THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER
In the autumn of 325 B.C. Alexander began to march through the desert
of Gedrosia on his way to Babylon.
The heat was terrible, and the soldiers were soon parched with thirst,
while sinking sand added to the hardship of the march.
Alexander tramped by the side of his men across the dreary waste,
sharing all their privations and cheering them by his presence. But
before he left the desert of Gedrosia, the king had lost more than a
fourth part of the army that had set out with him from India two short
months before.
At length the exhausted soldiers reached Susa, and here the king
allowed them to rest. He himself found much to do, for many of the
satraps whom he had left in charge of different provinces had betrayed
their trust. They had treated cruelly those who were in their power,
and had formed plots to make themselves kings over their own provinces.
It may be that they thought Alexander would never come back from his
perilous journey in the East.
When he had punished those who had proved faithless, were they
Macedonians or Persians, he turned to a matter on which his heart was
set--the union of the peoples of the East and the West.
The king tried to accomplish this in different ways. He had already
built cities in the East, and left in them Greeks and Macedonians along
with the native Asiatics.
Now he himself wedded Statira, the daughter of Darius, Hephæstion
married her sister, while several Macedonian generals, following the
example of the king, took the daughters of Persian nobles to be their
wives. Many of the soldiers, too, married women of the East.
Alexander hoped that little by little the two races would learn to know
each other better and to have the same interests.
In the spring of 324 B.C. Alexander went to Ecbatana, where the Persian
kings had been used to spend the summer months. Shortly afterwards he
met his whole army at Opis, not far from Babylon, and discharged many
of the Macedonian veterans who were no longer fit to fight because of
old age or because of the wounds from which they had suffered. The king
promised to provide for these old warriors for the rest of their lives.
He expected them to welcome their dismissal and their reward.
But the Macedonians had been growing more and more jealous of the
favours Alexander had been showing to the Persians, and now the
feelings that they had been forced to hide found words.
They bade the king discharge not only the veterans but his loyal
Macedonians. Some even dared to shout, ‘Go and conquer with Zeus, your
father.’
The king, in sudden anger, sprang from his seat, down among the angry
throng, and ordered thirteen of the ring-leaders to be put to death. He
then bade the others go away if they wished. They had been only poor
shepherds on the hills of Macedon, he reminded them, until his father
Philip had made them rulers of Greece. He had shared with them the
wealth of the East, and had kept nothing for himself, save his purple
robe and his royal diadem.
Alexander then went to his palace, and in three days he sent for the
Persian nobles, to whom he gave the posts of honour which until now had
been held by the Macedonians.
Plutarch tells us that when the Macedonians, who had stayed in their
quarters in spite of their dismissal, heard what Alexander had done,
‘they went without their arms, with only their undergarments on, crying
and weeping, to offer themselves at his tent, and desired him to deal
with them as their baseness and ingratitude deserved ... yet he would
not admit them to his presence, nor would they stir from thence, but
continued two days and nights before his tent, bewailing themselves,
and imploring him as their lord to have compassion on them. But on
the third day he came out to them, and seeing them very humble and
penitent, he wept himself a great while, after a gentle reproof spoke
kindly to them and dismissed those who were too old for service with
magnificent rewards, and with recommendation to Antipater that when
they came home, at all public shows and in the theatres, they should
sit in the best and foremost seats, crowned with chaplets of flowers.’
During the summer which he spent at Ecbatana, a great sorrow befell
the king. Hephæstion, his dearest friend, took ill, and in seven days
he was dead. For three days the king would touch no food. No one could
comfort him, for well the king knew that no one would ever fill the
place that Hephæstion had held in his heart. The body of his friend
the king ordered to be taken to Babylon, where it was burnt on a pyre
adorned with great magnificence. Chapels were built in his honour in
Alexandria and other cities.
In June 323 B.C., a month after the funeral rites, Alexander, who was
preparing for a great expedition by sea, went to the river Euphrates to
inspect some new harbours which he had ordered to be built.
The place was unhealthy, because of the many marshes that lay round
about the river, and the king was attacked by fever. He refused to take
any care and daily he grew worse, until at length he was forced by
weakness to stay in bed.
A rumour that he was dead reached the Macedonians, and they hastened to
the palace, begging to be allowed to see their king once more.
Alexander was not dead, but he was too weak to speak, as one by one the
soldiers were permitted to walk quietly past his bed. With an effort he
looked at them as they passed, and feebly raised his hand in farewell.
‘After I am gone will you ever find a king worthy of such heroes as
these?’ he murmured as they slowly filed out of the room.
Then he drew his signet ring from his finger and gave it to an officer,
saying that he left his kingdom ‘to the best man.’ So the great king
passed away at the age of thirty-three.
[Illustration: With an effort he looked at them as they passed]