Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/75

 SHOCK TO HELLENIC SENllMKNT. 43 though such were the views which governed him at the moment, he came afterwards to look back upon tlie proceeding with shame and sorrow. The shock to Hellenic feeling, when a city was subverted, arose not merely from the violent extinction of life, property, liberty, and social or political institutions — but also from the obliteration of legends and the suppression of religious observances, thus wronging and provoking the local gods and heroes. We shall presently find Alexander himself sacrificing at Ilium,^ in order to appease the wrath of Priam, still subsisting and efficacious, against liimself and his race, as being descended from Neoptolemus the slayer of Priam. By his harsh treatment of Thebes, he incurred the displeasure of Dionysus, the god of wine, said to have been born in that city, and one of the princi- pal figures in Theban legend. It was to inspirations of the offended Dionysus that Alexander believed himself to owe that ungovernable drunken passion under which he afterwards killed Kleitus, as well as the refusal of his Macedonian soldiers to fol- low him farther into India.^ If Alexander in after days thua f.al nrf/iaiiTag urpsfi/jaen', u?Acjg rs Kal Ka}i?iU7naafiLvov ^^rtpi.,"ft7i9-aj -oZf tojd avfzfiaxuv iyicATJfxaaiv. ' Aniaii, i. 11, 13. To illustrate farther the feeling of the Greeks, respect ing the wrath of the gods arising from the discontinuance of worship where it had been long continued — I transcribe a passage from Colonel Sleeman's work respecting the Hindoos, whose religious feelings are on so many points analogous to those of the Hellenes : — " Human sacrifices were certainly oftered in the city of Suugor during the whole Mahratta government, up to the year 1 800 — when they were put a stop to by the local governor, Assa Sahib, a very humane man. I once heard a learned Brahmin priest say, that he thougiit the decline of his (Assa Sahib's) family and goyernment arose from this innovation. 'There is (said he) no sin in not offering human sacrifices to the gods, where none have been offered; but tchere the gods have been accustomed to them, they are very naturally annoyed ichen the rite is abolished, and visit the place and the peo- ple ivith all Icinds of calamity.'' The priest did not seem to think that there was anything singular in this mode of reasoning: perhaps tlirce Brahmin priests out of four would have reasoned in the same manner." (Slceman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. xv. p. 130J. '■^ Plutarch, Alex. 13: compare Justin, xi. 4; and Isokrates ad Philipp. I Or. V. 5.3.5), where he recommends Thebes to Philip on the ground of pre-eminent worship towards Herakles. It deserves notice, that while Alexander himself repented of the destruc-