But he had been rescued from the Babylonian slave traders who swept him up. Loyal Macedonian soldiers who had preceded him to Hell had nurtured him. Having regained his legendary strength he had returned to his Aegean homeland. For twenty-three centuries in Hell the young man had fought enemies far and wide, conquering territory, losing territory, and conquering it again. But most of all he had fought the terrible sameness and boredom of neverending time. “Better to be a king than a slave,” he had told his comrades countless times, “but better still to be freed from this prison with no bars which is stronger than any jail.” But there was no release and he had little choice but to live out this existence of attacking and defending in limitless cycles of violence. King Alexander of Macedonia had been told by more modern arrivals of the name which history had given him. Alexander the Great.
