Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/521

Rh ALEXANDER THE GREAT 483 been accustomed to pay tribute when they went from the one capital of their kingdom to the other. The same demand was now made of Alexander, who told them to come to the pass and take it, and then, following a new track which had been pointed out to him, descended on their villages, and taught them that they had now to deal with a sovereign of another kind. With Persepolis, Pasar- gadte, the city containing the tomb of Cyrus, opened its gates to receive the avenger of the iniquities of Xerxes. As such, he determined to inflict on Darius a signal punish ment. Five thousand camels and a crowd of mules bore away the treasure, amounting, it is said, to nearly thirty millions of pounds sterling, and then the citadel was set on fire. The men in the city were killed, the women made slaves. For a month Alexander allowed his main army to rest near Persepolis ; for himself there could be no repose. AVith his cavalry he overran, and, in spite of the rigours of winter, subdued, the whole region of Farsistan. Then re turning to Persepolis, he set forth on his march to Media, where the fugitive king had hoped to be safe from his pursuit. Darius had left Agbataua (Ecbatana) eight days before his pursuer could reach it. In this ancient fastness of the Median and Persian sovereigns Alexander deposited his treasures, exceeding, we are told, forty millions sterling in amount, under the charge of a strong Macedonian garrison headed by Parmenion. He then hastened on towards the Caspian gates, and learnt, when he had passed them, that Darius had been dethroned, and was now the prisoner of the Bactrian satrap Bessus. The tidings made Alexander still more eager to seize him. His efforts were so far successful that Bessus felt escape to be hopeless unless Darius could be made to leave his chariot and fly on horse back. He refused to obey, and was left behind, mortally wounded. Before Alexander could reach him, he was dead. The conqueror now regarded, or professed to regard, himself as the legitimate heir and successor of Xerxes. His course of conquest was still unbroken ; but successful forays against the Mardians on the northern slopes of Mount Elburz, against the Arians of the modern Herat, and the Drangians of the present Seistan, were followed by an exploit of another sort. He had heard that a conspiracy against himself had been revealed to Philotas, who for two days had kept the secret to himself. On being asked why he had done this, Philotas answered that the information came from a worthless source and deserved no notice. Alexander professed himself satisfied with the explanation; but Philotas, it seems, had spoken freely to his mistress Antigone of the large share which he and his father had Lad in the conquests of Alexander, and Antigone had in her turn become an informer. Of real evidence against Philotas there was none ; and a letter from Parmenion to his sons, found when Philotas was treacherously arrested, could tell against them only in the eyes of one who was resolved that Philotas should die. But Alexander could not rest content with his death alone. There had been nothing yet, even in the way of shadowy slander, to criminate Parmenion, and he resolved that the needful charges should be drawn by tortures from his son. Hidden by a curtain, the conqueror of the world watched the agonies and scoffed at the screams of the friend who had fought by his side in a hundred fights. The issue was, or was said to be, what he desired. Philotas had confessed ; and Alexander sent off to Ecbatana a man bearing two despatches, one to cheat Parmenion into a false security, the other carrying to the officers next to him in command the real order for his assassination. The old man was reading the lying letter of the despot when he received a mortal stab in his back. The soldiers, on hearing of what had been done furiously demanded the surrender of the murderers, and were with difficulty withheld from taking summary vengeance on seeing the written orders of Alexander. The command of Philotas, who had been at the head of the companion-cavalry, was shared between Clitus and Hephsestion ; and Alexander turned from private murder to public war. The autumn and winter 329 B.C. were spent in overrunning parts of the modern Afghanistan and Cabul, in the formation of the Caucasian Alexandria, and in the passage of the Hindu-Kush. He was now in the satrapy of Bessus. The surrender of Aornus and Bactra was followed by the passage of the Oxus and by the betrayal of Bessus, who was sent naked and in chains to the city which had been his capital. His next exploit (there is but slender ground for calling it into question) was the slaughter, in Sogdiana, of the descendants of the Milesian Branchidse, who, having incurred the hatred of their fellow Greeks by surrendering to Xerxes the treasures of their temple, had followed the despot on his retreat, and by him had been placed in these distant regions. Five generations had passed away since that time, when Alex ander gave the order that not one of them, man, woman, or child, should be left alive. From the ruined city, by way of Maracanda (Samarkand), he reached the Jaxartcs (which he believed to be the Tanais or Don), and having laid on its banks the foundation of another Alexandria, ho crossed the river to chase some Scythians who had shown themselves on the further side. The end of this chase marked the northernmost point reached in his campaigns. The winter was spent in the Bactrian city of Zariaspa, 329-323 where Alexander, summoning Bessus before him, had his B - c - nose and ears cut off, and then sent him to be killed by his countrymen at Ecbatana. In the following summer his army was gathered again at Maracanda. Eepose from field-work left room for the display of the overbearing pride to be expected from one who had convinced himself that he was a god, and for the boundless flattery of those who found their interest in keeping up the delusion. But there were not wanting others to whom this arrogance and servility were intensely disgusting, and whose anger was the more fierce from the necessity of avoiding all open expression of it ; and in the banquets of the divine son of Ammon there was always a risk that these pent-up feelings might burst forth like a winter torrent. The catastrophe was not long in coming. In a feast at Maracanda, Alexander, boasting of all that he had done since the death of his father, took credit further for the victories of Philip in the later years of his reign. The patience of Clitus had long been severely taxed, and in the heat of the revel all thought of prudence was cast aside. He spoke his mind plainly, telling Alexander th at all his exploits taken together were not equal to those of the man who had found Macedonia a poor and distracted country, and had left it a mighty and coherent state ; and that his own greatest victories had been won through tha aid of Philip s old soldiers, some of whom he had murdered. Stung to the quick, Alexander gave utterance to his rage ; but his retort only led Clitus to remind him of the battle field of the Granicus, where he had saved him from death by cutting off the arm of the Persian whose sword was raised to smite him, and to warn him that, if he could not bear to listen to the words of truth, he should confine himself to the society of slaves. Alexander felt for his dagger : it had purposely been placed out of his reach. He called to his guards to sound an alarm : they hesitated to obey the orders of a raving drunkard. Some of the more sober and moderate of the party held him in their arms, praying him to do nothing hastily. By way of answer he reviled them for keeping him a prisoner as Bessus had kept Darius, and shaking himself free, snatched a pike from one of the guards, and thrust it through the body of