Of all the things he had, I wanted only his strength.

Ever in pursuit of the model of divine beauty, artists abandoned the coarse bodies of athletes and became infatuated with the cool contours of my muscles, my graceful limbs and fine features.

Looking at my reflection, I no longer saw the timid girl with braided hair, or the melancholy little boy who dreamed of being Homer. Instead there was a young prince with a proud nose and a determined chin. He had large, green innocent eyes that fascinated the powerful Macedonian warriors, and an adolescent mouth that the Greeks longed to kiss. His square shoulders, strong chest, and narrow waist, his firm belly and muscled buttocks, still had the harmonious curves and sweet proportions of a woman. I had become a work of art and was offered to everyone, but was forever inaccessible to common mortals.

How could it be that such filth and crime had made my body so resplendent? I was obsessed with hatred, ravaged by vengeance, initiated in the art of torture, unmoved by corpses, laughing as I decapitated and eviscerated them… how could it be that my features were still so incomparably pure?

Is the face a comedian's mask hiding the tragedy of the soul?

The body a statue of marble to serve men and the gods?

With Aristotle, I was an assiduous and intelligent pupil. With my father, a torturer and a whore. With my fellow students, a tyrannical leader and a servile lover. With Hephaestion, a suspicious woman, constantly haranguing him reproachfully to make him suffer.

I had grown accustomed to being several different people. There were as many Alexanders as there were men and women interested in me, in love with me, intoxicated by my face.