READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

GEORGE GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE

CHAPTER XCIV

MILITARY OPERATIONS AND CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, AFTER HIS WINTER-QUARTERS IN PERSIS, DOWN TO HIS DEATH AT BABYLON

From this time forward to the close of Alexander’s life—a period of about seven years—his time was spent in conquering the eastern half of the Persian empire, together with various independent tribes lying beyond its extreme boundary. But neither Greece, nor Asia Minor, nor any of his previous western acquisitions, was he ever destined to see again.

Now, in regard to the history of Greece—the subject of these volumes—the first portion of Alexander’s Asiatic campaigns (from his crossing the Hellespont to the conquest of Persis, a period of four years, March 334 B.C. to March 330 B.C), though not of direct bearing, is yet of material importance. Having in his first year completed the subjugation of the Hellenic world, he had by these subsequent campaigns absorbed it as a small fraction into the vast Persian empire, renovated under his imperial sceptre. He had accomplished a result substantially the same as would have been brought about if the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, destined, a century and a half before, to incorporate Greece with the Persian monarchy, had succeeded instead of failing. Towards the kings of Macedonia alone, the subjugation of Greece would never have become complete, so long as she could receive help from the native Persian kings—who were perfectly adequate as a countervailing and tutelary force, had they known how to play their game. But all hope for Greece from without was extinguished, when Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis became subject to the same ruler as Pella and Amphipolis—and that ruler too, the ablest general, and most insatiate aggressor, of his age; to whose name was attached the prestige of success almost superhuman. Still, against even this overwhelming power, some of the bravest of the Greeks at home tried to achieve their liberation with the sword: we shall see presently how sadly the attempt miscarried.

But though the first four years of Alexander’s Asiatic expedition, in which he conquered the Western half of the Persian empire, had thus an important effect on the condition and destinies of the Grecian cities—his last seven years, on which we are now about to enter, employed chiefly in conquering the Eastern half, scarcely touched these cities in any way. The stupendous marches to the rivers Jaxartes, Indus, and Hyphasis, which carried his victorious armies over so wide a space of Central Asia, not only added nothing to his power over the Greeks, but even withdrew him from all dealings with them, and placed him almost beyond their cognisance. To the historian of Greece, therefore, these latter campaigns can hardly be regarded as included within the range of his subject. They deserve to be told as examples of military skill and energy, and as illustrating the character of the most illustrious general of antiquity—one who, though not a Greek, had be­come the master of all Greeks. But I shall not think it necessary to recount them in any detail, like the battles of Issus and Arbela.

About six or seven months had elapsed from the battle of Arbela to the time when Alexander prepared to quit his most recent conquest—Persis proper. During all this time, Darius had remained at Ecbatana, the chief city of Media, clinging to the hope, that Alexander, when possessed of the three southern capitals and the best part of the Persian empire, might have reached the point of satiation, and might leave him unmolested in the more barren East. As soon as he learnt that Alexander was in movement towards him, he sent forward his harem and his baggage to Hyrcania, on the south-eastern border of the Caspian sea. Himself, with the small force around him, followed in the same direction, carrying off the treasure in the city (7000 talents), and passed through the Caspian Gates into the territory of Parthyene. His only chance was to escape to Bactria at the eastern extremity of the empire, ruining the country in his way for the purpose of retarding pursuers. But this chance diminished every day, from desertion among his few followers, and angry disgust among many who remained.

Eight days after Darius had quitted Ecbatana, Alexander entered it. How many days had been occupied in his march from Persepolis, we cannot say: in itself a long march, it had been further prolonged, partly by the necessity of subduing the intervening mountaineers called Paraetakeni, partly by rumours exaggerating the Persian force at Ecbatana, and inducing him to advance with precaution and regular array. Possessed of Ecbatana—the last capital stronghold of the Persian kings, and their ordinary residence during the summer months—he halted to rest his troops, and establish a new base of operations for his future proceedings eastward. He made Ecbatana his principal depot; depositing in the citadel, under the care of Harpalus as treasurer, with a garrison of 6000 or 7000 Macedonians, the accumulated treasures of his past conquests out of Susa and Persepolis; amounting, we are told, to the enormous sum of 180,000 talents. Parmenio was invested with the chief command of this important post, and of the military force left in Media; of which territory Oxodates, a Persian who had been imprisoned at Susa by Darius, was named satrap.

At Ecbatana Alexander was joined by a fresh force of 6000 Grecian mercenaries, who had marched from Cilicia into the interior, probably crossing the Euphrates and Tigris at the same points as Alexander himself had crossed. Hence he was enabled the better to dismiss his Thessalian cavalry, with other Greeks who had been serving during his four years of Asiatic war, and who now wished to go home. He distributed among them the sum of 2000 talents in addition to their full pay, and gave them the price of their horses, which they sold before departure. The operations which he was now about to com­mence against the eastern territories of Persia were not against regular armies, but against flying corps and distinct native tribes, relying for defence chiefly on the difficulties which mountains, deserts, privation, or mere distance, would throw in the way of an assailant. For these purposes he required an increased number of light troops, and was obliged to impose even upon his heavy-armed cavalry the most rapid and fatigu­ing marches, such as none but his Macedonian Companions would have been contented to execute; moreover he was called upon to act less with large masses, and more with small and broken divisions. He now therefore for the first time established a regular Taxis, or divisions of horse-bowmen.

Remaining at Ecbatana no longer than was sufficient for these new arrangements, Alexander recommenced his pursuit of Darius. He hoped to get before Darius to the Caspian Gates, at the north-eastern extremity of Media; by which Gates was understood a mountain-pass, or rather a road of many hours’ march, including several difficult passes stretching eastward along the southern side of the great range of Taurus towards Parthia. He marched with his Companion-cavalry, the light-horse, the Agrianians, and the bowmen—the greater part of the phalanx keeping up as well as it could—to Rhagae, about fifty miles north of the Caspian Gates; which town he reached in eleven days, by exertions so severe that many men as well as horses were disabled on the road. But in spite of all speed, he learnt that Darius had already passed through the Caspian Gates. After five days of halt at Rhagae, indispensable for his army, Alexander passed them also. A day’s march on the other side of them he was joined by two eminent Persians, Bagistanes and Antibelus, who informed him that Darius was already dethroned and in imminent danger of losing his life.

The conspirators by whom this had been done, were Bessus, satrap of Bactria—Barsaentes, satrap of Drangiana and Arachosia—and Nabarzanes, general of the regal guards. The small force of Darius having been thinned by daily desertion, most of those who remained were the contingents of the still unconquered territories, Bactria, Arachosia, and Drangiana, under the orders of their respective satraps. The Grecian mercenaries, 1500 in number, and Artabazus, with a band under his special command, adhered inflexibly to Darius, but the soldiers of Eastern Asia followed their own satraps. Bessus and his colleagues intended to make their peace with Alexander by surrendering Darius, should Alexander pursue so vigorously as to leave them no hope of escape; but if they could obtain time to reach Bactria and Sogdiana, they resolved to organise an energetic resistance, under their own joint command, for the defence of those eastern provinces—the most warlike popula­tion of the empire. Under the desperate circumstances of the case, this plan was perhaps the least unpromising that could be proposed. The chance of resisting Alexander, small as it was at the best, became absolutely nothing under the command of Darius, who had twice set the example of flight from the field of battle, betraying both his friends and his empire, even when surrounded by the full force of Persia. For brave and energetic Persians, unless they were prepared at once to submit to the invader, there was no choice but to set aside Darius ; nor does it appear that the conspirators intended at first anything worse. At a village called Thara in Parthia, they bound him in chains of gold—placed him in a covered chariot surrounded by the Bactrian troops,—and thus carried him onward, retreating as fast as they could; Bessus assuming the command. Artabazus, with the Grecian mercenaries, too feeble to prevent the proceeding, quitted the army in disgust, and sought refuge among the mountains of the Tapyri bordering on Hyrcania towards the Caspian Sea.

On hearing this intelligence, Alexander strained every nerve to overtake the fugitives and get possession of the person of Darius. At the head of his Companion-cavalry, his light-horse, and a body of infantry picked out for their strength and activity, he put himself in instant march, with nothing but arms and two days’ provisions for each man; leaving Craterus to bring on the main body by easier journeys. A forced march of two nights and one day, interrupted only by a short midday repose (it was now the month of July), brought him at daybreak to the Persian camp which his informant Bagistanes had quitted. But Bessus and his troops were already beyond it, having made considerable advance in their flight; upon which Alexander, notwithstanding the exhaustion both of men and horses, pushed on with increased speed through all the night to the ensuing day at noon. He there found himself in the village where Bessus had encamped on the preceding day. Yet learning from deserters that his enemies had resolved to hasten their retreat by night marches, he despaired of overtaking them, unless he could find some shorter road. He was informed that there was another shorter, but leading through a waterless desert. Setting out by this road late in the day with his cavalry, he got over no less than forty-five miles during the night, so as to come on Bessus by complete surprise on the following morning. The Persians, marching in disorder with­out arms, and having no expectation of an enemy, were so panic-struck at the sudden appearance of their indefatigable conqueror, that they dispersed and fled without any attempt to resist. In this critical moment, Bessus and Barsaentes urged Darius to leave his chariot, mount his horse, and accompany them in their flight. But he refused to comply. They were determined however that he should not fall alive into the hands of Alexander, whereby his name would have been employed against them, and would have materially lessened their chance of defending the eastern provinces; they were moreover incensed by his refusal, and had contracted a feeling of hatred and contempt to which they were glad to give effect. Casting their javelins at him, they left him mortally wounded, and then pursued their flight. His chariot, not distinguished by any visible mark, nor known even to the Persian soldiers themselves, was for some time not detected by the pursuers. At length a Macedonian soldier named Polystratus found him expiring, and is said to have received his last words; wherein he expressed thanks to Alexander for the kind treatment of his captive female relatives, and satisfaction that the Persian throne, lost to himself, was about to pass to so generous a conqueror. It is at least certain that he never lived to see Alexander himself.

Alexander had made the prodigious and indefatigable marches of the last four days, not without destruction to many men and horses, for the express purpose of taking Darius alive. It would have been a gratification to his vanity to exhibit the Great King as a helpless captive, rescued from his own servants by the sword of his enemy, and spared to occupy some subordinate command as a token of ostentatious indulgence. Moreover, apart from such feelings, it would have been a point of real advantage to seize the person of Darius, by means of whose name Alexander would have been enabled to stifle all further resistance in the extensive and imperfectly known regions eastward of the Caspian Gates. The satraps of these regions had now gone thither with their hands free, to kindle as much Asiatic sentiment and levy as large a force as they could, against the Macedonian conqueror; who was obliged to follow them, if he wished to complete the subjugation of the empire. We can understand therefore that Alexander was deeply mortified in deriving no result from this ruinously fatiguing march, and can the better explain that savage wrath which we shall here­after find him manifesting against the satrap Bessus.

Alexander caused the body of Darius to be buried, with full pomp and ceremonial, in the regal sepulchres of Persis. The last days of this unfortunate prince have been described with almost tragic pathos by historians; and there are few subjects in history better calculated to excite such a feeling, if we regard simply the magnitude of his fall, from the highest pitch of power and splendour to defeat, degradation, and assassination. But an impartial review will not allow us to forget that the main cause of such ruin was his own blindness—his long apathy after the battle of Issus, and abandonment of Tyre and Gaza, in the fond hope of repurchasing queens whom he had himself exposed to captivity—lastly, what is still less pardonable, his personal cowardice in both the two decisive battles deliberately brought about by himself. If we follow his conduct throughout the struggle, we shall find little of that which renders a defeated prince either respectable or interesting. Those who had the greatest reason to denounce and despise him were his friends and countrymen, whom he possessed ample means of defending, yet threw those means away. On the other hand, no one had better grounds for indulgence towards him than his conqueror; for whom he had kept unused the countless treasures of the three capitals, and for whom he had lightened in every way the difficulties of a conquest, in itself hardly less than impracticable.

The recent forced march, undertaken by Alexander for the purpose of securing Darius as a captive, had been distressing in the extreme to his soldiers, who required a certain period of repose and compensation. This was granted to them at the town of Hecatompylos in Parthia, where the whole army was again united. Besides abundant supplies from the neighbouring region, the soldiers here received a donative derived from the large booty taken in the camp of Darius. In the enjoyment and revelry universal throughout the army, Alexander himself partook. His indulgences in the banquet and in wine-drinking, to which he was always addicted when leisure allowed, were now unusually multiplied and prolonged. Public solemnities were celebrated, together with theatrical exhibitions by artists who joined the army from Greece. But the change of most importance in Alexander’s conduct was, that he now began to feel and act manifestly as successor of Darius on the Persian throne; to disdain the comparative simplicity of Macedonian habits, and to assume the pomp, the ostentatious apparatus of luxuries, and even the dress, of a Persian king.

To many of Alexander’s soldiers, the conquest of Persia appeared to be consummated and the war finished, by the death of Darius. They were reluctant to exchange the repose and enjoyments of Hecatompylos for fresh fatigues; but Alexander, assembling the select regiments, addressed to them an emphatic appeal which revived the ardour of all. His first march was across one of the passes from the south to the north of Mount Elburz, into Hyrcania, the region bordering the south-eastern corner of the Caspian Sea. Here he found no resistance; the Hyrcanian satrap Phrataphernes, together with Nabarzanes, Artabazus, and other eminent Persians, surrendered themselves to him, and were favourably received. The Greek mercenaries, 1500 in number, who had served with Darius, but had retired when that monarch was placed under arrest by Bessus, sent envoys requesting to be allowed to surrender on capitulation. But Alexander—reproaching them with guilt for having taken service with the Persians, in contravention of the vote passed by the Hellenic synod—required them to surrender at discretion; which they expressed their readiness to do, praying that an officer might be despatched to conduct them to him in safety. The Macedonian Andronikus was sent for this purpose, while Alexander undertook an expedition into the mountains of the Mardi; a name seemingly borne by several distinct tribes in parts remote from each other, but all poor and brave mountaineers. These Mardi occupied parts of the northern slope of the range of Mount Elburz, a few miles from the Caspian Sea (Mazanderan and Ghilan). Alexander pursued them into all their retreats,—overcame them, when they stood on their defence, with great slaughter,—and reduced the remnant of the half-destroyed tribes to sue for peace.

From this march, which had carried him in a westerly direction, he returned to Hyrcania. At the first halt he was met by the Grecian mercenaries who came to surrender themselves, as well as by various Grecian envoys from Sparta, Chalcedon, and Sinope, who had accompanied Darius in his flight. Alexander put the Lacedaemonians under arrest, but liberated the other envoys, considering Chalcedon and Sinope to have been subjects of Darius, not members of the Hellenic synod. As to the mercenaries, he made a distinction between those who had enlisted in the Persian service before the recogni­tion of Philip as leader of Greece, and those whose enlistment had been of later date. The former he liberated at once; the latter he required to remain in his service under the command of Andronicus, on the same pay as they had hitherto received. Such was the untoward conclusion of Grecian mercenary service with Persia; a system whereby the Persian monarchs, had they known how to employ it with tolerable ability, might well have maintained their empire even against such an enemy as Alexander.

After fifteen days of repose and festivity at Zeudracarta, the chief town of Hyrcania, Alexander marched eastward with his united army through Parthia into Aria—the region adjoining the modern Herat with its river now known as Herirood. Satibarzanes, the satrap of Aria, came to him near the border, to a town named Susia, submitted, and was allowed to retain his satrapy; while Alexander, first been skirting the northern border of Aria, marched in a direction nearly east towards Bactria against the satrap Bessus, who was reported as having proclaimed himself King of Persia. But it was discovered, after three or four days, that Satibarzanes was in league with Bessus; upon which Alexander suspended for the present his plans against Bactria, and turned by forced marches to Artakoana, the chief city of Aria. His return was so unexpectedly rapid, that the Arians were overawed, and Satibarzanes was obliged to escape. A few days enabled him to crush the dis­affected Arians and to await the arrival of his rear division under Craterus. He then marched southward into the territory of the Drangi, or Drangiana (the modern Seiestan), where he found no resistance—the satrap Barsaentes having sought safety among some of the Indians.

In the chief town of Drangiana occurred the revolting tragedy, of which Philotas was the first victim, and his father Parmenio the second. Parmenio, now seventy years of age, and therefore little qualified for the fatigue inseparable from the invasion of the eastern satrapies, had been left in the important post of commanding the great depôt and treasure at Ecbatana. His long military experience, and confidential position even under Philip, rendered him the second person in the Macedonian army, next to Alexander himself. His three sons were all soldiers. The youngest of them, Hektor, had been accidentally drowned in the Nile, while in the suite of Alexander in Egypt; the second, Nikanor, had commanded the hypaspists or light infantry, but had died of illness, fortunately for himself, a short time before; the eldest, Philotas, occupied the high rank of general of the Companion-cavalry, in daily communication with Alexander, from whom he received personal orders.

A revelation came to Philotas, from Kebalinus, brother of a youth named Nikomachus, that a soldier, named Dimnus of Chalastra, had made boast to Nikomachus, his intimate friend or beloved person, under vows of secrecy, of an intended conspiracy against Alexander, inviting him to become an accomplice. Nikomachus, at first struck with abhorrence, at length simulated compliance, asked who were the accomplices of Dimnus, and received intimation of a few names; all of which he presently communicated to his brother Kebalinus, for the purpose of being divulged. Kebalinus told the facts to Philotas, entreating him to mention them to Alexander. But Philotas, though every day in communication with the king, neglected to do this for two days; upon which Kebalinus began to suspect him of connivance, and caused the revelation to be made to Alexander through one of the pages named Metron. Dimnus was immediately arrested, but ran himself through with his sword, and expired without making any declaration.

Of this conspiracy, real or pretended, everything rested on the testimony of Nikomachus. Alexander indignantly sent for Philotas, demanding why he had omitted for two days to communicate what he had heard. Philotas replied that the source from which it came was too contemptible to deserve notice— that it would have been ridiculous to attach importance to the simple declarations of such a youth as Nikomachus, recounting the foolish boasts addressed to him by a lover. Alexander received, or affected to receive, the explanation, gave his hand to Philotas, invited him to supper, and talked to him with bis usual familiarity.

But it soon appeared that advantage was to be taken of this incident for the disgrace and ruin of Philotas, whose free-spoken criticisms on the pretended divine paternity,—coupled with boasts, that he and his father Parmenio had been chief agents in the conquest of Asia,—had neither been forgotten nor forgiven. These and other self-praises, disparaging to the glory of Alexander, had been divulged by a mistress to whom Philo­tas was attached; a beautiful Macedonian woman of Pydna, named Antigone, who, having first been made a prize in visiting Samothrace by the Persian admiral Autophradates, was afterwards taken amidst the spoils of Damascus by the Macedonians victorious at Issus. The reports of Antigona, respecting some unguarded language held by Philotas to her, had come to the knowledge of Craterus, who brought her to Alexander, and caused her to repeat them to him. Alexander desired her to take secret note of the confidential expressions of Philotas, and report them from time to time to himself.

It thus turned out that Alexander, though continuing to Philotas his high military rank, and talking to him constantly with seeming confidence, had for at least eighteen months, ever since his conquest of Egypt and perhaps even earlier, disliked and suspected him, keeping him under perpetual watch through the suborned and secret communication of a treacherous mistress. Some of the generals around Alexander—especially Craterus, the first suborner of Antigona—fomented these suspicions, from jealousy of the great ascendency of Parmenio and his family. Moreover, Philotas himself was ostentatious and overbearing in his demeanour, so as to have made many enemies among the soldiers. But whatever may have been his defects on this head—defects which he shared with the other Macedonian generals, all gorged with plunder and presents—his fidelity as well as his military merits stand attested by the fact that Alexander had continued to employ him in the highest and most confidential command throughout all the long subsequent interval; and that Parmenio was now general at Ecbatana, the most important military appointment which the king had to confer. Even granting the deposition of Nikomachus to be trustworthy, there was nothing to impli­cate Philotas, whose name had not been included among the accomplices said to have been enumerated by Dimnus. There was not a tittle of evidence against him, except the fact that the deposition had been made known to him, and that he had seen Alexander twice without communicating it. Upon this single fact, however, Craterus and the other enemies of Philotas worked so effectually as to inflame the suspicions and the pre­existing ill-will of Alexander into fierce rancour. He resolved on the disgrace, torture, and death, of Philotas,—and on the death of Parmenio besides.

To accomplish this, however, against the two highest officers in the Macedonian service, one of them enjoying a separate and distant command—required management. Alexander was obliged to carry the feelings of the soldiers along with him, and to obtain a condemnation from the army; according to an ancient Macedonian custom, in regard to capital crimes, though (as it seems) not uniformly practised. He not only kept the resolution secret, but is even said to have invited Philotas to supper with the other officers, conversing with him just as usual.2 In the middle of the night, Philotas was arrested while asleep in his bed,—put in chains,—and clothed in an ignoble garb. A military assembly was convened at daybreak, before which Alexander appeared with the chief officers in his confidence. Addressing the soldiers in a vehement tone of mingled sorrow and anger, he proclaimed to them that his life had just been providentially rescued from a dangerous conspiracy organised by two men hitherto trusted as his best friends—Philotas and Parmenio—through the intended agency of a soldier named Dimnus, who had slain himself when arrested. The dead body of Dimnus was then exhibited to the meeting, while Nikomachus and Kebalinus were brought forward to tell their story. A letter from Parmenio to his sons Philotas and Nikanor, found among the papers seized on the arrest, was read to the meeting. Its terms were altogether vague and unmeaning; but Alexander chose to construe them as it suited his purpose.

We may easily conceive the impression produced upon these assembled soldiers by such denunciations from Alexander himself—revelations of his own personal danger, and reproaches against treacherous friends. Amyntas, and even Koenus, the brother-in-law of Philotas, were yet more unmeasured in their invectives against the accused. They, as well as the other officers with whom the arrest had been concerted, set the example of violent manifestation against him, and ardent sympathy with the king’s danger. Philotas was heard in his defence, which, though strenuously denying the charge, is said to have been feeble. It was indeed sure to be so, coming from one seized thus suddenly, and overwhelmed with disadvantages; while a degree of courage, absolutely heroic, would have been required for any one else to rise and presume to criticise the proofs. A soldier named Bolon harangued his comrades on the insupportable insolence of Philotas, who always (he said) treated the soldiers with contempt, turning them out of their quarters to make room for his countless retinue of slaves. Though this allegation (probably enough well-founded) was noway connected with the charge of treason against the king, it harmonised fully with the temper of the assembly, and wound them up to the last pitch of fury. The royal pages began the cry, echoed by all around, that they would with their own hands tear the parricide in pieces.

It would have been fortunate for Philotas if their wrath had been sufficiently ungovernable to instigate the execution of such a sentence on the spot. But this did not suit the purpose of his enemies. Aware that he had been condemned upon the regal word, with nothing better than the faintest negative ground of suspicion, they determined to extort from him a confession such as would justify their own purposes, not only against him, but against his father Parmenio—whom there was as yet nothing to implicate. Accordingly, during the ensuing night, Philotas was put to the torture. Hephaestion, Craterus, and Koenus—the last of the three being brother-in-law of Philotas—themselves superintended the ministers of physical suffering. Alexander himself too was at hand, but concealed by a curtain. It is said that Philotas manifested little firmness under torture, and that Alexander, an unseen witness, indulged in sneers against the cowardice of one who had fought by his side in so many battles. All who stood by were enemies, and likely to describe the conduct of Philotas in such manner as to justify their own hatred. The tortures inflicted, cruel in the extreme and long continued, wrung from him at last a confession, implicating his father along with himself. He was put to death; and at the same time, all those whose names had been indicated by Nikomachus, were slain also—apparently by being stoned, without preliminary torture. Philotas had serving in the army a numerous kindred, all of whom were struck with consternation at the news of his being tortured. It was the Macedonian law that all kinsmen of a man guilty of treason were doomed to death along with him. Accordingly, some of these men slew themselves, others fled from the camp, seeking refuge wherever they could. Such was the terror and tumult in the camp, that Alexander was obliged to proclaim a suspension of this sanguinary law for the occasion.

It now remained to kill Parmenio, who could not be safely left alive after the atrocities used towards Philotas; and to kill him, moreover, before he could have time to hear of them, since he was not only the oldest, most respected, and most influential of all Macedonian officers, but also in separate com­mand of the great depôt at Ecbatana. Alexander summoned to his presence one of the Companions named Polydamas; a particular friend, comrade, or aide de camp, of Parmenio. Every friend of Philotas felt at this moment that his life hung by a thread; so that Polydamas entered the king’s presence in extreme terror, the rather as he was ordered to bring with him his two younger brothers. Alexander addressed him, denouncing Parmenio as a traitor, and intimating that Polydamas would be required to carry a swift and confidential message to Ecbatana, ordering his execution. Polydamas was selected as the attached friend of Parmenio, and therefore as best calculated to deceive him. Two letters were placed in his hands, addressed to Parmenio; one from Alexander himself, conveying ostensibly military communications and orders; the other, signed with the seal-ring of the deceased Philotas, and purporting to be addressed by the son to the father. Together with these, Polydamas received the real and important despatch, addressed by Alexander to Cleander and Menidas, the officers immediately subordinate to Parmenio at Ecbatana; proclaiming Parmenio guilty of high treason, and directing them to kill him at once. Large rewards were offered to Polydamas if he performed this commission with success, while his two brothers were retained as hostages against scruples or compunction. He promised even more than was demanded—too happy to purchase this reprieve from what had seemed impending death. Furnished with native guides and with swift dromedaries, he struck by the straightest road across the desert of Khorasan, and arrived at Ecbatana on the eleventh day—a distance usually requiring more than thirty days to traverse. Entering the camp by night, without the knowledge of Parmenio, he delivered his despatch to Cleander, with whom he concerted measures. On the morrow he was admitted to Parmenio, while walking in his garden with Cleander and the other officers marked out by Alexander’s order as his executioners. Polydamas ran to embrace his old friend, and was heartily welcomed by the unsuspecting veteran, to whom he presented the letters professedly coming from Alexander and Philotas. While Parmenio was absorbed in the perusal, he was suddenly assailed by a mortal stab from the hand and sword of Cleander. Other wounds were heaped upon him as he fell, by the remaining officers,—the last even after life had departed.

The soldiers in Ecbatana, on hearing of this bloody deed, burst into furious mutiny, surrounded the garden wall, and threatened to break in for the purpose of avenging their general, unless Polydamas and the other murderers should be delivered to them. But Cleander, admitting a few of the ringleaders, exhibited to them Alexander’s written orders, to which the soldiers yielded, not without murmurs of reluctance and indignation. Most of them dispersed, yet a few remained, entreating permission to bury Parmenio’s body. Even this was long refused by Cleander, from dread of the king’s displeasure. At last, however, thinking it prudent to comply in part, he cut off the head, delivering to them the trunk alone for burial. The head was sent to Alexander.

Among the many tragical deeds recounted throughout the course of this history, there is none more revolting than the fate of these two generals. Alexander, violent in all his impulses, displayed on this occasion a personal rancour worthy of his ferocious mother Olympias, exasperated rather than softened by the magnitude of past services. When we see the greatest officers of the Macedonian army directing in person, and under the eye of Alexander, the laceration and burning of the naked body of their colleague Philotas, and assassinating with their own hands the veteran Parmenio,—we feel how much we have passed out of the region of Greek civic feeling into that of the more savage Illyrian warrior, partially orientalised. It is not surprising to read, that Antipater, viceroy of Macedonia, who had shared with Parmenio the favour and confidence of Philip as well as of Alexander, should tremble when informed of such proceedings, and cast about for a refuge against the like possibilities to himself. Many other officers were alike alarmed and disgusted with the transactions. Hence Alexander, opening and examining the letters sent home from his army to Macedonia, detected such strong expressions of indignation, that he thought it prudent to transfer many pronounced malcontents into a division by themselves, parting them off from the remaining army. Instead of appointing any substitute for Philotas in the command of the Companion-cavalry, he cast that body into two divisions, nominating Hephaestion to the command of one, and Kleitus to that of the other.

The autumn and winter were spent by Alexander in reducing Drangiana, Gedrosia, Arachosia, and the Paropamisadae; the modern Seiestan, Afghanistan, and the western part of Kabul, lying between Ghazna on the north, Kandahar or Kelat on the south, and Furrah in the west. He experienced no combined resistance, but his troops suffered severely from cold and privation. Near the southern termination of one of the passes of the Hindoo-Koosh (apparently north-east of the town of Kabul) he founded a new city, called Alexandria ad Caucasum, where he planted 7000 old soldiers, Macedonians, and others as colonists. Towards the close of winter he crossed over the mighty range of the Hindoo-Koosh; a march of fifteen days through regions of snow, and fraught with hardship to his army. On reaching the north side of these mountains, he found himself in Bactria.

The Bactrian leader Bessus, who had assumed the title of king, could muster no more than a small force, with which he laid waste the country, and then retired across the river Oxus into Sogdiana, destroying all the boats. Alexander overran Bactria with scarce any resistance; the chief places, Baktra (Balkh) and Aornos surrendering to him on the first demonstration of attack. Having named Artabazus satrap of Bactria, and placed Archelaus with a garrison in Aornos, he marched northward towards the river Oxus, the boundary between Bactria and Sogdiana. It was a march of extreme hardship ; reaching for two or three days across a sandy desert destitute of water, and under very hot weather. The Oxus, six furlongs in breadth, deep, and rapid, was the most formidable river that the Macedonians had yet seen. Alexander transported his army across it on the tent-skins inflated and stuffed with straw. It seems surprising that Bessus did not avail himself of this favourable opportunity for resisting a passage in itself so difficult; he had however been abandoned by his Bactrian cavalry at the moment when he quitted their territory. Some of his companions, Spitamenes and others, terrified at the news that Alexander had crossed the Oxus, were anxious to make their own peace by betraying their leader. They sent a proposition to this effect; upon which Ptolemy with a light division was sent forward by Alexander, and was enabled, by extreme celerity of movements, to surprise and seize Bessus in a village. Alexander ordered that he should be held in chains, naked and with a collar round his neck, at the side of the road along which the army were marching. On reaching the spot, Alexander stopped his chariot, and sternly demanded from Bessus, on what pretence he had first arrested, and after­wards slain, his king and benefactor Darius. Bessus replied, that he had not done this single-handed; others were concerned in it along with him, to procure for themselves lenient treat­ment from Alexander. The king said no more, but ordered Bessus to be scourged, and then sent back as prisoner to Baktra—where we shall again hear of him.

In his onward march, Alexander approached a small town, inhabited by the Branchidae; descendants of those Branchidae near Miletus on the coast of Ionia, who had administered the great temple and oracle of Apollo on Cape Poseidion, and who had yielded up the treasures of that temple to the Persian king Xerxes, 150 years before. This surrender had brought upon them so much odium, that when the dominion of Xerxes was overthrown on the coast, they retired with him into the interior of Asia. He assigned to them lands in the distant region of Sogdiana, where their descendants had ever since remained; bilingual and partially dishellenised, yet still attached to their traditions and origin. Delighted to find themselves once more in commerce with Greeks, they poured forth to meet and welcome the army, tendering all that they possessed. Alexander, when he heard who they were and what was their parentage, desired the Milesians in his army to deter­mine how they should be treated. But as these Milesians were neither decided nor unanimous, Alexander announced that he would determine for himself. Having first occupied the city in person with a select detachment, he posted his army all round the walls, and then gave orders not only to plunder it, but to massacre the entire population—men, women, and children. They were slain without arms or attempt at resist­ance, resorting to nothing but prayers and suppliant manifesta­tions. Alexander next commanded the walls to be levelled, and the sacred groves cut down, so that no habitable site might remain, nor anything except solitude and sterility. Such was the revenge taken upon these unhappy victims for the deeds of their ancestors in the fourth or fifth generation before. Alexander doubtless considered himself to be execut­ing the wrath of Apollo against an accursed race who had robbed the temple of the god. The Macedonian expedition had been proclaimed to be undertaken originally for the purpose of revenging upon the contemporary Persians the ancient wrongs done to Greece by Xerxes; so that Alexander would follow out the same sentiment in revenging upon the con­temporary Branchidae the acts of their ancestors—yet more guilty than Xerxes, in his belief. The massacre of this unfor­tunate population was in fact an example of human sacrifice on the largest scale, offered to the gods by the religious impulses of Alexander, and worthy to be compared to that of the Carthaginian general Hannibal, when he sacrificed 3000 Grecian prisoners on the field of Himera, where his grandfather Hamilkar had been slain seventy years before.

Alexander then continued his onward progress, first to Marakanda (Samarcand), the chief town of Sogdiana—next to the river Jaxartes, which he and his companions, in their imperfect geographical notions, believed to be the Tanais, the boundary between Asia and Europe. In his march, he left garrisons in various towns, but experienced no resistance, though detached bodies of the natives hovered on his flanks. Some of these bodies, having cut off a few of his foragers, took refuge afterwards on a steep and rugged mountain, conceived to be unassailable. Thither however Alexander pursued them, at the head of his lightest and most active troops. Though at first repulsed, he succeeded in scaling and capturing the place. Of its defenders, thirty thousand in number, three-fourths were either put to the sword, or perished in jumping down the precipices. Several of his soldiers were wounded with arrows, and he himself received a shot from one of them through his leg. But here, as elsewhere, we perceive that nearly all the Orientals whom Alexander subdued were men little suited for close combat hand to hand,—fighting only with missiles.

Here, on the river Jaxartes, Alexander projected the founda­tion of a new city to bear his name; intended partly as a pro­tection against incursions from the Scythian Nomads on the other side of the river, partly as a facility for himself to cross over and subdue them, which he intended to do as soon as he could find opportunity. He was however called off for the time by the news of a widespread revolt among the newly-conquered inhabitants both of Sogdiana and Bactria. He suppressed the revolt with his habitual vigour and celerity, distributing his troops so as to capture five townships in two days, and Cyropolis or Kyra, the largest of the neighbouring Sogdian towns (founded by the Persian Cyrus), immediately afterwards. He put all the defenders and inhabitants to the sword. Returning then to the Jaxartes, he completed in twenty days the fortifications of his new town of Alexandria (perhaps at or near Khodjend), with suitable sacrifices and festivities to the gods. He planted in it some Macedonian veterans and Grecian mercenaries, together with volunteer settlers from the natives around. An army of Scythian Nomads, showing themselves on the other side of the river, piqued his vanity to cross over and attack them. Carrying over a division of his army on inflated skins, he defeated them with little difficulty, pursuing them briskly into the desert. But the weather was intensely hot, and the army suffered much from thirst; while the little water to be found was so bad, that it brought upon Alexander a diarrhoea which endangered his life. This chase, of a few miles on the right bank of the Jaxartes (seemingly in the present Khanat of Kokand), marked the utmost limit of Alexander’s progress northward.

Shortly afterwards, a Macedonian detachment, unskilfully conducted, was destroyed in Sogdiana by Spitamenes and the Scythians: a rare misfortune, which Alexander avenged by overrunning the region1 near the river Polytimetus (the Kohik), and putting to the sword the inhabitants of all the towns which he took. He then recrossed the Oxus, to rest during the extreme season of winter at Zariaspa in Baktria, from whence his communications with the West and with Macedonia were more easy, and where he received various reinforcements of Greek troops. Bessus, who had been here retained as a prisoner, was now brought forward amidst a public assembly; wherein Alexander, having first reproached him for his treason to Darius, caused his nose and ears to be cut off—and sent him in this condition to Ecbatana, to be finally slain by the Medes and Persians. Mutilation was a practice altogether Oriental and non-Hellenic: even Arrian, admiring and indulgent as he is towards his hero, censures this savage order, as one among many proofs how much Alexander had taken on Oriental dispositions. We may remark that his extreme wrath on this occasion was founded partly on disappointment that Bessus had frustrated his toilsome efforts for taking Darius alive—partly on the fact that the satrap had committed treason against the king’s person, which it was the policy as well as the feeling of Alexander to surround with a circle of Deity. For as to traitors against Persia, as a cause and country, Alexander had never discouraged, and had sometimes signally recompensed them. Mithrines, the governor of Sardis, who opened to him the gates of that almost impregnable fortress immediately after the battle of the Granikus—the traitor who perhaps, next to Darius himself, had done most harm to the Persian cause— obtained from him high favour and promotion.

The rude, but spirited tribes of Bactria and Sogdiana were as yet but imperfectly subdued, seconded as their resistance was by wide spaces of sandy desert, by the neighbourhood of the Scythian Nomads, and by the presence of Spitamenes as a leader. Alexander, distributing his army into five divisions, traversed the country and put down all resistance, while he also took measures for establishing several military posts, or new towns, in convenient places. After some time the whole army was reunited at the chief place of Sogdiana—Marakanda— where some halt and repose was given.

During this halt at Marakanda (Samarcand) the memorable banquet occurred wherein Alexander murdered Kleitus. It has been already related that Kleitus had saved his life at the battle of the Granikus, by cutting off the sword arm of the Persian Spithridates when already uplifted to strike him from behind. Since the death of Philotas, the important function of general of the Companion-cavalry had been divided between Hephaestion and Kleitus. Moreover the family of Kleitus had been attached to Philip, by ties so ancient, that his sister, Lanike, had been selected as the nurse of Alexander himself when a child. Two of her sons had already perished in the Asiatic battles. If therefore there were any man who stood high in the service, or was privileged to speak his mind freely to Alexander, it was Kleitus.

In this banquet at Marakanda, when wine, according to the Macedonian habit, had been abundantly drunk, and when Alexander, Kleitus, and most of the other guests were already nearly intoxicated, enthusiasts or flatterers heaped immoderate eulogies upon the king’s past achievements. They exalted him above all the most venerated legendary heroes; they proclaimed that his superhuman deeds proved his divine paternity, and that he had earned an apotheosis like Herakles, which nothing but envy could withhold from him even during his life. Alexander himself joined in these boasts, and even took credit for the later victories of the reign of his father, whose abilities and glory he depreciated. To the old Macedonian officers, such an insult cast on the memory of Philip was deeply offensive. But among them all, none had been more indignant than Kleitus, with the growing insolence of Alexander—his assumed filiation from Zeus Ammon, which put aside Philip as unworthy—his preference for Persian attendants, who granted or refused admittance to his person—his extending to Macedonian soldiers the contemptuous treatment habitually endured by Asiatics, and even allowing them to be scourged by Persian hands and Persian rods. The pride of a Macedonian general in the stupendous successes of the last five years, was effaced by his mortification, when he saw that they tended only to merge his countrymen amidst a crowd of servile Asiatics, and to inflame the prince with high-flown aspirations transmitted from Xerxes or Ochus. But whatever might be the internal thoughts of Macedonian officers, they held their peace before Alexander, whose formidable character and exorbitant self estimation would tolerate no criticism.

At the banquet of Marakanda, this long-suppressed repug­nance found an issue, accidental indeed and unpremeditated, but for that very reason all the more violent and unmeasured. The wine, which made Alexander more boastful, and his flatterers fulsome to excess, overpowered altogether the reserve of Kleitus. He rebuked the impiety of those who degraded the ancient heroes in order to make a pedestal for Alexander. He protested against the injustice of disparaging the exalted and legitimate fame of Philip; whose achievements he loudly extolled, pronouncing them to be equal, and even superior, to those of his son. For the exploits of Alexander, splendid as they were, had been accomplished, not by himself alone, but by that unconquerable Macedonian force which he had found ready made to his hands; whereas those of Philip had been his own—since he had found Macedonia prostrate and dis­organised, and had had to create for himself both soldiers and a military system. The great instruments of Alexander’s victories had been Philip’s old soldiers, whom he now despised—and among them Parmenio, whom he had put to death.

Remarks such as these, poured forth in the coarse language of a half intoxicated Macedonian veteran, provoked loud contradiction from many, and gave poignant offence to Alexander; who now for the first time heard the open outburst of disapprobation, before concealed and known to him only by surmise. But wrath and contradiction, both from him and from others, only made Kleitus more reckless in the outpouring of his own feelings, now discharged with delight after having been so long pent up. He passed from the old Macedonian soldiers to himself individually. Stretching forth his right hand towards Alexander, he exclaimed—“Recollect that you owe your life to me; this hand preserved you at the Granikus. Listen to the outspoken language of truth, or else abstain from asking freemen to supper, and confine yourself to the society of barbaric slaves.” All these reproaches stung Alexander to the quick. But nothing was so intolerable to him as the respectful sympathy for Parmenio, which brought to his memory one of the blackest deeds of his life—and the reminiscence of his preservation at the Granikus, which lowered him into the position of a debtor towards the very censor under whose reproof he was now smarting. At length wrath and intoxication together drove him into uncontrollable fury. He started from his couch, and felt for his dagger to spring at Kleitus; but the dagger had been put out of reach by one of his attendants. In a loud voice and with the Macedonian word of command, he summoned the body-guards and ordered the trumpeter to sound an alarm. But no one obeyed so grave an order, given in his condition of drunkenness. His principal officers, Ptolemy, Perdikkas and others, clung round him, held his arms and body, and besought him to abstain from violence; others at the same time tried to silence Kleitus and hurry him out of the hall, which had now become a scene of tumult and consternation. But Kleitus was not in a humour to confess himself in the wrong by retiring; while Alexander, furious at the opposition now, for the first time, offered to his will, exclaimed, that his officers held him in chains as Bessus had held Darius, and left him nothing but the name of a king. Though anxious to restrain his movements, they doubtless did not dare to employ much physical force; so that his great personal strength, and continued efforts, presently set him free. He then snatched a pike from one of the soldiers, rushed upon Kleitus, and thrust him through on the spot, exclaiming, “Go now to Philip and Parmenio.”

No sooner was the deed perpetrated, than the feelings of Alexander underwent an entire revolution. The spectacle of Kleitus, a bleeding corpse on the floor,—the marks of stupefaction and horror evident in all the spectators, and the reaction from a furious impulse instantaneously satiated—plunged him at once into the opposite extreme of remorse and self-con­demnation. Hastening out of the hall, and retiring to bed, he passed three days in an agony of distress, without food or drink. He burst into tears and multiplied exclamations on his own mad act; he dwelt upon the names of Kleitus and Lanike with the debt of gratitude which he owed to each, and denounced himself as unworthy to live after having requited such services with a foul murder. His friends at length prevailed on him to take food, and return to activity. All joined in trying to restore his self-satisfaction. The Macedonian army passed a public vote that Kleitus had been justly slain, and that his body should remain unburied; which afforded opportunity to Alex­ander to reverse the vote, and to direct that it should be buried by his own order. The prophets comforted him by the assur­ance that his murderous impulse had arisen, not from his own natural mind, but from a maddening perversion intentionally brought on by the God Dionysus, to avenge the omission of a sacrifice due to him on the day of the banquet, but withheld. Lastly, the Greek sophist or philosopher, Anaxarchus of Abdera, revived Alexander’s spirits by well-timed flattery, treating his sensibility as nothing better than generous weakness; remind­ing him that in his exalted position of conqueror and Great King, he was entitled to prescribe what was right and just, instead of submitting himself to laws dictated from without. Callisthenes the philosopher was also summoned, along with Anaxarchus, to the king’s presence, for the same purpose of offering consolatory reflections. But he is said to have adopted a tone of discourse altogether different, and to have given offence rather than satisfaction to Alexander.

To such remedial influences, and probably still more to the absolute necessity for action, Alexander’s remorse at length yielded. Like the other emotions of his fiery soul, it was violent and overpowering while it lasted. But it cannot be shown to have left any durable trace on his character, nor any effects justifying the unbounded admiration of Arrian; who has little but blame to bestow on the murdered Kleitus, while he expresses the strongest sympathy for the mental suffering of the murderer.

After ten days, Alexander again put his army in motion, to complete the subjugation of Sogdiana. He found no enemy capable of meeting him in pitched battle; yet Spitamenes, with the Sogdians and some Scythian allies, raised much hostility of detail, which it cost another year to put down. Alexander underwent the greatest fatigue and hardships in his marches through the mountainous parts of this wide, rugged, and poorly supplied country, with rocky positions, strong by nature, which his enemies sought to defend. One of these fastnesses, held by a native chief named Sisymithres, seemed almost unattackable, and was indeed taken rather by intimidation than by actual force. The Scythians, after a partial success over a small Macedonian detachment, were at length so thoroughly beaten and overawed, that they slew Spitamenes, and sent his head to the conqueror as a propitiatory offering.

After a short rest at Nautaka during the extreme winter, Alexander resumed operations, by attacking a strong post called the Sogdian Rock, whither a large number of fugitives had assembled, with an ample supply of provision. It was a precipice supposed to be inexpugnable; and would seemingly have proved so, in spite of the energy and abilities of Alexander, had not the occupants altogether neglected their guard, and yielded at the mere sight of a handful of Macedonians who had scrambled up the precipice. Among the captives taken by Alexander on this rock, were the wife and family of the Bactrian chief Oxyartes; one of whose daughters, named Roxana, so captivated Alexander by her beauty that he resolved to make her his wife. He then passed out of Sogdiana into the neigh­bouring territory Paraetakene, where there was another inex­pugnable site called the Rock of Chorienes, which he was also fortunate enough to reduce.

From hence Alexander went to Baktra. Sending Craterus with a division to put the last hand to the reduction of Paraetakene, he himself remained at Baktra, preparing for his expedition across the Hindoo-Koosh to the conquest of India. As a security for the tranquillity of Bactria and Sogdiana during his absence, he levied 30,000 young soldiers from those countries to accompany him.

It was at Baktra that Alexander celebrated his marriage with the captive Roxana. Amidst the repose and festivities connected with that event, the Oriental temper which he was now acquiring displayed itself more forcibly than ever. He could no longer be satisfied without obtaining prostration, or worship, from Greeks and Macedonians as well as from Persians; a public and unanimous recognition of his divine origin and superhuman dignity. Some Greeks and Macedonians had already rendered to him this homage. Nevertheless to the greater number, in spite of their extreme deference and admiration for him, it was repugnant and degrading. Even the imperious Alexander shrank from issuing public and formal orders on such a subject; but a manoeuvre was concerted, with his privity, by the Persians and certain compliant Greek sophists or philosophers, for the purpose of carrying the point by surprise.

During a banquet at Baktra, the philosopher Anaxarchus, addressing the assembly in a prepared harangue, extolled Alexander’s exploits as greatly surpassing those of Dionysus and Herakles. He proclaimed that Alexander had already done more than enough to establish a title to divine honours from the Macedonians; who (he said) would assuredly worship Alexander after his death, and ought in justice to worship him during his life, forthwith.

This harangue was applauded, and similar sentiments were enforced, by others favourable to the plan; who proceeded to set the example of immediate compliance, and were themselves the first to tender worship. Most of the Macedonian officers sat unmoved, disgusted at the speech. But though disgusted, they said nothing. To reply to a speech doubtless well-turned and flowing, required some powers of oratory; moreover, it was well known that whoever dared to reply stood marked out for the antipathy of Alexander. The fate of Kleitus, who had arraigned the same sentiments in the banqueting hall of Marakanda, was fresh in the recollection of every one. The repug­nance which many felt, but none ventured to express, at length found an organ in Callisthenes of Olynthus.

This philosopher, whose melancholy fate imparts a peculiar interest to his name, was nephew of Aristotle, and had enjoyed through his uncle an early acquaintance with Alexander during the boyhood of the latter. At the recommendation of Aristotle, Callisthenes had accompanied Alexander in his Asiatic expedition. He was a man of much literary and rhetorical talent, which he turned towards the composition of history—and to the history of recent times. Alexander, full of ardour for conquest, was at the same time anxious that his achievements should be commemorated by poets and men of letters; there were seasons also when he enjoyed their conversation. On both these grounds he invited several of them to accompany the army. The more prudent among them declined, but Callisthenes obeyed, partly in hopes of procuring the reconstitution of his native city Olynthus, as Aristotle had obtained the like favour for Stageira. Callisthenes had composed a narrative (not preserved) of Alexander’s exploits, which certainly reached to the battle of Arbela, and may perhaps have gone down farther. The few fragments of this narrative remaining seem to betoken extreme admiration, not merely of the bravery and ability, but also of the transcendent and unbroken good fortune, of Alexander—marking him out as the chosen favourite of the gods. This feeling was perfectly natural under the grandeur of the events. In so far as we can judge from one or two specimens, Callisthenes was full of complimentary tribute to the hero of his history. But the character of Alexander himself had undergone a material change during the six years between his first landing in Asia and his campaign in Sogdiana. All his worst qualities had been developed by unparalleled success and by Asiatic example. He required larger doses of flattery, and had now come to thirst, not merely for the reputa­tion of divine paternity, but for the actual manifestations of worship as towards a god.

To the literary Greeks who accompanied Alexander, this change in his temper must have been especially palpable and full of serious consequence; since it was chiefly manifested, not at periods of active military duty, but at his hours of leisure, when he recreated himself by their conversation and discourses. Several of these Greeks—Anaxarchus, Kleon, the poet Agis of Argos—accommodated themselves to the change, and wound up their flatteries to the pitch required. Callisthenes could not do so. He was a man of sedate character, of simple, severe, and almost unsocial habits—to whose sobriety the long Macedonian potations were distasteful. Aristotle said of him, that he was a great and powerful speaker, but that he had no judgement; according to other reports, he was a vain and arrogant man, who boasted that Alexander’s reputation and immortality were dependent on the composition and tone of his history. Of personal vanity,—a common quality among literary Greeks —Callisthenes probably had his full share. But there is no ground for believing that his character had altered. Whatever his vanity may have been, it had given no offence to Alexander during the earlier years; nor would it have given offence now, had not Alexander himself become a different man.

On occasion of the demonstration led up by Anaxarchus at the banquet, Callisthenes had been invited by Hephaestion to join in the worship intended to be proposed towards Alexander; and Hephaestion afterwards alleged, that he had promised to comply. But his actual conduct affords reasonable ground for believing that he made no such promise; for he not only thought it his duty to refuse the act of worship, but also to state publicly his reasons for disapproving it; the more so, as he perceived that most of the Macedonians present felt like himself. He contended that the distinction between gods and men was one which could not be confounded without impiety and wrong. Alexander had amply earned,—as a man, a general, and a king,—the highest honours compatible with humanity; but to exalt him into a god would be both an injury to him and an offence to the gods. Anaxarchus (he said) was the last person from whom such a proposition ought to come, because he was one of those whose only title to Alexander’s society was founded upon his capacity to give instructive and wholesome counsel.

Callisthenes here spoke out, what numbers of his hearers felt. The speech was not only approved, but so warmly applauded by the Macedonians present, especially the older officers,—that Alexander thought it prudent to forbid all further discussion upon this delicate subject. Presently the Persians present, according to Asiatic custom, approached him and performed their prostration; after which Alexander pledged, in successive goblets of wine, those Greeks and Macedonians with whom he had held previous concert. To each of them the goblet was handed, and each, after drinking to answer the pledge, approached the king, made his prostration, and then received a salute. Lastly, Alexander sent the pledge to Callisthenes, who, after drinking like the rest, approached him, for the purpose of receiving the salute, but without any prostration. Of this omission Alexander was expressly informed by one of the Companions; upon which he declined to admit Callisthenes to a salute. The latter retired, observing, “Then I shall go away, worse off than others as far as the salute goes.”

Callisthenes was imprudent, and even blameable, in making this last observation, which, without any necessity or advantage, aggravated the offence already given to Alexander. He was more imprudent still, if we look simply to his own personal safety, in standing forward publicly to protest against the suggestion for rendering divine honours to that prince, and in thus creating the main offence which even in itself was inexpiable. But here the occasion was one serious and important, so as to convert the imprudence into an act of genuine moral courage. The question was, not about obeying an order given by Alexander, for no order had been given—but about accept­ing or rejecting a motion made by Anaxarchus; which Alexander, by a shabby preconcerted manoeuvre, affected to leave to the free decision of the assembly, in full confidence that no one would be found intrepid enough to oppose it. If one Greek sophist made a proposition, in itself servile and disgraceful, another sophist could do himself nothing but honour by entering public protest against it; more especially since this was done (as we may see by the report in Arrian) in terms no way insulting, but full of respectful admiration towards Alexander personally. The perfect success of the speech is in itself a proof of the propriety of its tone; for the Macedonian officers would feel indifference, if not contempt, towards a rhetor like Callisthenes, while towards Alexander they had the greatest deference short of actual worship. There are few occasions on which the free spirit of Greek letters and Greek citizenship, in their protest against exorbitant individual insolence, appears more conspicuous and estimable than in the speech of Kallisthenes. Arrian disapproves the purpose of Alexander, and strongly blames the motion of Anaxarchus; nevertheless such is his anxiety to find some excuse for Alexander, that he also blames Callisthenes for unseasonable frankness, folly, and insolence, in offering opposition. He might have said with some truth, that Callisthenes would have done well to withdraw earlier (if indeed he could have withdrawn without offence) from the camp of Alexander, in which no lettered Greek could now associate without abnegating his freedom of speech and sentiment, and emulating the servility of Anaxarchus. But being present, as Callisthenes was, in the hall at Baktra when the proposition of Anaxarchus was made, and when silence would have been assent—his protest against it was both seasonable and dignified; and all the more dignified for being fraught with danger to himself.

Callisthenes knew that danger well, and was quickly enabled to recognise it in the altered demeanour of Alexander towards him. He was, from that day, a marked man in two senses: first, to Alexander himself, as well as to the rival sophists and all promoters of the intended deification,—for hatred, and for getting up some accusatory pretence such as might serve to ruin him; next, to the more free-spirited Macedonians, indignant witnesses of Alexander’s increased insolence, and admirers of the courageous Greek who had protested against the motion of Anaxarchus. By such men he was doubtless much extolled; which praises aggravated his danger, as they were sure to be reported to Alexander. The pretext for his ruin was not long wanting.

Among those who admired and sought the conversation of Callisthenes, was Hermolaus, one of the royal pages,—the band, selected from noble Macedonian families, who did duty about the person of the king. It had happened that this young man, one of Alexander’s companions in the chase, on seeing a wild boar rushing up to attack the king, darted his javelin, and slew the animal. Alexander, angry to be anticipated in killing the boar, ordered Hermolaus to be scourged before all the other pages, and deprived him of his horse.1 Thus humiliated and outraged—for an act not merely innocent, but the omission of which, if Alexander had sustained any injury from the boar, might have been held punishable—Hermolaus became resolutely bent on revenge.2 He enlisted in the project his intimate friend Sostratus, with several others among the pages ; and it was agreed among them to kill Alexander in his chamber, on the first night when they were all on guard together. The appointed night arrived, without any divulgation of their secret; yet the scheme was frustrated by the accident, that Alexander continued till daybreak drinking with his officers, and never retired to bed. On the morrow, one of the conspirators, becoming alarmed or repentant, divulged the scheme to his friend Charicles, with the names of those con­cerned. Eurylochus, brother to Charicles, apprised by him of what he had heard, immediately informed Ptolemy, through whom it was conveyed to Alexander. By Alexander’s order, the persons indicated were arrested and put to the torture;3 under which they confessed that they had themselves conspired to kill him, but named no other accomplices, and even denied that any one else was privy to the scheme. In this denial they persisted, though extreme suffering was applied to extort the revelation of new names. They were then brought up and arraigned as conspirators before the assembled Macedonian soldiers. There their confession was repeated. It is even said that Hermolaus, in repeating it, boasted of the enterprise as legitimate and glorious; denouncing the tyranny and cruelty of Alexander as having become insupportable to a freeman. Whether such boast was actually made or not, the persons brought up were pronounced guilty, and stoned to death forthwith by the soldiers.

The pages thus executed were young men of good Mace­donian families, for whose condemnation accordingly Alexander had thought it necessary to invoke—what he was sure of obtaining against any one—the sentence of the soldiers. To satisfy his hatred against Callisthenes—not a Macedonian, but only a Greek citizen, one of the surviving remnants of the subverted city of Olynthus—no such formality was required. As yet, there was not a shadow of proof to implicate this philosopher; for obnoxious as his name was known to be, Hermolaus and his companions had, with exemplary fortitude, declined to purchase the chance of respite from extreme torture by pronouncing it. Their confessions,—all extorted by suffering, unless con­firmed by other evidence, of which we do not know whether any was taken—were hardly of the least value, even against themselves; but against Callisthenes they had no bearing whatever; nay, they tended indirectly, not to convict, but to absolve him. In his case, therefore, as in that of Philotas before, it was necessary to pick: up matter of suspicious tendency from his reported remarks and conversations. He was alleged to have addressed dangerous and inflammatory language to the pages, holding up Alexander to odium, instigating them to conspiracy, and pointing out Athens as a place of refuge; he was moreover well known to have been often in conversation with Hermolaus. For a man of the violent temper and omnipotent authority of Alexander, such indications were quite sufficient as grounds of action against one whom he hated.

On this occasion, we have the state of Alexander’s mind disclosed by himself, in one of the references to his letters given by Plutarch. Writing to Craterus and to others immediately afterwards, Alexander distinctly stated that the pages throughout all their torture had deposed against no one but themselves. Nevertheless, in another letter addressed to Antipater in Macedonia, he used these expressions—“The pages were stoned to death by the Macedonians; but I myself shall punish the sophist, as well as those who sent him out here, and those who harbour in their cities conspirators against me.” The sophist Callisthenes had been sent out by Aristotle, who is here designated; and probably the Athenians after him. Fortunately for Aristotle, he was not at Baktra, but at Athens. That he could have had any concern in the conspiracy of the pages, was impossible. In this savage outburst of menace against his absent preceptor, Alexander discloses the real state of feeling which prompted him to the destruction of Callisthenes; hatred towards that spirit of citizenship and free speech, which Callisthenes not only cherished, in common with Aristotle and most other literary Greeks, but had courageously manifested in his protest against the motion for worshipping a mortal.

Callisthenes was first put to the torture and then hanged. His tragical fate excited a profound sentiment of sympathy and indignation among the philosophers of antiquity.

The halts of Alexander were formidable to friends and com­panions ; his marches, to the unconquered natives whom he chose to treat as enemies. On the return of Craterus from Sogdiana, Alexander began his march from Baktra (Balkh) southward to the mountain range Paropamisus or Caucasus (Hindoo-Koosh); leaving however at Baktra Amyntas with a large force of 10,000 foot and 3500 horse, to keep these intractable territories in subjugation. His march over the mountains occupied ten days ; he then visited his newly-founded city Alexandria in the Paropamisadae. At or near the river Kophen (Kabool river), he was joined by Taxiles, a powerful Indian prince, who brought as a present twenty-five elephants, and whose alliance was very valuable to him. He then divided his army, sending one division under Hephaestion and Perdikkas, towards the territory called Peukelaotis (apparently that immediately north of the confluence of the Kabool river with the Indus); and conducting the remainder himself in an easterly direction, over the mountainous regions between the Hindoo-Koosh and the right bank of the Indus. Hephaestion was ordered, after subduing all enemies in his way, to prepare a bridge ready for passing the Indus by the time when Alexander should arrive. Astes, prince of Peukelaotis, was taken and slain in the city where he had shut himself up; but the reduction of it cost Hephaestion a siege of thirty days.

Alexander, with his own half of the army, undertook the reduction of the Aspasii, the Guraei, and the Assakeni, tribes occupying mountainous and difficult localities along the southern slopes of the Hindoo-Koosh; but neither they nor their various towns mentioned—Arigaeon, Massaga, Bazira, Ora, Dyrta, &c., except perhaps the remarkable rock of Aornos, near the Indus—can be more exactly identified. These tribes were generally brave, and seconded by towns of strong position as well as by a rugged country, in many parts utterly without roads. But their defence was conducted with little union, no military skill, and miserable weapons; so that they were no way qualified to oppose the excellent combination and rapid movements of Alexander, together with the confident attack and very superior arms, offensive as well as defensive, of his soldiers. All those who attempted resistance were successively attacked, overpowered, and slain. Even those who did not resist, but fled to the mountains, were pursued and either slaughtered or sold for slaves. The only way of escaping the sword was to remain, submit, and await the fiat of the invader. Such a series of uninterrupted successes, all achieved with little loss, it is rare in military history to read. The capture of the rock of Aornos was peculiarly gratifying to Alexander, because it enjoyed the legendary reputation of having been assailed in vain by Herakles—and indeed he himself had deemed it, at first sight, unassailable. After having thus subdued the upper regions (above Attock or the confluence of the Kabul river) on the right bank of the Indus, he availed himself of some forests alongside to fell timber and build boats. These boats were sent down the stream, to the point where Hephaestion and Perdikkas were preparing the bridge.

Such fatiguing operations of Alexander, accomplished amidst all the hardships of winter, were followed by a halt of thirty days, to refresh the soldiers, before he crossed the Indus, in the early spring of 326 B.C. It is presumed, probably enough, that he crossed at or near Attock, the passage now frequented. He first marched to Taxila, where the prince Taxilus at once submitted, and reinforced the army with a strong contingent of Indian soldiers. His alliance and information was found extremely valuable. The whole neighbouring territory submitted, and was placed under Philippus as satrap, with a garrison and depot at Taxila. He experienced no resistance until he reached the river Hydaspes (Jelum), on the other side of which the Indian prince Porus stood prepared to dispute the passage; a brave man, with a formidable force, better armed than Indians generally were, and with many trained elephants; which animals the Macedonians had never yet encountered in battle. By a series of admirable military combinations, Alexander eluded the vigilance of Porus, stole the passage of the river at a point a few miles above, and completely defeated the Indian army. In spite of their elephants, which were skilfully managed, the Indians could not long withstand the shock of close combat, against such cavalry and infantry as the Macedonian. Porus, a prince of gigantic stature, mounted on an elephant, fought with the utmost gallantry, rallying his broken troops and keeping them together until the last. Having seen two of his sons slain, himself wounded and perishing with thirst, he was only preserved by the special directions of Alexander. When Porus was brought before him, Alexander was struck with admiration at his stature, beauty, and undaunted bearing. Addressing him first, he asked, what Porus wished to be done for him. “That you should treat me as a king,” was the reply of Porus. Alexander, delighted with these words, behaved towards Porus with the utmost courtesy and generosity; not only ensuring to him his actual kingdom, but enlarging it by new additions. He found in Porus a faithful and efficient ally. This was the greatest day of Alexander’s life; if we take together the splendour and difficulty of the military achievement, and the generous treatment of his conquered opponent.

Alexander celebrated his victory by sacrifices to the gods, and festivities on the banks of the Hydaspes; where he also gave directions for the foundation of two cities—Nicaea, on the eastern bank; and Bukephalia, on the western, so named in commemoration of his favourite horse, who died here of age and fatigue. Leaving Craterus to lay out and erect these new establishments, as well as to keep up communication, he conducted his army onward in an easterly direction towards the river Akesines (Chenab). His recent victory had spread terror around; the Glaukae, a powerful Indian tribe, with thirty-seven towns and many populous villages, submitted, and were placed under the dominion of Porus; while embassies of submission were also received from two considerable princes—Abisares, and a second Porus, hitherto at enmity with his namesake. The passage of the great river Akesines, now full and impetuous in its current, was accomplished by boats and by inflated hides, yet not without difficulty and danger. From thence he proceeded onward in the same direction, across the Punjab—finding no enemies, but leaving detachments at suitable posts to keep up his communications and ensure his supplies—to the river Hydraotes or Ravee; which, though not less broad and full than the Akesines, was comparatively tranquil, so as to be crossed with facility. Here some free Indian tribes, Kathaeans and others, had the courage to resist. They first attempted to maintain themselves in Sangala by surrounding their town with a triple entrenchment of waggons. These being attacked and carried, they were driven within the walls, which they now began to despair of defending, and resolved to evacuate by night; but the project was divulged to Alexander by deserters, and frustrated by his vigilance. On the next day be took the town by storm, putting to the sword 17,000 Indians, and taking (according to Arrian) 70,000 captives. His own loss before the town was less than 100 killed, and 1200 wounded. Two neighbouring towns, in alliance with Sangala, were evacuated by their terrified inhabitants. Alexander pursued, but could not overtake them, except 500 sick or weakly persons, whom his soldiers put to death. Demolishing the town of Sangala, he added the territory to the dominion of Porus, then present, with a contingent of 5000 Indians.

Sangala was the easternmost of all Alexander’s conquests. Presently his march brought him to the river Hyphasis (Sutledge), the last of the rivers in the Punjab—seemingly at a point below its confluence with the Beas. Beyond this river, broad and rapid, Alexander was informed that there lay a desert of eleven days’ march, extending to a still greater river called the Ganges; beyond which dwelt the Gandaridae, the most powerful, warlike, and populous, of all the Indian tribes, distinguished for the number and training of their elephants. The prospect of a difficult march, and of an enemy esteemed invincible, only instigated his ardour. He gave orders for the crossing. But here for the first time his army, officers as well as soldiers, manifested symptoms of un­controllable weariness; murmuring aloud at these endless toils, and marches they knew not whither. They had already over­passed the limits where Dionysus and Herakles were said to have stopped: they were travelling into regions hitherto unvisited either by Greeks or by Persians, merely for the purpose of provoking and conquering new enemies. Of victories they were sated; of their plunder, abundant as it was, they had no enjoyment;1 the hardships of a perpetual onward march, often excessively accelerated, had exhausted both men and horses; moreover, their advance from the Hydaspes had been accomplished in the wet season, under rains more violent and continued than they had ever before experienced. Informed of the reigning discontent, Alexander assembled his officers and harangued them, endeavouring to revive in them that forward spirit and promptitude which he had hitherto found not inadequate to his own. But he entirely failed. No one indeed dared openly to contradict him. Koenus alone hazarded some words of timid dissuasion; the rest manifested a passive and sullen repugnance, even when he proclaimed that those who desired might return, with the shame of having deserted their king, while he would march forward with the volunteers only. After a suspense of two days, passed in solitary and silent mortification—he still apparently persisted in his determination, and offered the sacrifice usual previous to the passage of a river. The victims were inauspicious; he bowed to the will of the gods; and gave orders for return, to the unanimous and unbounded delight of his army.

To mark the last extremity of his eastward progress, he erected twelve altars of extraordinary height and dimension on the western bank of the Hyphasis, offering sacrifices of thanks to the gods, with the usual festivities, and matches of agility and force. Then, having committed all the territory west of the Hyphasis to the government of Porus, he marched back, repassed the Hydraotes and Akesines, and returned to the Hydaspes near the point where he had first crossed it. The two new cities—Bucephalia and Nicaea—which he had left orders for commencing on that river, had suffered much from the rains and inundations during his forward march to the Hyphasis, and now required the aid of the army to repair the damage. The heavy rains continued throughout most of his return march to the Hydaspes.

On coming back to this river, Alexander received a large reinforcement both of cavalry and infantry, sent to him from Europe, together with 25,000 new panoplies, and a considerable stock of medicines. Had these reinforcements reached him on the Hyphasis, it seems not impossible that he might have prevailed on his army to accompany him in his farther advance to the Ganges and the regions beyond. He now employed himself, assisted by Porus and Taxilus, in collecting and constructing a fleet for sailing down the Hydaspes, and thence down to the mouth of the Indus. By the early part of November, a fleet of nearly 2000 boats or vessels of various sizes having been prepared, he began his voyage. Craterus marched with one division of the army, along the right bank of the Hydaspes—Hephaestion on the left bank with the remainder, including 200 elephants; Nearchus had the command of the fleet in the river, on board of which was Alexander himself. He pursued his voyage slowly down the river, to the confluence of the Hydaspes with the Akesines— with the Hydraotes—and with the Hyphasis—all pouring, in one united stream, into the Indus. He sailed down the Indus to its junction with the Indian Ocean. Altogether this voyage occupied nine months,1 from November 326 B.C. to August 325 B.C. But it was a voyage full of active military operations on both sides of the river. Alexander perpetually disembarked, to attack, subdue, and slaughter all such nations near the banks as did not voluntarily submit. Among them were the Malli and Oxydrakae, free and brave tribes, who resolved to defend their liberty, but, unfortunately for themselves, were habitually at variance, and could not now accomplish any hearty co-operation against the common invader. Alexander first assailed the Malli with his usual celerity and vigour, beat them with slaughter in the field, and took several of their towns. There remained only their last and strongest town, from which the defenders were already driven out and forced to retire to the citadel. Thither they were pursued by the Macedonians, Alexander himself being among the foremost, with only a few guards near him. Impatient because the troops with their scaling-ladders did not come up more rapidly, he mounted upon a ladder that happened to be at hand, attended only by Peukestes and one or two others, with an adventurous courage even transcending what he was wont to display. Having cleared the wall by killing several of its defenders, he jumped down into the interior of the citadel, and made head for some time, nearly alone, against all within. He received however a bad wound from an arrow in the breast, and was on the point of fainting, when his soldiers burst in, rescued him, and took the place. Every person within—man, woman, and child—was slain.

The wound of Alexander was so severe, that he was at first reported to be dead, to the great consternation and distress of the army. However, he became soon sufficiently recovered to show himself, and to receive their ardent congratulations, in the camp established at the point of junction between the Hydraotes (Ravee) and (Akesines) Chenab. His voyage down the river, though delayed by the care of his wound, was soon resumed and prosecuted, with the same active operations by his land-force on both sides to subjugate all the Indian tribes and cities within accessible distance. At the junction of the river Akesines (Punjab) with the Indus, Alexander directed the foundation of a new city, with adequate docks and conveniences for ship-building, whereby he expected to command the internal navigation. Having no further occa­sion now for so large a land-force, he sent a large portion of it under Craterus westward (seemingly through the pass now called Bolan) into Karmania. He established another military and naval post at Pattala, where the Delta of the Indus divided; and he then sailed with a portion of his fleet down the right arm of the river to have the first sight of the Indian Ocean. The view of ebbing and flowing tide, of which none had had experience on the scale there exhibited, occasioned to all much astonishment and alarm.

The fleet was now left to be conducted by the admiral Nearchus, from the mouth of the Indus round by the Persian Gulf to that of the Tigris; a memorable nautical enterprise in Grecian antiquity. Alexander himself (about the month of August) began his march by land westward through the territories of the Arabitae and the Oritae, and afterwards through the deserts of Gedrosia. Pura, the principal town of the Gedrosians, was sixty days’ march from the boundary of the Oritae.

Here his army, though without any formidable opposing enemy, underwent the most severe and deplorable sufferings; their march being through a sandy and trackless desert, with short supplies of food, and still shorter supplies of water, under a burning sun. The loss in men, horses, and baggage­cattle, from thirst, fatigue, and disease, was prodigious; and it required all the unconquerable energy of Alexander to bring through even the diminished number. At Pura the army ob­tained repose and refreshment, and was enabled to march forward into Carmania, where Craterus joined them with his division from the Indus, and Cleander with the division which had been left at Ecbatana. Cleander, accused of heinous crimes in his late command, was put to death or imprisoned; several of his comrades were executed. To recompense the soldiers for their recent distress in Gedrosia, the king conducted them for seven days in drunken bacchanalian procession through Karmania, himself and all his friends taking part in the revelry; an imitation of the jovial festivity and triumph with which the god Dionysus had marched back from the conquest of India.

During the halt in Karmania Alexander had the satisfaction of seeing his admiral Nearchus who had brought the fleet round from the mouth of the Indus to the harbour called Harmozeia (Ormuz), not far from the entrance of the Persian Gulf; a voyage or much hardship and distress, along the barren coasts of the Oritae, the Gedrosians, and the Ichthyophagi. Nearchus, highly commended and honoured, was presently sent back to complete his voyage as far as the mouth of the Euphrates; while Hephaestion also was directed to conduct the larger portion of the army, with the elephants and heavy baggage, by the road near the coast from Karmania into Persis. This road, though circuitous, was the most convenient, as it was now the winter season; but Alexander himself, with the lighter divisions of his army, took the more direct moun­tain road from Karmania to Pasargadae and Persepolis. Visiting the tomb of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire, he was incensed to find it violated and pillaged. He caused it to be carefully restored, put to death a Macedonian named Polymachus as the offender, and tortured the Magian guardians of it for the purpose of discovering accomplices, but in vain. Orsines, satrap of Persis, was however accused of connivance in the deed, as well as of various acts of murder and spoliation : according to Curtius, he was not only innocent, but had manifested both good faith and devotion to Alexander; in spite of which he became a victim of the hostility of the favourite eunuch Bagoas, who both poisoned the king’s mind with calumnies of his own, and suborned other accusers with false testimony. Whatever may be the truth of the story, Alexander caused Orsines to be hanged; naming as satrap Peukestes, whose favour was now high, partly as comrade and preserver of the king in his imminent danger at the citadel of the Malli—partly from his having adopted the Persian dress, manners, and language, more completely than any other Macedonian.

It was about February, in 324 B.C., that Alexander marched out of Persis to Susa. During this progress, at the point where he crossed the Pasitigris, he was again joined by Nearchus, who having completed his circumnavigation from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, had sailed back with the fleet from the latter river and come up the Pasitigris. It is probable that the division of Hephaestion also rejoined him at Susa, and that the whole army was there for the first time brought together, after the separation in Karmania.

In Susa and Susiana Alexander spent some months. For the first time since his accession to the throne, he had now no military operations in hand or in immediate prospect. No enemy was before him, until it pleased him to go in quest of a new one; nor indeed could any new one be found, except at a prodigious distance. He had emerged from the perils of the untrodden East, and had returned into the ordinary localities and conditions of Persian rule, occupying that capital city from whence the great Achaemenid kings had been accustomed to govern the Western as well as the Eastern portions of their vast empire. To their post, and to their irritable love of servility, Alexander had succeeded; but bringing with him a restless energy such as none of them except the first founder Cyrus had manifested—and a splendid military genius, such as was unknown alike to Cyrus and to his successors.

In the new position of Alexander, his principal subjects of uneasiness were, the satraps and the Macedonian soldiers. During the long interval (more than five years) which had elapsed since he marched eastward from Hyrcania in pursuit of Bessus, the satraps had necessarily been left much to themselves. Some had imagined that he would never return; an anticipation no way unreasonable, since his own impulse towards forward march was so insatiate, that he was only constrained to return by the resolute opposition of his own soldiers; moreover his dangerous wound among the Malli, and his calamitous march through Gedrosia, had given rise to reports of his death, credited for some time even by Olympias and Cleopatra in Macedonia. Under these uncertainties, some satraps stood accused of having pillaged rich temples, and committed acts of violence towards individuals. Apart from all criminality, real or alleged, several of them, also, had taken into pay bodies of mercenary troops, partly as a necessary means of authority in their respective districts, partly as a protection to themselves in the event of Alexander’s decease. Respecting the conduct of the satraps and their officers, many denunciations and complaints were sent in, to which Alexander listened readily and even eagerly, punishing the accused with indiscriminate rigour, and resenting especially the suspicion that they had calculated upon his death. Among those executed, were Abulites, satrap of Susiana, with his son Oxathres; the latter was even slain by the hands of Alexander himself, with a sarissa—the dispensation of punishment becoming in his hands an outburst of exasperated temper. He also despatched peremptory orders to all the satraps, enjoining them to dismiss their mercenary troops without delay. This measure produced considerable effect on the condition of Greece—about which I shall speak in a subsequent chapter. Harpalus, satrap of Babylon (about whom also more, presently), having squandered large sums out of the revenues of the post upon ostentatious luxury, became terrified when Alexander was approaching Susiana, and fled to Greece with a large treasure and a small body of soldiers. Serious alarm was felt among all the satraps and officers, innocent as well as guilty. That the most guilty were not those who fared worst, we may see by the case of Kleomenes in Egypt, who remained unmolested in his government, though his iniquities were no secret.

Among the Macedonian soldiers, discontent had been perpetually growing, from the numerous proofs which they witnessed that Alexander had made his election for an Asiatic character, and abnegated his own country. Besides his habitual adoption of the Persian costume and ceremonial, he now celebrated a sort of national Asiatic marriage at Susa. He had already married the captive Roxana in Bactria; he next took two additional wives—Statira, daughter of Darius—and Parysatis, daughter of the preceding king Ochus. He at the same time caused eighty of his principal friends and officers, some very reluctantly, to marry (according to Persian rites) wives selected from the noblest Persian families, providing dowries for all of them. He made presents besides, to all those Macedonians who gave in their names as having married Persian women. Splendid festivities accompanied these nuptials, with honorary rewards distributed to favourites and meritorious officers. Macedonians and Persians, the two imperial races, one in Europe, the other in Asia, were thus intended to be amalgamated. To soften the aversion of the soldiers generally towards these Asiatising marriages, Alexander issued proclamation that he would himself discharge their debts, inviting all who owed money to give in their names with an intimation of the sums due. It was known that the debtors were numerous; yet few came to enter their names. The soldiers suspected the proclamation as a stratagem, intended for the purpose of detecting such as were spendthrifts, and obtaining a pretext for punishment; a remarkable evidence how little confidence or affection Alexander now inspired, and how completely the sentiment entertained towards him was that of fear mingled with admiration. He himself was much hurt at their mistrust, and openly complained of it; at the same time proclaiming that paymasters and tables should be planted openly in the camp, and that any soldier might come and ask for money enough to pay his debts, without being bound to give in his name. Assured of secrecy, they now made application in such numbers that the total distributed was prodigiously great; reaching, according to some, to 10,000 talents—according to Arrian, not less than 20,000 talents.

Large as this donative was, it probably gave but partial satisfaction, since the most steady and well-conducted soldiers could have received no benefit, except in so far as they might choose to come forward with fictitious debts. A new mortifica­tion moreover was in store for the soldiers generally. There arrived from the various satrapies—even from those most distant, Sogdiana, Bactria, Aria, Drangiana, Arachosia, &c.— contingents of young and fresh native troops, amounting in total to 30,000 men; all armed and drilled in the Macedonian manner. From the time when the Macedonians had refused to cross the river Hyphasis and march forward into India, Alexander saw, that for his large aggressive schemes it was necessary to disband the old soldiers, and to organise an army at once more fresh and more submissive. He accordingly despatched orders to the satraps to raise and discipline new Asiatic levies, of vigorous native youths; and the fruit of these orders was now seen. Alexander reviewed the new levies, whom he called the Epigoni, with great satisfaction. He moreover incorporated many native Persians, both officers and soldiers, into the Companion-cavalry, the most honourable service in the army; making the important change of arming them with the short Macedonian thru sting-pike in place of the missile Persian javelin. They were found such apt soldiers, and the genius of Alexander for military organisation was so consummate, that he saw himself soon released from his dependence on the Macedonian veterans; a change evident enough to them as well as to him.

The novelty and success of Nearchus in his exploring voyage had excited in Alexander an eager appetite for naval operations. Going on board his fleet in the Pasitigris (the Karun, the river on the east side of Susa), he sailed in person down to the Persian Gulf, surveyed the coast as far as the mouth of the Tigris, and then sailed up the latter river as far as Opis. Hephaestion meanwhile, commanding the army, marched by land in concert with this voyage, and came back to Opis, where Alexander disembarked.

Sufficient experiment had now been made with the Asiatic levies to enable Alexander to dispense with many of his Macedonian veterans. Calling together the army, he intimated his intention of sending home those who were unfit for service, either from age or wounds, but of allotting to them presents at departure sufficient to place them in an enviable condition, and attract fresh Macedonian substitutes. On hearing this intimation, all the long-standing discontent of the soldiers at once broke out. They felt themselves set aside, as worn out and useless,—and set aside, not to make room for younger men of their own country, but in favour of those Asiatics into whose arms their king had now passed. They demanded with a loud voice that he should dismiss them all—advising him by way of taunt to make his future conquests along with his father Ammon. These manifestations so incensed Alexander, that he leaped down from the elevated platform on which he had stood to speak, rushed with a few of his guards among the crowd of soldiers, and seized or caused to be seized thirteen of those apparently most forward, ordering them immediately to be put to death. The multitude were thoroughly overawed and reduced to silence, upon which Alexander remounted the platform and addressed them in a speech of considerable length. He boasted of the great exploits of Philip, and of his own still greater : he affirmed that all the benefit of his conquests had gone to the Macedonians, and that he himself had derived from them nothing but a double share of the common labours, hardships, wounds, and perils. Reproaching them as base deserters from a king who had gained for them all these unparalleled acquisitions, he concluded by giving discharge to all—commanding them forthwith to depart.

After this speech—teeming (as we read it in Arrian) with that exorbitant self-exaltation which formed the leading feature in his character—Alexander hurried away into the palace, where he remained shut up for two days without admitting any one except his immediate attendants. His guards departed along with him, leaving the discontented soldiers stupefied and motionless. Receiving no further orders, nor any of the accustomed military indications, they were left in the helpless condition of soldiers constrained to resolve for themselves, and at the same time altogether dependent upon Alexander whom they had offended. On the third day, they learnt that he had convened the Persian officers, and had invested them with the chief military commands, distributing the newly-arrived Epigoni into divisions of infantry and cavalry, all with Macedonian military titles, and passing over the Macedonians themselves as if they did not exist. At this news the soldiers were overwhelmed with shame and remorse. They rushed to the gates of the palace, threw down their arms, and supplicated with tears and groans for Alexander’s pardon. Presently he came out, and was himself moved to tears by seeing their prostrate deportment. After testifying his full reconciliation, he caused a solemn sacrifice to be celebrated, coupled with a multitudinous banquet of mixed Macedonians and Persians. The Grecian prophets, the Persian magi, and all the guests present, united in prayer and libation for fusion, harmony, and community of empire, between the two nations.

This complete victory over his own soldiers was probably as gratifying to Alexander as any one gained during his past life ; carrying as it did a consoling retribution for the memorable stoppage on the banks of the Hyphasis, which he had neither forgotten nor forgiven. He selected 10,000 of the oldest and most exhausted among the soldiers to be sent home under Craterus, giving to each full pay until the time of arrival in Macedonia, with a donation of one talent besides. He intended that Craterus, who was in bad health, should remain in Europe as viceroy of Macedonia, and that Antipater should come out to Asia with a reinforcement of troops. Pursuant to this resolution, the 10,000 soldiers were now singled out for return, and separated from the main army. Yet it does not appear that they actually did return, during the ten months of Alexander’s remaining life.

Of the important edict issued this summer by Alexander to the Grecian cities, and read at the Olympic festival in July— directing each city to recall its exiled citizens—I shall speak in a future chapter. He had now accomplished his object of organising a land-force half Macedonian, half Asiatic. But since the expedition of Nearchus, he had become bent upon a large extension of his naval force also; which was indeed an indispensable condition towards his immediate projects of conquering Arabia, and of pushing both nautical exploration and aggrandisement from the Persian Gulf round the Arabian coast. He despatched orders to the Phenician ports, directing that a numerous fleet should be built; and that the ships should then be taken to pieces, and conveyed across to Thapsakus on the Euphrates, from whence they would sail down to Babylon. At that place, he directed the construction of other ships from the numerous cypress trees around—as well as the formation of an enormous harbour in the river at Babylon, adequate to the accommodation of 1000 ships of war. Mikkalus, a Greek of Klazomenae, was sent to Phenicia with 500 talents, to enlist, or to purchase, seamen for the crews. It was calculated that these preparations (probably under the superintendence of Nearchus) would be completed by the spring, for which period contingents were summoned to Babylon for the expedition against Arabia.

In the mean time, Alexander himself paid a visit to Ecbatana, the ordinary summer residence of the Persian kings. He conducted his army by leisurely marches, reviewing by the way the ancient regal parks of the celebrated breed called Nisaean horses—now greatly reduced in number. On the march, a violent altercation occurred between his personal favourite, Hephaestion,—and his secretary, Eumenes, the most able, dexterous, and long-sighted man in his service. Eumenes, as a Greek of Kardia, had been always regarded with slight and jealousy by the Macedonian officers, especially by Hephaestion: Alexander now took pains to reconcile the two, experiencing no difficulty with Eumenes, but much with Hephaestion. During his stay at Ecbatana, he celebrated magnificent sacrifices and festivities, with gymnastic and musical exhibitions, which were further enlivened, according to the Macedonian habits, by banquets and excessive wine-drinking. Amidst these proceedings, Hephaestion was seized with a fever. The vigour of his constitution emboldened him to neglect all care or regimen, so that in a few days the disease carried him off. The final crisis came on suddenly, and Alexander was warned of it while sitting in the theatre; but though he instantly hurried to the bedside, he found Hephaestion already dead. His sorrow for this loss was unbounded, manifesting itself in excesses suitable to the general violence of his impulses, whether of affection or of antipathy. Like Achilles mourning for Patroklus, he cast himself on the ground near the dead body, and remained there wailing for several hours; he refused all care, and even food, for two days; he cut his hair close, and commanded that all the horses and mules in the camp should have their manes cut close also; he not only suspended the festivities, but interdicted all music and every sign of joy in the camp; he directed that the battlements of the walls belonging to the neighbouring cities should be struck off; he hung, or crucified, the physician Glaukias, who had prescribed for Hephaestion; he ordered that a vast funeral pile should be erected at Babylon, at a cost given to us as 10,000 talents, to celebrate the obsequies; he sent messengers to the oracle of Ammon, to inquire whether it was permitted to worship Hephaestion as a god. Many of those around him, accommodating themselves to this passionate impulse of the ruler, began at once to show a sort of worship towards the deceased, by devoting to him themselves and their arms; of which Eumenes set the example, conscious of his own personal danger, if Alexander should suspect him of being pleased at the death of his recent rival. Perdikkas was instructed to convey the body in solemn procession to Babylon, there to be burnt in state when preparations should be completed.

Alexander stayed at Ecbatana until winter was at hand, seeking distraction from his grief in exaggerated splendour of festivals and ostentation of life. His temper became so much more irascible and furious, that no one approached him without fear, and he was propitiated by the most extravagant flatteries. At length he roused himself and found his true consolation, in gratifying the primary passions of his nature—fighting and man-hunting. Between Media and Persis, dwelt the tribes called Kossaei, amidst a region of lofty, trackless, inaccessible mountains. Brave and predatory, they had defied the attacks of the Persian kings. Alexander now conducted against them a powerful force, and in spite of increased difficulties arising from the wintry season, pushed them from point to point, following them into the loftiest and most impenetrable recesses of their mountains. These efforts were continued for forty days, under himself and Ptolemy, until the entire male population was slain; which passed for an acceptable offering to the manes of Hephaestion.

Not long afterwards, Alexander commenced his progress to Babylon; but in slow marches, further retarded by various foreign embassies which met him on the road. So widely had the terror of his name and achievements been spread, that several of these envoys came from the most distant regions. There were some from the various tribes of Libya—from Carthage—from Sicily and Sardinia—from the Illyrians and Thracians—from the Lucanians, Bruttians, and Tuscans, in Italy—nay, even (some affirmed) from the Romans, as yet a people of moderate power. But there were other names yet more surprising—Ethiopians, from the extreme south, beyond Egypt—Scythians from the north, beyond the Danube—Iberians and Gauls, from the far west, beyond the Mediter­ranean Sea. Legates also arrived from various Grecian cities, partly to tender congratulations and compliments upon his matchless successes, partly to remonstrate against his sweeping mandate for the general restoration of the Grecian exiles. It was remarked that these Grecian legates approached him with wreaths on their heads, tendering golden wreaths to him,—as if they were coming into the presence of a god. The proofs which Alexander received, even from distant tribes with names and costumes unknown to him, of fear for his enmity and anxiety for his favour, were such as had never been shown to any historical person, and such as entirely to explain his superhuman arrogance.

In the midst of this exuberant pride and good fortune, however, dark omens and prophecies crowded upon him as he approached Babylon. Of these the most remarkable was, the warning of the Chaldean priests, who apprised him, soon after he crossed the Tigris, that it would be dangerous for him to enter that city, and exhorted him to remain outside of the gates. At first he was inclined to obey; but his scruples were overruled, either by arguments from the Greek sophist Anaxarchus, or by the shame of shutting himself out from the most memorable city of the empire, where his great naval preparations were now going on. He found Nearchus with his fleet, who had come up from the mouth of the river,—and also the ships directed to be built in Phenicia, which had come down the river from Thapsakus, together with large numbers of seafaring men to serve aboard. The ships of cypress wood, and the large docks, which he had ordered to be constructed at Babylon, were likewise in full progress. He lost no time in concerting with Nearchus the details of an expedition into Arabia and the Persian Gulf, by his land-force and naval force co-operating. From various naval officers, who had been sent to survey the Persian Gulf, and now made their reports, he learnt, that though there were no serious difficulties within it or along its southern coast, yet to double the eastern cape which terminated that coast—to circumnavigate the unknown peninsula of Arabia,—and thus to reach the Red Sea—was an enterprise perilous at least, if not impracticable. But to achieve that which other men thought impracticable, was the leading passion of Alexander. He resolved to circum­navigate Arabia as well as to conquer the Arabians, from whom it was sufficient offence that they had sent no envoys to him. He also contemplated the foundation of a great maritime city in the interior of the Persian Gulf, to rival in wealth and commerce the cities of Phenicia.

Amidst preparations for this expedition—and while the immense funeral pile destined for Hephaestion was being built—Alexander sailed down the Euphrates to the great dyke called Pallakopas, about ninety miles below Babylon; a sluice constructed by the ancient Assyrian kings, for the purpose of being opened when the river was too full, so as to let off the water into the interminable marshes stretching out near the western bank. The sluice being reported not to work well, he projected the construction of a new one somewhat farther down. He then sailed through the Pallakopas in order to survey the marshes, together with the tombs of the ancient Assyrian kings which had been erected among them. Himself steering his vessel, with the kausia on his head, and the regal diadem above it, he passed some time among these lakes and swamps, which were so extensive that his fleet lost the way among them. He stayed long enough also to direct, and even commence, the foundation of a new city, in what seemed to him a convenient spot.

On returning to Babylon, Alexander found large reinforce­ments arrived there—partly under Philoxenus, Menander, and Menidas, from Lydia and Karia—partly 20,000 Persians, under Peukestes the satrap. He caused these Persians to be incorporated in the files of the Macedonian phalanx. According to the standing custom, each of these files was sixteen deep, and each soldier was armed with the long pike or sarissa wielded by two hands; the lochage, or front-rank man, being always an officer receiving double pay, of great strength and attested valour—and those second and third in the file, as well as the rearmost man of all, being likewise strong and good men, receiving larger pay than the rest. Alexander, in his new arrangement, retained the first three ranks and the rear rank unchanged, as well as the same depth of file; but he sub­stituted twelve Persians in place of the twelve Macedonians who followed after the third-rank man; so that the file was composed first of the lochage and two other chosen Mace­donians, each armed with the sarissa—then of twelve Persians armed in their own manner with bow or javelin—lastly, of a Macedonian with his sarissa bringing up the rear. In this Macedonico-Persian file, the front would have only three projecting pikes, instead of five, which the ordinary Macedonian phalanx presented; but then, in compensation, the Persian soldiers would be able to hurl their javelins at an advancing enemy, over the heads of their three front-rank men. The supervening death of Alexander prevented the actual execution of this reform, interesting as being his last project for amalgamating Persians and Macedonians into one military force.

Besides thus modifying the phalanx, Alexander also passed in review his fleet, which was now fully equipped. The order was actually given for departing, so soon as the obsequies of Hephaestion should be celebrated. This was the last act which remained for him to fulfil. The splendid funeral pile stood ready—two hundred feet high, occupying a square area, of which the side was nearly one furlong, loaded with costly decorations from the zeal, real and simulated, of the Macedonian officers. The invention of artists was exhausted, in long discussions with the king himself, to produce at all cost an exhibition of magnificence singular and stupendous. The outlay (probably with addition of the festivals immediately following) is stated at 12,000 talents. Alexander awaited the order from the oracle of Ammon, having sent thither messengers to inquire what measure of reverential honour he might properly and piously show to his departed friend. The answer was now brought back, intimating that Hephaestion was to be worshipped as a Hero—the secondary form of worship, not on a level with that paid to the gods. Delighted with this divine testimony to Hephaestion, Alexander caused the pile to be lighted, and the obsequies celebrated, in a manner suitable to the injunctions of the oracle. He further directed that magnificent chapels or sacred edifices should be erected for the worship and honour of Hephaestion, at Alexandria in Egypt,—at Pella in Macedonia, and probably in other cities also.

Respecting the honours intended for Hephaestion at Alex­andria, he addressed to Kleomenes the satrap of Egypt a despatch which becomes in part known to us. I have already stated that Kleomenes was among the worst of the satraps; having committed multiplied public crimes, of which Alexander was not uninformed. The regal despatch enjoined him to erect in commemoration of Hephaestion a chapel on the terra firma of Alexandria, with a splendid turret in the islet of Pharos; and to provide besides that all mercantile written contracts, as a condition of validity, should be inscribed with the name of Hephaestion. Alexander concluded thus:—“If on coming I find the Egyptian temples and the chapels of Hephaestion completed in the best manner, I will forgive you for all your past crimes; and in future, whatever magnitude of crime you may commit, you shall suffer no bad treatment from me”. This despatch strikingly illustrates how much the wrong doings of satraps were secondary considerations in his view, compared with splendid manifestations towards the gods, and personal attachment towards friends.

The intense sorrow felt by Alexander for the death of Hephaestion—not merely an attached friend, but of the same age and exuberant vigour as himself—laid his mind open to gloomy forebodings from numerous omens, as well as to jealous mistrust even of his oldest officers. Antipater especially, no longer protected against the calumnies of Olympias by the support of Hephaestion,1 fell more and more into discredit; whilst his son Kassander, who had recently come into Asia with a Macedonian reinforcement, underwent from Alexander during irascible moments much insulting violence. In spite of the dissuasive warning of the Chaldean priests, Alexander had been persuaded to distrust their sincerity, and had entered Babylon, though not without hesitation and uneasiness. However, when, after having entered the town, he went out of it again safely on his expedition for the survey of the lower Euphrates, he conceived himself to have exposed them as deceitful alarmists, and returned to the city with increased confidence, for the obsequies of his deceased friend.

The sacrifices connected with these obsequies were on the most prodigious scale. Victims enough were offered to furnish a feast for the army, who also received ample distributions of wine. Alexander presided in person at the feast, and abandoned himself to conviviality like the rest. Already full of wine, he was persuaded by his friend Medius to sup with him, and to pass the whole night in yet further drinking, with the boisterous indulgence called by the Greeks K6mus or Revelry. Having slept off his intoxication during the next day, he in the evening again supped with Medius, and spent a second night in the like unmeasured indulgence. It appears that he already had the seeds of fever upon him, which was so fatally aggravated by this intemperance that he was too ill to return to his palace. He took the bath, and slept in the house of Medius; on the next morning, he was unable to rise. After having been carried out on a couch to celebrate sacrifice (which was his daily habit), he was obliged to lie in bed all day. Nevertheless he summoned the generals to his presence, prescribing all the details of the impending expedition, and ordering that the land­force should begin its march on the fourth day following, while the fleet, with himself aboard, would sail on the fifth day. In the evening he was carried on a couch across the Euphrates into a garden on the other side, where he bathed and rested for the night. The fever still continued, so that in the morning, after bathing and being carried out to perform the sacrifices, he remained on his couch all day, talking and playing at dice with Medius; in the evening, he bathed, sacrificed again, and ate a light supper, but endured a bad night with increased fever. The next two days passed in the same manner, the fever becoming worse and worse; nevertheless Alexander still sum­moned Nearchus to his bedside, discussed with him many points about his maritime projects, and repeated his order that the fleet should be ready by the third day. On the ensuing morning the fever was violent; Alexander reposed all day in a bathing-house in the garden, yet still calling in the generals to direct the filling up of vacancies among the officers, and ordering that the armament should be ready to move. Throughout the two next days, his malady became hourly more aggravated. On the second of the two, Alexander could with difficulty support the being lifted out of bed to perform the sacrifice; even then, however, he continued to give orders to the generals about the expedition. On the morrow, though desperately ill, he still made the effort requisite for performing the sacrifice; he was then carried across from the garden-house to the palace, giving orders that the generals and officers should remain in permanent attendance in and near the hall. He caused some of them to be called to his bedside; but though he knew them perfectly, he had by this time become incapable of utterance. One of his last words spoken is said to have been, on being asked to whom he bequeathed his kingdom, “To the strongest”; one of his last acts was, to take the signet ring from his finger, and hand it to Perdikkas.

For two nights and a day he continued in this state, without either amendment or repose. Meanwhile the news of his malady had spread through the army, filling them with grief and consternation. Many of the soldiers, eager to see him once more, forced their way into the palace, and were admitted unarmed. They passed along by the bedside, with all the demonstrations of affliction and sympathy: Alexander knew them, and made show of friendly recognition as well as he could; but was unable to say a word. Several of the generals slept in the temple of Serapis, hoping to be informed by the god in a dream whether they ought to bring Alexander into it as a suppliant to experience the divine healing power. The god informed them in their dream, that Alexander ought not to be brought into the temple—that it would be better for him to be left where he was. In the afternoon he expired—June 323 B.C —after a life of thirty-two years and eight months—and a reign of twelve years and eight months.

The death of Alexander, thus suddenly cut off by a fever in the plenitude of health, vigour, and aspirations, was an event impressive as well as important in the highest possible degree, to his contemporaries far and near. When the first report of it was brought to Athens, the orator Demades exclaimed—“It cannot be true: if Alexander were dead, the whole habitable world would have smelt of his carcass.” This coarse, but emphatic comparison, illustrates the immediate, powerful, and wide-reaching impression produced by the sudden extinction of the great conqueror. It was felt by each of the many remote envoys who had so recently come to propitiate this far-shooting Apollo—by every man among the nations who had sent these envoys—throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, as then known,—to affect either his actual condition or his probable future. The first growth and development of Macedonia, during the twenty-two years preceding the battle of Chaeronea, from an embarrassed secondary state into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment of contemporaries, and admiration for Philip’s organising genius. But the achievements of Alexander, during his twelve years of reign, throwing Philip into the shade, had been on a scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of human expectation, but almost of human belief. The Great King (as the King of Persia was called by excellence), was, and had long been, the type of worldly power and felicity, even down to the time when Alexander crossed the Hellespont. Within four years and three months from this event, by one stupendous defeat after another, Darius had lost all his Western Empire and had become a fugitive eastward of the Caspian Gates, escaping captivity at the hands of Alexander only to perish by those of the satrap Bessus. All antecedent historical parallels —the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Croesus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition,—sank into trifles compared with the overthrow of this towering Persian colossus. The orator Aeschines expressed the genuine sentiment of a Grecian spectator, when he exclaimed (in a speech delivered at Athens shortly before the death of Darius)—“What is there among the list of strange and unexpected events, that has not occurred in our time? Our lives have transcended the limits of humanity; we are born to serve as a theme for incredible tales to posterity. Is not the Persian king —who dug through Athos and bridged the Hellespont,—who demanded earth and water from the Greeks,—who dared to proclaim himself in public epistles master of all mankind from the rising to the setting sun—is not he now struggling to the last, not for dominion over others, but for the safety of his own person?”

Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the middle of 330 B.C, more than seven years before his death. During the following seven years, his additional achievements had carried astonishment yet further. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense treasure and military force which had once rendered the Great King so formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.

Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old—the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at which Timour first acquired the crown, and began his foreign conquests. His extra­ordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military experience; and, what was still more important, his appetite for further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger, as complete, as it had been when he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future achievements, with such increased means and experience, were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known; and if his life had been prolonged, he would probably have accomplished it. Nowhere (so far as our knowledge reaches) did there reside any military power capable of making head against him; nor were his soldiers, when he commanded them, daunted or baffled by any extremity of cold, heat, or fatigue. The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander, had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans or Samnites, would have failed and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army, the same cannot be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the Macedonian Companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have been found a match for Alexander in military genius and combinations; nor, even if personally equal, would he have possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose—nor the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort. I do not think that even the Romans could have successfully resisted Alexander the Great; though it is certain that he never throughout all his long marches encountered such enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and Lucanians— combining courage, patriotism, discipline, with effective arms both for defence and for close combat.

Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous courage—sometimes indeed both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him—we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. Amidst constant success, these precautionary combinations were never discontinued. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organisation on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity, by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force—as an individual warrior, and as organiser and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodised, and all subduing compression which he personifies in Athene. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies; in which category indeed were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns, amidst tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defence, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains, are alike pursued and slaughtered.

Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a soldier and a general, some authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government, and for intentions highly favourable to the improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever-repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded until he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal dominion—conceived not metaphorically, but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time—was the master-passion of his soul. At the moment of his death, he was commencing fresh aggression in the south against the Arabians, to an indefinite extent; while his vast projects against the western tribes in Africa and Europe, as far as the Pillars of Herakles, were consigned in the orders and memor­anda confidentially communicated to Craterus. Italy, Gaul, and Spain, would have been successively attacked and conquered; the enterprises proposed to him when in Bactria by the Chorasmian prince Pharasmanes, but postponed then until a more convenient season, would have been next taken up, and he would have marched from the Danube northward round the Euxine and Palus Maeotis against the Scythians and the tribes of Caucasus. There remained moreover the Asiatic regions east of the Hyphasis, which his soldiers had refused to enter upon, but which he certainly would have invaded at a future opportunity, were it only to efface the poignant humilia­tion of having been compelled to relinquish his proclaimed purpose. Though this sounds like romance and hyperbole, it was nothing more than the real insatiate aspiration of Alexander, who looked upon every new acquisition mainly as a capital for acquiring more: “You are a manlike all of us, Alexander (said the naked Indian to him)—except that you abandon your home like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself, and inflicting hardship upon others.” Now, how an empire thus boundless and heterogeneous, such as no prince has ever yet realised, could have been administered with any superior advantages to subjects, it would be difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining—of keeping satraps and tribute-gatherers in authority as well as in subordination—of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions distant by months of march—would occupy the whole life of a world-conqueror, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited to peace and stability, if we give him credit for such purposes in theory.

But even this last is more than can be granted. Alexander’s acts indicate that he desired nothing better than to take up the traditions of the Persian empire; a tribute-levying and army­levying system, under Macedonians, in large proportion, as his instruments ; yet partly also under the very same Persians who had administered before, provided they submitted to him. It has indeed been extolled among his merits that he was thus willing to reappoint Persian grandees (putting their armed force however under the command of a Macedonian officer)— and to continue native princes in their dominions, if they did willing homage to him, as tributary subordinates. But all this had been done before him by the Persian kings, whose system it was to leave the conquered princes undisturbed, subject only to the payment of tribute, and to the obligation of furnishing a military contingent when required. In like manner Alexander’s Asiatic empire would thus have been composed of an aggregate of satrapies and dependent principalities, furnishing money and soldiers; in other respects, left to the discretion of local rule, with occasional extreme inflictions of punishment, but no systematic examination or control. Upon this, the condition of Asiatic empire in all ages, Alexander would have grafted one special improvement: the military organisation of the empire, feeble under the Achaemenid princes, would have been greatly strengthened by his genius, and by the able officers formed in his school, both for foreign aggression and for home control.

The Persian empire was a miscellaneous aggregate, with no strong feeling of nationality. The Macedonian conqueror who seized its throne was still more indifferent to national sentiment. He was neither Macedonian nor Greek. Though the absence of this prejudice has sometimes been counted to him as a virtue, it only made room, in my opinion, for prejudices still worse. The substitute for it was an exorbitant personality and self-estimation, manifested even in his earliest years, and inflamed by extraordinary success into the belief in divine parentage; which, while setting him above the idea of communion with any special nationality, made him conceive all mankind as subjects under one common sceptre to be wielded by himself. To this universal empire the Persian king made the nearest approach,1 according to the opinions then prevalent. Accordingly Alexander, when victorious, accepted the position and pretensions of the overthrown Persian court as approaching most nearly to his full due. He became more Persian than either Macedonian or Greek. While himself adopting, as far as he could safely venture, the personal habits of the Persian court, he took studied pains to transform his Macedonian officers into Persian grandees, encouraging and even forcing intermarriages with Persian women according to Persian rites. At the time of Alexander’s death, there was comprised, in his written orders given to Craterus, a plan for the wholesale transportation of inhabitants both out of Europe into Asia, and out of Asia into Europe, in order to fuse these populations into one by multiplying intermarriages and intercourse. Such reciprocal translation of peoples would have been felt as eminently odious, and could not have been accomplished without coercive authority. It is rash to speculate upon unexecuted purposes; but, as far as we can judge, such compulsory mingling of the different races promises nothing favourable to the happiness of any of them, though it might serve as an imposing novelty and memento of imperial omnipotence.

In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental violence of impulse, unmeasured self-will, and exaction of reverence above the limits of humanity—have been already re­counted. To describe him as a son of Hellas, imbued with the political maxims of Aristotle, and bent on the systematic diffusion of Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind—is, in my judgement, an estimate of his character contrary to the evidence. Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aristotle as to the best mode of colonising; but his temper altered so much, after a few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not only to lose all deference for Ari­stotle’s advice, but even to hate him bitterly. Moreover, though the philosopher’s full suggestions have not been preserved, yet we are told generally that he recommended Alexander to behave to the Greeks as a leader or president, or limited chief—and to the Barbarians (non-Hellenes) as a master; a distinction substantially coinciding with that pointed out by Burke in his speeches at the beginning of the American war, between the principles of government proper to be followed by England in the American colonies, and in British India. No Greek thinker believed the Asiatics to be capable of that free civil polity upon which the march of every Grecian community was based. Aristotle did not wish to degrade the Asiatics below the level to which they had been accustomed, but rather to preserve the Greeks from being degraded to the same level. Now Alexander recognised no such distinction as that drawn by his preceptor. He treated Greeks and Asiatics alike, not by elevating the latter, but by degrading the former. Though he employed all indiscriminately as instruments, yet he presently found the free speech of Greeks, and even of Macedonians, so distasteful and offensive, that his preferences turned more and more in favour of the servile Asiatic sentiment and customs. Instead of hellenising Asia, he was tending to asiatise Macedonia and Hellas. His temper and character, as modified by a few years of conquest, rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle towards the Greeks—quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise, and smart from free criticism, which is inseparable from the position of a limited chief. Among a multitude of subjects more diverse-coloured than even the army of Xerxes, it is quite possible that he might have turned his power towards the improvement of the rudest portions. We are told (though the fact is difficult to credit, from his want of time) that he abolished various barbarisms of the Hyrcanians, Arachosians, and Sogdians. But Macedonians as well as Greeks would have been pure losers by being absorbed into an immense Asiatic aggregate.

Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in Asia. So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon up simple military posts, or borrow from the list of foundations really established by his successors. Except Alexandria in Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to have attained any great development. Nearly all were planted among the remote, warlike, and turbulent peoples eastward of the Caspian Gates. Such establishments were really fortified posts to hold the country in subjection: Alex­ander lodged in them detachments from his army, but none of these detachments can well have been large, since he could not afford materially to weaken his army, while active military operations were still going on, and while farther advance was in contemplation. More of these settlements were founded in Sogdiana than elsewhere; but respecting the Sogdian foundations, we know that the Greeks whom he established there, chained to the spot only by fear of his power, broke away in mutiny immediately on the news of his death. Some Greek soldiers in Alexander’s army on the Jaxartes or the Hydaspes, sick and weary of his interminable marches, might prefer being enrolled among the colonists of a new city on one of these unknown rivers, to the ever-repeated routine of exhausting duty. But it is certain that no volunteer emigrants would go forth to settle at distances such as their imaginations could hardly conceive. The absorbing appetite of Alexander was conquest, to the East, West, South, and North; the cities which he planted were established, for the most part, as garrisons to maintain his most distant and most precarious acquisitions. The purpose of colonisation was altogether sub­ordinate; and that of hellenising Asia, so far as we can see, was not even contemplated, much less realised.

This process of hellenising Asia—in so far as Asia was ever hellenised—which has often been ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the Diadochi who came after him; though his conquests doubtless opened the door and established the military ascendency which rendered such a work practicable. The position, the aspirations, and the interests of these Diadochi—Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, &c.— were materially different from those of Alexander. They had neither appetite nor means for new and remote conquest; their great rivalry was with each other; each sought to strengthen himself near home against the rest. It became a matter of fashion and pride with them, not less than of interest, to found new cities immortalising their family names. These foundations were chiefly made in the regions of Asia near and known to Greeks, where Alexander had planted none. Thus the great and numerous foundations of Seleucus Nikator and his successors covered Syria, Mesopotamia, and parts of Asia Minor. All these regions were known to Greeks, and more or less tempting to new Grecian immigrants—not out of reach or hearing of the Olympic and other festivals, as the Jaxartes and the Indus were. In this way a considerable influx of new Hellenic blood was poured into Asia during the century succeeding Alexander—probably in great measure from Italy and Sicily, where the condition of the Greek cities became more and more calamitous—besides the numerous Greeks who took service as individuals under these Asiatic kings. Greeks, and Macedonians speaking Greek, became predominant, if not in numbers, at least in importance, throughout most of the cities in Western Asia. In particular, the Macedonian military organisation, discipline, and administration, was maintained systematically among these Asiatic kings. In the account of the battle of Magnesia, fought by the Seleucid king Antiochus the Great against the Romans in 190 B.C, the Macedonian phalanx, constituting the main force of his Asiatic army, appears in all its completeness, just as it stood under Philip and Perseus in Macedonia itself.

When it is said however that Asia became hellenised under Alexander’s successors, the phrase requires explanation. Hellenism, properly so called—the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence, manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomy—never passed over into Asia; neither the highest qualities of the Greek mind, nor even the entire character of ordinary Greeks. This genuine Hellenism could not subsist under the overruling compression of Alexander, nor even under the less irresistible pressure of his successors. Its living force, productive genius, self-organising power, and active spirit of political communion, were stifled, and gradually died out. All that passed into Asia was a faint and partial resemblance of it, carrying the superficial marks of the original. The administration of the Greco-Asiatic kings was not Hellenic (as it has been sometimes called), but completely despotic, as that of the Persians had been before. Whoever follows their history, until the period of Roman dominion, will see that it turned upon the tastes, temper, and ability of the prince, and on the circumstances of the regal family. Viewing their government as a system, its prominent difference, as compared with their Persian predecessors, con­sisted in their retaining the military traditions and organization of Philip and Alexander; an elaborate scheme of discipline and manoeuvring, which could not be kept up without permanent official grades and a higher measure of intelligence than had ever been displayed under the Achaemenid kings, who had no military school or training whatever. Hence a great number of individual Greeks found employment in the military as well as in the civil service of these Greco-Asiatic kings. The intelligent Greek, instead of a citizen of Hellas, became the instrument of a foreign prince; the details of government were managed to a great degree by Greek officials, and always in the Greek language.

Moreover, besides this, there was the still more important fact of the many new cities founded in Asia by the Seleucidae and the other contemporary kings. Each of these cities had a considerable infusion of Greek and Macedonian citizens, among the native Orientals located there, often brought by compulsion from neighbouring villages. In what numerical ratio these two elements of the civic population stood to each other, we cannot say. But the Greeks and Macedonians were the leading and active portion, who exercised the greatest assimilating force, gave imposing effect to the public manifesta­tions of religion, had wider views and sympathies, dealt with the central government, and carried on that contracted measure of municipal autonomy which the city was permitted to retain. In these cities the Greek inhabitants, though debarred from political freedom, enjoyed a range of social activity suited to their tastes. In each, Greek was the language of public business and dealing; each formed a centre of attraction and commerce for an extensive neighbourhood; all together, they were the main Hellenic, or quasi-Hellenic, element in Asia under the Greco-Asiatic kings, as contrasted with the rustic villages, where native manners, and probably native speech, still continued with little modification. But the Greeks of Antioch, or Alexandria, or Seleucia, were not like citizens of Athens or Thebes, nor even like men of Tarentum or Ephesus. While they communicated their language to Orientals, they became themselves substantially orientalised. Their feelings, judgements, and habits of action, ceased to be Hellenic. Polybius, when he visited Alexandria, looked with surprise and aversion on the Greeks there resident, though they were superior to the non-Hellenic population, whom he considered worthless.1 Greek social habits, festivals, and legends, passed with the Hellenic settlers into Asia; all becoming amalga­mated and transformed so as to suit a new Asiatic abode. Important social and political consequences turned upon the diffusion of the language, and upon the establishment of such a common medium of communication throughout Western Asia. But after all, the hellenised Asiatic was not so much a Greek as a foreigner with Grecian speech, exterior varnish, and superficial manifestations; distinguished fundamentally from those Greek citizens with whom the present history has been concerned. So he would have been considered by Sophocles, by Thucydides, by Socrates.

Thus much is necessary, in order to understand the bearing of Alexander’s conquests, not only upon the Hellenic population, but upon Hellenic attributes and peculiarities. While crushing the Greeks as communities at home, these conquests opened a wider range to the Greeks as individuals abroad; and produced—perhaps the best of all their effects—a great increase of intercommunication, multiplication of roads, exten­sion of commercial dealing, and enlarged facilities for the acquisition of geographical knowledge. There already existed in the Persian empire an easy and convenient royal road (established by Darius son of Hystaspes, and described as well as admired by Herodotus) for the three months’ journey between Sardis and Susa; and there must have been another regular road from Susa and Ecbatana to Bactria, Sogdiana, and India. Alexander, had he lived, would doubtless have multiplied on a still larger scale the communications both by sea and land between the various parts of his world-empire. We read that among the gigantic projects which he was contemplating when surprised by death, one was, the construction of a road all along the northern coast of Africa, as far as the Pillars of Herakles. He had intended to found a new maritime city on the Persian Gulf, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and to incur much outlay for regulating the flow of water in its lower course. The river would probably have been thus made again to afford the same conveniences, both for navigation and irrigation, as it appears to have furnished in earlier times under the ancient Babylonian kings. Orders had been also given for constructing a fleet to explore the Caspian Sea. Alexander believed that sea to be connected with the Eastern Ocean, and intended to make it his point of departure for circumnavigating the eastern limits of Asia, which country yet remained for him to conquer. The voyage already performed by Nearchus, from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, was in those days a splendid maritime achievement; to which another still greater was on the point of being added—the circumnavigation of Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea; though here we must remark, that this same voyage (from the mouth of the Indus round Arabia into the Red Sea) had been performed in thirty months, a century and a half before, by Skylax of Karyanda, under the orders of Darius son of Hystaspes; yet, though recorded by Herodotus, forgotten (as it would appear) by Alexander and his contemporaries. This enlarged and systematic exploration of the earth, combined with increased means of communication among its inhabitants, is the main feature in Alexander’s career which presents itself as promising real consequences beneficial to humanity.

We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the exten­sion of science, that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of 800 talents in money, placing under his directions several thousand men, for the purpose of prosecuting zoological researches. These exaggerations are probably the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and Alexander in the early part of his reign, may have helped Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and specimens for observation—from esteem towards him personally, rather than from interest in his discoveries. The intellectual turn of Alexander was towards literature, poetry, and history. He was fond of the Iliad especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and the histories of Phlistus.