Book VII, 427

Come let us see who lies under this stone. But I see no inscription cut on it, only nine cast dice, of which the first four represent the throw called Alexander, the next four that called Ephebus—the bloom of youthful maturity—and the one the more unlucky throw called Chian. Is their message this, that both the proud sceptred potentate and the young man in his flower end in nothing, or is that not so?— I think now like a Cretan archer I shall shoot straight at the mark. The dead man was a Chian, his name was Alexander and he died in youth. How well one told through dumb dice of the young man dead by ill-chance and the life staked and lost!