He ordered me to pose naked before the royal sculptors. In their deft hands, the clay became a mouth, curls, a torso, thighs. The divine Apollo and I were now but one. Together we would dictate the law of perfection throughout Macedonia and Greece. Philip came to watch, walked round, then left. He came back and stood before the statue, motionless as he contemplated it.

He begged me to let him kiss me, ordered me to open my arms to him. He clambered over me suffocatingly, kneeling before me when I rebuffed him with a scream. My rejection unleashed his desire: his gifts piled up, he summoned me to every celebration, introducing me as the future king of Macedonia, seating me in pride of place beside him, pouring wine for me as eagerly as a woman in love.

His efforts flattered and disgusted me. His passion softened my loathing even as it heightened it. I nurtured a towering contempt for the human body and for those obsessed with the flesh. A new Alexander was burgeoning within me. I could not tell whether he was strong or weak. He told me that my beauty was the rarest of goods: if I learned how to barter, I would become a superior being.

Everything was reduced to trade-offs. I gave only on condition of receiving. Philip, the king who was never refused anything, began to enjoy this game that reversed our roles. I had become his tyrant; he reveled in his servitude. To persuade me to undress, he had to heap gifts at my feet: gold plates, weapons, jewels, all the treasures he had grasped from the Greeks by force and by blood, at the risk of his own life. I soon tired of this accumulation; gold elicited only my disdain. My displeasure aroused him further, and he made dogged attempts to earn my smile.

I asked for every extravagant gift that came to mind: a three-horned bull, an embalmed Egyptian, a shrunken head, a freshly aborted fetus from a slave girl. When I tired of the game and felt satisfied with my offerings, like Apollo consenting to step down from the heavens, I gave myself to him and his companions in pleasure with perfect indifference. He would laugh and put his golden laurel wreath on my head, offering me his throne in exchange for one long kiss. Through all the madness of this capricious behavior, I kept my feet anchored to the ground.