One day, Philip summoned Alexander to him.

"I have decided that the teachers of the Macedonian court do not provide you with the challenge you deserve," he told his son. Alexander was being tutored by Anaximenes of Lampsacus, a rhetorician and historian, Leonidas, a relative of Olympias, and Lysimachus who obtained second place among the prince's tutors through flattery. The latter called Alexander Achilles, and Philip Peleus. In time, the young Achilles came to be known as such by the entire palace. But he showed promise, more than these tutors could work with. Philip was therefore considering some of the finest academics of the day, among them Isocrates, Speusippus, and Aristotle.

King Philip had done the unthinkable, building one of the most organized military forces in Greece despite leading what the Athenians scornfully considered the least organized, most bearish and unrefined Greek city. Some day, Alexander would build on his legacy. For that, he needed to be intellectually fit.

Olympias was political, religious and dynastian - absolutely ruthless when it came to getting her son Alexander on the throne.

Both she and her husband Philip agreed on this one thing and one thing only: that Alexander was to be great, and it was their role to prepare him for it. They were both worried that Alexander was growing up as a guiness, a femboy. They suggested importing high-class call girls to set him straight.

Eventually, Olympias brought to him a Thessalian courtesan named Callixena.

"Sleep with her," Olympias implored him. "Alexander, my son, the most important thing you can do - what you must do - is take a wife and produce an heir. Have many wives, and many children. You must, Alexander. If you forget everything else I've taught you, remember this one thing."

Olympias routinely begged him to sleep with the courtesan, to no avail.

Alexander had no interest in the girls, apart from pity for their cruel plight. He despised the idea of coerced relationships, and the insistence of his parents only put him off more. But he had to appease his masculine, militant, hard-drinking, dominant, alpha male father. He also didn't want to shame and disgrace the women. Therefore, he took them into his chambers when he had no other choice, but never slept with them.

***

Philip had chosen the ideal man to be his son's tutor. He chose Aristotle, a philosopher, writer and scholar who had learned from Plato himself.

Alexander and a select cohort of boys, the sons of Macedonian nobles, would begin their education in a month. It went without saying that Hephaestion would be among the chosen Companions - as everyone kew he was Alexander's shadow - which was just as well for his father was an aristocrat. Their classroom was to be the Temple of the Nymphs at Mieza. There, they would learn medicine, philosophy, morals, ethics, religion, logic, and art. In return, Aristotle asked only that Philip restore his ravaged hometown, freeing slave and exile. To this, Philip agreed.

***

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"Although an inferior race, the Persians control at least four fifths of the known world." Aristotle gestured with his stick to the pebble mosaic map beneath his feat. Alexander flinched at the term inferior, refusing to believe it. But not long ago, Aristotle's dear friend Hermias of Atarneus had been tortured and killed in Persia; it was surely the man's grief that made him perceive the Persians as barbaric. "But, is it possible that the source of Egypt's mighty river Nile could rise in these distant mountains of the outer Earth?"

Alexander, Ptolemy, Hephaestion, Nearchus, Harpalos, Philotas, and Cassander sat around the man, rapt and attentive.

"If so, an experienced navigator could find his way here, by this river, east, down into the great plains of India, out into the eastern ocean and end of the world, and by this route, up the Nile, back to Egypt, into the Middle Sea and home to Greece."

Alexander committed this word, and all of Aristotle's other words, to memory. His young heart swelled with excitement and determination. Someday, he would go there. He would conquer those lands.

"Now if only these frogs could look outward and act on their favourite position at the centre. Greece could rule the world!"

"Why is it, master?" Alexander spoke up. "In myth, these lands you speak of are known. India, where Heracles and Dionysus travelled. All these men who went East - Thessius, Jason, Achilles - were victorious. From generation to generation, their stories have been passed on. Why? Unless there is truth to them?"

Hephaestion gazed at the boy, rapt with wonder.

"Tales of Amazons, huh?" Aristotle chuckled. "No, Alexander, only common people believe these tales. As they believe most anything. We are here precisely to educate ourselves against such foolish passions.

"But if we are superior to the Persians as you say, why do we not rule them? It is, it has always been, our Greek dream to go east."

"The East has a way of swallowing men and their dreams."

Nearchus raised his hand, plump, boyish face crumpled with conservation.

"Master? Master?" He beseeched Aristotle in his whiny voice.

Hephaestion snickered to Alexander.

"Yes," said Aristotle.

Nearchus, not hearing, again rambled, "Master?"

Aristotle grew impatient.

"Yes, out with it, out with it."

"Why are the Persians so cruel?" Nearchus queried.

The other boys snickered at their simple comrade.

"That is not the subject for today, Nearchus. But it is true, the Oriental races are known for their barbarity and slavish devotion to their senses. Excess in all things is the undoing of men. That is why we Greeks are superior, we practice control of our senses. Moderation." He laughed wryly. "We hope!"

"Then what of Achilles of Troy, master?" Cassander piped up. "Was he not excessive?"

"Ah, Achilles simply lacks restraint. He dominates other men so completely that even when he withdraws from battle crazed with grief over his dead lover, Patroclus, he seriously endangers his own army. He is a deeply selfish man."

"Then would you say the love between Achilles and Patroclus is a corrupting one," Cassander challenged.

Hephaestion's gaze flitted to Alexander.

Aristotle sighed.

"When men lie together in lust," he explained, "it is a surrender to the passions and does nothing for the excellence in us. Nor does any other excess, Cassander, jealousy among them. But when men lie together, and knowledge and virtue are passed between them that is pure and excellent - when they compete to bring out the good, the best in each other - this is the love between men that can build a city-state and lift us from our frog pond." His lip curved in a smile.

Alexander returned it.

***

It was under the tutelage of Aristotle that Alexander developed a keen and hungry passion for the works of Homer. He favoured the Iliad, which told the story of his revered hero and role model, Achilles.

Alexander would steal away into a small alcove by himself to read it. He read of how Achilles refused to be consoled by the rest of the Grecian band when Patroclus died.

"His rage they calm not, nor his grief control;
He groans, he raves, he sorrows from his soul."

His goddess-mother found him "in tears Stretch'd o'er Patroclus' corse," from where he refused to leave.

"His friend's dear image present to his mind,
Takes his sad couch, more unobserved to weep;
Nor tastes the gifts of all-composing sleep.
Restless he roll'd around his weary bed,
And all his soul on his Patroclus fed:
The form so pleasing, and the heart so kind,
That youthful vigour, and that manly mind,
What toils they shared, what martial works they wrought,
What seas they measured, and what fields they fought;
All pass'd before him in remembrance dear,
Thought follows thought, and tear succeeds to tear."

Alexander shuddered at the bone-chilling battle cry Achilles was said to roar upon setting out to avenge Patroclus.

"The hero rose: Her aegis Pallas o'er his shoulder throws;
Around his brows a golden cloud she spread;
A stream of glory flamed above his head.
As when from some beleaguer'd town arise
The smokes, high curling to the shaded skies;
(Seen from some island, o'er the main afar,
When men distress'd hang out the sign of war;)
Soon as the sun in ocean hides his rays,
Thick on the hills the flaming beacons blaze;
With long-projected beams the seas are bright,
And heaven's high arch reflects the ruddy light:
So from Achilles' head the splendours rise,
Reflecting blaze on blaze against the skies.
Forth march'd the chief, and distant from the crowd,
High on the rampart raised his voice aloud;
With her own shout Minerva swells the sound;
Troy starts astonish'd, and the shores rebound.
As the loud trumpet's brazen mouth from far
With shrilling clangour sounds the alarm of war,
Struck from the walls, the echoes float on high,
And the round bulwarks and thick towers reply;
So high his brazen voice the hero rear'd:
Hosts dropp'd their arms, and trembled as they heard:
And back the chariots roll, and coursers bound,
And steeds and men lie mingled on the ground.
Aghast they see the living lightnings play,
And turn their eyeballs from the flashing ray.
Thrice from the trench his dreadful voice he raised,
And thrice they fled, confounded and amazed."

With a sinister scowl, Achilles vowed: "Patroclus dead, whoever meets me, dies."

He existed for the sole purpose of avenging Patroclus, slaying man and beast and even river.

"Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live."

Even the god Apollo questioned Achilles' unnaturally protracted grief, torment and despair.

"To lose a friend, a brother, or a son,
Heaven dooms each mortal, and its will is done:
Awhile they sorrow, then dismiss their care;
Fate gives the wound, and man is born to bear.
But this insatiate, the commission given
By fate exceeds, and tempts the wrath of heaven."

But Patroclus had been more than a friend, a brother or a son.

Patroclus appeared to Achilles in a dream and asked:

"Sleeps my Achilles, his Patroclus dead?
Living, I seem'd his dearest, tenderest care,
But now forgot, I wander in the air."

And Achilles tried vainly to embrace the ghost of Patroclus, responding:

"And is it thou? (he answers) To my sight
Once more return'st thou from the realms of night?
O more than brother! Think each office paid,
Whate'er can rest a discontented shade;
But grant one last embrace, unhappy boy!
Afford at least that melancholy joy."
He said, and with his longing arms essay'd
In vain to grasp the visionary shade!"

The extravagant funeral rites, so time-consuming and costly, were a testament to Achilles' disconsolation.

"But great Achilles stands apart in prayer,
And from his head divides the yellow hair;
Those curling locks which from his youth he vow'd,
And sacred grew, to Sperchius' honour'd flood:
Then sighing, to the deep his locks he cast,
And roll'd his eyes around the watery waste:
"Sperchius! whose waves in mazy errors lost
Delightful roll along my native coast!
To whom we vainly vow'd, at our return,
These locks to fall, and hecatombs to burn:
Full fifty rams to bleed in sacrifice,
Where to the day thy silver fountains rise,
And where in shade of consecrated bowers
Thy altars stand, perfumed with native flowers!
So vow'd my father, but he vow'd in vain;
No more Achilles sees his native plain;
In that vain hope these hairs no longer grow,
Patroclus bears them to the shades below."
Thus o'er Patroclus while the hero pray'd,
On his cold hand the sacred lock he laid."

Most moving of all was Patroclus' proposal that his ashes be mingled with Achilles, so that they may be together even in death.

"Hear then; and as in fate and love we join,
Ah suffer that my bones may rest with thine!
Together have we lived; together bred,
One house received us, and one table fed;
That golden urn, thy goddess-mother gave,
May mix our ashes in one common grave."

Indeed, Achilles swore that his love would burn on through the abode of Hades.

"Divine Patroclus! Death hath seal'd his eyes;
Unwept, unhonour'd, uninterr'd he lies!
Can his dear image from my soul depart,
Long as the vital spirit moves my heart?
If in the melancholy shades below,
The flames of friends and lovers cease to glow,
Yet mine shall sacred last; mine, undecay'd,
Burn on through death, and animate my shade."

Alexander wept and wept.