Persia, its infinite expanse and shadowy provinces, appeared like a dream, a necessary dream and an indispensable challenge. It became the obsession that promised to bring an end to my torment.

Ambition healed and intoxicated me. I had no choice: in a long starless night, Alexander would be a shooting star, burning intensely. Though short, his life would leave the memory of its swift dazzling trajectory across the celestial vault.

Olympias talked to me of marriage. I knew from my men that she had started looking for a wife for me among the daughters of Macedonian noblemen. Her dreams of a happy marriage and her longing to be a grandmother made the very air in the palace difficult to breathe. I tried to evade the question with talk of my father, accusing my mother of allowing him to pervert me, and of tolerating my vices as she had his. Olympias looked at me, her eyes filled with sadness.

"Woman!" I screamed, "you gave me love, but that love nurtured a monster. I don't want to be married! I don't want a wife like you! I don't want to have children I can harm!"

She looked away and said nothing.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and gave full vent to my anger.

"Look at me," I bellowed, shaking her. "I'm not the man you think you love. I'm not a god. I destroy cities for the sheer pleasure of showing that I'm more fierce and dangerous than Philip, to exceed him in every crime he committed. I have decapitated children, eviscerated women, burned men alive when they have done me no harm at all. Oh, Olympias, you gave birth to a tyrant!" She held me in her arms and wept.

"Give me a child," she whispered. "Then go and never come back! If I raise a son of yours, he will be a good and just king, he will be wise and clement…"