him there was one yet in being, a poor man and of no account, who lived miserable in a certain garden. Thereupon messengers were sent, who found the poor man watering some few small beds of pot-herbs. The miserable creature was strangely surprised to see so many soldiers about him, but go he must; and so being brought before Alexander in his rags and tatters, he caused him presently to be proclaimed king and clad in purple; which done, he was admitted into the number of those who were called the king’s companions. The name of this person was Alynomus.
At the battle of the Granicus his helmet was cleft to his very scull; at Gaza he was wounded in the shoulder with a dart. Among the Maragandi he was shot in the shin so desperately, that the bone of his shank was broken and started out of the skin. In Hyrcania he was struck in the neck with a stone, which caused such a dimness in his eyes that for many days he was in danger of losing his sight. Among the Assaracans he was wounded in the heel with an Indian dart; at which time he thus derided his flatterers with a smiling countenance, saying, This is blood, and no immortal ichor, —
Such stream as issues from a wounded God.
At Issus he was run through the thigh with a sword by Darius (as Chares relates), who encountered him hand to hand. Alexander also himself, writing the truth with all sincerity to Antipater, said, It was my fortune to be wounded with a poniard in the thigh, but no ill symptoms attended it either when it was newly done or afterwards during the cure. Another time, among the Malli he was wounded with an arrow two cubits in length, that went in at his breast and came out at his neck, as Aristobulus relates. Crossing the Tanais against the Scythians and winning the field, he pursued the flying enemy a hundred and fifty furlongs, though at the same time laboring with a dysentery.
...he presently crossed into Asia, — as Phylarchus relates, with only thirty days’ provision; as Aristobulus reports, with seventy talents, — having before sold and divided among his friends his own revenues and those of his crown. Only Perdiccas refused what he offered him, asking him at the same time what he had left for himself. And when Alexander replied, Nothing but hopes, Then, said he, we will be content with the same; for it is not just to accept of thy goods, but we must wait for those of Darius.
But in his small army there was surpassing desire of glory, emulation among those of equal age, and a noble strife to excel in honor and virtue among friends. Then, as for himself, he carried with him all these great hopes, — piety towards the Gods, fidelity to his friends, generous frugality, temperance, beneficence, contempt of death, magnanimity, humanity, decent affability, candid integrity, constancy in counsel, quickness in execution, love of precedence in honor, and an effectual purpose to follow the steps of virtue.
...Then in God’s name let us compare Alexander with the best of them. Solon by a law made a great abatement upon the payment of the Athenians’ private debts, which he called his burden-easing law; Alexander discharged the debts of his Macedonians at his own expense. Pericles, laying a tax upon the Greeks, expended the money in building temples to beautify the citadel of Athens; Alexander sent home ten thousand talents out of the spoils of the barbarians, for the building of temples to the Gods all over Greece.
There the first blow he received with a battle-axe cleft his helmet and entered his skull; at the same time another shot him with an Indian arrow in the breast near one of his paps, the head being four fingers broad and five in length, which, together with the weight of the shaft which projected from the wound, did not a little torment him. But, what was worst of all, while he was thus defending himself from his enemies before him, when he had laid a bold attempter that approached his person sprawling upon the earth with his sword, a fellow from a mill close by came behind him, and with a great iron pestle gave him such a bang upon the neck as deprived him for the present both of his senses and his sight.
But this little availed Alexander; for he was carried off with the dart sticking in his breast, having now a war in his own bowels, while the arrow in his bosom was a kind of cord, or rather nail, that was driven through his breastplate and fastened it to his body. When they went about to dress him, the forked shape of the iron head would not permit the surgeons to draw it forth from the root of the wound, being fixed in the solid parts of the breast that fortify the heart. Nor durst they attempt to cut away the shaft that stuck out, fearing they should put him to an excess of torment by the motion of the iron in the cleft of the bone, and cause a new flux of blood not easy to be stopped. Alexander, observing their hesitation and delay, endeavored himself with a little knife to cut off the shaft close to the skin; but his hand failed him, being seized with a heavy numbness by reason of the inflammation of the wound. Thereupon he commanded the surgeons and those that stood about him to try the same thing themselves and not to be afraid, giving them all the encouragement he could. Those that wept he upbraided for their weakness; others he called deserters, that refused him their assistance in such a time of need.