Alexander of Aphrodisias

“ Alexander's interpretation proceeds throughout upon the Alexander of Aphrodisias. naturalistic lines which have already become familiar to us. Aristotle had maintained that the individual alone is real, and had nevertheless asserted that the universal is the proper object of knowledge. Alexander seeks consistency by holding to the first position alone. ”

“ Plot. 20, a stoic) . He appears to have written commentaries on most of the works of Aristotle. Simplicius (ad Arist. de Caelo, ii. 23, fol. 105) says he was the instructor of Alexander of Aphrodisias. ”

“ As the boy approached manhood he became remarkable, not only for his wonderful beauty of form and feature, but also for his strength and courage, which he exercised in defending the flocks from the attacks of robbers and wild beasts; hence he was called Alexander, or helper of men. It was about this time that he settled the famous dispute concerning the golden apple, thrown by the goddess of Discord into the assembly of the gods. As we have already seen, he gave his decision in favour of Aphrodite; thus creating for himself two implacable enemies, for Hera and Athene never forgave the slight. ”

“ In striking contrast to this mournful scene of sorrow in the palace of Sysigambis, there was an exhibition of the most wild and tumultuous joy in the streets, and in all the public places of resort in the city of Athens, when the tidings of the death of the great Macedonian king arrived there. The Athenian commonwealth, as well as all the other states of Southern Greece, had submitted very reluctantly to the Macedonian supremacy. They had resisted Philip, and they had resisted Alexander. ”

“ Born about the year 318, and claiming descent from Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, connected also with the royal family of Macedonia through Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, he became when a mere stripling king of the wild mountain tribes of Epirus, and learned how to fight battles in the school of Demetrius Poliorcetes and of his father Antigonus. He fought by their side in his seventeenth year at the memorable battle of Ipsus in Phrygia, in which they were decisively defeated by the combined armies of Seleucus and Lysimachus. ”

“ The building-up of the soul in man is not a matter of individuals, but of centuries. Yet in at least a superficial way Greek thought became the thought of all mankind. We may dismiss Alexander's savage conquests with a sigh of pity; but we cannot deny him recognition as a most potent teacher of the world.
His empire did not last. It was in too obvious opposition to all that we have recognized as the Grecian spirit. At his death the same impulse seems to have stirred each one of his subordinates, to snatch for himself a kingdom from the confusion. ”

“ Nothing remains but to strike the blow.
"O men of Macedon, my friends and companions, liberators of Greece, the hour of our triumph is near. At the Granicus we overthrew the army of a viceroy; now we are to meet the army of the Great King himself.
"It is Persia that awaits our onset at Issus. There have the Gods assembled the might and power of the empire and it stands like corn ripe for the reaper. The sheaves of this harvest shall be of gold that the barbarians have gathered for us as bees gather honey.
"Heroes of Hellas! from your iron hands none can wrest victory unless you will it! ”

“ For many centuries Athens retained her prestige as a centre of art and culture; her schools went on indeed to 529 A.D., that is to say for nearly a thousand years; but the leadership in the intellectual activity of the world passed presently across the Mediterranean to Alexandria, the new trading city that Alexander had founded. Here the Macedonian general Ptolemy had become Pharaoh, with a court that spoke Greek. He had become an intimate of Alexander before he became king, and he was deeply saturated with the ideas of Aristotle. ”

“ Alexander mounts the throne, a youth of twenty. Greece flies to arms against him, not dreaming that a greater than Philip is here. Marching quickly against the Thracians and the Illyrians, who at once succumb, he volts to smite rebellious Thebes and Athens, whom Demosthenes's incessant appeals have again induced to take the field. In spite of him, the Athenians now basely desert the Thebans, leaving them to stand the entire fury of the war alone. Greece is thus soon quieted again, and the boy warrior, leaving Antipater behind with a sufficient home guard, crosses to Asia never to return. ”

“ Greece had produced personal rulers of ability, or even of genius; but to the greatest of these, to Peisistratus, to Dionysius, even to Jason of Pherae, there clung the fatal taint of illegitimacy. As yet no ruler had succeeded in making the person of the monarch respectable. Alexander made it sacred. From him is derived, for the West, that “divinity that doth hedge a king.” And in creating Hellenism he created, for the first time, a common type of civilization, with a common language, literature and art, as well as a common form of political organization. ”

“ Macedon is still to Greece what Russia, before Peter the Great, was to Europe—a half-unknown and barbarous land, full of latent energy and power, and waiting for the rise of a master mind to discern its embryo greatness and turn its peasants into the unconquerable phalanx. Alexander must arise to carry forth with his victorious arms the seeds of Greek civilization over the Eastern world. Aristotle must arise to gather up in one boundless mind the vast results of Greek philosophy, and found an empire vaster and more enduring than that of his great pupil in the subjugated intellect of man. ”

“ I do not think that even his tracing his origin to a god was a great error on Alexander’s part, if it was not perhaps merely a device to induce his subjects to show him reverence.980 Nor does he seem to 425me to have been a less renowned king than Minos, Aeacus, or Rhadamanthus, to whom no insolence is attributed by the men of old, because they traced their origin to Zeus. Nor does he seem at all inferior to Theseus or Ion, the former being the reputed son of Poseidon, and the latter of Apollo. ”

“ This portrait was in the splendid temple of Diana, or Artemis, at Ephesus. Alexander was accustomed to say of it, “There are two Alexanders, one invincible, the living son of Philip—the other immutable, the picture of Apelles.”
Later in his life Apelles painted many pictures of mythological subjects. He visited Alexandria, in Egypt; he did not win the favor of King Ptolemy, and his enemies in [Pg 19] the Egyptian court played cruel practical jokes upon him. On one occasion he received an invitation to a feast at which the king had not desired his presence. The monarch was angry ”

“ They set their teeth upon the thought that defeat would leave the road to their homes unguarded. They pictured the shame of returning as hunted fugitives, with the barbarians at their heels—how sullen Sparta would exult and fickle Athens blaze up in revolt. It would be better to die there on the banks of the foreign river than to incur such disgrace.
To all minds came the thought that the fate of the world was hanging in the balance, and all eyes turned to Alexander. The young king, cool and confident, had regained his position at the head of the Agema. ”

“ Athens sent money and promised an army. The Bœotarchs ordered the walls to be made strong and a barricade to be built inside so that even if the walls should fall, they would still be able to defend themselves. Fugitives from Onchestris brought the first news that Alexander and his army were there. Even then the city would not believe it was the Hegemon himself, but maintained that it must be Antipater or the Lyncestian namesake of the king. For how, they asked, could the dead come to life?"
"Nothing is beyond the power of the Gods," Agias said sententiously. ”

“ By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.
Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old—the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome ”

“ Alexander’s contemporaries among the Greeks were not mistaken as to the influence which he exercised. He died detested and cursed by Greece and Macedonia. If he had lived longer, he would perhaps himself have seen the downfall of the structure he had reared. He could not be otherwise than active and stirring, and he could not have gone on without bringing ruin upon himself. His intention was not to hellenise Asia, but to make Greece Persian; hence if he had longer remained in Asia, we should have seen the formation of a Græco-Persico-Macedonian empire. ”

“ Alexander was proclaimed king, at only twenty years old; and Demosthenes was so delighted at the death of the enemy of Athens, that he wreathed his head with a garland in token of joy, little guessing that Philip’s murder had only placed a far greater man on the throne. The first thing Alexander did was to go to Corinth, and get himself chosen in his father’s stead captain-general of the Greeks. Only the Spartans refused, saying it was their custom to lead, and not to follow; while the Athenians pretended to submit, meaning to take the first opportunity of breaking off the yoke. ”

“ Is not the Persian king—who dug through Athos and bridged the Hellespont—who demanded earth and water from [174] the Greeks—who dared to proclaim himself in public epistles master of all mankind from the rising to the setting sun—is not he now struggling to the last, not for dominion over others, but for the safety of his own person?"
Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander's career even in the middle of 330 b.c., more than seven years before his death. During the following seven years his additional achievements had carried astonishment yet further. ”

“ Alexander III., King of Macedonia, surnamed the Great, was born at Pella in the year 356 B.C. He was the son of Philip II. and Olympias, who belonged to the royal race of Epeiros, which claimed to be descended from Achilles, the hero of the Iliad. The education of the prince was in the outset entrusted to Lysimachos, an Akarnanian, and to his mother’s kinsman Leonidas, [16] a man of an austere character, who inured his pupil to Spartan-like habits of hard exercise and simple fare. ”

“ Nay, follow his counsel, for it is not to be lightly regarded by you that you are the only men in Hellas whose offences the great king is ready to forgive and whose friend he would be.”
141. Thus spoke Alexander. But the Lacedaemonians had heard that Alexander was come to Athens to bring the Athenians to an agreement with the foreigner ”

“ But as soon as Alexander had settled matters in his own country, and come in person with his army into Boeotia, down fell the courage of the Athenians, and Demosthenes was hushed; the Thebans, deserted by them, fought by themselves, and lost their city. After which, the people of Athens, all in distress and great perplexity, resolved to send ambassadors to Alexander, and amongst others, made choice of Demosthenes for one; but his heart failing him for fear of the king's anger, he returned back from Cithaeron, and left the embassy. ”

“ Thebes was taken by assault; six thousand of her warriors were slain; the city was leveled with the ground, and thirty thousand prisoners were condemned to slavery. The other Grecian states hastily renewed their submission; and Athens, with servile homage, sent an embassy to congratulate the young king on his recent successes. Alexander accepted the excuses of all, and having intrusted the government of Greece and Macedon to Antip'ater, one of his generals, he set out on his career of Eastern conquest with only thirty-five thousand men, and a treasury of only seventy talents of silver. ”

“ On the death of Arymbas, Alexander the brother of Olympias, was put on the throne by Philip and married his daughter Cleopatra. Alexander assumed the new title of king of Epirus, and raised the reputation of his country abroad. ”

“ The decadence of Greece and the Roman decadence are filled up with pastiches and caricatures of him; even in modern times he has remained the type and the ideal of all warrior tyrants down to Louis XIV and Napoleon.
“The literature that makes his fame is for the most part of poor stuff. The Greeks of the imperial epoch, in order to console themselves for the grandeur of Rome, did their best to inflate the glory of Alexander. This theatrical hero is worth more to the rhetorician than a legislator like Solon or a statesman like Pericles. ”

“ Nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite's shaft shot by the hands of Love, the child of Zeus. Idly, idly by the streams of Alpheus and in the Pythian shrines of Phœbus, Hellas heaps the slaughtered steers; while Love we worship not, Love, the king of men, who holds the key to Aphrodite's sweetest bower,—worship not him who, when he comes, lays waste and marks his path to mortal hearts by wide-spread woe. ”

“ These men obtained all the requests which they were despatched to make, and the king gave up to the Athenians all their fellow-citizens who had been captured at the Granicus. [3] Being informed that revolutionary plans had been carried out in the Peloponnese, he sent Amphoterus thither to assist those of the Peloponnesians who were firm in their support of his war against Persia, and were not under the control of the Lacedaemonians. ”

“ The immensity of the obstacles to be overcome oppressed him, and he began once more to doubt whether, after all, there could be any hope of success for the young king. He fell asleep, to see in his dreams the pale face of Artemisia framed in her unbound hair.
His mind was still clouded with misgiving when he went next morning with Chares and Leonidas to pay his respects at the palace; but they were dispelled like mists before the morning sun when he stood face to face with Alexander. In the inspiring presence of the young leader no doubts could live. ”