LXXV. After Alexander had once lost his confidence and become suspicious and easily alarmed, there was no circumstance so trivial that he did not make an omen of it, and the palace was full of sacrifices, lustrations, and soothsayers. So terrible a thing is disbelief in the gods and contempt for them on the one hand, while superstition and excessive reverence for them presses on men's guilty consciences like a torrent of water[434] poured upon them. Thus was Alexander's mind filled with base and cowardly alarms. However when the oracular responses of the gods about Hephæstion were reported to him, he laid aside his grief somewhat, and again indulged in feasts and drinking bouts. He entertained Nearchus and his friends magnificently, after which he took a bath, and then, just as he was going to sleep, Medius invited him to a revel at his house. He drank there the whole of the following day, when he began to feel feverish: though he did not drink up the cup of Herakles at a draught, or suddenly feel a pain as of a spear piercing his body, as some historians have thought it necessary to write, in order to give a dramatic fitness and dignity to the end of so important a personage. Aristobulus tells us that he became delirious through fever, and drank wine to quench his thirst, after which he became raving mad, and died on the thirtieth day of the month Daisius.

LXXVI. In his own diary his last illness is described thus: "On the eighteenth day of Daisius he slept in the bath-room, because he was feverish. On the following day after bathing he came into his chamber and spent the day playing at dice with Medius. After this he bathed late in the evening, offered sacrifice to the gods, dined, and suffered from fever during the night. On the twentieth he bathed and sacrificed as usual, and while reclining in his bath-room he conversed with Nearchus and his friends, listening to their account of their voyage, and of the Great Ocean. On the twenty-first he did the same, but his fever grew much worse, so that he suffered much during the night, and next day was very ill. On rising from his bed he lay beside the great plunge-bath, and conversed with his generals about certain posts which were vacant in his army, bidding them choose suitable persons to fill them. On the twenty-fourth, although very ill, he rose and offered sacrifice; and he ordered his chief officers to remain near him, and the commanders of brigades and regiments to pass the night at his gate. On the twenty-fifth he was carried over the river to the other palace, and slept a little, but the fever did not leave him. When his generals came to see him he was speechless, and remained so during the twenty-fifth, so that the Macedonians thought that he was dead. They clamoured at his palace gates, and threatened the attendants until they forced their way in. When the gates were thrown open they all filed past his bed one by one, dressed only in their tunics. On this day Python and Seleukus, who had been to the temple of Serapis, enquired whether they should bring Alexander thither. The god answered that they must leave him alone. The eight and twentieth day of the month, towards evening, Alexander died."

LXXVII. Most of the above is copied, word for word, from Alexander's household diary. No one had any suspicion of poison at the time; but it is said that six years after there appeared clear proof that he was poisoned, and that Olympias put many men to death, and caused the ashes of Iolas, who had died in the mean time, to be cast to the winds, as though he had administered the poison to Alexander.

Some writers say that Antipater was advised by Aristotle to poison Alexander, and inform us that one Hagnothemis declared that he had been told as much by Antipater; and that the poison was as cold as ice, and was gathered like dew, from a certain rock near the city of Nonakris, and preserved in the hoof of an ass: for no other vessel could contain it, because it is so exceedingly cold and piercing. Most historians, however, think that the whole story of Alexander's being poisoned was a fiction; and this view is strongly supported by the fact, that as Alexander's generals began to fight one another immediately after his death, his body lay for many days unheeded, in hot and close rooms, and yet showed no signs of decay, but remained sweet and fresh. Roxana, who was pregnant, was regarded with great respect by the Macedonians, and being jealous of Statira, she sent her a forged letter, purporting to come from Alexander and asking her to come to him. When Statira came, Roxana killed both her and her sister, cast their bodies down a well, and filled up the well with earth. Her accomplice in this crime was Perdikkas, who on the death of Alexander at once became a very powerful man. He sheltered his authority under the name of Arrhidæus, who became the nominal, while Perdikkas was the virtual king of Macedonia. This Arrhidæus was the son of Philip by a low and disreputable woman named Philinna, and was half-witted in consequence of some bodily disorder with which he was afflicted. This disease was not congenital nor produced by natural causes, for he had been a fine boy and showed considerable ability, but Olympias endeavoured to poison him, and destroyed his intellect by her drugs.

FOOTNOTES:

[394] On the subject of serpent worship, see in Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible,' art.: 'Serpent,' and 'Brazen Serpent.'

[395] The Greek month Hekatombæon answers to the last half of our July and the first half of August.

[396] Cf. Horace, Carm. iii. 22.

[397] Reciters of epic poems, the cantos of which were called 'rhapsodies.'

[398] The same indifference to athletic sports, as practised in Greece, is mentioned in the Life of Philopœmen. The pankratium is sometimes called the pentathlum, and consisted of five contests, the foot-race, leaping, throwing the quoit, hurling the javelin, and wrestling. No one received the prize unless he was winner in all. In earlier times boxing was part of the pentathlum, but hurling the javelin was afterwards substituted for it.