cross from Europe to Asia cannot step safely from one couch to another!”
Then he took his mother to her native home, and stayed away till his father sent for him, but kept him in a kind of disgrace, until at the wedding feast of Alexander’s sister Cleopatra with the king of Epirus, just as Philip came forward in a white garment, a man darted forward and thrust a sword through his body, then fled so fast that he would have escaped if his foot had not been caught in some vine stocks, so that the guards cut him to pieces.
Alexander was proclaimed king, at only twenty years old; and Demosthenes was so delighted at the death of the enemy of Athens, that he wreathed his head with a garland in token of joy, little guessing that Philip’s murder had only placed a far greater man on the throne. The first thing Alexander did was to go to Corinth, and get himself chosen in his father’s stead captain-general of the Greeks. Only the Spartans refused, saying it was their custom to lead, and not to follow; while the Athenians pretended to submit, meaning to take the first opportunity of breaking off the yoke. Before Alexander could march, however, to Persia, he had to leave all safe behind him; so he turned northwards to subdue the wild tribes in Thrace. He was gone four months, and the Greeks heard nothing of him, so that the Thebans thought he must be lost, and proclaimed that they were free from the power of Macedon.
Their punishment was terrible. Alexander came back in haste, fought them in their own town, hunted them from street to street, killed or made slaves of all who had not been friends of his father, pulled down all the houses, and divided the lands between the other Bœotian cities. This was for the sake of making an example of terror; but he afterwards regretted this act, and, as Bacchus was the special god of Thebes, he thought himself punished by the fits of rage that seized him after any excess in wine. The other Greeks, all but the Spartans, again sent envoys to meet Alexander at Corinth, and granted him all the men, stores, and money he asked for. The only person who did not bow down to him was Diogenes, a philosopher who so exaggerated Stoicism that he was called the “Mad Socrates.” His sect were called Cynics, from Cyon, a dog, because they lived like dogs, seldom washing, and sleeping in any hole. Diogenes’ lair was a huge earthenware tub, that belonged to the temple of the mother of the gods, Cybele; and here Alexander went to see him, and found him basking in the sun before it, but not choosing to take any notice of the princely youth who addressed him—“I am Alexander the King.”
“And I am Diogenes the Cynic,” was the answer, in a tone as if he thought himself quite as good as the king. Alexander, however, talked much with him, and ended by asking if he could do anything for him.
“Only stand out of my sunshine,” was the answer;
and as the young king went away he said, “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes;” meaning, perhaps, that if he were not to master all earthly things, he would rather despise them. Twelve years later, Diogenes, then past ninety, was found dead in his tub, having supped the night before upon the raw leg of an ox; and, strangely enough, it was the very night that Alexander died.
