THE END
Charidemus arrived at Babylon punctually at the time appointed, reaching
it at a date which may be put in our reckoning as early in January, 323.
Alexander had not arrived, but was on his way from Susa.
A week after his arrival he had the pleasure of meeting his Theban
friend, who had been sent on in advance to superintend the final
arrangements for a ceremony which occupied most of the king’s thoughts at
this time, the funeral of Hephaestion. For Hephaestion was dead, killed
by a fever, not very serious in itself, but aggravated by the patient’s
folly and intemperance, and Alexander was resolved to honour him with
obsequies more splendid than had ever before been bestowed on mortal man.
The outlay had already reached ten thousand talents, and at least two
thousand more would have to be spent before the whole scheme was carried
out. And then there were chapels to be built and priesthoods endowed, for
the oracle of Ammon had declared that the dead man might be lawfully
worshipped as a hero, though it had forbidden the divine honours which it
was asked to sanction.
In April the king reached Babylon. The soothsayers had warned him not to
enter the city. He might have heeded their advice but for the advice of
his counsellor, the Greek sophist Anaxarchus, who had permanently secured
his favour by his extravagant flatteries. “The priests of Belus,” he
suggested, “have been embezzling the revenues of the temple, and they
don’t want to have you looking into their affairs.” His stay was brief;
the funeral preparations were not complete, and he started for a voyage
of some weeks among the marshes of the Euphrates, an expedition which
probably did not benefit his health.
In June he returned, and, all being then ready, celebrated the funeral
of his friend with all the pomp and solemnity with which it was possible
to surround it. The beasts offered in sacrifice were enough to furnish
ample meals for the whole army. Every soldier also received a large
allowance of wine. The banquet given to the principal officers was one of
extraordinary magnificence and prolonged even beyond what was usual with
the king.
Two or three days afterwards the two friends were talking over the
disquieting rumours about the king’s health which were beginning to
circulate through the city. They could not fail to remember the curious
prediction which they had heard years before from the lips of Arioch, or
to compare with it the recent warnings of the Babylonian soothsayers.
Charondas, too, had a strange story to tell of Calanus, an Indian sage,
who had accompanied the conqueror in his return from that country. Weary
of life the man had deliberately burnt himself on a funeral pile raised
by his own hands. Before mounting it he had bidden farewell to all his
friends. The king alone he left without any salutation. “My friend,” he
had said, “I shall soon see you again.”
When the friends reached their quarters they found Philip, the
Acarnanian, waiting for them. The physician looked pale and anxious.
“Is the king ill?” they asked with one voice. “Seriously so,” said
Philip, “if what I hear be true.”
“And have you prescribed for him?”
“He has not called me in; nor would he see me, if I were to present
myself. He has ceased to believe in physicians; soothsayers, prophets,
quacks of every kind, have his confidence. Gladly would I go to him,
though indeed a physician carries his life in his hand, if he seeks to
cure our king or his friend. Poor Glaucias did his best for Hephaestion.
But what can be expected when a patient in a fever eats a fowl and drinks
a gallon of wine? Æsculapius himself could not have saved his life. And
then poor Glaucias is crucified because Hephaestion dies. And, mark my
words, the king will go the same way, unless he changes his manners. What
with his own folly and the folly of his friends, there is no chance for
him. You saw what he drank at the funeral banquet. Well, he had the sense
to feel that he had had enough, and was going home, when Medius must
induce him to sup with him, and he drinks as much more. Then comes a day
of heavy sleep and then another supper, at which, I am told, he tried to
drain the great cup of Hercules, and fell back senseless on his couch.
The next morning he could not rise; and to-day, too, he has kept his bed.
But he saw his generals in the afternoon and talked to them about his
plans. I understood from Perdiccas that he seemed weak, but was as clear
in mind as ever. And now, my friends, I should recommend you not to leave
Babylon till this matter is settled one way or another. If Alexander
should die—which the gods forbid—there is no knowing what may happen; and
there is a proverb which I, and I dare say you, have often found to be
true, that the absent always have the worst of it.”
In obedience to this suggestion the two friends remained in Babylon,
waiting anxiously for the development of events. On the second day after
the conversation with Philip, recorded above, Charidemus met the admiral
Nearchus,[78] as he was returning from an interview with the king. “How
is he?” he asked. “I can hardly say,” replied the admiral. “To look at
him, one would say that things were going very badly with him. But his
energy is enormous. He had a long talk with me about the fleet. He knew
everything; he foresaw everything. Sometimes his voice was so low that I
could hardly hear him speak, but he never hesitated for a name or a fact.
I believe that he knows the crew and the armament, and the stores of
every ship in the fleet. And he seems to count on going. We are to start
on the day after to-morrow. But it seems impossible.”
Three days more passed in the same way. The councils of war were still
held, and the king showed the same lively interest in all preparations,
and still talked as if he were intending to take a part himself in the
expedition. Then came a change for the worse. It could no longer be
doubted that the end was near, and the dying man was asked to whom he
bequeathed his kingdom. “To the strongest,” he answered, and a faint
smile played upon his lips as he said it. Afterwards an attendant heard
him muttering to himself, “They will give me fine funeral games.”[79] The
following day the generals came as usual; he knew them, but could not
speak.
And now, human aid being despaired of, a final effort was made to get
help from other powers. The desperately sick were sometimes brought
into the temple of Serapis, the pleasure of the god having been first
ascertained by a deputation of friends who spent the night in the temple.
Accordingly seven of the chief officers of the army inquired of the deity
whether he would that Alexander should be brought into the shrine. “Let
him remain where he is,” was the answer given in some mysterious way; and
the king was left to die in peace.
One thing, however, still remained to be done. The news of the king’s
dangerous illness had spread through the army, and the men came
thronging in tumultuous crowds about the gates of the palace. It was,
too, impossible to quiet them. They would see him; they would know for
themselves how he fared; if he was to be concealed, how could they be
sure that some foul play was not being practised. The murmurs were too
loud and angry, and the murmurers too powerful to be disregarded with
impunity. The officers and a certain number of the soldiers, selected
by their comrades, were to be admitted within the gates and into the
sick chamber itself. It was a strange and pathetic sight. The dying king
sat propped up with pillows on his couch. He had not, indeed, worn and
wasted as were his features, the aspect of death. The fever had given
a brilliance to his eyes and a flush to his cheek that seemed full of
life. And he knew his visitors. He had a truly royal memory for faces,
and there was not one among the long lines of veterans, weeping most of
them with all the abandonment of grief which southern nations permit
themselves, whom he did not recognize. Speak he could not, though now
and then his lips were seen to move, as though there were something that
he was eager to say. When Charondas passed him he seemed to be specially
moved. He bent his head slightly—for he could not beckon with his hands,
long since become powerless—as if he would speak with him. The Theban
bent down and listened intently. He could never afterwards feel sure
whether he had heard a sound or guessed the word from the movements of
the lips, but he always retained an absolute conviction that the king
uttered, or at least formed in his breath, the word “Dionysus.” He had
walked all his days in fear of the anger of the god. Now it had fallen
upon him to the uttermost. Thebes was avenged by Babylon.
That evening the great conqueror died.
* * * * *
“There was some truth after all in what Arioch told us,” said Charidemus
to his friend, about a week after the death of the king, “though I have
always felt sure that the spirit which he pretended to consult was a
fraud. But was there not something which concerned ourselves?”
“Yes,” replied Charondas, “I remember the words well. ‘Happy are they who
stand afar off and watch.’ And indeed it scarcely needs a soothsayer to
tell us that.”
“You have heard, I dare say,” said Charidemus, “of what Alexander was
heard to whisper to himself. ‘They will give me fine funeral games.’ Have
you a mind to take part in these same games?”
“Not I,” replied his friend; “two or three of the big men will win great
prizes, I doubt not; but little folk such as you and me will run great
risk of being tripped up. But what are we to do?”
The Macedonian paused a few moments, “I have thought the matter over many
times, and talked it over too with my wife, who has, if you will believe
me, as sound a judgment as any of us. You see that standing out of the
tumult, as I have been doing for the last five years and more, I have
had, perhaps, better opportunities for seeing the matter on all sides.
I always felt that if the king died young—and there was always too much
reason to fear, quite apart from the chances of war, that he would—there
would be a terrible struggle for the succession. No man living, I am
sure, could take up the burden that he bore. Many a year will pass before
the world sees another Alexander; but there will be kingdoms to be carved
out of the empire. That I saw; and then I put to myself the question,
what I should do. It seemed to me that there would be no really safe
resting-place where a man might enjoy his life in peace and quietness
in either Macedonia or Greece. I sometimes thought that there would be
no such place anywhere. And then I recollected a delightful spot where
I spent some of the happiest months of my life, while you were with the
king in Egypt, that inland sea in the country of the Jews. If there is
to be a haven of rest anywhere, it will be there. What say you? are you
willing to leave the world and spend the rest of your days there?”
“Yes,” said the Theban, “on conditions.”
“And what are these conditions?”
“They do not depend upon you, though you may possibly help me to obtain
them.”
The conditions, as my readers may guess, were the consent of Miriam, the
great-grand-daughter of Eleazar of Babylon, to share this retirement, and
the approbation of her kinsfolk. These, not to prolong my story now that
its main interest is over, were obtained without much difficulty. Eleazar
was dead. Had he been alive, it is likely that he would have refused
his consent, for he kept with no little strictness to the exclusive
traditions of his race. His grandson and successor was more liberal, or,
perhaps we should say, more latitudinarian in his views. Charondas bore a
high reputation as a gallant and honourable man; and he had acquired a
large fortune, as any high officer in Alexander’s army could hardly fail
to do, if he was gifted with ordinary prudence. A bag of jewels which
he had brought back from India, and which were estimated as worth four
hundred talents at the least, was one of the things, though it is only
fair to say, not the chief thing that impressed the younger Eleazar in
his favour. Miriam’s consent had virtually been given long before.
Charidemus and his wife had a painful parting with Barsiné. She
recognized the wisdom of their choice; but she refused to share their
retirement. “I must keep my son,” she said, “where his father placed him.
Some day he may be called to succeed him, and his subjects must know
where to find him.”[80]
In the spring of the following year the two households were happily
established in two charming dwellings at the southern end of the Lake
of Galilee. Though the friends never formally adopted the Jewish faith,
they regarded it with such respect that they and their families became
“Proselytes of the gate.”[81] It is needless to tell the story of their
after lives. Let it suffice to say that these were singularly uneventful
and singularly happy.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “Gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus.”
[2] About £20.
[3] Philip, King of Macedonia, who by this time was very nearly master
of Greece, had, it was said, consulted the Delphic oracle as to his
plans, and had received from the priestess an answer which may be thus
Englished:—
“Craft may be baffled, force may fail,
The silver spear shall still prevail.”
To the king himself a witticism of similar import was attributed: “I have
never found,” he said, “a citadel impregnable, into which I could send an
ass laden with silver.”
[4] This sentence was that the city of Thebes should be razed to the
ground and all its territory distributed among the allies; that all the
captive Thebans, with a few exceptions, should be sold as slaves; that
all who had escaped might be arrested and put to death wherever they
might be found.
[5] Homer insists on the _beauty_ of Achilles.
“Nireus from Syma brought three balanced ships,
Nireus, the fairest man that came to Troy
Of all the Greeks, _save Peleus’ blameless son_.”
[6] A complete description of the organization of the Macedonian army
would be out of place in a book of this kind. Any reader who may be
anxious to make himself acquainted with the subject will find it treated
with much fulness in Grote’s “History of Greece” (vol. xii. pp. 75-89).
For my purposes a brief outline will suffice. The Macedonian infantry
consisted (1) of the Pezetæri, or Foot Companions, who made up the
phalanx, of which I shall have occasion to say something hereafter; (2)
the Hypaspistæ, _i.e._, “shield-bearers,” originally a bodyguard for
the person of the king, but afterwards, as has been in the case of many
modern armies, our own included, enlarged into a considerable force of
light infantry; (3) irregular troops, javelin-throwers, archers, &c. A
select corps of actual body-guards was chosen out of the Hypaspistæ.
The horse was divided into (1) heavy cavalry, armed with a _xyston_ or
thrusting pike; (2) light cavalry, who carried a lighter weapon. These
may be called Lancers.
[7] On the Hellespont, the nearest point of Europe to Asia.
[8] When Lysander the Spartan was urged to destroy Athens, then at his
mercy, he replied that he could not “put out one of the eyes of Greece!”
[9] The names of the two were Charidemus and Ephialtes. Ephialtes was
killed at the siege of Halicarnassus. Of Charidemus we shall hear again.
[10] As a matter of fact Phocion was born in 401, and was therefore
sixty-seven years old.
[11] He was one of the “Royal Youths.” Q. Curtius gives this description
of this corps: “It was the custom among the Macedonian nobles to hand
over their grown-up sons to the king, for the performance of functions
which differed but little from domestic service. They took it in turns to
pass the night close to the door of the house in which the king slept.
They received the king’s horses from the grooms, and brought them to him
when he was ready to mount. They accompanied him when he hunted, and they
stood close to him in battle. In return, they were carefully instructed
in all the branches of a liberal education. They had the especial
distinction of sitting down to meals with the king. No one but the king
himself was allowed to inflict corporal punishment upon them. This
company was the Macedonian training-ground for generals and officers.”
[12] This soothsayer was Aristander, who was attached to the retinue of
the king, and accompanied him in all his campaigns.
[13] Chœrilus was a notoriously bad poet, to whom Alexander committed the
task of celebrating his achievements, a curious contradiction, Horace
thinks, to the discrimination which he showed in forbidding any one to
paint his portrait except Apelles, or to make a statue of him except
Lysippus. The joke about Chœrilus was that, having agreed to receive
a gold piece for every good verse and a stripe for every bad one, the
balance against him was so heavy that he was beaten to death.
[14] The oracle had declared that the first of the Greeks who should leap
on shore in the expedition against Troy would be slain. Protesilaüs, a
Thessalian prince, unhesitatingly took the doom upon himself, leapt from
his ship and was slain by Hector.
[15] The animal was probably stupefied with drugs. Otherwise it is
difficult to account for its standing still. It was considered a most
disastrous omen when an ox attempted to escape, and the occurrence was
probably rare. It must have happened very frequently unless some such
means had been used to prevent it.
[16] There was even then a fierce dispute about the site of Homer’s Troy.
Curiously enough it has been recently renewed, but the reader need not be
troubled with it either in its ancient or its modern form.
[17] The phalanx was a development due to the military genius of Philip
of Macedon on the tactics adopted by Epaminondas. This great Theban
commander massed his troops in a heavy column which he brought to bear
on one point of the enemy’s line. But the Theban column was powerless to
deal with the phalanx. At Chæronea it was utterly broken by it, all the
front rank soldiers falling on the ground. They were met by an impassable
_chevaux de frise_. Polybius writes (the passage is a fragment of his
twenty-ninth book): “The consul Lucius Æmilius [Paullus] had never seen
a phalanx till he saw it in the army of Perseus on this occasion [the
battle of Pydna]; and he often confessed to some of his friends at Rome
subsequently that he had never beheld anything more alarming and terrible
than the Macedonian phalanx; and yet he had been, if any one ever had,
not only a spectator, but an actor in many battles.” It is interesting to
note that the historian was himself one of the “friends at Rome,” to whom
the great general related this experience. “It is impossible,” he writes
elsewhere, “to confront a charge of the phalanx, so long as it retains
its proper formation and strength.” But he goes on to show that it could
not do this except when it could choose its own ground.
[18] Historians are unusually well agreed about the total of the force
which Alexander carried over into Asia. The highest numbers are 43,000
infantry and 6,500 cavalry; the lowest, 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry.
[19] By this phrase are meant the seven nobles who conspired to slay the
Magian usurper, who, after the death of Cambyses, personated the dead
Smerdis, and held the Persian throne for a few months. Darius, one of the
seven, became king, but to his fellow-conspirators and their descendants
certain privileges, as immunity from taxes and free access to the person
of the king, were accorded in perpetuity.
[20] The battle of the Granicus was fought on May 25th.
[21] Parmenio had been in command of the other wing of the army.
[22] A talent, I may remind my readers, was about equivalent to £200; a
drachma to something less than tenpence, a _franc_, it may be said, for
convenience of recollection, though, strictly speaking, the drachma and
the franc stand in the proportions of 39 to 38.
[23] The Taurus range may be said, speaking roughly, to be the eastern
boundary of Lesser Asia.
[24] The legend was that in the reign of this king a lion’s cub was born
in some marvellous way, that an oracle declared that if the creature
were carried round the fortifications of the city they never could be
taken; that it was so carried round, but that when the bearers came to
the citadel, it seemed so absurd that a place so strong could be in any
danger of capture, the king ordered that it should not be carried any
further. But this was the very place which was successfully attacked by
the soldiers of Cyrus, when that king was besieging Crœsus the Lydian in
his capital.
[25] The Princess Ada was one of the five children of Hecatomnus, King of
Caria, who was descended from the famous queen, “the Carian Artemisia,
strong in war,” as Tennyson describes her, who fought at Salamis. It
was the custom of the Carian reigning house (as it was afterwards of
the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt) for brothers to marry sisters.
Hecatomnus, dying in 379, was succeeded by his son Mausolus and his
daughter Artemisia. Mausolus died in 352, and was succeeded by his widow.
She reigned alone for two years, and was succeeded by Idrieus and Ada,
her father’s second son and second daughter. Idrieus died 344, and Ada
reigned alone, till in 340 she was expelled by her youngest brother,
Pixodarus. The daughter of the usurper was married to a Persian noble
who, on his father-in-law’s death in 335, received Caria as a satrapy.
[26] “First in the large-experienced craft” is the title with which
the writer or transcriber of his epitaph apostrophises him. I say
“transcriber” because the epigram is found in the Greek Anthology as well
as among the remains of Halicarnassus.
[27] In the epitaph on Herodotus, it is said that he left Halicarnassus,
his native town, to “escape from ridicule.”
[28] “Let no one enter who knows not geometry,” was written on the door
of the house in which Plato taught the chosen few. His popular lectures
were addressed to much larger audiences.
[29] These are allusions to the story in the Odyssey. It is “Memnon
the god-like, the goodliest man in the host,” the “son of the Day-dawn
light,” by whom Antilochus was slain. But the story is told by
post-Homeric writers. Dictys Cretensis says, that Memnon came with an
army of Ethiopians and Indians from Caucasus to Troy, that he slew
Antilochus, when that hero tried to rescue his father the aged Nestor,
and that he was himself slain by Achilles.
[30] B.C. 371.
[31] Gibraltar.
[32] This island was Britain, and is so described by the Massilian
geographer Pytheas.
[33] About £400.
[34] Alexander did send such of his troops as were newly married to spend
the winter of 334-3 at home, and made himself exceedingly popular by so
doing.
[35] The _Peplos_ was the sacred robe destined to adorn the statue of the
goddess. It was carried, spread like a sail on a mast, much after the
fashion of the banners used in processions now-a-days. It was embroidered
with figures, the Battle of the Giants, in which Athené was represented
as playing an important part, being one of the chief subjects. The
_Basket-bearers_ were maidens who carried baskets on their heads
containing various sacred things used in the worship. It was necessary
that they should be of unmixed Athenian descent, and the office was
considered a great honour. Their hair was powdered; they carried strings
of figs in their hands, and parasols were held over their heads.
[36] It was about _seventy_ feet.
[37] This was the crushing defeat which led to the capture of Athens and
the termination of the Peloponnesian War.
[38] The Lyceum was a _gymnasium_, _i.e._, a place where athletic
exercises were practised, in the eastern suburb of Athens, with covered
walks round it. In the largest of these, called for distinction’s sake
_The Walk_, Aristotle was accustomed to teach. It was thus that his
school got the name of the “Peripatetics.”
[39] Antipater, who was left in charge of Macedonia and the home
provinces by Alexander when he started on his Asian expedition.
[40] 333 B.C.
[41] It was founded by Sardanapalus (Assur-bani-pal), built, according to
the legend, along with Anchialus, in a single day.
[42] Charidemus, it will be remembered, was one of the Athenians exiled
at the demand of Alexander after the fall of Thebes. He had taken refuge
with Darius.
[43] The modern Thipsach (the _Passage_).
[44] Three thousand talents, equivalent to about £600,000.
[45] At Susa fifty thousand talents, or about £11,500,000, were found; at
Persepolis one hundred and twenty thousand, or £27,600,000; huge sums,
but nevertheless not equal to the amounts held in bullion and coin by the
Banks of England and France.
[46] Since Ahab (about 900 B.C.) had made peace with Benhadad, King
of Syria, on condition that he should have “streets” in Damascus, as
Benhadad’s father had had them in Samaria.
[47] Tyre stood a siege of nearly thirteen years from Nebuchadnezzar’s
army, but was at last compelled to capitulate. “Her prestige and her
commerce dwindled; she was not allowed to rebuild her suburb upon
the mainland (Palæ-tyrus), which remained in ruins till the time of
Alexander; and she lost for a time the leading position among Phœnician
cities, which seems to have passed to Sidon.” (Professor Rawlinson’s
“Phœnicia,” pp. 173-4.)
[48] Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, hurled the young Scamandrius or
Astyanax, son of Hector and Andromaché, from the walls of Troy.
[49] Very possibly this had something to do with the extravagancies of
his later years, when he assumed the Persian dress, lived in Persian
fashion, and even demanded Oriental prostrations from his attendants. The
attempt which he made to combine Macedonian and Persian soldiers in the
phalanx was certainly a part of the same scheme.
[50] This was by the caravan road from Damascus to Egypt. The road
crossed the Jordan at the north of the Lake of Galilee, and then struck
westward across the country till it reached the Maritime Plain. Somewhere
about Joppa a traveller to Jerusalem left the caravan road turning
eastward to make his way up to Jerusalem. The distance would be 136 miles.
[51] According to Herodotus (viii. 97) the work was commenced as a blind
to conceal from the Greeks and from his own people the king’s resolution
to return to Asia, after his defeat at Salamis.
[52] Thirteen years.
[53] This was not, as my readers may fancy, an anticipation of Peter
the Great’s sojourn at Deptford, for the purpose of learning the art
of shipbuilding. Abdalonymus (Abd-Elomin, “servant of the gods”), whom
Hephaestion, acting for Alexander, had made King of Sidon, though
of royal descent, was a working man (“on account of his poverty he
cultivated a garden near the city for a humble remuneration,” says
Curtius), and his son may well have gone to work for his livelihood in
the dockyards of Tyre.
[54] When Tyre was taken the crews of the Sidonian galleys did actually
rescue a number of the inhabitants, who would otherwise have been slain
or sold into captivity.
[55] Herodotus says it was of emerald, but Sir J. G. Wilkinson (in Prof.
Rawlinson’s “Herodotus”) notes that it was doubtless of green glass,
glass having been manufactured in Egypt even thousands of years before
the time of Herodotus.
[56] Nearly two hundred miles.
[57] Democedes was a physician of Crotona, whose services were engaged
by the cities of Ægina and Athens and by Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos,
in succession, at increasing salaries (£344, £406, £487 10s.). He was
taken prisoner in company with Polycrates and sent up to Susa. Here he
remained for a time unnoticed among the king’s slaves. Darius chanced to
sprain his ankle, in leaping from his horse, and the Egyptian physicians
who were called in failed to effect a cure. Some courtier had chanced to
hear that Polycrates had had a famous physician in attendance on him,
and suggested that his advice should be asked. He was brought as he was,
“clothed in rags and clanking his chains,” into the king’s presence.
It was only under threat of torture that he confessed his knowledge of
medicine. But he treated the injury with success, and was amply rewarded,
the king giving him two pairs of golden chains, and each of the royal
wives dipping a saucer into a chest of gold coins and pouring the
contents into his hands so bountifully that the slave who followed him
was enriched by the stray pieces. He afterwards healed Atossa, Darius’s
principal queen, of a dangerous carbuncle. By a stratagem which I have
not space here to describe he got back to his native city, where he
married the daughter of the great athlete Milo, and finally settled.
[58] About £1,220.
[59] Between two and three in the morning.
[60] “Its name,” says Curtius, “is given to it from its rapidity, for
in the Persian tongue Tigris is the word for an arrow” (iv. 9, 16).
The Biblical word Chiddekel or Hiddekel (Genesis ii. 14) is said to be
compounded of two forms _Chid_ or _Hid_, “river,” and _dekel_ an arrow.
[61] Now _Erbil_, a station on the caravan-route between Erzeroum and
Baghdad.
[62] So Arrian says, writing with the two contemporary memoirs of
Alexander’s generals before him. These two were Ptolemy, afterwards King
of Egypt, and Aristobulus, a soldier of considerable repute.
[63] Now called the Great Zab.
[64] Susa was the official capital of the kingdom; Babylon, though fallen
somewhat from its former greatness, was still the largest city. One might
compare them to St. Petersburg and Moscow, but that Moscow is intensely
Russian in feeling, while Babylon was probably strong by Anti-Persian. It
had not forgotten its own independence, an independence which it tried
more than once to assert by arms.
[65] That described in 2 Kings xxiv. 13-16 as having happened in the
eighth year of Jehoiachin (B.C. 602).
[66] It seems probable that Astyages is to be identified with “Darius the
Mede” mentioned in the Book of Daniel as succeeding to the government of
Babylon after the death of Belshazzar.
[67] Five “darics” would be about equal to about £5 10s. The coin got its
name from the first Darius.
[68] The walls of Babylon were built of brick.
[69] Not even by Cortes and his Spaniards in the newly-conquered Mexico,
or by Pizarro in the still richer Peru.
[70] Equal to about eleven millions and a half. Two-thirds were in
uncoined gold and silver; the rest in gold darics. The average stock of
bullion and coin held by the Bank of England is about half as much again.
[71] The phrase is taken from the historian Curtius.
[72] About £150.
[73] We may compare, as a somewhat similar incident in modern times,
the plunder of the Chinese Emperor’s Summer Palace in Pekin in the
Chinese War of 1860. Happily modern feelings forbade the massacre
which accompanied the spoil of Persepolis; but the destruction of the
palace was a distinct act of vengeance on the wanton aggression and the
brutality of the Chinese ruler, who was personally punished by the loss
of his palace, just as the Persians were punished by the destruction of
their metropolis. A famous English poem, Dryden’s “Ode on St. Cecilia’s
Day,” attributes the destruction of Persepolis to a drunken freak of
Alexander; but there is no doubt that it was a deliberate act. Curtius
speaks of it as having been proposed at a council of war, and other
historians mention the unavailing resistance of Parmenio.
[74] Nine o’clock at night. The time of year seems to have been July.
[75] Maracanda is the modern Samarcand.
[76] The kingdom of Porus consisted of the eastern portion of the
Punjaub. The Hydaspes is the Djalan or Jelam, sometimes called Behât.
[77] This may be reckoned to have been midsummer in the year 326 B.C. He
reached Susa in the winter of 324. But the chronology of the latter part
of the campaign is uncertain.
[78] Nearchus had been in command of the fleet which had taken part in
Alexander’s operations in the further East, and he was now about to
command it again in the expedition which was about to be made against
Arabia.
[79] The funeral games would be the wars fought by his successors to
determine who was the “strongest,” named as the legatee of his power. The
prediction was amply fulfilled.
[80] As this child does not come into my story, a few words may be given
to describe his fate. The name given to him was Heracles, Heracles
being the Greek divinity with whom the Tyrian Melkarth was commonly
identified. Brought up by his mother in the retirement described above,
he was mentioned as a possible successor after Alexander’s death. The
proposition met with no favour at the time, but eleven years later his
claims were advanced by Polysperchon, one of the generals who engaged in
the struggle for the fragments of Alexander’s empire. He was persuaded
to leave his retirement, and, as being the only surviving child of the
emperor, seemed likely to become an important person. Cassander, who
had usurped the throne of Macedonia, marched against Polysperchon,
who had the young prince and his mother in his camp, but found his
troops unwilling to act against Alexander’s son. He proceeded to bribe
Polysperchon with the offer of the government of the Peloponnese, if
he would abandon the young man’s cause. Polysperchon caused him to be
murdered, and Barsiné with him.
[81] “The Rabbins distinguish two classes of proselytes, viz.,
_proselytes of righteousness_, who received circumcision, and bound
themselves to keep the whole Mosaic law, and to comply with all the
requirements of Judaism, and _proselytes of the gate_, who dwelt among
the Jews, and although uncircumcised, observed certain specified laws,
especially the seven precepts of Noah (as the Rabbins called them),
_i.e._, against the seven chief sins, idolatry, blasphemy against God,
parricide, unchastity, theft or plundering, rebellion against rulers, and
the use of ‘flesh with the blood thereof.’”
THE END.
The Gresham Press,
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CHILWORTH AND LONDON.
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