I had a fantasy moment whilst reading this, as my first thought was, what a great scene it would have made in the movie.
We needed a voice other than Old Ptolemy's droning on wearily, and Memnon's the man for the job here - telling us what a whiz kid this Alexander is and what a swathe he is cutting through the world, especially in this quote; (italic-less, I'm afraid)
“When a man holds his first regency at sixteen and leads an army to war, when he is a commander of cavalry at eighteen and destroys in one charge the Sacred Band of Thebes, when he is a king at twenty and crushes the city that the Band rose from so that no two stones stand one on the other, when he can keep down the north and settle the south in only a season, with his father’s death still fresh in the world, then he is not a man to be taken lightly. He has Philippos’ army and Philippos officers and the finest strategos in Hellas to tell him how things should be done. My lord, Great Lord of All, he is no untried pup, this man.”
In my fantasy, as Memnon says all this in voiceover, we get to see snippets of the action on screen in montage. We then get to see Darius' reaction shots (and it would have given that rather splendid looking Daz Regan something to actually do and say in the movie) It would have filled in some of the gaping maw betwixt the trembling prince and the confident kick-ass king, and told us a little about the charisma of that young lion. It would have shown us a little about Darius' character and mindset - and we'd have been nearly all ready for that battle at Gaugamela....
Sorry - I got carried away there, it was a good fantasy. And this piece is more than just good, as always. As I've said before, I like to hear these other voices telling us about Alexander, and it's about time Memnon got his chance. Liked it. A lot.
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Date: 2005-02-09 11:29 pm (UTC)We needed a voice other than Old Ptolemy's droning on wearily, and Memnon's the man for the job here - telling us what a whiz kid this Alexander is and what a swathe he is cutting through the world, especially in this quote; (italic-less, I'm afraid)
“When a man holds his first regency at sixteen and leads an army to war, when he is a commander of cavalry at eighteen and destroys in one charge the Sacred Band of Thebes, when he is a king at twenty and crushes the city that the Band rose from so that no two stones stand one on the other, when he can keep down the north and settle the south in only a season, with his father’s death still fresh in the world, then he is not a man to be taken lightly. He has Philippos’ army and Philippos officers and the finest strategos in Hellas to tell him how things should be done. My lord, Great Lord of All, he is no untried pup, this man.”
In my fantasy, as Memnon says all this in voiceover, we get to see snippets of the action on screen in montage. We then get to see Darius' reaction shots (and it would have given that rather splendid looking Daz Regan something to actually do and say in the movie) It would have filled in some of the gaping maw betwixt the trembling prince and the confident kick-ass king, and told us a little about the charisma of that young lion. It would have shown us a little about Darius' character and mindset - and we'd have been nearly all ready for that battle at Gaugamela....
Sorry - I got carried away there, it was a good fantasy. And this piece is more than just good, as always. As I've said before, I like to hear these other voices telling us about Alexander, and it's about time Memnon got his chance. Liked it. A lot.