HERMES

If you don’t mind, ferryman, let’s work out how much you owe me at the moment, so that we won’t quarrel about it later.

CHARON

Let’s do that, Hermes. It’s better to have this settled, and it’ll save trouble.

HERMES

I brought you an anchor as you ordered; five drachmae.

CHARON

That’s dear.

HERMES

By Hades, that’s what I paid for it, and a thong for an oar cost me two obols.

CHARON

Put down five drachmae and two obols.

HERMES

And a darning-needle for your sail. Five obols it cost me.

CHARON

Put that down too.

HERMES

And wax to plug up the leaks in your boat, and nails, and a bit of rope which you made into a brace, costing two drachmae in all.

CHARON

You got these cheap too!

HERMES

That’s all, unless we’ve forgotten something in our calculations. Well, when do you say that you are going to pay me?

CHARON

For the moment, Hermes, it’s impossible, but if an epidemic or a war sends me down a large batch, I can then make a profit, by overcharging on the fares in the rush.

HERMES

So, for the present, I’ll have to sit down and pray for the worst to happen so that I may be paid?

CHARON

It can’t be helped, Hermes. We get few coming here at the moment, as you can see. It’s peacetime.

HERMES

Better so, even if you do keep me waiting for what you owe me. Ah, but in the old days, Charon, you know what men they were that came, all of them brave, and most of them covered with blood and wounded; but now we get a few poisoned by a wife or a son, or with their legs and bellies all puffed out with rich living, a pale miserable lot, all of them, quite unlike the old ones. Most of them have money to thank for their coming here; they scheme against each other for it, apparently.

CHARON

Yes, it’s the grand passion.

HERMES

Then you won’t think it wrong of me if I dun you for my debt.

Philip

You cannot deny that you are my son this time, Alexander; you would not have died if you had been Ammon’s.

Alexander

I knew all the time that you, Philip, son of Amyntas, were my father. I only accepted the statement of the oracle because I thought it was good policy.

Philip

What, to suffer yourself to be fooled by lying priests?

Alexander

No, but it had an awe-inspiring effect upon the barbarians. When they thought they had a God to deal with, they gave up the struggle; which made their conquest a simple matter.

Philip

And whom did you ever conquer that was worth conquering? Your adversaries were ever timid creatures, with their bows and their targets and their wicker shields. It was other work conquering the Greeks: Boeotians, Phocians, Athenians; Arcadian hoplites, Thessalian cavalry, javelin-men from Elis, peltasts of Mantinea; Thracians, Illyrians, Paeonians; to subdue these was something. But for gold-laced womanish Medes and Persians and Chaldaeans,—why, it had been done before: did you never hear of the expedition of the Ten Thousand under Clearchus? and how the enemy would not even come to blows with them, but ran away before they were within bow-shot?

Alexander

Still, there were the Scythians, father, and the Indian elephants; they were no joke. And my conquests were not gained by dissension or treachery; I broke no oath, no promise, nor ever purchased victory at the expense of honour. As to the Greeks, most of them joined me without a struggle; and I dare say you have heard how I handled Thebes.

Philip

I know all about that; I had it from Clitus, whom you ran through the body, in the middle of dinner, because he presumed to mention my achievements in the same breath with yours.

Philip

They tell me too that you took to aping the manners of your conquered Medes; abandoned the Macedonian cloak in favour of the candys, assumed the upright tiara, and exacted oriental prostrations from Macedonian freemen! This is delicious. As to your brilliant matches, and your beloved Hephaestion, and your scholars in lions’ cages,—the less said the better. I have only heard one thing to your credit: you respected the person of Darius’s beautiful wife, and you provided for his mother and daughters; there you acted like a king.

Alexander

And have you nothing to say of my adventurous spirit, father, when I was the first to leap down within the ramparts of Oxydracae, and was covered with wounds?

Philip

Not a word. Not that it is a bad thing, in my opinion, for a king to get wounded occasionally, and to face danger at the head of his troops: but this was the last thing that you were called upon to do. You were passing for a God; and your being wounded, and carried off the field on a litter, bleeding and, groaning, could only excite the ridicule of the spectators: Ammon stood convicted of quackery, his oracle of falsehood, his priests of flattery. The son of Zeus in a swoon, requiring medical assistance! who could help laughing at the sight? And now that you have died, can you doubt that many a jest is being cracked on the subject of your divinity, as men contemplate the God’s corpse laid out for burial, and already going the way of all flesh? Besides, your achievements lose half their credit from this very circumstance which you say was so useful in facilitating your conquests: nothing you did could come up to your divine reputation.

Alexander

The world thinks otherwise. I am ranked with Heracles and Dionysus; and, for that matter, I took Aornos, which was more than either of them could do.

Philip

There spoke the son of Ammon, Heracles and Dionysus, indeed! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Alexander; when will you learn to drop that bombast, and know yourself for the shade that you are?