Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/241

 ALEXANDER. 233 after, and was thought to presage better. For Proxenus, a Macedonian, who was the chief of those who looked to the king's furniture, as he was tweaking up the ground near the river Oxus, to set up the royal pavilion, discov- ered a spring of a fat, oily liquor, which after the top was taken off, ran pure, clear oil, without any difference either of taste or smell, having exactly the same smooth- ness and brightness, and that, too, in a country where no olives grew. The water, indeed, of the river Oxus, is said to be the smoothest to the feeling of all waters, and to leave a gloss on the skins of those who bathe them- selves in it. Whatever might be the cause, certain it is that Alexander was wonderfully pleased with it, as ap- pears by his letters to Antipater, where he speaks of it as one of the most remarkable presages that God had ever favored him with. The diviners told him it signified his expedition would be glorious in the event, but very pain- ful, and attended with many difficulties; for oil, they said, was bestowed on mankind by God as a refreshment of their labors. Nor did they judge amiss, for he exposed himself to many hazards in the battles which he fought, and received very severe wounds, but the greatest loss in his army was occasioned through the unwholesomeness of the air, and the want of necessary provisions. But he still applied him- self to overcome fortune and whatever opposed him, by resolution and virtue, and thought nothing impossible to true intrepidity, and on the other hand nothing secure or strong- for cowardice. It is told of him that when he be- sieged Sisimithres, who held an inaccessible, impregnable rock against him, and his soldiers began to despair of taking it, he asked Oxyartes whether Sisimithres was a man of courage, who assuring him he was the greatest coward alive, " Then you tell me," said he, " that the place may easily be taken, since what is in command of it