A magic dream.
Nectanebus thereupon sought for herbs useful to command dreams, plucked them, and pressed a syrup out of them. He placed a wax image of the queen inscribed with her name upon a little couch, lighted lamps, and poured his syrup over the wax figure, muttering a secret and efficacious incantation the while. By this means he brought it about that the queen would dream or think she dreamed whatever he said to the wax image of her. Later Nectanebus himself played the part of the god Ammon, announcing his coming beforehand to Olympias by making by his “science” a dragon which glided into her presence.
Lucian on Olympias and the serpent.
Lucian of Samosata in the second century tells us that it was a common story in his time that Olympias had lain with a serpent before giving birth to Alexander. He suggests as the explanation of how this tale originated the fact that at Pella in Macedonia there is a breed of large serpents, “so tame and gentle that women make pets of them, children take them to bed, they will let you tread on them, have no objection to being squeezed, and will draw milk from the breasts like infants.... It was doubtless one of these that was her bedfellow.”[2316] As is apt to be the case in ancient efforts to give a natural explanation of what purports to be miraculous or supernatural, Lucian’s biology is only slightly less incredible than Nectanebus’s magic transformations.
More dream-sending: magic transformation.
As the queen became pregnant, “Nectanebus consecrated a hawk and told it to go to Philip,” who was still absent, “to stand by him through the night and to instruct him in a dream as it was ordered.”[2317] The vision in question was explained by an interpreter of dreams to Philip as signifying that his wife would have a son by the god Ammon. Nevertheless Philip was somewhat suspicious and hastened to bring his wars to a close and hurry home. Nectanebus, however, rendering himself invisible by means of the magic art, continued to deceive both king and queen. Once he terrified the court by appearing again in the form of a huge hissing serpent, but put his head in Olympias’s lap and then kissed her. Thereupon he turned from a serpent into an eagle and flew away. Philip was then really convinced that his wife’s lover was the god Ammon.
An omen interpreted.
Before the birth of Alexander the following omen befell Philip. As he sat absorbed in thought in a place where there were many birds flying about, one of them laid an egg in his lap. It rolled to the ground, the shell broke, and a snake issued forth. It circled about the egg-shell but when it tried to re-enter the shell was prevented by death. When Antiphon, the interpreter of omens, was consulted concerning this portent, he said that it signified that a son should be born who would conquer the world but die before he could regain his native land.
The birth of Alexander.
The day of Olympias’s delivery now approached and Nectanebus, in his office of astrologer, stood by her side to tell her when the favorable moment had arrived for the birth of her child. Once he urged her to wait, since a child born at that moment would be a slave and a captive. Again he bade her restrain herself, for at that moment an effeminate would be born. At last the favorable instant came for the birth of a world conqueror, and Alexander was born amid an earthquake, thunder, and lightning. In this case, therefore, the moment of birth is regarded as controlling the destiny. Many astrologers, however, considered the moment of conception as of greater importance; we have already heard Augustine tell of the sage who chose a certain hour for intercourse with his wife in order to beget a marvelous son; and in the thirteenth century Albertus Magnus, in his treatise on animals, informs us that “Nectanebus, the natural father of Alexander, in having intercourse with his mother Olympias, observed the time when the sun was entering Leo and Saturn was in Taurus, since he wished his son to receive the form and power of those planets.”[2318]