Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

ALEXANDERS CHARACTER. XXIX
to women, cold by temperament, the opposite of
his father Philip, and others that he was far too
much absorbed in ambition and engaged in bodily
labours to find the necessary time to dally in an
Oriental harem. The former view is supported
by the passage in Plutarch' where he is made to
say that sleep and the commerce with the sex
were the thing-s that made him most sensible of
his mortality, and that he considered both weariness
and pleasure as the natural effects of our weakness;
but the latter view is probably the more correct.
That Alexander could be fascinated by female
beauty is evident from his affection for Barsime, The prm-
the widow of his rival Memnon and daughter of"mI
Artabazus, who is said to have been not only a
most beautiful woman, but one who was educated
after the manner of the Greeks.^ The incident
which has most laid hold of the Oriental imagi-
nation, and caused Oriental peoples to proclaim
Alexander's chastity is that which happened in
connexion with the mother, wife and daughter of
Darius. When Parmenion suggested to him that the
Persian royal women should share the usual fate Alexander's
treatment of
of female captives, he replied that it would be a the Persian
Queen.
nant remark of Alexander to his friends (Plutarch, xxii.)^ when
Theodore the Tarentine wrote and told Alexander that he
had two beautiful boys to sell. Mr. Grote {History of Greece,
vol. iv. p. 1 go), relying on the passage in Athenaeus quoted
in the preceding note, believes that his development was
tardy. ' Life of Alexander, % xxii.
^ Plutarch, g xxi.