Alexander the Great Supposedly Set One Of His Servants On Fire

The year was 331 BCE—Alexander the Great had recently delivered a humiliating defeat to the Persian King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela. As the Persian forces retreated further into the interior of their empire, Alexander the Great seized control of most of Mesopotamia, including the famed city of Babylon.

One of the stranger tales about Alexander’s life occurred while he was marching his forces from the battlefield of Guagamela to the city of Babylon. Apparently, during the journey, Alexander’s forces encountered a town that overflowed with some sort of flammable liquid. Ancient commentators described the petroleum-based substance in different ways. Strabo (c. 64 BCE- 21 CE), in Book XVI of his Geography, wrote that Alexander encountered asphalt or naphtha near the Euphrates River. Plutarch (c. 46-119 CE), in his Alexander (Chapter 35), also identified the flammable material as naphtha. Quintus Curtius (1st century CE), in his History of Alexander (Book V), named the location as the Babylonian city of Mennis and claimed that the liquid was actually bitumen.

Anyway, wherever the location and whatever the flammable substance, the locals were eager to make a spectacle of their oily export. Plutarch (who wrote the most elaborate account of the incident) claimed that the townspeople used their naphtha or bitumen to light a path for Alexander, so that he could easily find his guest quarters for the night. As Alexander followed the flickering flames back to his temporary home, his curiosity about the oily substance only increased. The display left such an impact, that the Macedonian king was still musing about the stuff, even while bathing.

As the story (of Strabo and Plutarch) goes, Alexander’s scientific curiosity got the better of him during his bath, and dangerous ideas began to hatch in his head. Eventually, Alexander and his bath attendants decided to carry out more experiments with the fascinating naphtha or bitumen. According to Plutarch, an unfortunate man named Stephanus was somehow convinced by Alexander and at least one other bath attendant to become a human torch. In Plutarch’s account, Stephanus’ participation in the dangerous experiment was consensual, but in Strabo’s version, the poor man’s willingness to burn was much less certain.

Either way, Stephanus was thoroughly covered with the flammable substance and set alight. From the sources, it seems that Alexander almost immediately regretted his decision—not to mention how Stephanus must have felt. As soon as the bath attendant was engulfed in hungry flames, Alexander tried to douse the inferno with a jar of water, but that did not extinguish the fire. It took several bath attendants splashing water on the burning Stephanus for the petroleum-fueled flames to be finally put out. In the end, Stephanus supposedly survived the ordeal, but he was severely burned.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top Picture Attribution: (Alexander the Great by Placido Costanzi (1702-1759) setting fire to Jan Hus (painted by Spiezer Chronik (1485)), both [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plut.+Alex.+35&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0243  
• http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/16A*.html 
• https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015008158415;view=1up;seq=373  
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plutarch 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Strabo  
• http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/curtius-rufus-quintus-probably-fl

King Nabonidus of Babylonia—A Madman, An Ill Man, Or Just A Scholar

The history of King Nabonidus is perplexingly difficult to tell—his reign was mentioned by numerous ancient sources, yet they each differ greatly in their portrayal of his life. Nabonidus, or his rule, was mentioned in accounts such as the Bible’s Book of Daniel (although there he is mistakenly referred to as Nebuchadnezzar), the tablets of the Babylonian Chronicles, the Dead Sea Scrolls and The Histories of Herodotus. These writings, produced from different times and cultures, portrayed Nabonidus from multiple perspectives, and each for their own separate motives. Despite their different outlooks, the ancient accounts did, thankfully, corroborate on some pieces of King Nabonidus’ vague history.

Based on archaeological and written evidence, historians can sketch a loose outline of Nabonidus’ reign. It is considered historical fact that Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, over which he ruled from around 556-539 BCE. Although he was a religious man, Nabonidus did not get along with the priests of Marduk, who served the most preeminent god of Babylonia. Instead, the king was especially devoted to the moon deity, Sîn, to whom Nabonidus’ mother is thought to have worked as a priestess. In terms of war, King Nabonidus may have launched a military campaign into southern Anatolia, but he generally had considerably less bloodlust than many of the other ancient kings, who often seemed to fall into perpetual warfare.

Eventually, King Nabonidus mysteriously withdrew from the capitol city of Babylon and lived at the Tamya oasis in Arabia for a period of time that lasted seven to ten years. While Nabonidus was in seclusion, his son, Belshazzar, led the administration of the empire from the city of Babylon, under the title of coregent.

The reason as to why King Nabonidus remained away from Babylon for nearly a decade is still a heavily debated issue. Some people think pressure from the priests of Marduk caused the king to leave. Other popular theories suggest that the king had a medical issue. The Prayer of Nabonidus in the Dead Sea Scrolls stated that the king suffered from a terrible ulcer, and went to the oasis at Temya for healing. The Biblical Book of Daniel stated that Belshazzar’s father was at Temya in efforts to recover from a mental illness that made the king behave like livestock, eating blades of grass from the ground. Other historians suggest that King Nabonidus was merely obsessed with archaeology and that his long period of absence was just a huge archaeological expedition to discover ancient ruins and relics.

Regardless of the cause of the king’s retreat to Tamya, Nabonidus was eventually forced to return to Babylon because of a growing threat from Persia that was truly great—in fact, it was none other than Cyrus the Great. In 539 BCE, the Persian Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire clashed. King Nabonidus tried to mobilize his forces to push back the Persians, but he was thoroughly outmatched. Ancient accounts of the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire vary significantly regarding how much or little fighting occurred, but the general consensus among modern historians is that the city of Babylon surrendered without a fight, and King Nabonidus was captured by the Persians. As for the fate of Nabonidus, Cyrus reportedly spared the Babylonian king’s life and let the man live out the remainder of his days in exile.

  (Basalt stela of Nabonidus, held by the British Museum, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

(Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel, by Shigeru Aoki (1882–1911), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons) 

(cropped Nebuchadnezzar by William Blake (1757–1827), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Sources:

•  Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies: The Role of Cross-Border Trade and Travel by Michael C. Howard. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nabonidus
• http://www.livius.org/ct-cz/cyrus_I/babylon04.html 
• http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nabonidus 
• http://www.archaeologyexpert.co.uk/nabodinus.html 
• https://www.ancient.eu/image/4632/