This was the Athens Alexander arrived in, and took note. Heroic to a fault, he saw his chance for immortality, and it would seem to live great and die in glory may have become "fixed" in his young mind as a scholar with other princes of other city states.

There may be no published thoughts on this motivation behind Alexander deciding with his life to go for it! But my meditation would suggest he came to feel it was his destiny to make Greece all free and great and master rather than defend from Persia, and rule the known world.

Alexander had such early inspirations that would affect other people after his death, as with Socrates. He must be good, he might as well be Great. It seems that Alexander, unlike most of us, had all too many examples on how life could end quickly, and unless that dying man had done good or evil in his life made a difference on how he could die, and expect to go to a better life with God.

This truth is just plain horse sense, as Socrates told Aristotle, and as Aristotle told Alexander, and Alexander to his horse, who you may have heard,told me.

Socrates died quietly and told Aristotle, who told his pupil Alexander, that he was going to a better life. Alexander almost died in the desert in Egypt seeking a Wise Holy Man : they blessed each other. 350 years before Christ, men Believed.

Socrates was an ugly little man who walked in rags through the streets of Athens in his later years. But in his youth, during the height of the Golden Age of Greece he had performed with great bravery at three great battles against the ever present army and navy of Persia.

As he aged, limping and infirm, he was not fit for any further service to Athens and was allowed to ramble and talk to groups of people. And who can refuse an old man his times of rambling and talking to his neighbors, and then to others who hear of his wise series of questions and answers that he brought you conclude about you own needs or actions.

His purity of mind allowed thoughts of good and ways to improve the human condition and how we all must search our own soul and moral code before causing another a harm. This is often heard from an old warrior, but none spoke with such searching clarity into the essence of a question. What was the seeker seeking, really?

All citizens of Greece needed to be on their alert. As at Gettysburg two thousand years later, the fate of democracy could some times hang by threads. Socrates made the leaders of ancient Greece jealous and was forced to die.

How the death of Socrates was witnessed by his pupil Aristotle, who within years discussed the meaning of free will and a good life and worthy death and entry in an afterlife of joy with his young pupil Alexander, who would become Great. We talk about that next.