Chapter 13

With some skill, Darius' army passed from the East into Cilicia, and thus got behind Alexander, who had gone two days' march into Syria; but on the tidings he turned back at once, and found that they had not guarded the passes between him and them. So he attacked them close to Issus, and there again gained a great victory. When Darius saw his Immortals giving way, he was seized with terror, sprang out of his royal chariot, mounted on horseback, and never rested till he was on the other side of the Euphrates.

Still there was a sharp fight, and Alexander was slightly wounded in the thigh; but when all the battle was over he came to the tents of Darius, and said he would try a Persian bath. He was amused to find it a spacious curtained hall, full of vessels of gold and silver, perfumes and ointments, of which the simpler Greeks did not even know the use, and with a profusion of slaves to administer them. A Persian feast was ready also; but just as he was going to sit down to it he heard the voice of weeping and wailing in the next tent, and learned that it came from Darius' family. He rose at once to go and comfort the old mother, Sisygambis, and went into her tent with Hephaestion. Both were plainly dressed, and Hephaestion was the taller, so that the old queen took him for the king, and threw herself at his feet. When she saw her mistake she was alarmed, but Alexander consoled her gently by saying, "Be not dismayed, mother; this is Alexander's other self." And he continued to treat her with more kindness and respect than she had ever met with before, even from her own kindred; nor did he ever grieve her but once, when he showed her a robe, spun, woven, and worked by his mother and sisters for him, and offered to have her grand-children taught to make the like. Persian princesses thought it was dignified to have nothing to do, and Sisygambis fancied he meant to make slaves of them; so that he had to reassure her, and tell her that the distaff, loom, and needle were held to give honour to Greek ladies. Darius had fled beyond the rivers, and Alexander waited to follow till he should have reduced the western part of the empire. He turned into Syria and Phoenicia, and laid siege to Tyre, which was built on an island a little way from the sea-shore. He had no ships, but he began building a causeway across the water. However, the Tyrians sallied out and destroyed it; and he had to go to Sidon, which he took much more easily, and thence obtained ships, with which he beat the Tyrian fleet, and, after great toil and danger, at last entered Tyre, after a siege of five months.

Then he marched along the shore to the Philistine city of Gaza, which was likewise most bravely defended by a black slave named Boetis. Alexander was much hurt by a stone launched from the walls, which struck him between the breast and shoulder, and when at the end of four months' siege the city was stormed, the attack was led by one of his cousins. A cruel slaughter was made of the citizens; and then Alexander marched up the steep road to Jerusalem, expecting another tedious siege. Instead of this, he beheld a long procession in white bordered with blue, coming out at the gates to meet him. All the Priests and Levites, in their robes, came forth, headed by Jaddua, the High Priest, in his beautiful raiment, and the golden mitre on his head inscribed with the words, "Holiness unto the Lord." So he had been commanded by God in a vision; and when Alexander beheld the sight, he threw himself from his horse, and adored the Name on the mitre. He told his officers that before he set out from home, when he was considering of his journey, just such a form as he now beheld had come and bidden him fear not, for he should be led into the East, and all Persia should be delivered to him. Then the High Priest took him to the outer court of the temple, and showed him the very prophecies of Daniel and Zechariah where his own conquests were foretold.

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CHAP. XXIX. ALEXANDER'S EASTERN CONQUESTS. B.C. 331-328.

Alexander's next step was into Egypt, where the people had long desired to drive out the Persians, and welcomed him gladly. He wished to make a Greek settlement in Egypt, and bring Greek and Egyptian learning together; so at the delta of the Nile he built the great city of Alexandria, which still remains as important as ever.

So powerful did he feel himself, that a fancy crossed his mind that, after all, he was no mere man, but the son of Jupiter, and a demi-god, like Bacchus, or Hercules of old. There was a temple to the Egyptian god Ammon, on an oasis, a fertile spot round a spring in the middle of the desert, with an oracle that Alexander resolved to consult, and he made his way thither with a small chosen band. The oasis was green with laurels and palms; and the emblem of the god, a gold disk, adorned with precious stones, and placed in a huge golden ship, was carried to meet him by eighty priests, with maidens dancing round them. He was taken alone to the innermost shrine. What he heard there he never told; but after this he wore rams' horns on his helmet, because a ram's head was one sign of the god, whom the Greeks made out to be the same as Jupiter; and from this time forward he became much more proud and puffed up, so that it is likely that he had been told by this oracle just what pleased him.

He then went back to Tyre, and thence set out for the East. A bridge was thrown across the Euphrates, but the Tigris was forded by the foot soldiers, holding their shields above their heads out of the water. On the other side Darius was waiting with all the men of the East to fight for their homes, not for distant possessions, as had been the lands of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. The Greeks had four days' march along the banks of the Tigris before coming in sight of the Persian host at Arbela. It was so late that the two armies slept in sight of one another. Parmenio advised the king to make a night attack, but all the answer he got was, "It would be base to steal a victory;" and when he came in the morning to say that all was ready, he found his master fast asleep, and asked him how he could rest so calmly with one of the greatest battles in the world before him. "How could we not be calm," replied Alexander, "since the enemy is coming to deliver himself into our hands?"

He would not wear such a corslet as had been crushed into his shoulder at Gaza, but put on a breastplate of thick quilted linen, girt with a broad leather belt, guarded with a crust of finely-worked metal, and holding a light, sharp sword. He had a polished steel helmet, a long spear in his right hand, and a shield on his left arm; and thus he went forth to meet Darius, who came in the midst of 200 chariots, armed with scythes, and fifteen trained elephants. He had so many troops that he intended to close the wings of his army in upon the Greeks, fold them up, and cut them off; but Alexander, foreseeing this, had warned his men to be ready to face about on any side, and then drew them up in the shape of a wedge, and thus broke into the very heart of the Immortal band, and was on the point of taking Darius prisoner, when he was called off to help Parmenio, whose division had been broken, so that the camp was threatened. Alexander's presence soon set all right again, and made the victory complete; but Darius had had time to get away, and was galloping on a swift horse to the Armenian mountains. There was nobody left to defend Assyria, and Alexander marched in through the brazen gates of Babylon, when the streets were strewn with flowers, and presents of lions and leopards borne forth to greet the conqueror.

The great temple of Bel had been partly ruined by the fire-worshipping Persians, and Alexander greatly pleased the Babylonians by decreeing that they might restore it with his aid; but the Jews at Babylon would not work at an idol temple, which they believed to be also the tower of Babel, and on their entreaty Alexander permitted them to have nothing to do with it.

After staying thirty days at Babylon, he went on to Susa, where he found the brazen statues which Xerxes had carried away from the sack of Athens. He sent them home again, to show the Greeks that he had avenged their cause. When he came to Fars--or, as the Greeks called it, Persepolis--a wretched band of Greek captives came out to meet him, with their eyes put out, or their noses, ears, hands, or feet cut off. The Greeks never tortured: it was a dreadful sight to them, and the king burst into tears, and promised to send all safe home, but they begged him, instead, to help them to live where they were, since they were ashamed to show themselves to their kindred. Their misery made Alexander decide on giving the city up to plunder; the men were killed, the women and children made slaves. He meant to revenge on the Persian capital all that the Great Kings had inflicted on the Greek cities, and one Corinthian actually shed tears of joy at seeing him on the throne, exclaiming, "What joy have those Greeks missed who have not seen Alexander on the throne of Darius!"

[Picture: Princes of Persia]

Poor Darius had pushed on into the mountains beyond Media, and thither Alexander pursued him; but his own subjects had risen against him, and placed him in a chariot bound with golden chains. Alexander dashed on in pursuit with his fleetest horsemen, riding all night, and only resting in the noonday heat, for the last twenty-five miles over a desert without water. At daybreak he saw the Persian host moving along like a confused crowd. He charged them, and there was a general flight, and presently a cry that Darius was taken. Alexander galloped up and found the unhappy king on the ground, speechless and dying, pierced with javelins by his own subjects, who would not let him fall alive into the enemy's hands, and supported by a Macedonian soldier, who had given him drink, and heard his words of gratitude to Alexander for his kindness to his family, and his hopes that the conqueror would avenge his death, and become sovereign of the world. Alexander threw his own mantle over the body, and caused it to be embalmed, and buried in the sepulchres of the Persian kings.

Now that the victory was gained, the Greeks wanted to go home, and keep all the empire subject to them; but this was not Alexander's plan. He meant to spread Greek wisdom and training over all the world, and to rule Persians as well as Greeks for their own good. So, though he let the Greek allies go home with pay, rewards, and honours, he kept his Macedonians, and called himself by the Persian title, Shah in Shah, King of Kings, crowned himself with the Persian crown, and wore royal robes on state occasions. The Macedonians could not bear the sight, especially the nobles, who had lived on almost equal terms with him. There were murmurs, and Parmenio was accused of being engaged in a plot, and put to death. It was the first sad stain on Alexander's life, and he fell into a fierce and angry mood, being fretted, as it seems, by the murmurs of the Macedonians, and harassed by the difficulties of the wild mountainous country on the borders of Persia, where he had to hunt down the last Persians who held out against him. At a town called Cyropolis, a stone thrown from the walls struck him on the back of the neck, and for some days after he could not see clearly, so that some harm had probably been done to his brain. A few days later he was foolish enough to indulge in a wine-drinking banquet, at which some flatterers began to praise him in such an absurd manner that Clitus, the son of his good foster-mother Lanika, broke out in anger at his sitting still to listen to them. "Listen to truth," he said, "or else ask no freemen to join you, but surround yourself with slaves."

Alexander, beside himself with rage, leaped up, feeling for his dagger to kill Clitus, but it was not in his belt, and they were both dragged backwards and held by their friends, until Alexander broke loose, snatched a pike from a soldier, and laid Clitus dead at his feet; but the moment he saw what he had done, he was hardly withheld from turning the point against himself, and then he shut himself up in his chamber and wept bitterly, without coming out or tasting food for three days. He caused Clitus to be buried with all honours, and offered great sacrifices to Bacchus, thinking that it was the god's hatred that made him thus pass into frenzy when he had been drinking wine.

He spent three years in securing his conquest over the Persian empire, where he won the love of the natives by his justice and kindness, and founded many cities, where he planted Greeks, and tried to make schools and patterns for the country round. They were almost all named Alexandria, and still bear the name, altered in some shape or other; but though some of his nearer friends loved him as heartily as ever, and many were proud of him, or followed him for what they could get, a great many Macedonians hated him for requiring them to set the example of respect, and laughed at the Eastern forms of state with which he was waited on, while they were still more angry that he made the Persians their equals, and not their slaves. So that he had more troubles with the Macedonians than with the strangers.

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CHAP. XXX.--THE END OF ALEXANDER. B.C. 328.

Before establishing his empire, Alexander longed to survey the unknown lands further eastwards, and he led his army down the long, terrible Khybar pass to the banks of the Indus, where he fought a great battle with an Indian king called Porus, the bravest enemy he had yet met. At last Porus was defeated and made prisoner. He came to Alexander as if he were visiting him, and Alexander received him with like courtesy, and asked if he had any request to make. "None, save to be treated as a king," said Porus. "That I shall do, for my own sake," said Alexander, and the two became friends. In this country of the Indus, Alexander received the submission of thirty-five cities, and founded two more, one of which he named Bucephala, in honour of his good horse Bucephalus, which died in the middle of a battle without a wound.

Alexander longed to press on and see all the wonders of India, and the great river Ganges, but his Macedonians were weary of the march, and absolutely refused to go any further, so that he was obliged to turn back, in hopes of collecting another army, and going to the very shores of the Eastern Ocean.

He would not, however, return by the way he had gone, through the mountains, but he built ships on the river Jhelum, a tributary of the Indus, with which to coast along the shores to the mouth of the Euphrates. There were forests of fir and pine to supply the wood, but their inhabitants, the apes and monkeys, collected in such force on the top of a hill near at hand, that the Greeks thought they were human enemies, and were about to attack them, till a native explained the mistake.

They met more dangerous enemies when they came to Mooltan, the city of a tribe called the Malli. This was a fort shut in by a strong outer wall, within which trees were growing. Alexander planted a ladder against the wall, and mounted it first, but while his men were climbing up after him, it broke, and he stood alone on the wall, a mark for all the darts of the enemy. His guards stretched up their arms, begging him to leap back to them, but he scorned to do this, and jumped down within, among the enemy. They gave back for a moment, but, on finding that he was quite alone, closed in upon him. He set his back against the wall, under a fig-tree, and slew with his sword all who approached. Then they formed into a half-circle, and shot at him with barbed arrows, six feet long. By this time a few of his guards had climbed up the wall, and were coming down to his help, at the moment when an arrow pierced his breast, and he sank down in a kneeling posture, with his brow on the rim of his shield, while his men held their shields over him till the rest could come to their aid, and he was taken up as one dead, and carried out on his shield, while all within the fort were slaughtered in the rage of the Macedonians. When the king had been carried to his tent, the point of the arrow was found to be firmly fixed in his breast-bone, and he bade Perdiccas, his friend, cut a gash wide enough to allow the barbs to pass before drawing it out. He refused to be held while this was done, but kept himself perfectly still, until he fainted, and lay for many hours between life and death; nor was it for a week that he could even bear to be placed on board a galley, and lie on the deck under an awning as it went down the river, whilst his men were in raptures to see him restored to them.

He had to halt for some weeks, and then proceed along the Indus, until he reached the Indian Ocean, where the Greeks were delighted to see their old friend the sea, though they were amazed at the tides, having never seen any in their own Mediterranean. Alexander now sent an old commander, Nearchus, to take charge of the ships along the coast, while he himself marched along inland, to collect provisions and dig wells for their supply; but the dreadful, bare, waterless country, covered with rocks, is so unfit for men that his troops suffered exceedingly, and hardly anyone has been there since his time. He shared all the distresses of his soldiers, and once, when a little water, found with great difficulty, was brought him as he plodded along in the scorching heat of a noonday sun, he gave heartfelt thanks, but in the sight of all poured out the water, not choosing to take to himself what all could not share. In the midst the guides lost their way, and Alexander had to steer their course for a week by his own instinct, and the sun and stars, until after sixty days he reached a place which seems to be Bunpore, part of the Persian empire, where his difficulties were over, and Nearchus by-and-by joined him, after a wonderful voyage, of which he wrote an account, which has not come down to our times, so that we only know that no Greek believed in it. Alexander meant to try if he could sail through this strange sea, and return to Greece by the Pillars of Hercules, as we now know would have been quite possible.

He found, when he came back to Persia, that the governors he had left in the cities had thought that he was sure to perish in India, and had plundered shamefully, so that he had to punish severely both Greeks and Persians; but then, to make the two nations friends, he held an immense wedding feast at Susa, when eighty Greek bridegrooms married eighty Persian brides. Alexander himself and his friend Hephaestion had the two daughters of Darius, and the other ladies were daughters of satraps. The wedding was thus conducted: in one great hall eighty double seats were placed, and here the bridegrooms sat down to feast, till the brides entered, in jewelled turbans, wide linen drawers, silken tunics, and broad belts. Alexander rose, took his princess by the hand, and led her to his seat, and all the rest followed his example--each led his lady to his seat, kissed her, and placed her beside him, then cut a loaf of bread in two, poured out wine, and ate and drank with her.

[Picture: Supposed Walls of Babylon--From an Ancient Coin]

Hephaestion died soon after, at Ecbatana, of a fever he had not taken care of in time. Alexander caused his corpse to be brought to Babylon, and burnt on a funeral pile; while he himself was in an agony of grief, and sent to ask the oracle of Ammon whether his friend might not be worshipped as a hero-god. He himself had already demanded divine honours from the Greeks. The Athenians obeyed, but secretly mocked; and the Spartans grimly answered, "If Alexander will be a god, let him."

Alexander was at Babylon, newly fortifying it, and preparing it to be the capital of his mighty empire. He held his court seated on the golden throne of the Persian Shahs, with a golden pine over it, the leaves of emeralds and the fruit of carbuncles; and here he received embassies from every known people in Europe and Asia, and stood at the highest point of glory that man has ever reached, not knowing how near the end was.

Ever since Cyrus had taken Babylon by turning the Euphrates out of its course, the ground had been ill drained, swampy, and unhealthy; and before setting out on further conquests, Alexander wished to put all this in order again, and went about in a boat on the canals to give directions. His broad-brimmed hat was blown off, and lodged among the weeping willows round some old Assyrian's tomb; and though it was brought back at once, the Greeks thought its having been on a tomb an evil omen, but the real harm was in the heat of the sun on his bare head, which he had shorn in mourning for Hephaestion.

He meant to go on an expedition to Arabia, and offered a great sacrifice, but at night fever came on. The Greeks at home, who hated him, said it was from drinking a huge cup of wine at one draught; but this is almost certain not to be true, since his doctors have left a daily journal of his illness, and make no mention of any such excess. He daily grew worse, worn out by his toils and his wounds, and soon he sank into a lethargy, in which he hardly spoke. Once he said something about his empire passing to the strongest, and of great strife at his funeral games, and at last, when his breath was almost gone, he held out his signet ring to Perdiccas, the only one of his old friends who was near him. He was only thirty-three years old, and had made his mighty conquests in twelve years, when he thus died in 323. The poor old Persian queen, Sisygambis, so grieved for him that she refused all food, sat weeping in a corner, and died a few days after him.

[Picture: Site of Susa, Ancient Metropolis of Persia]

CHAP. XXXI. THE LAST STRUGGLES OF ATHENS. B.C. 334-311.

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The generals of Alexander met in dismay and grief the morning after his death at Babylon, and Perdiccas sadly laid the ring on the empty throne. There was no one to go on with what he had begun, for though he had a brother named Arridaeus, the poor youth was weak in mind; and Alexander's own son was a little, helpless infant. These two were joined together as Kings of Macedon and Shahs of Persia, and four guardians were appointed for them, who really only used their names as a means of getting power for themselves.

The Greek cities had always hated the yoke of Macedon, and hoped that Alexander would be lost in the East. They had been restless all this time, and had only been kept down by the threats and the bribes of Antipater, the governor of Macedon. When the news of Alexander's death first came to Athens, the people were ready to make a great outbreak, but the more cautious would not believe it, and Phocion advised them to wait, "for," he said, "if he is dead to-day, he will still be dead to-morrow and the next day, so that we may take council at our leisure."