The Folklore of Discworld

Anything others have done, he has done better, faster, more often. He is the bravest, the most famous. He has been an Emperor in the Counterweight Continent, and during this phase of his career was respectfully referred to as Genghis Cohen. There is just one small problem – he is now somewhere around ninety years old. Most of the friends and foes of his younger days are dead. His surviving companions are now known as the Silver Horde. Like him, they suffer a variety of age-related afflictions (piles, deafness, toothlessness, stiff joints), and like him they will never cease to be Heroes.
    And yet, in the long run, what does the life of a Hero amount to? Standing on a mountain peak, Cohen surveys the kingdoms of the world as he sets out on his last and greatest enterprise, accompanied by the Silver Horde and a very puzzled minstrel.
    ‘I bin to everywhere I can see,’ said Cohen, looking around. ‘Been there, done that … been there again, done it twice … nowhere left where I ain’t been.’
    The minstrel looked him up and down, and a kind of understanding dawned. I know why you are doing this now, he thought. Thank goodness for a classical education. Now, what was the quote?
    ‘ “And Carelinus wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer”,’ he said.
    ‘Who’s that bloke? You mentioned him before,’ said Cohen.
    ‘You haven’t heard of the Emperor Carelinus?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘But he was the greatest conqueror that ever lived! His empire spanned the entire Disc! … Well, when he got as far as the coast of Muntab, it was said that he stood on the shore and wept. Some philosopher told him there were more worlds out there somewhere, and that he’d never be able to conquer them. Er … that reminded me a bit of you.’
    Cohen strolled along in silence for a moment.
    ‘Yeah,’ he said at last. ‘Yeah, I can see how that could be.
    Only not as cissy, obviously.’ [ The Last Hero ]
    And later, trying to explain why he and his companions mean to blow up the mountain of the gods, though they themselves will be killed doing it, Cohen remembers the rage and frustration of Carelinus that the unjust gods have granted such short lives to men:
    ‘I ain’t much good with words, but … I reckon we’re doing this ’cos we are goin’ to die, d’yer see? And ’cos some bloke got to the edge of the world somewhere and saw all them other worlds out there and burst into tears ’cos there was only one lifetime. So much universe, and so little time. And that’s not right.’
    Carelinus, the mighty conqueror of distant kingdoms, has a counterpart in the history of Ancient Greece. His name was Alexander the Great, and there are strange similarities in the careers of these two great men. The Knotty Problem, for one. Carelinus once came to the Temple of Offler in Tsort, where there was a huge, complicated knot tying two beams together, and it was said that whoever untied it would reign over the whole continent; Carelinus simply sliced right through it with his sword, and went on to build a huge empire. Was this cheating? Cohen thinks it wasn’t:
    ‘It wasn’t cheating, because it was a good story. I can just imagine it, too. A load of whey-faced priests and suchlike standin’ around and thinkin’, “That’s cheatin’ , but he’s got a really big sword so I won’t be the first to point this out, plus this damn great army is just outside.” ’
    Amazingly, exactly the same thing happened to Alexander. As a young general, he led his army into the town of Gordium (near modern Ankara, in Turkey), where there was an ancient ox-cartwhich their first king had dedicated to Zeus after tying up its axle tree with a weirdly knotted rope. It was prophesied that anyone who could untie it would rule all Asia, but nobody had managed it in over a hundred years. Alexander tried, failed, and then drew his sword and cut it. That night there was a terrible thunderstorm. The priests of Zeus wisely decided this showed the approval of the gods.
    Another story told of him (if properly understood) shows that he felt just the same way as Carelinus and Cohen did about the limits of his achievements.
    It is popularly said that Alexander, at the height of his power, stood on the shores of the Indian Ocean and ‘wept to think that there were no worlds left for him to conquer’. Like so much that is popularly said, this is nonsense; it is a medieval legend, not to be found in any ancient source. Alexander was no fool. He knew