Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride
Goodwin, Ed.

And although the actions of Semiramis are sung among the Assyrians as very great, and likewise those of Sesostris in Egypt, and the Phrygians to this very day style all illustrious and strange actions manic, because Manis, one of their ancient kings (whom some call Masdes) was a brave and mighty person; and although Cyrus enlarged the empire of the Persians, and Alexander that of the Macedonians, within a little matter of the world's end; yet have they still retained the names and memorials of gallant princes. And if some, puffed up with excessive vain-glory (as Plato speaks), having their minds enflamed at once with both youthful blood and folly, have with an unruly extravagancy taken upon them the style of Gods and had temples erected in their honor, yet this opinion of them flourished but for a short season, and they afterwards underwent the blame of great vanity and arrogancy, conjoined with the highest impiety and wickedness; and so,

Like smoke they flew away with swift-paced Fate;¹

and being dragged away from the altars like fugitive slaves, they have now nothing left them but their tombs and graves. Which made Antigonus the Elder, when one Hermodotus had in his poems declared him to be son to the Sun and a God, to say to him: Friend, he that empties my close-stoolpan knows no such matter of me. And Lysippus the carver had good reason to quarrel with the painter Apelles for drawing Alexander's picture with a thunder-bolt in his hand, whereas himself had made him but with a spear, which (he said) was natural and proper for him, [p. 86] and a weapon the glory of which no time would rob him of.