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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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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.
Next morning he was carried in a high fever to the great reservoir and offered sacrifice with difficulty; he then gave audience to the officers, issued some orders concerning the sailing of the fleet, discussed the appointments to certain posts with his generals, and left the selections of the officers to be promoted, to them, with the admonition to make a strict examination. The sixth came, the king was prostrated by sickness, nevertheless he had himself carried to the altar, offered sacrifices and prayers, and gave orders for the departure of the fleet to be postponed. A melancholy night followed, and the next morning the king was hardly able to offer sacrifice. He commanded the generals to assemble in the anteroom of the palace and the captains and officers to keep together in the courtyard. He had himself carried back from the gardens to the palace. He grew weaker every moment; when the leaders were admitted he recognised them but was not able to speak. The fever continued through the night, and through the following day and night the king lay speechless.
The impression produced by the king’s illness in both the army and the city was beyond description; the Macedonians thronged round the palace, they begged to see their king, they feared that he was dead already and that his death was kept secret; they did not cease their lamentations, threats, and entreaties until the doors were opened to them. Then they filed past their king’s bed, and Alexander raised his head slightly, gave his hand to each and looked his silent farewell to his veterans. On the following day (it was the tenth of June) Pithon, Peucestas, Seleucus, and others went to the temple of Serapis and inquired of the god whether the king would be better if he were carried into his temple and prayed to him. The answer was “Bring him not, if he remains where he is he will soon be better.” And on the day after, towards the evening of the eleventh of June, Alexander died.d