Thus was
Alexander's mind filled with base and cowardly alarms. However when
the oracular responses of the gods about Hephaestion were reported to
him, he laid aside his grief somewhat, and again indulged in feasts
and drinking bouts. He entertained Nearchus and his friends
magnificently, after which he took a bath, and then, just as he was
going to sleep, Medius invited him to a revel at his house. He drank
there the whole of the following day, when he began to feel feverish:
though he did not drink up the cup of Herakles at a draught, or
suddenly feel a pain as of a spear piercing his body, as some
historians have thought it necessary to write, in order to give a
dramatic fitness and dignity to the end of so important a personage.
Aristobulus tells us that he became delirious through fever, and drank
wine to quench his thirst, after which he became raving mad, and died
on the thirtieth day of the month Daisius.
LXXVI. In his own diary his last illness is described thus: "On the
eighteenth day of Daisius he slept in the bath-room, because he was
feverish. On the following day after bathing he came into his chamber
and spent the day playing at dice with Medius. After this he bathed
late in the evening, offered sacrifice to the gods, dined, and
suffered from fever during the night. On the twentieth he bathed and
sacrificed as usual, and while reclining in his bath-room he conversed
with Nearchus and his friends, listening to their account of their
voyage, and of the Great Ocean.
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