Book 13
1
What’s this, Alexander? Are you dead too, just like the rest of us?
1
As you see, Diogenes. There’s nothing strange in a human like me dying.
1
Ammon lied, then, when he said you were his son? You were Philip’s son after all?
1
Of course I was Philip’s son. I shouldn’t have died, if Ammon was my father.
1
And it was another lie about Olympias—that a serpent came to her and was seen in her bed, that that was how you came to be born, and that Philip was deceived in thinking that he was your father?
1
I heard that too, just as you did, but now I see that there was not a word of truth in what my mother and the prophets of Ammon said.
1
But their lies weren’t without practical advantage to you, Alexander. For many cowered down before you, thinking you a god.
2
But tell me, to whom have you left your great empire?
2
I don’t know, Diogenes; I didn’t give any instructions about it in time; I merely gave my ring to Perdiccas when I died. But why do you laugh, Diogenes?
2
I’m only recalling how Greece treated you, flattering you from the moment you succeeded to your kingdom, and choosing you as her champion and leader against the barbarians, and how some even added you to the twelve gods, built you temples, and sacrificed to you, as the son of the serpent.
3
But tell me, where did the Macedonians bury you?
3
I’ve been lying in Babylon for a whole thirty days now, but my guardsman Ptolemy promises that, whenever he gets a respite from the present disturbances, he’ll take me away to Egypt and bury me there, so that I may become one of the gods of the Egyptians.
3
Well, can I help laughing, Alexander, when I see that even in Hades you still act like a fool and hope you’ll be an Anubis or an Osiris? But don’t be too hopeful about that, personage most divine. It’s against our law that anyone who has once sailed across our lake and passed within our entrance should go up again. For Aeacus does not neglect his duties, nor is Cerberus to be taken lightly.
