Ruins of Greek Wall at Alatrium
Fresh envoys had also arrived from Greece—from what states we are not informed—to render him the divine honours which he had demanded. They came crowned, according to the custom of persons sent on a sacred mission to a temple, offered golden crowns to him, and saluted him with the title of a god. But, Arrian observes with emphatic simplicity, he was now not far from his end. It seemed to be announced by another sinister omen. The king had been busied with the enrolment of the newly-arrived troops, in council with his officers, who were seated on each side of the throne. Feeling thirst, he withdrew to refresh himself; the council rose for a time, and none were left in the hall but the attendant eunuchs. Before he returned, a man entered the apartment, mounted the steps of the throne, and seated himself on it. The slaves had probably been kept motionless by amazement, when they should have prevented him: but when the deed was done, the etiquette of the Persian court forbade them to lay their hands on one who occupied the seat of royalty, and they rent their clothes and beat their breasts in helpless consternation. The man was examined, and put to the torture, by Alexander’s orders, who suspected a treasonable design. According to some accounts, he was a Messenian, named Dionysius, who had been a long time in prison, and had just made his escape. We may infer, that he was out of his senses. He could give no explanation of his act, but that it had come into his mind. Hence it seemed the more manifest to the soothsayers, that it must be viewed as a sign of impending evil. Alexander himself probably so considered it, and it was the more alarming, as it followed so many others. That he was haunted by his gloomy forebodings, and superstitious fancies, to the degree which Plutarch describes, is hardly credible, unless he was already unconsciously affected by the disorder which proved fatal to him: as on the other hand it seems probable that its secret germs may have been cherished by the dejected state of his spirits.
From the presence of the disease, before its symptoms had become manifest, we may perhaps best explain the behaviour which Plutarch attributes to him in the interview which he had with Antipater’s son, Cassander, shortly before his death; a scene which appears to have been attended with very important consequences. Alexander confronted Cassander with Antipater’s accusers: and when Cassander treated their charges as groundless calumnies, sternly interrupted him, and asked whether men who had suffered no wrong would have travelled so far to prefer a calumnious charge. Cassander pleaded, that the greater the distance from the scene of the alleged injury, the safer was the calumny. But the king indignantly replied that Cassander showed how well he had studied Aristotle’s sophistry, by which every argument might be turned two opposite ways, but that it should avail nothing, if the complaints proved to be in any degree well-founded. So far indeed we only see a proof that Alexander retained the full vigour of his mind and character. Plutarch however adds, what is more difficult to believe, that because Cassander, at his first audience, could not keep his countenance at the sight of the Persian ceremonial, which was entirely new to him, Alexander seized him by the hair, and dashed his head against the wall. This may be a gross exaggeration; but that Cassander’s reception was so harsh and violent as to leave an indelible impression of fear and hatred on his soul, is confirmed, as strongly as such a fact can be, by his subsequent conduct.
LAST ILLNESS
The preparations for the projected campaign were now so far advanced, that Alexander celebrated a solemn sacrifice for its success. He at the same time entertained his principal officers at a banquet, and continued drinking with them to a late hour of the evening. As he was retiring to rest, he was invited by Medius—who it seems had of late been admitted to an intimacy with him something like Hephæstion’s—to a revel, which was to be followed by a fresh drinking-bout. He complied, and the greater part of the night seems to have been thus spent. The next evening he again banqueted at the house of Medius, and again the carousal was prolonged.
It was at the close of this banquet, after he had refreshed himself with a bath, that he felt the symptoms of fever so strongly as to be induced to sleep there. The grasp of death was on him, though his robust frame yielded only after a hard struggle to the gradual prevalence of the malady.
We have a minute and seemingly complete account of his last illness, in an official diary which Arrian transcribed. Nevertheless various reports, which it does not sanction, were current in ancient times, and one of them, which ascribed his death to gross intemperance, has always been very generally believed. Another, which has been as generally rejected, attributed it to a dose of poison,[39] contrived by Aristotle, conveyed by Cassander, and administered by Iollas, another of Antipater’s sons, who filled the office of cup-bearer to the king. As this report was undoubtedly invented by Cassander’s enemies, so the other may have been first circulated by him and his partisans. It represents Alexander as having drained an enormous cup, a bowl of Hercules, as it was called, and as having instantly sunk as from a sudden blow. This incident certainly would not have appeared on the face of the journal; but neither does it seem quite consistent with Alexander’s habits, who, according to Aristobulus, drank chiefly for the sake of prolonging conversation, nor with other details which have been preserved concerning the banquet. If he had been in his usual state of health, the debauch described in the journal would probably have produced no effect on him. It may however both have hastened the outbreak of the fever, and have rendered it fatal. Aristobulus related another fact, which the journal passed over in silence; that in a paroxysm of the fever, the patient quenched his thirst with a large draught of wine.[b]
THE DEATH-BED OF ALEXANDER
On the morning of the first of June Alexander awoke very ill. The varied emotions of the last few days, with the rapid succession of banquets, had made him only too susceptible to illness, and the fever took strong hold on him. He had to be carried in his bed to the altar for the morning sacrifice which he was wont to offer daily. He then lay on a couch in the great hall, receiving his generals and giving them the necessary orders for the start: the army was to set out on the fourth of June; the fleet, with which he was going in person, on the following day. He was then carried on his couch to the Euphrates, got into a ship and crossed to the gardens on the farther side, where he took a bath and passed the night shivering with chill. After the bath and sacrifice the next morning, he went into his private apartment and lay on a couch there all day. Medius was there and tried to cheer him by conversation. The king commanded the leaders to appear before him next morning, and having taken a little supper he went to bed.
The fever increased, his condition grew worse, and he passed the whole night without sleep. After the bath and sacrifice next morning Nearchus and the other leaders of the fleet were admitted; the king informed them that their departure must be postponed for a day on account of his illness, but that he hoped to be sufficiently recovered by that time to embark on the sixth. He remained in the bathroom; Nearchus was commanded to sit by his bed and tell him of his voyage. Alexander listened with great pleasure, rejoicing that he too should presently experience similar perils. Meanwhile his condition changed for the worse, the fever was higher every night. Nevertheless on the morning of the fourth of June he called the officers of the fleet together after the bath and morning sacrifice, and commanded them to have everything in readiness for his reception and for the sailing of the fleet on the sixth. After the evening bath the fever set in more violently than ever, the king’s strength diminished visibly, and a night of sleepless torment ensued.