We were now a mobile empire, stretching back thousands of miles to Greece.
Cooks and architects, doctors and surveyors,
money lenders and wives, children, lovers, whores..
And forget not the slaves, that anonymous, bent working spines,
a new beast, ravaged or expanded,
For better or worse,
No occupied territory remained the same again.
Although devoted to Roxane,
Alexander's visits to her tent diminished as a year,
then two, went by with out a successor,
..wounding Alexander's great pride.
The surveyors are saying that Zeus chained Prometheus up there,
In one of those caves,
They say there's a giant eagle's nest just above it,
I suppose he drops down each night to peck out poor Prometheus' liver.
You remember what Aristotle told us of these mountains?
Yes I do. That when we reach these heights,
..we look back and see Macedonia to the west, and the outer ocean to the east,
But I fear this world is far larger than anyone dreamed.
The world of Titans.
The scouts have been up every known trail Alexander,
There is no way across,
Except to the south, into India.
Were we gods, we'd breach these walls to the eastern ocean.
We will Alexander, in a few years time we will return.
But first the men must see their homes.
Have you found your home? Tell me.
More and more I think it will be Alexandria.
Well at least it's hot,
Thais, she loved it there.
Women bring men home. I have no such feeling.
You have Babylon, Alexander,
..where your mother awaits your invitation.
Yes, I have Babylon,
but each land, each boundary I cross,
I strip away another illusion.
I sense death will be the last,
Yet still I push harder,
and harder to reach this, home.
Where has our eagle gone?
We must go on, Ptolemy.
Until we find an end.
India
India, the land where the sun was born,
Fabled to be even richer than Persia,
..had never been explored or conquered.
From the beginning, Alexander struggled to unify a land without a center.
Kings who conspired against one another,
A labrynth of tribes, urged on by zealots and philosophers,
To die by the thousands for their strange gods.
Crateros and the advance party fought against men with hairy skins,
who were tiny, and lived in the tops of trees.
Until Hephaistion convinced us these were animals who immitated men,
but wore their own skin.
They called this tribe "monkey."
Monkey.
And then there was the rain.
Never before had we seen water that fell from the gods,
For sixty days and nights.
You know better, Machatas. What's your son going to say?
Come on man! We'll get you stronger! Yes my King.
I will be with you at your side.
Cleitus! Bring the snake healers!
Korbala!
What happened, lad?
It's to the neck.
Oh no! Zeus, no. Hold on, Dimnos, hold on!
Be brave. BRAVE!
Our quest for gold and glory evaporated as we realized
there was none to be had.
Tempers worsened.
We massacred all Indians who resisited,
And with the local water putrid, we drank the strong wine.
As we moved southeast,
Alexander often returned the lands we'd conquered to their defeated kings,
so as to make of them allies.
But this did not set well with the army,
They began to wonder if Alexander was on some crazed quest,
To imitate the glory of Heracles.
To Bagoas!
And to my mother's god, Dionysus.
Who, were told by our Indian allies, traveled here before Heracles,
Some six thousand years ago. To a hero!
Roxane!
You lose face.
These Indians, they are low, evil people.
You don't try to understand them.
I try. But this I know, Alexander.
In Persia, you are a great king.
Here they hate you.
Let us go back to Babylon. There you are strong.
We will talk about this later.
Yes, later, talk.
I shall come, tonight.
And I shall wait. Good night, my king.
Your majesty,
A toast to Bagoas,
And the 30,000 beautiful Persian boys,
we're training to fight in this great army.
And to the memory of Philip, had he lived,
To see his Macedonians transformed into such
..a pretty army,
To Philip, to a real hero.
To Cleitus, and his new appointment as Satrap of Bactria.
A fancy way of putting it, Ptolemy..
But we all know what a pension and an exile is after 30 years service.
You call governing this major province, exile?
Has your majesty given any of his closest companions a province so far from home?
Then you won't make a very good Satrap, will ya Cleitus?
So be it! Let me rot in Macedonian rags,
..rather than shine in eastern pomp!
I won't quake and bow down like the sycophants you have around you,
Hephaistion, Nearchus, Perdiccas.
As governor of one of our most asian satropies,
Cleitus, does it not occur to you that if my Persian subjects
bow down before me, it is important for them to do so?
Do I insist on Greeks doing the same?
You accept Greek offerings as a son of Zeus, do you not?
Only when offered.
Then why don't you refuse these vain flatteries?
What freedom is this to bow before you?
You bow before Heracles, do you not? ..and he was mortal!
But, a son of Zeus.
How can you, so young, compare yourself to Heracles?
Why not?
I have achieved more in my years, traveled as far, probably farther.
Heracles did it by himself.
Did you conquer Asia by yourself, Alexander?
I mean who planned the Asian invasion?
Was it not your father?
Or is his blood no longer good enough? Zeus?..Amon, is it?
You insult me, Cleitus.
You mock my family. Be careful!
Never!
Would your father have take barbarians as his friends?
Asked us to fight with them as equals in war?
Are we not good enough any longer?
I remember a time when we could talk as men, straight to the eye,
None of this scraping, groveling,
..and now you kiss them?
Take a barbarian, childless wife, and dare call her queen?
Go quickly, Cleitus.. before you ruin your life.
Doesn't your great pride fear the Gods any longer?
This army... this army is your blood, boy!
Without it you're nothing!
You no longer serve the purpose of this march!
Get him from my sight!
I don't serve your purpose? What was I serving when I saved your puppy life at Gaugamela?
Do you think we'll be forced now, to mate with brown apes?
Arrest him for treason!
Who's with me? Who's with him?
I call Father Zeus to witness! I call you to trial before him...
..and we'll see how deep this conspiracy cuts. Take him!
You speak about plots against you? What about poor Parmenion? Make me do your foul deed.
Have you no shame?
Hypocrite! Despot! False King!
You, and your barbarian mother live in shame.
Let me pass,
I am the queen.
I want to see him, I have waited 3 days.
He says none, not even you.
He needs me.
No, he doesn't.
And he needs you?
Hephaistion, you make a mistake.
The army needs your reassurance.
Alexander,
Like an old lover they forgive but they will never forget.
You know more than any, great deeds are done by men
who took and never regretted.
You're Alexander! Pity and grief will only destroy you.
Have I become so arrogant, that I am blind?
Sometimes,
to expect the best of everyone is arrogance.
Then Cleitus spoke true,
I have become a tryant.
Immortal and they know it,
And they forgive you because you make them proud of themselves.
I have failed, look at me.
Macedonia - 8 Years before
Philip. King of Macedonia, and leader of the Greeks.
All my life I have waited to see Greeks grovel with respect for Macedonia.
Today is that day!
They say already, "Philip is a great general..."
"..but Alexander is simply Great."
But if you ever insult me again, I'll kill you.
Missed you. In the spring, Persia,
You'll command my horse from the right,
I'm honored father. I wouldn't miss it for all the gold in the world.
Which one day you'll have.
Making himself a 13th God,
He's drunk so much wine, my poor Philip! He's lost his mind.
Your majesty.
Attalus.
I hope the prince is enjoying the spectacle as much as our regent.
He is very tired.
Pausanias, bring the rest of the guard.
Royal guard!..to the arena. MARCH!
No guard your majesty?..with all this crowd?
Greeks all over the place.
Cleitus. Cleitus. My Cleitus.
This man you can always trust Alexander,
Treat him as you would me. He'll guard your back for you.
Yes father.
My people are guarding today, Cleitus.
Let these Greeks see for themselves how I can walk through my people,
Then let them call me tyrant! .. in the main garden AFTER my entry only.
Cleitus, make sure the wine flows steady all day. I want them to like me.
Weren't you told? I go in alone.
Follow with the main guard,
Go on.
GO ON!
Father it's best I go with you.
You want the world to see you're my successor?
Is that what she wants?
Ah, don't look so hurt all the time, Alexander. Be a man!
You count yourself lucky you were here at all, today.. after your public display.
By Heracles, by Zeus and by all the gods! Obey me this once!
Have courage father. And go on your way with joy so at each step,
..I may recall your valor.
And now our beloved king,
Philip!..in whose honor, these wedding games begin.
Pausanias?.. I told you...
The King lives! Alexander!
Son of Philip. The most destined king!
A king now, you're king.
May the gods bless Alexander!
Alexander!!
Go.
How can you behave so shamelessly in public?
Because it was meant to be.
This isn't how I wanted to become king.
No one blames you.
They blame me already, behind my back, in secret.
Slander is not power.
Shame is?
Who killed my father?
Tell me. Tell me, or shall I put you on trial for his murder?
Pausanias.
He had help!
Did you help him?
No, never, why, why would I?
..so many wanted it, Greeks, Persians, men...
You're mad! You're cursed! You have unleashed furies, you dont even know their power!
Ah now who is exaggerating?
..even if it was the wish of your heart.
That is a lie! He was my father! I loved him!
He was not your father! You owe no blood debt to that man.
You lie and lie and lie,
So many lies you've spun like a sorceress, confusing me.
Look at you, look at you,
..you are everything that he was not.
He was coarse, you are fine.
He was a General, you are a King.
He could not rule himself, and you shall rule the world.
You are so cursed by the gods when you speak like this,
Such thick pride, and no mourning for your husband.
Mourn? Him? What do you know of Philip?
No Alexander, Zeus is your father,
Act like it.
My first act would be to kill you!
You murdered me in my cradle,
You birthed me in a cycle of hate.
Hate you have for those stronger than you,
Hate you have for men!
I taught you my heart, Alexander!
..and by Zeus and Dionysus you grew beautiful,
Damn your sorceress soul!
Your soul is mine, Alexander.
No, no! You have taken from me everything I've ever loved...and made me YOU!
Stop it! Stop acting like a boy. You're a King. Act like one!
Parmenion is with us for once.
Execute Attalus without delay,
Then confiscate their lands and root out that family forever.
Eurydice? Never. Laugh, you monster, you heart breaker.
How will you live out the year like this?
Have you learned nothing from Philip?
No from you mother.
The past.
What have I done, to make you hate me so?
One day, you will understand this,
that I have only you in my heart,
I know what you need,
now is the time,
The Gods favor you,
great wealth, power, conquest,
All you desire, the world is yours,
take it.
..and a kiss?
He never saw his mother again.
And while he was away fighting the northern tribes,
Olympias had Philip's new wife, Eurydice, and her infant son murdered.
By necessity, he had her uncle, Attalus, executed.
India
Of course you have fears, we all have fears,
Because no one has ever gone this far before!
And now we are weeks from the encircling ocean,
our route home.
We'll build a fleet of ships and sail all the way back down the Nile to Egypt.
And from Alexandria, we shall be home within weeks,
..there to be reunited with our loved ones,
..to share our great treasures and tales of Asia,
And to enjoy our unperishable glory to the ends of time!
Follow Alexander.
What? Silence?
We are with you Alexander.
Peukastas. A Hero!
Where are these great Amazons of myth who dare to fight and kill men,
Where have they gone?
We will never leave you Alexander.
You, Meleager! Who are these tribes ahead, compared to those we have vanquished?
Lysimachos?
Antigonos?
You break my heart, you men. Afraid!
Crateros? Crateros!
My king, I don't like no belly aching,
I wont tolerate it in any of my units.
But I lost many a man. Young ones, never been with a woman,
some died of disease,
some were butchered and severed by the banks of the Oxus.
Some died good, some just didn't get no luck,
but they died.
40,000 I come over with eight years ago,
And we marched after you more than 10,000 miles,
In the rain, and the sun, we fought for you,
Some of us, fifty battles we've been in, ..and killed many a barbarian.
And now when I look around,
How many of them faces do I see?
And now you want us to fight more of these crazy monkey tribes east of here,
We hear talk of thousands of these elephant monsters,
..plus a hundred more rivers!
Crateros, good Crateros.
Who better than you to speak?
Most noble of men.
But you know there is no part of me without a scar or bone broken,
By sword, knife, stone, catapult and club,
I have shared every hardship with all of you.
Aye, you have my king, and we love you for it!
But by Zeus, too many have died!
You have no children, Alexander.
And we are just humble men, we seek no disturbance with the gods,
All we wish for, is to see our children,
And our wives and our grandchildren one last time,
Before we join our brothers in the dark house they call Hades.
Yes, you are right, Crateros.
I have been negligent.
I should have sent you veterans home sooner,
..and I will. The first of you shall be the silver shields,
And then every man who's served seven years,
With full pensions from our treasury,
Respected! Rich! Loved!
You'll be treated by your wives and children as heroes for the rest of your lives.
And enjoy a peaceful death,
But you dream, Crateros.
Your simplicity, long ended when you took Persian mistresses and children.
How you thickened your holdings with plunder and jewels.
Because you've fallen in love with all the things in life that destroy men.
Do you not see?
And you, as well as I, know,
that as the years decline, and the memories stale,
And all your great victories fade,
It will always be remembered, you left your king in Asia!
For I will go on with my Asians!
To the jackals with ya then, Alexander!
We comfort you, and you disspirit us!
We're tired of glory!
We want to see our wives and children before we die!
I've paid for your bastard children. I've taken nothing for myself!
And I've asked of you is one more month.
SHAME!
That's your king!
What would your father say?
I've taken you farther than my father ever dreamed!
So go on! Ask a few barbarians for their courage!
I go EAST!
He wants no man at home, to speak of his crimes!
Who said that?
We'll never make it back to Macedonia.
You despicable coward! Come forth, make your accusations public.
Why, so you could have us killed? Son of Zeus!
You desecrate your real father's memory!
..and then you'll murder him, like ya did Cleitus!
Hide! Hide in the smoke!
You! Not my Demetrios! You called me murderer.
I have no such blood on my hands!
After all I've done for you! You swine! You cowards! Traitors!
Come on then! Where are your daggers?
He drove on, south to the outer ocean.
In smashing the mutiny and executing the ring leaders,
He did nothing, to my mind, that any general in war time would not have done.
But clearly the army was divided.
..that Alexander was no longer loved by all.
They come! Together we're strong as Gods!
Cover with your left, strike hard with your right!
The air is rot, a waste of time.
Up shields!
Battle positions!
Troopers, prepare your knives! Follow me!
Come Macedonians! Why do you hang back? Hurry!
You take the right! You three, ride and circle!
The phalanx is in jeopardy! Meleager, ride to Farnakes and tell him return to the center at once!
Lucius! Find Hephaistion at the river bank and bring all cavalry to the center!
We must reached Crateros before it's too late!
To the center!!
Hold Macedonians! Ride! Ride!
NO!!!
The horses won't go! On foot then!
Come Bucephalus.
'tis only sun and shadow,
You and I together. One last time, Bucephalus.
Isn't it a lovely thing, to live with great courage,
And to die, leaving an ever lasting flame.
Come Macedonians! Why do you retreat? Do you want to live forever?
In the name of Zeus. ATTACK!
ATTACK!
Alexander!
The king is down!
To the king!
It was the bloodiest of his battles,
Pure butchery. The end of all reason.
We'd never be men again.
He lives! Alexander!
Men of Macedon, we're going home.
We're going home.
His life should have ended in India.
..but that's myth.
In life, Heracles died of a poisoned shirt given him in error his jealous wife.
Making his devotions to the Gods at the end of the great journey,
Alexander bade the East farewell and marched his army directly west,
Across the Great Gedrosian Desert, seeking the shortest route home to Bablyon.
To this day, there is no accounting of how many died.
It was the worst blunder of his life,
And when he finally reentered Babylon after six years in the Far East,
Alexander again seized the imagination of the world by taking two more wives.
Just last night, hewas..
Its the water, your majesty. He mixed it with the wine.
But how can this be? Typhus?.. of India?
Oh I wouldn't tax yourself your majesty,
..a few good nights rest will do it, but no wine, or...
Come doctor.
I feel better. Soon, I'll be up.
We leave for Arabia in the spring and I can't leave without you.
Arabia,
You used to dress me up like a shiek,
Wave your wooden sword
You were the only one who would never let me win,
The only one who has ever been honest with me,
You saved me from myself,
Please don't leave me, Hephaistion.
My Alexander,
I remember the young man who wants to be Achilles and then outdid him.
And you Patroclus. And then what happened?
Now it's the myth only young men believe.
But how beautiful a myth it was.
Oh we reach, we fall.
Oh Hephaistion!
I worry for you without me.
I am nothing without you!
Come, fight Hephaistion!
We will die together,
It's our destiny.
We will have children with our wives,
And our sons will play together as we once did,
A thousand ships we'll launch from here, Hephaistion.
We'll round Arabia, and sail up the gulf to Egypt,
From there we'll build a channel through the desert,
And out to the middle sea,
And then we will move on Carthage, and that great island, Sicily,
They'll pay large tribute!
After that, the Roman tribe. Good fighters! We'll beat them.
And then explore the northern forests and add the Pillars of Heracles to the western ocean,
And then one day, not ten years from now,
Babylon, with its deep water harbor,
..will be the center of the world. Alexandrias will grow,
Populations will mix and travel freely. Asia and Europe will come together,
And we'll grow old, Hephaistion,
..looking out our balcony,
..at this new world.
Hephaistion. Hephaistion?
Noooooo!
Where is this doctor?
I can't explain this your majesty! It's not possible. I swear by Apollo...
Execute him! Take him out now and execute him!
come away, come away.
Liars! Liars! You all hated him, all of you!
Get out! Get out now!
Be gone with you! Harpies! Get out, get out!
Are you drunk again? Get out.
He's dead.
Who?
Many hated him, but I don't think any other would have dared.
Hephaistion is dead?
Are you mad?
You've taken from me all that I've ever loved!
May all the Furies chew tines on your miserable heart!
Alexander!
I have your child..
Alexander!
Alexander I have your child.
Alexander, my husband, my king. We have a son!
My poor, poor ill-fated son.
Never touch me again!
Noooooooo!
One last charm!
For the dog.
To my old friends.
And to the myths!
To the next one!
Yes come, come to Babylon.
I await you, your only loving son.
Wait, wait, vultures,
wait, my son, Alexander...
Just three more months! Please live, my son..
Alexander, we beg you. Tell us who.
Who will rule this great empire for you?
*whispers* fear not...
Zeus is your father!
Alexander the army will divide,
Satripies will revolt. Without your orders, there'll be war!
Pray tell us, WHO?
No, he said Crateros. Crateros!
Babylon, Persia June 323 B.C.
On the 10th of June, a month short of his 33rd year,
Alexander's great heart finally gave out.
And, as he vowed, he joined Hephaistion.
But in his short life he achieved without doubt,
the mythic glory of his ancestor, Achilles. And more.
His sacrifice was an early death. But in keeping to his side of the bargain,
I cannot help but feel he conquered death as well.
Olympias's transgression in the murder of his father is, to my mind, a probability,
His, a burden.
Alexander was too in love with glory for him to steal it,
But by blood, and blood alone, he was guilty.
Within hours, we were fighting like jackals for his corpse.
Wars of the world had begun.
Forty years, off and on, they endured,
Cassander in Greece, Crateros and Antigonas in Western Asia,
Seleukos and Perdiccas in the East, myself in Egypt,
..until we divided his empire in four parts.
Cassander certainly proved his will to power,
And seven years later he had Olympias executed,
And within 12 years he achieved the complete destruction of Alexander's bloodline,
When he poisoned Roxane
..and Alexander's 13 year old son, the true heir to the empire.
But the truth is never simple,
and yet it is,
The truth is, we did kill him,
By silence we consented,
because, because we couldn't go on,
What, by Aries, did we had to look forward to,
..but to be discarded in the end, like Cleitus?
After all this time, to give away our wealth to Asian sycophants we despised?
Mixing the races? Harmony? Bah!
Oh, he talked of these things,
But wasn't it really about Alexander? ..another population ready to obey him?
I never believed in his dream. None of us did.
That's the truth of his life,
The dreamers exhaust us.
They must die before they kill us with their blasted dreams.
Ah, just throw all that away, Cadmos.
It's an old fool's rubbish.
You shall write,
"He died of fever and a weakend condition."
Yes, Great Pharoah.
Oh, he could have stayed home in Macedonia, married, raised a family,
He'd have died a celebrated man,
But this was not Alexander.
All his life, he fought to free himself from fear,
And by this, and this alone he was made free,
The freest man I have ever known.
His tragedy was one of increasing loneliness and
impatience with those who could not understand.
And if his desire to reconcile Greek and barbarian ended in failure,
Hah! What failure!
His failure towered over other men's successes.
I have lived, I have lived long life, Cadmos.
But the glory and memory of man will always belong to the ones
who follow their great visions,
And the greatest of these is the one
we now call
Megas Alexandros
The greatest Alexander of them all.
# Fixed by Choopa #