![]() ![]() ![]() With him, again, is associated the invention of the mirror, Alexander having expressed a wish that some day he would like to see both reality and the illusion of reality at the same time. In the last hours of King Darius of the Persian Empire - Dara as he is named in Persian chronicles - whom he had defeated after a protracted and bitter war and who lay dying, Alexander, the legend says, wept bitterly, with his rival’s head in his lap. But there are other legends which bring out this mix of fact and fiction more clearly perhaps. The last utterance is not unlikely to have been an embroidery around the fact of the encounter, designed to laud and project him as a more or less virakta person himself: a philosopher-king. From a manuscript of the Shahnama of Firdausi. ‘Yes,’ said Diogenes, ‘stand a little out of my sun.’” Alexander was so struck by the boldness and the scorn for power of Diogenes that he is believed to have said to his followers: “But truly, if I were not Alexander, I wish I were Diogenes.” Alexander gazing at the Speaking Tree. And then that monarch addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything. “Diogenes raised himself up a little when he saw so many people coming towards him,” Plutarch writes, “and fixed his eyes upon Alexander. But Diogenes not being one of them, Alexander decided to go and see him in person, only to find him lying in the sun. After his great successes, he says, Alexander was lionised and attended upon by many statesmen and philosophers. There are many versions of the story, but possibly the most reliable one comes from Plutarch, the 1st century Greek philosopher and historian, who wrote extensively on the lives of many great leaders of men. Take the case of the uplifting story about Alexander’s encounter with that faqir-like figure, the philosopher Diogenes of Corinth. Alexander in a diving bell being lowered in the sea. ![]() Equally large, on the other hand, are stories, of each of which he is the hero, which might have had a core of facts, but which kept on being edited and embellished and embroidered over centuries. Most of his deeds - who, for all the campaigns he led, all the conquests he made, all the questions he raised, died at the young age of 33 - were recorded during his lifetime and shortly afterwards, leaving an imprint on the scroll of time that would be hard to equal. There are, on the one hand, well-documented facts about the life of Alexander, son of Philip of Macedonia, descendant of the demigod Hercules, tutored by none other than Aristotle. The lives of great figures get surrounded by legends which keep growing like barnacles that cling to the bottoms of great ships and thrive. No one knows for certain, but then this is the very essence of the legend of Alexander. I have no idea where this quite moving line of verse comes from: possibly from a Persian source, for Alexander’s is a prominent presence in some of the greatest works of Persian literature: from the Shahnama of Firdausi to the Khamsa-s (quintet) of Nizami and Khusrau. Miniature from The Book of the Life of the Good King, Alexander, in French. “There is nothing that we will take to the other world: humility he taught us, and the fruitless-ness of gathering material wealth.” Alexander with other creatures in a diving bell. But no, he was Sikandar, Sikandar-eAzam.” Every now and then, our teacher would turn philosophical, and recite for our benefit: “Sikandar jab chalaa duniya se, donon haath khaali the.”. “Do you know how the Hindi-walas call him?” he would ask, and then add with a little sneer, “Alakshendra, even Alak-sundar. While describing his conquests and his learning, his nostrils would flare up a little, and a seldom seen shine would appear in his eyes. But, for our teacher, he was always Sikandar-e-Azam, the Great Sikandar. The lesson was in Urdu: the name was written and therefore pronounced as Sikandar, which in the telling sometimes sounded like Iskandar. I remember, as if it was yesterday, the enthusiasm with which a teacher of ours in school used to read out and narrate to us the ‘story’ of Alexander the Great which was in our prescribed syllabus. “For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.”- Attributed to Alexander the Great ![]()
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