HKB
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Often appears with: counsel and advisers to rulers · conspiracy and assassination · wise man · will, choice, and freedom · value, price, and exchange · thracida · the problem of evil and theodicy · reason and the intellect · prudence and practical wisdom · pompey · philip’s agents · philip
Usually: censure (3) · curiosity (3) · argument (2) · narrative (2) · reflection (2) · detachment (2) · indignation (2) · commentary or gloss (1) · ambition and its cost (1) · confronting death (1)
“Further, it is unreasonable that only the few of any species attain to the end of the species.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) · wit
“For he put all Sertorius's writings and letters together and read not one of them, nor suffered anyone else to read them, but burnt them all, and caused Perpenna immediately to be put to death, lest by discovering their names, further troubles and revolutions might ensue.” Plutarch, Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans · observation
“Nay, I call you the hireling, formerly of Philip, and now of Alexander, and so do all who are present.” Demosthenes, The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 · wit
A new biography begins: Eumenes of Cardia, said to be educated as scholar and soldier, enters Philip’s service, later serves Alexander as secretary, and gains favor through marriage ties.
to get up, Antonius threw himself upon his breast, and held both his hands, so that he died by a number of blows, without being able even to defend himself. Upon the first news of his death, most of the Spaniards left the conspirators, and sent ambassadors to Pompey and Metellus, and yielded themselves up to them. Perpenna attempted to do something with those that remained, but he made only so much use of Sertorius…
Eumenes’s standing is tested through conflicts with Hephaestion and a money matter with Alexander, including a plan to burn his tent; after Hephaestion’s death Alexander turns harsher on Eumenes, who then helps honor his memory.
daughter of Artabazus; and in the distribution of the Persian ladies amongst his captains, Alexander gave Apame, one of her sisters, to Ptolemy, and another, also called Barsine, to Eumenes. Notwithstanding, he frequently incurred Alexander's displeasure, and put himself into some danger, through Hephaestion. The quarters that had been taken up for Eumenes, Hephaestion assigned to Euius, the flute-player. Upon whi…
He concludes this line by blaming Aeschines for past crimes and ridicules Aeschines’ claims of “friendship” with rulers, insisting Aeschines was a hireling of Philip and then Alexander.
here, those who resist your will, that you must thank for the fact that you live and draw your pay; for, left to yourselves, you would long ago have perished. {50} There is still much that I might say about the transactions of that time, but I think that even what I have said is more than enough. The blame rests with Aeschines, who has drenched me with the stale dregs[n] of his own villainy and crime, from which I w…
An editorial explanation says a “Thracida” name for Alexander meant something like Thracian/barbarous, but the precise meaning is unknown.
Against Him Besieged The City And Took It By Force; As Also What Other Things He Did In Judea. 1. Now when Pompey had pitched his camp at Jericho, [where the palm tree grows, and that balsam which is an ointment of all the most precious, which upon any incision made in the wood with a sharp stone, distills out thence like a juice,] 4 he marched in the morning to Jerusalem. Hereupon Aristobulus repented of what he wa…
Aquinas rejects Alexander’s view that the passive intellect cannot understand separate substances, arguing it fails logically, limits union with the active intellect, and would make true human happiness unattainable.
he says Alexander holds) the passive intellect can never understand separate substances (because according to him it is corruptible), but man understands separate substances by means of the active intellect. This opinion, however, is untrue. First, because, supposing the active intellect to be a separate substance, we could not formally understand by its instrumentality, for the medium of an agent's formal action co…
Using Alexander and a cynic/Antigonus anecdote, Seneca argues that what is “becoming” depends on giver, receiver, timing, and purpose, and that a benefit must be appropriately proportioned to both.
in you not to take than to take and squander), still there must be some of your friends who are not strong enough to put a city in their pockets. XVII. A certain cynic asked Antigonus for a talent. Antigonus answered that this was too much for a cynic to ask for. After this rebuff he asked for a penny. Antigonus answered that this was too little for a king to give. "This kind of hair-splitting" (you say) "is contemp…
He argues greed is common to rulers like Alexander’s imitators and the Persian houses of Cyrus and Cambyses, claiming only the wise man truly has everything without needing conquest or retention.
have seized or given away, or how great a part of the world may pay him tribute; such a man must be in need of as much as he desires. III. This was not the vice of Alexander alone, who followed with a fortunate audacity in the footsteps of Bacchus and Hercules, but it is common to all those whose covetousness is whetted rather than appeased by good fortune. Look at Cyrus and Cambyses and all the royal house of Persi…