Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/218

 jg(5 HISTORY OF GREECE. about to pass to so generous a conqueror. It is at least certain that he never lived to see Alexander himself.* Alexander had made the prodigious and indefatigable march- es of the last four days, not without destruction to many men and horses, for the express purpose of taking Darius alive. It would have been a gratification to his vanity to exhibit the Great Kino- as a helpless captive, rescued from his own servants by the sword of his enemy, and spared to occupy some subordi- nate command as a token of ostentatious indulgence. Moreover, apart from such feelings, it would have been a point of real ad- vantage to seize the person of Darius, by means of whose name Alexander would have been enabled to stifle all farther resist- ance in the extensive and imperfectly known regions eastward of the Caspian Gates. The satraps of these regions had now gone thither with their hands free, to kindle as much Asiatic sentiment and levy as large a force as they could, against the Macedonian conqueror ; who was obliged to follow them, if he wished to complete the subjugation of the empire. We can un- derstand therefore that Alexander was deeply mortified in de- rivino- no result from this ruinously fatiguing march, and can the better explain that savage wrath which we shall hereafter find him manifesting against the satrap Bessus. Alexander caused the body of Darius to be buried with full pomp and ceremonial, in the regal sepulchres of Persis. The last days of this unfortunate prince have been described with al- most tragic pathos by historians ; and there are few subjects in history better calculated to excite such a feeling, if we regard simply the magnitude of his fall, from the highest pitch of power and splendor to defeat, degradation, and assassination. But an impartial review will not allow us to forget that the main cause of such ruin was his own blindness — his long apathy after the ' This account of the remaikablc incidents immediately preceding the death of Darius, is taken mainly from Arrian (iii. 21), and seems one of the most authentic chapters of his work. He is very sparing in telling what passed in the Persian camp ; he mentions indeed only the communications made by the Persian deserters to Alexander. Curtius (v. 27-34) gives the narrative far more vaguely and loosely than Arrian, but with ample details of what was going on in the Persian camp. We should have been glad to know from whom these details were borrow-