Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/523

Rh 485 docked also. Humc.n blood could scarcely be shed with prudence on his pyre ; but he was resolved that his friend should begin his life in the unseen world with unstinted wealth, and the precious things destined to be consumed on his funeral pile represented, it is said, a sum of nearly two millions and a half pounds sterling. Messengers were sent to the Egyptian oracle to ask if the dead man might be worshipped as a god, and Eumenes, with many others, took care to anticipate its answer by offering him such honours as might fall in with the humour of the divine mourner. His grief seemed only to render his bursts of passion more fearful. None dared to address him except in language of the most grovelling flattery ; and, in the words of Plutarch, his only consolation was found in his old habit of man-hunting. The diversion was this time 23 B.C. furnished by some mountain tribes between Media and Farsistan. His march to Babylon steeped him still more in the intoxication of success. As he advanced on his road he was met by ambassadors not only from Illyrians and Thracians, from Sicily and Sardinia, from Libya and Carthage, but from Lucanians and Etruscans, and, as some said, from Rome itself. The lord of all the earth could scarcely look for wider acknowledgment or more devout submission ; but his self-gratulation may have been damped by the warning of the Chaldean priests that it would be safer for him not to enter the gates of Babylon. For a while he hesitated, but he had more to do than to heed their words. The preparations for his Arabian cam paign must be hurried on ; all that might be needed must be done to improve the navigation of the Euphrates, and a new city mustbe builtto rival, perhaps, the Alexandria which he had founded by the banks of the Nile. More than all, he had to celebrate the obsequies of Hephasstion, whose body had been brought to Babylon from Ecbatana. The feasting which everywhere accompanied the funeral rites of the ancient world was exaggerated by the Macedonians, as by other half rude or savage tribes, into prolonged revelry. Alexander spent the whole night drinking in the house of his friend Medius, and the whole of the next day in sleep ing off his drunkenness. Throughout the following night the same orgies were repeated. When he next awoke he was unable to rise. Fever had laid its grasp upon him, and each day its hold became tighter, while he busied himself incessantly with giving orders about his army, his fleet, his generals, until at length the powers of speech began to fail. When asked to name his successor, he said that he left his kingdom to the strongest. His signet-ring he took from his finger and gave to Perdiccas. Throughout the army the tidings of his illness spread consternation ; old grudges were all forgotten ; his veterans forced them selves into his presence, and with tears bade farewell to their general, who showed by signs that he still knew them. A few hours later Alexander died, after a reign of less than thirteen years, and before he had reached the age of thirty-three. That the schemes of conquest with which almost to the last moment he had been absorbingly busied would, if he had lived, have been in great part realised, can scarcely be doubted, unless we suppose that causes w r ere at work which at no distant period would have disturbed and upset the balance of his military judgment, and deprived him of that marvel lous power of combination and of shaping means to cir cumstances in which Hannibal and Napoleon are perhaps his only peers. It would be rash to say that such a darkening of his splendid powers might not have been brought about, even before he could^ reach middle age, by habits which, if we may judge from the history of his later years, were fast becoming confirmed. In truth, except as a general, he had lost the balance of his mind already. The ruling despot who fancied himself a god, who could thrust a pike through the body of one friend and sneer at the cries drawn forth from another by the agonies of torture, was already far removed from the far-sighted prudence of the politic statesman and ruler. His con quests served great ends ; and before he set out on his career of victory he may have had a distinct vision of these ends. Desire for knowledge ; the wish to see new forms of human and animal life ; the curiosity of traversing unknown lands, of laying open their resources, of bringing them all within the limits and the influence of the Mace donian, or, as he preferred to put it, the Greek world ; the eagerness to establish over all known, possibly over all unknown, regions a mighty centralised empire, which should avail itself of all their forces, and throw down the barriers which rendered the interchange of their wealth impossible, may have mingled with his alleged or his real purpose of avenging on the Persian king the misdoings of Xerxes, Darius, and Cyrus. But there is little evidence or none that these motives retained their power undiminished as he advanced further on his path of victory, while there seems to be evidence, only too abundant, that all other motives were gradually and even fast losing strength as the lust of conquest grew with his belief or his fancy of his superhuman power and origin. During his sojourn with Aristotle he must have learnt that real knowledge can be reached and good government insured only where there is freedom of thought and speech, and where the people obey their own laws. A few years later he had come to look on Aristotle as an enemy to be punished with scarcely less severity than Callisthenes. But at the least it must be remembered that his work was left un finished ; possibly he may have regarded it as little more than begun. Looking at it from this point of view, we can neither shut our eyes to the solid benefits accruing from his conquests both for the East and the West, nor, in spite of his awful crimes, can we place him in the rank of those scourges of mankind among whom Alaric and Attila, Genghiz, Tim our, and Napoleon stand pre-eminent. Of the several accounts of his career which have come down to us, not one, unhappily, is strictly contemporary ; and mere fairness calls upon us to give him the benefit of a doubt, when doubt can be justly entertained, in reference even to deeds which carry with them an unutterable horror and shame. It is impossible to deny that with a higher sense of duty Alexander would better have deserved the title of Great ; but the judgment which may be passed on some of his actions cannot affect his transcendent glory as the most consummate general of ancient times, and perhaps even of all ages. For an examination of the sources of the history of Alexander the Great, see Freeman, Historical Essays, second series, essay v. The history itself is presented in various aspects by Thirlwall, History of Greece, chaps, xlvii.-lv. ; Grotc, History of Greece, part ii., chaps, xci.-xeiv. : Niebuhr s Lectures on Ancient History. lectures xxiv.-lxxx. ; Williams, Life of Alexander the Great; St Croix, Examcn Critique dcs Ancicns Historicns d Alcxandre Je Grand; Droysen, GescMchte Alexanders dcr Grosscn. See also Finlay, Greece under the Romans, chap. i. ; Arnold, History of Rome, chap. xxx. For the geography of Alexander s Indian cam paigns, see Cunningham s Ancient Geography of India; and for the scientific results of his conquests, Ilumboldt s Kosmos, vol. ii., part ii., section 2. / ft _ w&amp;gt; c ^