It was Alexander who was sent in first; he now wore his hair long, had falling ringlets, dressed in a parti-coloured tunic of white and purple, with a white cloak over it, and carried a falchion like that of Perseus, from whom he claimed descent on his mother’s side. And although those miserable Paphlagonians knew that both his parents were obscure, humble folk, they believed the oracle when it said: “Here in your sight is a scion of Perseus, dear unto Phoebus ; This is divine Alexander, who shareth the blood of the Healer!” Podaleirius, the Healer, it would appear, was so passionate and amorous that his ardour carried him all the way from Tricca to Paphlagonia in quest of Alexander’s mother !

Podaleirius and his brother Machaon, the Homeric healers (Iliad 11, 833), were sons of Asclepius and lived in Tricca (now Trikkala), Thessaly. According to the Sack of Ilium (Evelyn-White, Hesiod, p. 524) Machaon specialized in surgery, Podaleirius in diagnosis and general practice.

An oracle by now had turned up which purported to be a prior prediction by the Sibyl : On the shores of the Euxine sea, in the neighbourhood of Sinope,There shall be born, by a Tower, in the days of the Romans, a prophet ;After the foremost unit and three times ten, he will shew forthFive more units besides, and a score told three times over,Matching, with places four, the name of a valiant defender !

Since in the Greek notation numbers are designated by letters, this combination (1, 30, 5, 60) is αλεξ (alex). Alexander seems to have been a little afraid that some rival might steal his thunder if he were not more specific: at all events the first two words of the last line give, in the Greek, the entire name (andros-alex).