magic arts of his wife, or else from a religious scruple, because his place was more worthily filled.  Another version of this story is that the women of Macedonia have been from very ancient times subject to the Orphic and Bacchic frenzy (whence they were called Clodones and Mimallones), and perform the same rites as do the Edonians and the Thracian women about Mount Haemus, from which the word “threskeuein” has come to mean “to be over-superstitious.”  Olympias, it is said, celebrated these rites with exceeding fervour, and in imitation of the Orientals, and to introduce into the festal procession large tame serpents,[394] which struck terror into the men as they glided through the ivy wreaths and mystic baskets which the women carried on their heads.

III.  We are told that Philip after this portent sent Chairon of Megalopolis to Delphi, to consult the god there, and that he delivered an oracular response bidding him sacrifice to Zeus Ammon, and to pay especial reverence to that god:  warning him, moreover, that he would some day lose the sight of that eye with which, through the chink of the half-opened door, he had seen the god consorting with his wife in the form of a serpent.  The historian Eratosthenes informs us that when Alexander was about to set out on his great expedition, Olympias told him the secret of his birth, and bade him act worthily of his divine parentage.  Other writers say that she scrupled to mention the subject, and was heard to say “Why does Alexander make Hera jealous of me?”

Alexander was born on the sixth day of the month Hekatombaeon,[395] which the Macedonians call Lous, the same day on which the temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burned.  This coincidence inspired Hegesias of Magnesia to construct a ponderous joke, dull enough to have put out the fire, which was, that it was no wonder that the temple of Artemis was burned, since she was away from, it, attending to the birth of Alexander.[396] All the Persian magi who were in Ephesus at the time imagined that the destruction of the temple was but the forerunner of a greater disaster, and ran through the city beating their faces and shouting that on that day was born the destroyer of Asia.  Philip, who had just captured the city of Potidaea, received at that time three messengers.  The first announced that the Illyrians had been severely defeated by Parmenio; the second that his racehorse had won a victory at Olympia, and the third, that Alexander was born.  As one may well believe, he was delighted at such good news and was yet more overjoyed when the soothsayers told him that his son, whose birth coincided with three victories, would surely prove invincible.

IV.  His personal appearance is best shown by the statues of Lysippus, the only artist whom he allowed to represent him; in whose works we can clearly trace that slight droop of his head towards the left, and that keen glance of his eyes which formed his chief characteristics, and which were afterwards imitated by his friends and successors.