2.13
But the king, who was Fortune’s favourite, and was always guarded and personally protected by her, was caught within like a wild beast in the toils, alone and without succour; nor was he struggling for Susa or Babylon, nor to capture Bactriaj nor to vanquish the great Porus; for in great and glorious conflicts, even though men fail, disgrace, at least, can find no place. But so contentious and malicious was Fortune, so greatly did she favour barbarians and hate Alexander, that she tried to destroy not only his body and his life, but also, in so far as she could, to destroy his repute and to wipe out his fair fame. For it were not a terrible thing for Alexander to fall and lie buried beside the Euphrates or the Hydaspes, nor ignoble to meet death by coming into close combat with Darius or in confronting the horses and swords and battle-axes of the Persians as they fought to defend their king, nor to be overthrown while he bestrode the walls of Babylon and to fall from his high hope. Thus fell Pelopidas and Epameinondas; their death was a death belonging to Virtue, not to misfortune, engaged as they were in such a high emprise. But of what sort was the deed of Fortune, who is now under scrutiny? Was it not that on the farthest outposts of a land beside a foreign river within the walls of an obscure hamlet, which surrounded and hid away. from sight the lord and master of the inhabited world, he should perish, smitten and stricken by ignominious weapons and whatever else lay at hand? For his head was wounded through his helmet by an axe, and someone shot an arrow through his breastplate so that it penetrated the bones of his breast and was lodged there firmly, while the shaft protruded and hampered him and the iron point was four fingers broad and five fingers long.Plutarch the rhetorician increases by one finger’s-breadth the dimensions of the arrow-point which are given by Plutarch the biographer in his Life of Alexander, chap. lxiii. (700 e). But - the extreme of all the dangers he confronted - while he was defending himself against those who attacked him in front, the archer who shot him had plucked up courage to approach him with a sword, but Alexander with his dagger was too quick for the man and knocked him down and killed him; but while he was thus occupied, someone ran out from a mill, and gave him a blow on the neck with a cudgel from behind; this confused his senses, and his head swam. But Virtue was by his side and in him she engendered daring, and in his companions strength and zeal. For men like Limnaeus and Ptolemy and Leonnatus and all those who had surmounted the wall or had broken through it took their stand before him and were a bulwark of Virtue, exposing their bodies in the face of the foe and even their lives for the goodwill and love they bore their king. Surely it is not due to Fortune that the companions of good kings risk their lives and willingly die for them; but this they do through a passion for Virtue, even as bees, as if under the spell of love-charms, approach and closely surround their sovereign.
