Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

ALEXANDER'S GREATNESS FORETOLD. 23
"by a poor or mean man, but by a being who is
"mighty, and exalted, and honourable. And there
"is nothing which men honour more than gold, for
"it is the desire of kings, and therewith' [men]
"ornament Christian temples. And the interpre-
"tation of the sun by the side of it is that the
"child shall come from the east and [shall go] even
"to the west, and that he shall be a mighty man and
"as terrible as a lion,^ and that he shall conquer
"the nations with his sword. And as dbncerning
"the god of the country whom thou didst see with
"ram's horns upon his head, and shaven of head
"and beard, this is the god of Lybia.^ The inter-
"pretation of thy dream is this." Now when Philip"*
heard that Olympias had conceived he rejoiced
greatly.
So 5 Philip* returned from the war and camcRetum of
' Read ffln-fr '
^ "And some time after the marriage, Philip dreamed
that he sealed up the queen's womb with a seal, the im-
pression of which he thought was a lion. Most of the inter-
preters believed the dream announced some reason to doubt
the honour of Olympias, and that Philip ought to look more
closely to her conduct. But Aristander of Themesus said,
it only denoted that the queen was pregnant: for a seal is
never put upon any thing that is empty; and that the child
would prove a boy, of a bold and lionlike courage." Plutarch,
Life of Alexander, Langhorne's Translation.
3 See above, p. 9, note 3. Read d^ii^tl s
5 See Pseudo-Callisthenes, Bk. I, chap. 9 (Miiller, p, 9,
Meusel, p. 711).
6 Read d.i^^tl »
Philip.