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Rh let him die without seeing him. The watchers of the palace were obliged to open the doors to them, and the veterans of a hundred battle-fields filed sorrowfully past the couch of their dying commander. His body was carried to Alexandria, in Egypt, and there enclosed in a golden coffin, and a splendid mausoleum was raised over it. His ambition for celestial honors was gratified in his death; for in Egypt and elsewhere temples were dedicated to him, and divine worship was paid to his statues.

We cannot deny to Alexander, in addition to a remarkable genius for military affairs, a profound and comprehensive intellect. He had fine tastes, and liberally encouraged art, science, and literature. The artists of his times had in him a munificent patron; and to his preceptor Aristotle he sent large collections of natural-history objects, gathered in his extended expeditions. He had a kind and generous nature: he avenged the murder of his enemy Darius; and he repented in bitter tears over the body of his faithful Clitus. He exposed himself like the commonest soldier, sharing with his men the hardships of the march and the dangers of the battle-field.

But he was self-seeking, foolishly vain, and madly ambitious of military glory. He plunged into shameful excesses, and gave way to bursts of passion that transformed a usually mild and generous disposition into the fury of a madman. The contradictions of his life cannot, perhaps, be better expressed than in the words once applied to the gifted Themistocles: "He was greater in genius than in character."

Results of Alexander's Conquests.—The remarkable conquests of Alexander had far-reaching consequences. They ended the long struggle between Persia and Greece, and spread Hellenic civilization over Egypt and Western Asia. The distinction between Greek and Barbarian was obliterated, and the sympathies of men, hitherto so narrow and local, were widened, and thus an important preparation was made for the reception of the cosmopolitan creed of Christianity. The world was also given a universal language of