De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute

This is Fortune’s discourse, who declares that Alexander is her own characteristic handiwork, and hers alone. But some rejoinder must be made on behalf of philosophy, or rather on Alexander’s behalf, who would be vexed and indignant if he should be thought to have received as a pure gift, even at the hands of Fortune, the supremacy which he won at the price of much blood and of wounds that followed one after another; and Many a night did he spend without sleeping, Many a blood-stained day did he pass amid combats unceasing, against irresistible forces and innumerable tribes, against impassable rivers and mountain fastnesses whose summit no arrow could reach, furthered by wise counsels, steadfast purpose, manly courage, and a prudent heart.

I think that if Fortune should try to inscribe her name on his successes, he would say to her, “Slander not my virtues, nor take away my fair fame by detraction. Darius was your handiwork: he who was a slave and courier of the king, him did you make the mighty lord of Persia; and Sardar Lapalus, upon whose head you placed the royal diadem, though he spent his days in carding purple wool. But I, through my victory at Arbela, went up to Susa, and Cilicia opened the way for me into the broad land of Egypt; but to Cilicia I came by way of the Granicus, which I crossed, using as a bridge the dead bodies of Mithridates and Spithridates. Adorn yourself, proud Fortune, and vaunt your dominion over kings that never felt a wound nor shed a drop of blood. For they have been Fortune’s favourites, men such as Ochus was and Artaxerses, whom at the very hour of their birth you placed upon the throne of Cyrus. But my body bears many a token of an opposing Fortune and no ally of mine. First, among the Illyrians, my head was wounded by a stone and my neck by a cudgel. Then at the Granicus my head was cut open by an enemy’s dagger, at Issus my thigh was pierced by the sword. Next at Gaza my ankle was wounded by an arrow, my shoulder was dislocated, and I whirled heavily round and round. Then at Maracandaf the bone of my leg was split open by an arrow. There awaited me towards the last also the buffetings I received among the Indians and the violence of famines. Among the Aspasians my shoulder was wounded by an arrow, and among the Gandridae my leg. Among the Mallians, the shaft of an arrow sank deep into my breast and buried its steel; and I was struck in the neck by a cudgel, when the scaling-ladders which we had moved up to the walls were battered down; and Fortune cooped me up alone, favouring ignoble barbarians and not illustrious adversaries with such an exploit. But if Ptolemy had not held his shield above me, and Limnaeus taking his stand before me had not fallen, a target for ten thousand shafts, and if my Macedonians had not overthrown the wall with spirit and main force, then that nameless village in a foreign land must needs have become the tomb of Alexander.”