Note 617 — Chapter XCIV · MILITARY OPERATIONS AND CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, AFTER HIS WINTER-QUARTERS IN PERSIS, DOWN TO HIS DEATH AT BABYLON. (continued 2)

The details, respecting the last illness of Alexander, are peculiarly authentic, being extracted both by Arrian and by Plutarch, from the Ephemerides Regiæ, or short Court Journal; which was habitually kept by his secretary Eumenes, and another Greek named Diodotus (Athenæ. x. p. 434): see Arrian, vii. 25, 26; Plutarch, Alex. 76.

It is surprising that throughout all the course of this malady no mention is made of any physician as having been consulted. No advice was asked; if we except the application to the temple of Serapis, during the last day of Alexander’s life. A few months before, Alexander had hanged or crucified the physician who attended Hephæstion in his last illness. Hence it seems probable that he either despised or mistrusted medical advice, and would not permit any to be invoked. His views must have been much altered since his dangerous fever at Tarsus, and the successful treatment of it by the Akarnanian physician Philippus.

Though the fever (see some remarks from Littré attached to Didot’s Fragm. Script. Alex. Magn. p. 124) which caused Alexander’s death is here a plain fact satisfactorily made out, yet a different story was circulated some time afterwards, and gained partial credit (Plutarch De Invidiâ, p. 538), that he had been poisoned. The poison was said to have been provided by Aristotle,—sent over to Asia by Antipater through his son Kassander,—and administered by Iollas (another son of Antipater), Alexander’s cupbearer (Arrian, vii. 27, 2; Curtius, x. 10, 17; Diodor. xvii. 118; Justin, xii. 13). It is quite natural that fever and intemperance (which latter moreover was frequent with Alexander) should not be regarded as causes sufficiently marked and impressive to explain a decease at once so unexpected and so momentous. There seems ground for supposing, however, that the report was intentionally fomented, if not originally broached, by the party-enemies of Antipater and Kassander—especially by the rancorous Olympias. The violent enmity afterwards displayed by Kassander against Olympias, and all the family of Alexander helped to encourage the report. In the life of Hyperides in Plutarch, (Vit. X. Oratt. p. 849) it is stated, that he proposed at Athens public honors to Iollas for having given the poison to Alexander. If there is any truth in this, it might be a stratagem for casting discredit on Antipater (father of Iollas), against whom the Athenians entered into the Lamian war, immediately after the death of Alexander.