Alexander Page #12

- We beg you, tell us.

The myth becomes real.

Zeus is your father.

Who will it be?

Pray tell us, who?

- What did he say?

- "To the best. "

- He said, "To the best. "

- What?

- No, he said, "To Crateros. "

- To Crateros?

Why would he say Crateros?

On the 10th of June,

a month short of his 33rd year...

...Alexander's great heart

finally gave out.

And as he vowed,

he joined Hephaistion.

But in his short life,

he achieved, without doubt...

...the mythic glory

of his ancestor Achilles and more.

Olympias' transgression

in the murder of his father...

...is, to my mind, a probability.

His, a burden.

Alexander was too in love with glory

for him to steal it.

But by blood, and blood alone,

he was guilty.

No!

- Bolt the doors.

- The body stays in Babylon.

- The body belongs to Macedon.

- Within hours...

...we were fighting like jackals

for his corpse.

The wars of the world had begun.

Forty years, off and on, they endured.

Cassander in Greece.

Crateros and Antigonus in western Asia.

Solucas and Perdiccas in the East.

Myself in Egypt.

Until we divided his empire in four parts.

Gentlemen, we are not savages.

- We are the future...

- Get out!

I think Alexander would have been

disappointed in us.

Naturally, rumors grew he'd been poisoned

by one faction of his generals or another...

...but the truth in these matters

has long since been driven from currency.

Cassander saw to that

with his fake diaries...

...painting Alexander

as a sick and bloated drunk.

Many believed,

to remove suspicion from himself.

He certainly proved he had the temperament

for politics and murder...

...when seven years later,

he executed Olympias.

Met her death with great courage.

Five years...

No, it was six years after that...

...Cassander finally achieved the complete

destruction of Alexander's bloodline...

...when he poisoned Roxane...

...and Alexander's 13-year-old son...

...the true heir to the empire.

But Roxane too, like Olympias...

...played by stern rules,

supported by several generals.

Days after Alexander's death,

she had Stateira poisoned.

It was reason enough

for some to believe...

...she was the one behind

Hephaistion's sudden demise.

But this is unproven in my mind.

Bagoas disappeared

from the histories entirely...

...a wise move, perhaps.

But I will say his love and devotion

for Alexander...

...were unquestionable and extraordinary.

Now I am the keeper of his body...

...embalmed here in the Egyptian ways.

I followed him as Pharaoh,

and have now ruled 40 years.

I have two sons,

each jealous of the other's power.

But they will grow to make

fine fathers and husbands.

And I trust they'll be just in their affairs.

But they have never seen...

...the great cavalry charge of Gaugamela...

...or the mountains of the Hindu Kush...

...when we crossed the 100,000 men army

into India.

He was a god, Cadmos...

...or as close as anything

I've ever known.

"Tyrant!" they yell so easily. I laugh.

No tyrant ever gave back so much.

What do they know of the world,

these schoolboys?

It takes strong men to rule.

Alexander was more, he was a Prometheus,

a friend to man. He changed the world.

Before him, there were tribes...

...and after him, all was possible.

There was suddenly a sense the world

could be ruled by one king...

...and be better for all.

Eighteen great Alexandrias he built

across this world.

It was an empire, not of land

and gold, but of the mind.

It was a Hellenic civilization...

...open to all.

But the truth is never simple...

...and yet it is.

The truth is, we did kill him.

By silence, we consented.

Because...

Because we couldn't go on.

What, by Ares, did we look forward to

but to be discarded in the end, like Cleitus?

After all this time, to give away our wealth

to Asian sycophants we despised?

Mixing the races, harmony?

Oh, he talked of these things...

...but wasn't it really about Alexander

and another population ready to obey him?

I never believed in his dream.

None of us did.

That's the truth of his life.

The dreamers exhaust us.

They must die before they kill us

with their blasted dreams.

Oh, just throw all that away, Cadmos.

It's an old fool's rubbish.

You shall write, "He died of fever

and a weakened condition. "

Yes, great Pharaoh.

Oh, he could have stayed home in

Macedonia, married, raised a family.

He'd have died a celebrated man.

But this was not Alexander.

All his life,

he fought to free himself from fear.

And by this, and this alone,

he was made free.

The freest man I've ever known.

His tragedy was one

of increasing loneliness...

...and impatience with those

who could not understand.

And if his desire...

...to reconcile Greek and barbarian

ended in failure...

What failure!

His failure towered

over other men's successes.

I've lived...

I've lived long life, Cadmos...

...but the glory

and the memory of man...

...will always belong to the ones

who follow their great visions.

And the greatest of these

is the one they now call...

...Megas Alexandros.

The greatest of them all.

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