Alexander (2004)

Anthony Hopkins: Old Ptolemy

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Quotes 

• Old Ptolemy : The truth is never simple and yet it is. The truth is we did kill him. By silence we consented... because we couldn't go on. But by Ares, what did we have to look forward to but to be discarded in the end like Cleitus? After all this time, to give away our wealth to Asian sycophants we despised? Mixing the races? Harmony? Oh, he talked of these things. I never believe in his dream. None of us did. That's the truth of his life. The dreamers exhaust us. They must die before they kill us with their blasted dreams.

• Old Ptolemy : On the tenth of June, a month short of his 33rd year, Alexander's great heart finally gave out. And, as he vowed, he joined Hephaistion. But in his short life he achieved, without doubt, the mythic glory of his ancestor; Achilles. And more.

• [last lines] 

  Old Ptolemy : I've lived... I've lived long life, Cadmos, but the glory and the memory of men will always belong to the ones who follow their great visions. The greatest of these is the one they now call Megas Alexandros. The greatest of them all.

• Old Ptolemy : How can I tell you what it was like to be young; to dream big dreams? And to believe when Alexander looked you in the eye you could do anything. In his presence, by the light of Apollo, we were better than ourselves.

• Old Ptolemy : Within hours we were fighting like Jackals for his corpse. The wars of the world had begun. Forty years, off and on, they endured, until we divided his empire in four parts. I think Alexander would have been disappointed in us.

• Old Ptolemy : Alexander used to say that we are most alone when we are with the myths.

• Old Ptolemy : It was mad. Forty thousand of us against hundreds of thousands of barbarian races unknown to us, gathered under Darius himself. East and West had now come together to decide the fate of the known world. It was the day Alexander had waited for all his life.

• Old Ptolemy : All greatness comes from loss.

• [first lines] 

  Old Ptolemy : Our world is gone now. Smashed by the wars. Now I am the keeper of his body, embalmed here in the Egyptian ways. I followed him as Pharaoh, and have now ruled 40 years. I am the victor. But what does it all mean when there is not one left to remember - the great cavalry charge at Gaugamela, or the mountains of the Hindu Kush when we crossed a 100,000-man army into India? He was a god, Cadmos. Or as close as anything I've ever seen.

• Old Ptolemy : Who Roxane really was, I doubt any of us ever saw further than the pools of those black eyes.

• Old Ptolemy : It was said later that Alexander was never defeated in his lifetime, except by Hephaistion's thighs.

• Old Ptolemy : All men reach and fall...

  [takes sand in his hand and lets it slip through his fingers] 

  Old Ptolemy : reach and fall...

• Old Ptolemy : I've known many great men in my life, but only one colossus. And only now in old do I understand who this force of nature really was. Or do I?

• Old Ptolemy : We all felt there was more here than sexual bickery. Alexander wanted the truth, and Philotas' answers were lacking merit. Alexander put him, silently and quickly, to trial by his peers. And whether plotter or opportunist, Philotas was found guilty of treason. None of us defended Philotas, but then again, none of us ever liked him.

• Old Ptolemy : In the end, I believe, Babylon was a far easier mistress to enter than to leave.

• Old Ptolemy : His failure towered over other men's successes.

• Old Ptolemy : [about the Hydaspes battle]  It was the bloodiest of his battles. Pure butchery, the end of all reason... we'd never be men again.

• Old Ptolemy : The surveyors told us we were now on the boarders of where Europe and Asia meet. In fact, we were totally lost.

• Old Ptolemy : I've paid my price, in blood. And in broken dreams.