Some fateful wheel that, round in darkness rolling,
Knows this—its work, but not that work's far scope.
Hephestion, what is life? My life, since boyhood,
Hath been an agony of means to ends;
An ultimate end I find not. For that cause,
On-reeling in the oppression of a void,
At times I welcome what I once scarce brook'd—
The opprobrium of blank sleep.”
There are many scenes of strong dramatic power in this drama—the death of Darius, the quarrel with Parmenio, the rebellion of the Greeks, the last scene with Philotas, and others; but the power and intensity deepen at the close, when death at last creeps into the veins of the conqueror. He has lost Hephestion earlier in the drama, and this loss rends his heart. There is much truth in his singular, almost selfish love for his great-souled friend, who stood to Alexander as a wife would stand to another man. But he to whom “his purposes were wife and child” could not lean on a woman. It must be a man, strong, brave, keen-eyed as himself, but calmer, larger hearted, humbler, greater souled. Such was Hephestion, and his strong yet sweet character is not only admirably drawn, but affords an excellent foil throughout to the eager, impetuous, fiery nature and fiery words of the king.
Omens thicken around him, and the end comes at Babylon. The fever that burns at his heart seizes on his body while sailing on the Lake of Pallacopas. As the royal barge passes, a strain rises up from the waters: