The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Philip himself. However, he rose at court, became a private friend of
young Alexander, and at last his Somatophylax, some sort of Colonel of
the Life Guards. And from thence he rose rapidly, till after his great
master's death he found himself despot of Egypt.
His face, as it appears on his coins, is of the loftiest and most Jove-
like type of Greek beauty. There is a possibility about it, as about
most old Greek faces, of boundless cunning; a lofty irony too, and a
contemptuousness, especially about the mouth, which puts one in mind of
Goethe's expression; the face, altogether, of one who knew men too well
to respect them. At least, he was a man of clear enough vision. He saw
what was needed in those strange times, and he went straight to the
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