Now Antigenes, the One-eyed, had got himself enrolled as a debtor fraudulently and, on producing somebody who affirmed that he had made a loan to him at the bank, the money was paid over; then his fraud was discovered, and the king, in anger, drove him from his court and deprived him of his command. Antigenes, however, was a splendid soldier, and while he was still a young man and Philip was besieging Perinthus, though a bolt from a catapult smote him in the eye, he would not consent to have the bolt taken out nor give up fighting until he had repelled the enemy and shut them up within their walls.
Accordingly, he could not endure with any complacency the disgrace that now fell upon him, but was evidently going to make away with himself from grief and despondency. So the king, fearing this, put away his wrath and ordered him to keep the money.
The thirty thousand boys whom he had left behind him under instruction
and training
Therefore when he also sent the weak and maimed among them down to the
sea-board, they said it was insult and abuse, after using men up in
every kind of service, now to put them away in disgrace and cast them
back upon their native cities and their parents, no longer the men they
were when he took them. Accordingly, they bade him send them all away
and hold all his Macedonians of no account, since he had these young
war-dancers, with whom he could go on and conquer the world.
At these words of theirs Alexander was displeased, and heaped much abuse upon them in his anger, and drove them away, and committed his watches to Persians, and out of these constituted his body-guards and attendants. When the Macedonians saw him escorted by these, while they themselves were excluded from him and treated with contumely, they were humbled; and when they reasoned the matter out they found that they had been almost mad with jealousy and rage.
So finally, after coming to their senses, they went to his tent, without their arms and wearing their tunics only, and with loud cries and lamentations put themselves at his mercy, bidding him deal with them as base and thankless men. But Alexander would not see them, although his heart was softening. And the men would not desist, but for two days and nights persisted in standing thus before his door, weeping and calling upon their master.
So on the third day he came forth, and when he saw their piteous and
humble plight, wept for some time; then, after chiding them gently and
speaking kindly to them, he dismissed those who were past service with
magnificent gifts, and wrote to Antipater that at all the public
contests and in the theatres they should have the foremost seats and
wear garlands. He also ordained that the orphan children of those who
had lost their lives in his service should receive their father’s pay.
When he came to Ecbatana in Media and had transacted the business that was urgent, he was once more much occupied with theatres and festivals, since three thousand artists had come to him from Greece. But during this time it chanced that Hephaestion had a fever; and since, young man and soldier that he was, he could not submit to a strict regimen, as soon as Glaucus, his physician, had gone off to the theatre, he sat down to breakfast, ate a boiled fowl, drank a huge cooler of wine, fell sick, and in a little while died.
Alexander’s grief at this loss knew no bounds.