nd to pay
especial reverence to that god: warning him, moreover, that he would
some day lose the sight of that eye with which, through the chink of
the half-opened door, he had seen the god consorting with his wife in
the form of a serpent. The historian Eratosthenes informs us that when
Alexander was about to set out on his great expedition, Olympias told
him the secret of his birth, and bade him act worthily of his divine
parentage. Other writers say that she scrupled to mention the subject,
and was heard to say "Why does Alexander make Hera jealous of me?"

Alexander was born on the sixth day of the month Hekatombaeon,[395]
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, since she was away from, it, attending to the birth of
Alexander.[396] All the Persian magi who were in Ephesus at the time
imagined that the destruction of the temple was but the forerunner of
a greater disaster, and ran through the city beating their faces and
shouting that on that day was born the destroyer of Asia. Philip, who
had just captured the city of Potidaea, received at that time three
messengers. The first announced that the Illyrians had been severely
defeated by Parmenio; the second that his racehorse had won a victory
at Olympia, and the third, that Alexander was born. As one may well
believe, he was delighted at such good news and was yet more overjoyed
when the soothsayers told him that his son, whose birth coincided with
three victories, would surely prove invincible.

IV. His personal appearance is best shown by the statues of Lysippus,
the only artist whom he allowed to represent him; in whose works we
can clearly trace that slight droop of his head towards the left, and
that keen glance of his eyes which formed his chief characteristics,
and which were afterwards imitated by his friends and successors.

Apelles, in his celebrated picture of Alexander wielding a
thunderbolt, has not exactly copied the fresh tint of his flesh, but
has made it darker and swarthier than it was, for we are told that his
skin was remarkably fair, inclining to red about the face and breast.
We learn from the memoirs of Aristoxenes, that his body diffused a
rich perfume, which scented his clothes, and that his breat