Transcript
Book 2, Chapter Nine: Birth Stories, Pages 221 and 222
“Philip had a dream, too.
In his dream, he placed a seal on my mother’s womb.
The mark which emerged was none other than a lion’s face.”
Alexander’s storytelling is interrupted by cries from the Greek chorus – female oracles, who are attending to the scene between young Philip and Olympias.
“This is no empty promise, Philip.
Your wife carries the exalted one.
The lion of Macedon. Euai!”
Cheers of Euai ring across the chorus as they receive the seal from Philip’s hand and inspect the auspicious lion’s head, passing the seal down one
by
one
until the last of the chorus oracles delivers the seal to Philip’s heir, Alexander.
“Impressive!” cries the Servant. “So many omens in anticipation of your arrival!”
Alexander smiles as he tosses the seal back to the chorus.
“Right? And you know that’s not all!”
The Servant replies,
“Ah, indeed!
The thunderbolt and the seal are not all there is to your provenance. There is, of course, the story of the egg… Come!”
The Servant dutifully escorts Alexander and the pregnant Olympias away from the scene to a room behind a curtain…
Chapter Nine 221-222
Woah going all experimental with the flow.
For this scene I still don’t really know what Plutarch meant by “seal”: is it the product of a cylindrical seal or a signet ring? I felt like the most realistic way to depict either method – a seal being a very small imprint on clay or wax – isn’t that impressive visually (in comics form anyway), so I chose to give Philip a very large sheet of clay to wrap around Olympias’ belly. Make that what you will lol. Mainly the real meat of the layout is the return of the chorus; we’ve seen them earlier in various guises already, now they are servants and subjects of Alexander’s empire passing along the seal to gawk at it. The seal has got to be pretty big visually so we can follow it being passed along until it reaches Alexander.
Anyway, the story of the egg… that’s next update’s business. Readers of The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, you will enjoy the return of a familiar art style. 🙂
Author’s Footnotes:
Again, what I call the “Greek version” of the birth story legends can be read in full here: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alexander*/3.html (Plutarch, Part 1, 2-5).
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