Illness and death.
On the 15th and 16th Alexander caroused deep into the night at
the house of the favourite Medius. On the 17th he developed
fever; for a time he treated it as a momentary impediment to the
expedition; but on the 27th his speech was gone, and the Macedonian
army were suffered to pass man by man through his chamber to
bid him farewell. On the 28th (? June 13) Alexander died.10
His son by Roxana, the so-called ALEXANDER ``AEGUS,'' was
born a few months later. He and his uncle Philip, as joint
kings, were placed under the guardianship of Perdiccas,
Peithon and Antipater in succession. After the death of
Antipater (319) Roxana fled with him to Epirus, and was
afterwards taken back to Macedonia, together with Olympias, by
Polyperchon. All three fell into the hands of Cassander;
Alexander and his mother were in 310-309 put to death by
order of Cassander (Justin xiv. 6, xv. 2). The meaningless
surname of Aegus, still given in some books to this
Alexander, is derived simply from a modern misreading of
the text of the Astronomical Canon, AIGOU for ALLOU.
Character and policy.
Alexander the Great is one of the instances of the vanity
of appealing from contemporary disputes to ``the verdict of
posterity''; his character and his policy are estimated to-day
as variously as ever. Certain features--the high physical
courage, the impulsive energy, the fervid imagination--stand
out clear; beyond that disagreement begins. That he was a
great master of war is admitted by most of those who judge
his character unfavourably, but even this has been seriously
questioned (e.g. by Beloch, Griech. Gesch. iii. (i.),
p. 66). There is a dispute as to his real designs. That
he aimed at conquering the whole world and demanded to be
worshipped as a god is the traditional view. Droysen denies
the former, and Niese maintains that his ambition was limited
by the bounds of the Persian empire and that the claim to
divine honours is fabulous (Historische Zeitschr. lxxix.,
1897, 1 f.). It is true that our best authority, Arrian,
fails to substantiate the traditional view satisfactorily;
on the other hand those who maintain it urge that Arrian's
interests were mainly military, and that the other authorities,
if inferior in trustworthiness, are completer in range of
vision. Of those, again, who maintain the traditional view,
some, like Niebuhr and Grote, regard it as convicting Alexander
of mad ambition and vainglory, whilst to Kaerst Alexander
only incorporates ideas which were the timely fruit of a
long historical development. The policy of fusing Greeks and
Orientals again is diversely judged. To Droysen and Kaerst
it accords with the historical conditions; to Grote and to
Beloch it is a betrayal of the prerogative of Hellenism.
Some notion of the personal appearance of Alexander may be
got from the literature and the surviving monuments. He is
described as of an athletic frame, though not taller than the
common, and a white and ruddy complexion. The expression
of his eyes had something ``liquid and melting'' (ton
ommaton ten diachusin kai ugroteta), and the hair
which stood up over his forehead gave the suggestion of a
lion. He had a way of carrying his head somewhat aslant. (See
especially Plut. Alex. 4; de Alex. fort. ii. 2.) The
greatest masters of the time executed portraits of him, Lysippus
in sculpture, Apelles in painting and Pyrgoteles in graven
gems. Among surviving monuments, we have no completely
certified portraits except the Tivoli herm (now in the Louvre)
and the coins struck by his successors. The herm is a dry
work and the head upon the coins shows various degrees of
idealization. There are, however, a considerable number of
works which can make out a better or worse claim either to
be portraits of Alexander or to reproduce his type, and a
large field of discussion is therefore open as to their values
and classification (F. Kopp, Uber das Bildnis Alexanders
d. Grossen (1892); K. J. Ujfalvy, Le Type physique
d'Alexandre le Grand (1902); T. Schreiber, Studien uber das
Bildnis Alexanders d. Grossen (1903); J. J. Bernoulli,
Die erhaltenen Darstellungen Alexanders d. Grossen
(1905). Alexander shaved clean, and set the fashion in this
respect for the Graeco-Roman world for the next 500 years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The campaigns and life of Alexander did not
lack contemporary historians, some of them eye-witnesses and even
associates. They included the philosopher Callisthenes, put to
death by Alexander in 327, whose history went up to the death
of Darius, Alexander's general Ptolemy, afterwards king in
Egypt, Nearchus who commanded the fleet that sailed from the
Indus to the Persian Gulf, Onesicritus who served as pilot in
the same fleet, Aristobulus who was with Alexander in India,
Clitarchus, a contemporary, if not an eye-witness, important
from the fact that his highly coloured version of the life
of Alexander became the popular authority for the succeeding
centuries. Besides the historical narrative, there were
works mainly geographical or topographical left by persons
like Baeton and Diognetus, whom Alexander had employed (as
bematistai) to survey the roads over which he passed. All
such original sources have now perished. The fragments are
collected in the Didot edition of Arrian by Karl Muller. Not
reckoning scattered notices, we depend principally opon five
later compositions, Diodorus, book xvii. (c. 20 B.C.),
the work of Quintus Curtius (c. A.D. 42), Plutarch's (c.
45-125 A.D.) Life of Alexander, Arrian's Anabasis and
Indica (c. A.D. 150), and the relevant books of Justin's
abridgment (2nd cent. A.D.) of the history of Trogus (c.
10 B.C.?). To these we may add the Latin Itinerarium
Alexandri, a skeleton outline of Alexander's campaigns dedicated
to the emperor Constantius (A.D. 324-361), printed at the
end of the Didot edition of Arrian, and the Epitome Rerum
Gestarum Alexandri magni, an abridgment made in the 4th or
5th century of a lost Latin work of uncertain date, combining
history with elements taken from the Romance (edited by O.
Wagner, Leipzig, 1900). The relation of these works to the
various original sources constitutes the critical problem
before the modern historian in reference to the history of
Alexander. See Droysen vol. i. appendix i.; A. Schoene, De
rerum Alexandri Magni scriptorum imprimis Arriani & Plutarchi
fontibus (1870); Fraenkel, Die Geschichtschreiber Alex.
d. Grossen (1883); O. Maas, Kleitarch und Diodor (Petersburg,
1894); Kaerst, Ferechungen zur Gesch. Alex. d. Grossen
(1887), and Gesch. d. hellenist. Zeitalters (vol. i., 1901
), pp. 421 f.; F. L. Schoenle, Diodorstudien ( 1891 ); E.
Schwartz, articles ``Aristobulos (14),'' ``Arrianus,'' ``Quintus
Curtius,'' ``Diodorus'' in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie.
For modern views of Alexander see Thirlwall, History of Greece;
Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History (Eng. trans. rev. by
author, 1852) Grote, History of Greece; Droysen, Histoire
de l'Hellenisme (translation by Bouche-Leclerq); Ad. Holm,
History of Greece (Eng. trans., 1898); B. Niese, Gesch.
der griech. u. maked. Staaten (vol. i.); Kaerst, Gesch. des
hellenist. Zeitalters (1901); J. Beloch, Griechische
Gesch. (vol. iii., 1904); J. B. Bury, History of Greece
(1902); A. von Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans (1888). Among
the mass of monographs and special articles, reference may
be made to Freeman, Historical Essays, 2nd series, pp. 182
f.; Dodge, Alexander (in a series called Great Captains)
1890; Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History (1892, ch. viii.;
D. G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon (1897),
a striking effort of historical imagination to reconstruct
Alexander as a man of the real world: Benjamin I. Wheeler,
Alexander the Great (1900) in the ``Heroes of the Nations
Series.'' The purely military aspect of Alexander's campaigns
is treated in general histories of warfare (Rustow-Kochly,
Bauer, Delbruck, Verdy du Vernois), and in special monographs
by Hogarth, Journ. of Philol. vol. xvii., 1888, pp.
1 foll.; H. Droysen, Untersuchungen uber A. des Gr.
Heerwesen (1885), and Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, Kurze
Ubersicht der Feldzuge A. de Gr. (1897). For further
references to the literature on Alexander, see Kaerst's article
in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie (1894). (E. R. B.)
1 The use of the surname is proved as far back
as the 1st century B.C. (Nepos, De Reg. 2).
2 See Bauer,``Die Schlacht bei Issus'' in Jahreshefte
d.osterr. archaol. Instit. ii. pp. 105 f.; A. Janke. Auf
Alex. d. grossen Pfaden; Gruhn, Das Schlachtfeld von Issus;
Lammert in Berl. Philol. Wochenschr. (1905), col. 1596 f.
3 Pridik, De Alex. Mog. epist. commercio (Dorpat, 1893);
Schwartz, art. ``Curtius'' in Pauly-Wissowa, col. 1884.
4 The story of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem rests
on no better authority than a later Jewish romance.
5 The best opinion now confirms Abbott's identification
of Aornus with Mahaban--Deane, Journ. R. Asiat. Soc.
(Oct. 1896), p. 673; them, Report of an Archaeological
Tour with the Buner Field Force (Lahore, 1898), pp. 45-48.
6 Beside V. Smith (cited below) see Schubert, ``Die
Porusschlacht,'' in Rhein. Mus. lvi., 1901, p. 543.
7 There seems nothing to fix the exact spot of
this town; the common identification with Multan is,
according to Raverty and V. Smith, certainly wrong.
8 For the indian campaigns of Alexander see especially McCrindle,
Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (1896); Vincent A.
Smith, Early History of India (1904), and the references
there given to the researches of Sir T. H. Holdich, Raverty
and Foucher; A. Anspach, De Alex. Magni exped. ind. (1903).
9 Tomaschek, ``Topographische Erlauterung der Kustenfahrt Nearchs''
in the Sitzungsberichte der kaiserl. Akad. d. Wissensch.
of Vienna (Philosoph.-histor. Klasse, vol. cxxi.); Major
P. M. Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia (1902), pp. 166 f.
10 For Alexander's funeral, see F.
Jacoby in Rhein. Mus. (1903), pp. 461 f.
The Romance of Alexander.
The figure of Alexander naturally impressed itself upon the
imagination of the world which his career had shaken. Even
in India we are told that he was held in honour by the native
kings who took his farthest provinces in possession. But
Eastern tradition, so tenacious of the old myths of primitive
man, has a short memory for actual history, and five centuries
later Alexander was only remembered in Iran as the accursed
destroyer of the sacred books, whose wisdom he had at the
same time pilfered by causing translations to be made into
``Roman.'' That the East to-day has so much to tell about
Alexander is only due to the fact that old mythical stories of
gods or heroes who go travelling through lands of monsters and
darkness, of magical fountains and unearthly oceans, became
attached to his name in the popular literature of the Roman
empire, and this mythical Alexander was reintroduced in the
7th century A.D. into the farther East, where the historical
Alexander was almost forgotten. The romance of Alexander
is found written in the languages of nearly all peoples from
the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, but all these versions are
derived, mediately or immediately, from the Greek original
which circulated under the false name of Callisthenes. The
Greek pseudo-Callisthenes (otherwise Aisopos we possess in
three recensions, based all upon a book produced in Egypt in
the 2nd century A.D. But this book itself was a farrago of
heterogeneous elements--pieces of genuine history, ancient
stories once told in Babylon of Gilgamesh or Etanna, literary
forgeries of the days soon after Alexander, like the oldest
