Parallel Lives: Complete

It is said that when Pausanias came to him and complained of his treatment, Alexander answered him by quoting the line from the Medea of Euripides, in which she declares that she will be revenged upon “The guardian, and the bridegroom, and the bride,” alluding to Attalus, Philip, and Kleopatra.

While the others were laughing and settling the terms of the wager, Alexander ran straight up to the horse, took him by the bridle, and turned him to the sun; as it seems he had noticed that the horse’s shadow dancing before his eyes alarmed him and made him restive. He then spoke gently to the horse, and patted him on the back with his hand, until

He seems to have been altogether indifferent to athletic exercises;

Alexander greeted him, and enquired whether he could do anything for him. “Yes,” answered Diogenes, “you can stand a little on one side, and not keep the sun off me.” This answer is said to have so greatly surprised Alexander, and to have filled him with such a feeling of admiration for the greatness of mind of a man who could treat him with such i

“Stout ropes to check him, and stout oars to guide.” he sent for Aristotle, the most renowned philosopher of the age, to be his son’s tutor, and paid him a handsome reward for doing so.

As a youth he showed great power of self-control, by abstaining from all sensual pleasures in spite of his vehement and passionate nature; while his intense desire for fame rendered him serious and high-minded beyond his years.

Alexander was born on the sixth day of the month Hekatombæon, which the Macedonians call Lous, the same day on which the temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burned. This coincidence inspired Hegesias of Magnesia to construct a ponderous joke, dull enough to have put out the fire, which was, that it was no wonder that the temple of Artemis was burned,

The Greeks after this assembled at Corinth and agreed to invade Persia with Alexander for their leader. Many of their chief statesmen and philosophers paid him visits of congratulation, and he hoped that Diogenes of Sinope, who was at that time living at Corinth, would do so. As he, however, paid no attention whatever to Alexander and remained quie

Kleopatra had been cruelly tortured and put to death by his mother Olympias.