Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus (1886). pp. 90-171 Books 11-20

BOOK XI.

Commencement of Alexander's reign; he prepares to invade Persia, I. II. ----Suppresses the seeds of revolt in Greece; destroys Thebes; banishes the Athenian orators, III. IV.----Sets out for Persia, V.----Battle of the Granicus, VI.----The Gordian knot, VII.----Alexander and his physician Philippus, VIII. Battle of Issus, IX.----Alexander becomes luxurious; takes Tyre, X.----Visits the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, XI.----Refuses peace to Darius, XII.----Battle of Arbela and its consequences, XIII. XIV.----Death of Darius Codomannus, XV.

I. IN the army of Philip there were various nations, and after his death different feelings prevailed among them. Some, oppressed with an unjust yoke, were excited with hopes of recovering their liberty; others, from dislike of going to war in a distant country, rejoiced that the expedition was broken off; others grieved that the torch, kindled at the daughter's nuptials, should have been applied to the funeral pile of the father. It was no small fear, too, that possessed his friends on so sudden a change, contemplating at one time Asia that |91 had been provoked, at another Europe ¹ that was not yet pacified, at another the Illyrians, Thracians, Dardanians, and other barbarous nations, who were of wavering faith and perfidious dispositions, and whom, if they should all rebel at once, it would be utterly impossible to resist.

To all these apprehensions the succession of Alexander was a relief, who, in a public assembly, so effectually soothed and encouraged the people, as to remove all uneasiness from those that were afraid, and to fill every one with favourable expectations. He was now twenty years old; at which age he gave great promise of what he would be, but with such modesty, that it was evident he reserved the further proofs of his ability for the time of action. He granted the Macedonians relief from all burdens, except that of service in war; by which conduct he gained such popularity with his subjects, that they said they had changed only the person, not the virtues, of their king.

II. His first care was about his father's funeral, when he caused all who had been privy to his murder to be put to death at his burial-place. The only one that he spared was Alexander Lyncestes ² his brother, preserving in him the man who had first acknowledged his royal authority, for he had been the first to salute him king. His brother Caranus, ³ a rival for the throne, as being the son of his step-mother, he ordered to be slain.

In the beginning of his reign he put down many tribes that were revolting, and quelled some seditions in their birth. Encouraged by his success, he marched with haste into Greece, where, after his father's example, having summoned the states to meet at Corinth, he was appointed general in his room. He then turned his attention to the war with Persia, of which a commencement had been made by Philip; but, as he was engaged in preparations for it, he received intelligence that "the Thebans and Athenians had gone over from his side to that of the Persians, and that the author of the defection was the orator Demosthenes, who had been bribed by |92 the Persians with a large sum of money, and who had asserted that the whole army of the Macedonians, with their king, had been cut off by the Triballi, producing the author of the information before an assembly of the people, a man who said that he had been wounded in the battle in which the king had fallen. In consequence of which statement," it was added, "the feelings of almost all the cities were changed, and the garrisons of the Macedonians besieged." To repress these commotions, he marched upon Greece with an army in full array, and with such expedition, that they could scarcely believe they saw him of whose approach they were so little aware.

III. In the course of his march he had exhorted the Thessaiians to peace, reminding them of the kindnesses ⁴ shown them by his father Philip, and of his mother's connexion with them by the family of the Aeacidae. ⁵ The Thessalians gladly listening to such an address, he was chosen, like his father, captain-general of the whole nation, and they resigned into his hand all their customs and public revenues. The Athenians, as they had been the first to rebel, were also the first to repent of their rebellion, turning their contempt for their enemy into admiration of him, and extolling the youth of Alexander, which they had previously despised, above the merits of old generals. Sending ambassadors, therefore, they deprecated war; and Alexander, listening to their eiir treaties, and severely reproving them for their conduct, laid aside hostilities against them. He then directed his march towards Thebes, intending to show similar indulgence, if he found similar penitence. But the Thebans had recourse, not to prayers or in treaties, but to arms, and, being conquered, suffered the severest hardships of the most wretched state of subjugation. It being debated in a council of war whether the city should be destroyed, the Phocians, Plataeans, Thespians, and Orchomenians, who were the allies of Alexander and sharers in his victory, dwelt upon the destruction of their own cities and the cruelty of the Thebans, urging against |93 them not only their present, but former, defection to the Persians, to the prejudice of the common liberty of Greece; "on which account," they said, "they were an object of general hatred, as was manifest from the fact that all the Greeks' had bound themselves by an oath to demolish Thebes as soon as they had conquered the Persians." They brought forward also the fabulous accounts of their old crimes, with which they had filled every theatre, to make them odious not only for their recent perfidy, but for their ancient infamy.

IV. Cicadas, one of those who had been taken prisoners, being permitted to speak in their behalf, said, that "they had not revolted from the king, whom they understood to be killed, but from the king's heirs; that what had been done in the matter was the fault, not of treachery, but of credulity;⁶ for which, however, they had already suffered severely by the loss of the flower of their soldiery; that there was left them only a multitude of old men and women, equally weak and harmless, but who had been so harassed by contumelies and insults, that they had never endured anything more grievous; and that he did not now intercede for his countrymen, of whom so few survived, but for their unoffending natal soil, and for a city which had given birth, not only to men, but to gods." ⁷ He endeavoured to work upon the king, too, from his superstitious regard for Hercules, who had been born at Thebes, and from whom the family of the Aeacidae was descended, and from the reflection that the youth of his father Philip had; been spent at Thebes; and he conjured him "to spare a city which adored some of his ancestors, who had been born in it, as gods, and saw others who had been brought up in it, princes of the highest dignity." But resentment was more powerful than entreaty. The city was in consequence demolished, the lands divided among the conquerors, and the prisoners publicly sold, their price being settled not for the profit of those who bought them, but according to the hatred of their enemies. ⁸ Their fate seemed to the Athenians |94   deserving of pity; and they therefore, though contrary to the king's prohibition, opened their gates for the reception of the exiles. At this proceeding Alexander was so displeased, that when they deprecated war by a second embassy, he forbore from hostilities only on condition that their orators and leaders, through confidence in whom they had so often rebelled, should be delivered up to him. The Athenians preparing to comply, lest they should be compelled to abide a war, the matter ended in this arrangement, that the orators should be retained and the generals banished; when the latter immediately went over to Darius, and formed no inconsiderable addition to the strength of the Persians.

V. When he set out to the Persian war, he put to death all his step-mother's relations ⁹ whom Philip had advanced to any high dignity, or appointed to any command. Nor did he spare such of his own kinsmen as seemed qualified to fill the throne, lest any occasion for rebellion should be left in Macedonia during his absence; and of the tributary princes he took such as were distinguished for ability to the war with him, leaving the less able at home for the defence of his dominions. Having then assembled his troops, he put them on shipboard, where, excited with incredible animation at the sight of Asia, he erected altars to the twelve gods to offer prayers for success in the war. He divided all his private property, which he had in Macedonia and the rest of Europe, among his friends, saying, "that for himself Asia was sufficient." Before any ship left the shore, he offered sacrifices, praying for "victory in that war, in which he had been chosen the avenger of Greece so often assailed by the Persians, to whom," he said, "a reign sufficiently long had been granted, a reign that had now reached maturity, and it was time that others, who would conduct themselves better, should take their place." Nor were the anticipations of the army different from those of the priace; for all the soldiers, unmindful of their wives and children, and of the length of the expedition from home, contemplated the Persian gold, and the wealth of the whole east, as already their own prey, thinking neither of the war nor its perils, but of riches only. When they arrived at |95 the continent of Asia, Alexander first of all threw a dart into the enemy's country, and leaped on the shore in full armour, like one dancing the tripudium.¹⁰ He then proceeded to offer sacrifices, praying that "those countries might not unwillingly receive him as their king." He also sacrificed at Troy, at the tombs of the heroes who had fallen in the Trojan war.

VI. Marching forward in quest of the enemy, he kept the soldiers from ravaging Asia, telling them that "they ought to spare their own property, and not destroy what they came to possess." His army consisted of thirty-two thousand infantry, and four thousand five hundred cavalry, with a hundred and eighty-two ships. Whether, with this small force, it is more wonderful that he conquered the world, or that he dared to attempt its conquest, is difficult to determine. When he selected his troops for so hazardous a warfare, he did not choose robust young men, or men in the flower of their age, but veterans, most of whom had even passed their term of service, and who had fought under his father and his uncles; ¹¹ so that he might be thought to have chosen, not soldiers, but masters in war. No one was made an officer ¹² who was not sixty years of age; so that he who saw the captains assembled at head-quarters,¹³ would have declared that he saw the senate of some ancient republic. None, on the field of battle, thought of flight, but every one of victory; none trusted in his feet, but every one in his arms.

King Darius, on the other hand, from confidence in his strength, abstained from all artifice in his operations; |96 observing that "clandestine measures were fit only for a stolen victory;" he did not attempt to repel the enemy from his frontiers, but admitted them into the heart of his kingdom, thinking it more honourable to drive war out of his kingdom than not to give it entrance. The first engagement, in consequence, was fought on the plains of Adrastia.¹⁴ The Persian army consisted of six hundred thousand men, who were conquered not less by the valour of the Macedonians than by the conduct of Alexander, and took to flight. The slaughter among the Persians was great. Of the army of Alexander there fell only nine foot-soldiers, and a hundred and twenty horse, whom the king buried sumptuously as an encouragement to the rest, honouring them also with equestrian statues, and granting privileges to their relatives. After this victory the greater part of Asia came over to his side. He had also several encounters with Darius's lieutenants, whom he conquered, not so much by his arms, as by the terror of his name.

VII. During the course of these proceedings, he was acquainted, on the information of a certain prisoner, that a conspiracy was forming against him by Alexander Lyncestes the son-in-law of Antipater, who had been made governor of Macedonia. Fearing, therefore, that, if he were put to death, some disturbance might arise in Macedonia, he only kept him in prison.¹⁵

He soon after marched to a city called Gordium, which is situated between the Greater and Lesser Phrygia, and which he earnestly desired to take, not so much for the sake of plunder, as because he had heard that in that city, in the temple of Jupiter, was deposited the yoke of Gordius's car; the knot of which, if any one should loose, the oracles of old had predicted that he should rule all Asia. The cause and origin of the matter was as follows. When Gordius was ploughing in these parts, with oxen that he had hired, ¹⁶ birds of every kind began to fly about him. Going to consult the augurs of the next town on the occurrence, he met at the |97 gate a virgin of remarkable beauty, and asked her "which of the augurs he had best consult." When she, having heard his reason for consulting them, and knowing something of the art from the instruction of her parents, replied, that "a kingdom was portended to him," and offered to become his wife and the sharer of his expectations. So fair a match seemed the chief felicity of a throne. After his marriage a civil war arose among the Phrygians; and when they consulted the oracles how their discord, might be terminated, the oracles replied that "a king was required to settle their disputes." Inquiring a second time as to the person of the king, they were directed to regard him as their king whom they should first observe, on their return, going to the temple of Jupiter on a car. The person who presented himself to them was Gordius, and they at once saluted him king. He dedicated the car, in which he was riding when the throne was offered him, "to kingly majesty," and it was placed in the temple of Jupiter. After him reigned his son Midas, who, having been instructed by Orpheus in sacred rites, filled all Phrygia with ceremonies of religion, by which he was better protected, during his whole life, than by arms. Alexander, having taken the city, and gone to the temple of Jupiter, requested to see the yoke of Gordius's car, and, when it was shown him, not being able to find the ends of the cords, which were hidden within the knots, he put a forced interpretation on the oracle, and cut the cords with his sword; and thus, when the involutions were opened out, discovered the ends concealed in them.

VIII. While he was thus engaged, intelligence was brought him that Darius was approaching with a vast army. Fearing the defiles, he crossed Mount Taurus with the utmost expedition, advancing, in one of his forced marches, five hundred stadia.¹⁷ Arriving at Tarsus, and being charmed with the pleasantness of the river Cydnus, which flows through the midst of the city, he threw off his armour, and, covered as he was with dust and sweat, plunged himself into the water, which was then excessively cold; when, on a sudden, such a numbness seized his nerves, that his voice was lost, and not only was there no hope of saving his life, but not even a means of |98 delaying death could be found. One of his physicians, named Philippus, was the only person that promised a cure; but a letter from Parmenio, which arrived the day before from Cappadocia, rendered him an object of suspicion; for Parmenio, knowing nothing of Alexander's illness, had written to caution him against trusting Philippus, as he had been bribed by Darius with a large sum of money. Alexander, however, thought it better to trust the doubtful faith of the physician, than to perish of certain disease. Taking the cup from Philippus, therefore, he gave him Parmenio's letter to read, and, as he drank, fixed his eyes upon the physician's countenance while he was reading. Seeing him unmoved, he became more cheerful, and recovered his health on the fourth day after.

IX. Meantime Darius advanced to battle with four hundred thousand foot and a hundred thousand horse. So vast a multitude of enemies caused some distrust in Alexander, when he contemplated the smallness of his own army; but he called to mind, at the same time, how much he had already done, and how powerful people he had overthrown, with that very moderate force. His hopes, therefore, prevailing over his apprehensions, and thinking it more hazardous to defer the contest, lest dismay should fall upon his men, he rode round among his troops, and addressed those of each nation in an appropriate speech. He excited the Illyrians and Thracians by describing the enemy's wealth and treasures, and the Greeks by putting them in mind of their wars of old, and their deadly hatred towards the Persians. He reminded the Macedonians at one time of their conquests in Europe, and at another of their desire to subdue Asia, boasting that no troops in the world had been found a match for them, and assuring them that this battle would put an end to their labours and crown their glory. In the course of these proceedings he caused the army occasionally to halt, that they might, by such stoppages, accustom themselves to endure the sight of so great a multitude. Nor was Darius less active in drawing up his forces. Rejecting the services of his officers, he rode himself through the whole army, encouraged the several divisions, and put them in mind of the ancient glory of the Persians, and the perpetual possession of empire vouchsafed them by the im mortal gods. Soon after a battle was fought with great spirit. |99 Both kings were wounded in it. The result remained doubtful until Darius fled, when there ensued a great slaughter of the Persians, of whom there fell sixty-one thousand infantry and ten thousand horse, and forty thousand were taken prisoners. On the side of the Macedonians were killed a hundred and thirty foot and a hundred and fifty horse. In the camp of the Persians was found abundance of gold and other treasures; and among the captives taken in it were the mother and wife, who was also the sister, of Darius, and two of his daughters. When Alexander came to see and console them, they threw themselves, at the sight of his armed attendants, into one another's arms, and uttered mournful cries, as if expecting to die immediately. Afterwards, falling at the feet of Alexander, they begged, not that they might live, but that their death might be delayed till they should bury the body of Darius. Alexander, touched with the respectful concern of the princesses for Darius, assured them that the king was still alive, and removed their apprehensions of death; directing, at the same time, that they should be treated as royal personages, and giving the daughters hopes of husbands suitable to the dignity of their father.

X. As he afterwards contemplated the wealth and display of Darius, he was seized with admiration of such magnificence. Hence it was that he first began to indulge in luxurious and splendid banquets, and fell in love with his captive Barsine for her beauty, by whom he had afterwards a son that he called Hercules. Not forgetting, however, that Darius was still alive, he despatched Parmenio to seize the Persian fleet, and commissioned some others of his friends to secure the cities of Asia, which, on hearing the report of the victory, had immediately submitted to the conqueror, the satraps of Darius surrendering themselves with a vast quantity of treasure. He next marched into Syria, where he was met by several princes of the east with fillets on their heads.¹⁸ Of these, according to their respective deserts, he received some into alliance; others he deprived of their thrones, and put new kings in their places. Above the rest Abdolonymus, appointed by Alexander king of Sidon, stood pre-eminent; a man whom, when he was living a life of poverty, being accustomed to draw water, and water gardens for hire, Alexander made |100 a king, setting aside the nobles, lest they should regard his favour as shown to their birth, and not as proceeding from the kindness of the giver.

The city of Tyre sending Alexander, by the hands of a deputation, a golden crown of great value, as a token of congratulation, he received their present kindly, and told them that "he intended to visit Tyre to pay his vows to Hercules." The deputies replying that "he would do that better at Old Tyre,¹⁹ and in the more ancient temple;" he was so provoked with them, because they evidently deprecated his visit, that he threatened their city with destruction. Bringing up his army, soon after, to the island, he was met with a hostile resistance, the Tyrians, from reliance on Carthage, being not less determined than himself. The example of Dido had stimulated the Tyrians; for that queen, after founding Carthage, had secured the empire over the third part of the world;²⁰ and they thought it would be dishonourable if their women should show more courage in acquiring dominion than they in defending their liberty. They removed to Carthage, therefore, such as were unfit for war, and sent at once for assistance, but were, not long afterwards, reduced by treachery.²¹

XI. Alexander next got possession of Rhodes and Cilicia ²² without an effort. He then went to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, to consult the oracle about the event of his future proceedings, and his own parentage. For his mother Olympias had confessed to her husband Philip, that "she had conceived Alexander, not by him, but by a serpent of extraordinary size." Philip, too, towards the end of his life, had publicly declared that "Alexander was not his son;" and he accordingly divorced Olympias, as having been guilty of adultery. Alexander, therefore, anxious to obtain the honour of divine paternity, and to clear his mother from infamy, instructed the priests, by messengers whom he sent before him, what answers |101 he wished to receive. The priests, as soon as he entered the temple, saluted him as the son of Ammon. Alexander, pleased with the god's adoption of him, directed that he should be regarded as his son. He then inquired "whether he had taken vengeance on all that had been concerned in the assassination of his father." He was answered that "his father could neither be assassinated, nor could die; but that vengeance for Philip's death had been fully exacted." On putting a third question, he was told that "success in all his wars, and dominion over the world, was granted him." A response was also given by the oracle to his attendants, that "they should reverence Alexander as a god, and not as a king." Hence it was that his haughtiness was so much increased, and a strange arrogance arose in his mind, the agreeableness of demeanour, which he had contracted from the philosophy of the Greeks and the habits of the Macedonians, being entirely laid aside. On his return from the temple of Ammon he founded Alexandria, and desired that that colony of the Macedonians might be considered the metropolis of Egypt.

XII. Darius, having fled to Babylon, entreated Alexander, in a letter, "to give him permission to redeem his prisoners," offering a large sum for their ransom. But Alexander demanded his whole kingdom, and not a sum of money, as the price of their release. Some time after, another letter from Darius was brought to Alexander, in which one of his daughters was offered him in marriage, and a portion of his kingdom. Alexander replied that "what was offered was his own," and desired him ''to come to him as a suppliant, and to leave the disposal of his kingdom to his conqueror." All hopes of peace being thus lost, Darius resumed hostilities, and proceeded to meet Alexander with four hundred thousand infantry and a hundred thousand cavalry. On his march he was informed that "his wife had died of a miscarriage, and that Alexander had mourned for her death, and attended her funeral; acting, in that respect, not from love, but merely from kindness of feeling; as Darius's wife had been visited by him but once, though he had often gone to console his mother and her little daughters."

Darius now considered himself indeed overcome, since, after losing so many battles, he was surpassed by his enemy even in kindnesses, and declared that it vas a consolation to him |102 since he could not conquer, to be conquered by such an enemy. He therefore wrote a third letter to Alexander, thanking him for not having acted as an enemy towards his family, and offering him a larger portion of his kingdom, even as far as the river Euphrates, another of his daughters in marriage, and thirty thousand talents for the other prisoners. To this Alexander replied, that "thanks were needless from an enemy; that nothing had been done by him to flatter Darius, or to gain the means of mollifying him, with a view either to the doubtful results of war, or to conditions of peace; but that he had acted from a certain greatness of mind, by which he had learned to fight against the forces of his enemies, not to take advantage of their misfortunes;" and he promised at the same time, that "he would comply with the wishes of Darius, if he would be content to be second to him, and not his equal; but that the universe could not be governed by two suns, nor could the earth with safety have two sovereigns; and that he must consequently either prepare to surrender on that day, or to fight on the next, and must promise himself no better success than he had already experienced."

XIII. On the next day they drew up their armies; when, on a sudden, before they came to battle, a deep sleep fell on Alexander, who was wearied with making arrangements. Nothing but the presence of the king being wanting, in order to commence the engagement, he was awakened, though with difficulty, by Parmenio, and as those about him asked the reason of his sleeping in the midst of danger, when he was sparing of sleep even in time of security, he answered that "he had been relieved from great concern, and that his repose was occasioned by sudden freedom from apprehension, since he should now engage with the forces of Darius in a body; whereas he had dreaded, if the Persians should divide their army, that the war would be greatly protracted." Before the battle commenced, each army was an object of admiration to its antagonists. The Macedonians admired the host of men opposed to them, their stature, and the beauty of their armour. The Persians were amazed that so many thousands of their countrymen had been defeated by so small a force. Nor did the kings forbear to ride round among their troops. Darius told his men, that "if a division of the enemy were |103 made, scarcely one man would fall to ten ²³ of his own armed followers." Alexander exhorted the Macedonians "not to be alarmed at the numbers of the enemy, their stature, or the strangeness of their complexion." He bade them remember only that "they were now fighting for the third time with the same adversaries; and not to imagine that they had been rendered braver by defeat, as they would bring into the field with them the sad recollection of former disasters, and of the blood shed in the two previous engagements;'' adding, that "Darius had the greater number of human beings, but he himself the greater number of men." He admonished them "to despise an army glittering with gold and silver, in which they would find more spoil than danger, since victory was to be gained, not by splendour of arms, but by the power of the sword."

XIV. Soon after, the battle was begun. The Macedonians rushed upon the swords presented to them, with contempt for an enemy whom they had so often defeated. The Persians, on the other hand, were desirous to die rather than be conquered. Seldom has there been so much blood shed in a battle. Darius, when he saw his army repulsed, wished himself to die, but was compelled by his officers to flee. Some advising that the bridge over the Cydnus should be broken down, in order to stop the advance of the enemy, he said that "he would not provide for his safety in such a way as to expose so many thousands of his followers to the foe; and that the road which was open to himself, ought also to be open to others." Alexander, meanwhile, made the most hazardous efforts; where he saw the enemy thickest, and fighting most desperately, there he always threw himself, desiring that the peril should be his, and not his soldiers'. By this battle he gained the dominion over Asia, in the fifth year after his accession to the throne. His victory was so decisive, that after it none ventured to rebel against him; and the Persians, after a supremacy of so many years, patiently |104 submitted to the yoke of servitude. After rewarding his soldiers, and allowing them to recruit their strength for thirty-four days, he took account of the spoil. He afterwards found forty thousand talents in the city of Susa. Next he took Persepolis, the metropolis of the kingdom of Persia, a city which had been eminent for many years, and which was filled with the spoils of the world, as was now first seen at its destruction. In the course of these proceedings, about eight hundred Greeks met Alexander, men who had been punished in captivity by mutilation of their bodies, and who entreated that, "as he had delivered Greece, he would also release them from the cruelty of their enemies." Permission was given to them to go home, but they preferred receiving portions of land in Persia, lest, instead of causing joy to their parents by their return, they should merely shock them by the horrid spectacle which they presented.

XV. Meanwhile, to gain the favour of the conqueror, Darius was confined in golden fetters ²⁴ and chains in a village of the Parthians named Thara; the immortal gods, I suppose, ordaining that the empire of the Persians should have its termination in the country of those who were to succeed them in dominion.²⁵ Alexander, hastening his march, arrived there on the following day, when he found that Darius had been conveyed from the place in the night, in a covered vehicle. Directing his army to follow him, he pursued the flying prince with six thousand cavalry. On his march he had several severe encounters, and advanced many miles without finding any traces of Darius. But while he was allowing the horses time to rest, one of the soldiers, going to a neighbouring spring, found Darius in the vehicle, wounded in several places, but still alive. One of the Persian captives being brought forward, the dying prince, knowing from his voice that he was his countryman, said that "he had at least this comfort in his present sufferings, that he should speak to one who could understand him, and that he should not utter his last words in vain." He then desired that the following message should be given to Alexander: that "he died without having done him any acts of kindness, but a debtor to him |105 for the greatest, since he had found his feelings towards his mother and children to be those of a prince, not of a foe; that he had been more happy in his enemy than in his relations, for by his enemy life had been granted to his mother and children, but taken from himself by his relatives, to whom he had given both life and kingdoms; and that such a requital must therefore be made them as his conqueror should please. For himself, that he made the only return to Alexander which he could at the point of death, by praying to the gods above and below, and the powers that protected kings, that the empire of the world might fall to his lot. That he desired the favour of a decent rather than a magnificent funeral; and, as to avenging his death, it was not his cause alone that was concerned, but precedent, and the common cause of all kings, which it would be both dishonourable and dangerous for him to neglect; since, in regard to vengeance, the interests of justice were affected, and, in regard to precedent, those of the general safety. To this effect he gave him his right hand, as the only pledge of a king's faith to be conveyed to Alexander." Then, stretching out his hand, he expired.

When this intelligence was communicated to Alexander, he went to see the body of the dead monarch, and contemplated with tears a death so unsuitable to his dignity. He also directed his corpse to he buried as that of a king, and his relics to be conveyed to the sepulchres of his ancestors.

BOOK XII.

Greece resumes hostilities in Alexander's absence, I.----Expedition of Alexander, king of Epirus, into Italy; Scythia invaded, II.----Alexander's luxury; Thalestris; Alexander assumes the Persian dress, III.----Effects of his conduct on his troops; his mode of conciliating them, IV,----Parmenio and Philotas put to death; further conquests of Alexander; Bessus delivered up to justice, V.----Death of Clitus; Alexander's grief, VI.----Alexander's pride; his march to the east; his ardour to surpass Bacchus and Hercules, VII. ----Overcomes Porus, VIII. ---- His danger among the Sygambri; reaches the mouth of the Indus; marries Statira, IX. X.----His munificence; he suppresses a mutiny; death of Hephaestion, XI. XII.----Alexander poisoned by the contrivance of Antipater, XIII. XIV.----His death, XV.----His eulogy, XVI.

I. ALEXANDER interred the soldiers, whom he had lost in the pursuit of Darius, at great expense, and distributed |106  thirteen thousand talents among the rest that attended him in that expedition. Of the horses, the greater part were killed by the heat; and those that survived were rendered unfit for service. All the treasure, amounting to a hundred and ninety thousand talents, was conveyed to Ecbatana, and Parmenio was entrusted with the charge of it. In the midst of these proceedings, letters from Antipater in Macedonia were brought to Alexander, in which the war of Agis king of Sparta in Greece, that of Alexander king of Epirus in Italy, and that of Zopyrion his own lieutenant-general in Scythia, were communicated. At this news he was affected with various emotions, but felt more joy at learning the deaths of two rival kings, than sorrow at the loss of Zopyrion and his army.

After the departure of Alexander from Macedonia, almost all Greece, as if to take advantage of the opportunity for recovering their liberty, had risen in arms, yielding, in that respect, to the influence of the Lacedaemonians, who alone had rejected peace from Philip and Alexander, and had scorned the terms on which it was offered. The leader in this insurrection was Agis, king of the Lacedaemonians, but Antipater, assembling an army, suppressed the commotion in its infancy. The slaughter, however, was great on both sides; for king Agis, when he saw his men taking to flight, dismissed his guards, and, that he might seem inferior to Alexander in fortune only, not in valour, made such a havoc among the enemy, that he sometimes drove whole troops before him. At last, overpowered by numbers, he fell superior to all in glory.

II. Alexander, too, the king of Epirus, having been invited into Italy by the Tarentines,* who desired his assistance against the Bruttians, had gone thither as eagerly as if, in a division of the world, the east had fallen by lot to Alexander, the son of his sister Olympias, and the west to himself, and as if he was likely to have not less to do in Italy, Africa, and Sicily, than Alexander in Asia and Persia. To this was added, that as the oracle at Delphi had forewarned Alexander the Great against treachery in Macedonia, so that of Jupiter at Dodona had admonished the other Alexander "to beware of the city Pandosia and the river Acheron;" and as both these were in Epirus, and he was ignorant that they were also to be found in Italy, he had the more eagerly fixed on this foreign expedition, in hope of escaping the dangers signified in the |107 warning. On his arrival in Italy, his first contest was with the Apulians; but when he learned the destiny appointed to their city, he soon concluded a peace and alliance with their king. The chief city of the Apulians, at that time, was Brundusium, which a party of Aetolians that followed Diomede, a leader rendered famous and honourable by his achievements at Troy, had founded; but being expelled by the Apulians, and having recourse to some oracle, they received for answer that "they would possess for ever the place which they had sought to recover," On this ground they demanded of the Apulians that their city should be restored, threatening them with war unless the demand should be complied with. But the oracle becoming known to the Apulians, they put the ambassadors to death, and buried them in the city, that they might have a perpetual abode there; and, having thus given the oracle a fulfilment, they long kept possession of the city. Alexander, hearing of this occurrence, and having great respect for the oracles of antiquity, made an end of hostilities with the Apulians.

He engaged also in war with the Bruttians and Lucanians, and captured several cities; and he formed treaties and alliances with the Metapontines, Pediculans, and Romans. But the Bruttians and Lucanians, having collected reinforcements from their neighbours, renewed the war with fresh vigour; when the king was slain near the city Pandosia and the river Acheron, not knowing the name of the fatal place before he fell in it, and understanding, as he was expiring, that the death, for fear of which he had fled from his country, had not been to be dreaded in his country. The Thurians ransomed his body at the public expense, and buried it.

During these events in Italy, Zopyrion, who had been left governor of Pontus by Alexander the Great, thinking that, if he did not attempt something, he should be stigmatized as indolent, collected a force of thirty thousand men, and made war upon the Scythians. But being cut off, with his whole army, he paid the penalty for a rash attack upon an innocent people.

III. When these occurrences were reported to Alexander, who was then in Parthia, he assumed a show of grief on account of his relationship to Alexander, and caused the army to mourn for three days. But while all his men were expecting, as if the war had been ended, to return to their country, and |108 were embracing in imagination their wives and children, he called a general assembly of the troops; in which he told them that "nothing had been done in so many glorious battles, if the barbarians more to the eastward should be left unmolested; that he had not sought the body, but the throne, of Darius; and that those who had revolted from his government must be punished." Having, by this speech, revived the spirits of his soldiers for new exertions, he subdued Hyrcania and the Mardians. Here Thalestris, or Minithya, queen of the Amazons, came to meet him, having travelled for twenty-five days, with three hundred women in her train, and through extremely populous nations, in order to have issue by him. Her appearance and arrival was a cause of astonishment to all, both from her dress, which was an unusual one for women, and from the object of her visit. To gratify her, thirteen days' rest was allowed by the king; and when she thought herself pregnant, she took her leave.

Soon after, Alexander assumed the attire of the Persian monarchs, as well as the diadem, which was unknown to the kings of Macedonia, as if he gave himself up to the customs of those whom he had conquered. And lest such innovations should be viewed with dislike, if adopted by himself alone, he desired his friends also to wear the long robe of gold and purple. That he might imitate the luxury too, as well as the dress of the Persians, he spent his nights among troops of the king's concubines of eminent beauty and birth. To these extravagances he added vast magnificence in feasting; and lest his entertainments should seem jejune and parsimonious,²⁶ he accompanied his banquets, according to the ostentation of the eastern monarchs, with games; being utterly unmindful that power is accustomed to be lost, not gained, by such practices.

IV. During the course of these proceedings, there arose throughout the camp a general indignation that he had so degenerated from his father Philip as to abjure the very name of his country, and to adopt the manners of the Persians, |109 whom, from the effect of such manners, he had overcome. But that he might not appear to be the only person who yielded to the vices of those whom he had conquered in the field, he permitted his soldiers also, if they had formed a connexion with any of the female captives, to marry them; thinking that they would feel less desire to return to their country, when they had some appearance of a house and home in the camp, and that the fatigues of war would be relieved by the agreeable society of their wives. He saw, too, that Macedonia would be less drained to supply the army, if the sons, as recruits, should succeed their veteran fathers, and serve within the ramparts within which they were born, and would be likely to show more courage, if they passed, not only their earliest days of service, but also their infancy, in the camp. This custom was also continued under Alexander's successors. Maintenance was provided for the boys, and arms and horses were given them when they grew up; and rewards were assigned to the fathers in proportion to the number of their children. If the fathers of any of them were killed, the orphans notwithstanding received their father's pay; and their childhood was a sort of military service in various expeditions. Inured from their earliest years to toils and clangers, they formed an invincible army; they looked upon their camp as their countiy, and upon a battle as a prelude to victory.

V. Alexander, meanwhile, began to show a passionate temper towards those about him, not with a princely severity, but with the vindictiveness of an enemy. What most incensed him was, that reflections were cast upon him in the common talk of the soldiers, for having cast off the customs of his father Philip and of his country. For this offence, Parmenio, an old man, next to the king in rank, and his son Philotas, were put to death; an examination by torture having been previously held on both of them. At this instance of cruelty, all the soldiers, throughout the camp, began to express their displeasure, being concerned for the fate of the innocent old general and his son, and saying, at times, that "they must expect nothing better for themselves." These murmurs coming to the knowledge of Alexander, he, fearing that such reports would be carried to Macedonia, and that the glory of his victories would be sullied by the stain of |110 cruelty, pretended that be was going to send home some of his friends to give an account of his successes. He exhorted his soldiers to write to their relatives, as they would now have fewer opportunities on account of the scene of warfare being further from home. The packets of letters, as they were given in, he commanded to be privately brought to him, and having learned from them what every one thought of him, he put all those, who had given unfavourable opinions of his conduct, into one regiment, with an intention either to destroy them, or to distribute them in colonies in the most distant parts of the earth.

He then subdued the Drancae, the Evergetae, the Parymae, the Parapammeni, the Adaspii, and other nations that dwelt at the foot of Mount Caucasus.

In the meantime Bessus, one of the former friends of Darius, who had not only betrayed his sovereign, but put him to death, was brought to Alexander in chains, who, that he might be punished for his treachery, delivered him to the brother of Darius to be tortured, considering not so much that Darius had been his enemy, as that he had been the friend of the man by whom he had been lulled.

That he might leave his name to these parts, he founded the city of Alexandria on the river Tanais, completing a wall six miles in circuit in seventeen days, and transplanting into it the inhabitants of three cities that had been built by Cyrus. He also built twelve cities in the territories of the Bactrians and Sogdians, and distributed among them such of the soldiers as he had found mutinous.

VI. After these proceedings, he invited his friends on some particular day, to a banquet, where mention being made, when they were intoxicated, of the great things achieved by Philip, he began to prefer himself to his father, and to extol the vastness of his own exploits to the skies, the greater part of the company agreeing with him; and when Clitus, one of the older guests, trusting to his hold on the king's friendship, in which he held the principal place, defended the memory of Philip, and praised his acts, he so provoked Alexander, that he snatched a weapon from one of the guards, and slew him with it in the midst of the guests. Exulting at the murder, too, he scoffed at the dead man for his defence of Philip, and his commendation of his mode of warfare. But when his mind, satiated with the bloodshed, grew calm, and reflection |111 took the place of passion, he began, as he contemplated at one time the character of the dead, and at another the occasion of his death, to feel the deepest sorrow for the deed; grieving that he had listened to his father's praises with more anger than he ought to have listened to insults on his memory, and that an old and blameless friend had been slain by him at a feast and carousal. Driven, therefore, to repentance, with the same vehemence with which he had before been impelled to resentment, he determined to die. Bursting into tears, he embraced the dead man, laid his hand on his wounds, and confessed his madness to him as if he could hear; then, snatching up a weapon, he pointed it against his breast, and would have committed suicide, had not his friends interposed. His resolution to die continued even for several days after; for to his other causes of sorrow was added the remembrance of his nurse, the sister of Clitus, on whose account, though she was far away, he was greatly ashamed of his conduct, lamenting that so base a return should be made her for rearing him; and that, in the maturity of life and conquest, he should have requited her, in whose arms he had spent his infancy, with bloodshed instead of kindness. He reflected, too, what remarks and odium he must have occasioned, as well in his own army as among the conquered nations; what fear and dislike of himself among his other friends; and how dismal and sad he had rendered his entertainment, appearing not less to be dreaded at a feast than when armed in the field of battle. Parmenio and Philotas, his cousin Amyntas, his murdered stepmother and brothers, with Attalus, Eurylochus, Pausanias, and other slaughtered nobles of Macedonia, presented themselves to his imagination. He in consequence persisted in abstaining from food for four days, until he was drawn from his purpose by the prayers of the whole army, who conjured him "not to lament the death of one, so far as to ruin them all; since, after bringing them into the remotest part of the barbarians' country, he would leave them amidst hostile nations exasperated by war." The entreaties of Callisthenes the philosopher had great effect upon him, a man who was intimate with him from having been his fellow-student under Aristotle, and who had been subsequently sent for, by the king himself, to record his acts for the perusal of posterity. |112 

VII. Soon after, he gave orders that he should not be approached with mere salutation, but with adoration;²⁷ a point of Persian pride to which he had hesitated to advance at first, lest the assumption of everything at once should excite too strong a feeling against him. Among those who refused to obey, the most resolute was Callisthenes; but his opposition proved fatal, both to himself and to several other eminent Macedonians, who were all put to death on the pretence that they were engaged in a conspiracy. The custom of saluting their king was however retained by the Macedonians, adoration being set aside.²⁸

He then marched into India, that he might have his empire bounded by the ocean, and the extreme parts of the east. That the equipments of his army might be suitable to the glory of the expedition, he mounted the trappings of the horses, and the arms of the soldiers, with silver, and called a body of his men, from having silver shields, Argyraspides.²⁹ On arriving at the city Nysa, he ordered the inhabitants, who, from their confidence in being protected by their worship of Bacchus, the founder of their city, made no resistance, to be spared; rejoicing that he had not only followed the god's military achievements, but also his footsteps. He then led his army to view the sacred mountain, which was clad with the adornments of nature, the vine and ivy, as beautifully as if it had been tilled by art, and decked by the labour of the cultivator. But the troops, as they approached the hill, were impelled, by a sudden commotion in their minds, to utter devout cries to the god, and ran frantically up and down, to the amazement of the king, but without suffering any harm; whence he might understand that, by sparing the town, he had not so much secured its safety, as that of his own army.

He next proceeded to the Daedalian mountains,³⁰ and the dominions of Queen Cleophis; who, after surrendering to Alexander, recovered her throne from him by admitting him |113 to her bed; saving by her charms what she had been unable to secure by her valour. A son whom she had by him, she named Alexander; and he afterwards sat upon the throne of the Indians. Queen Cleophis, for allowing her chastity to be violated, was thenceforward called by the Indians the royal harlot.

Having arrived, in his course through India, at a rock of extraordinary ruggedness and altitude, to which many people had fled for refuge, he learned that Hercules had been hindered from taking it by an earthquake. Seized with a desire, in consequence, to go beyond the exploits of Hercules, he made himself master of the rock with the utmost exertion and peril, and received submission from all the tribes of that part of the country.

VIII. There was one of the kings of India, named Porus, equally distinguished for strength of body and vigour of mind, who, hearing of the fame of Alexander, had been for some time before preparing for war against his arrival. Coming to battle with him, accordingly, he directed his soldiers to attack the rest of the Macedonians, but desired that their king should be reserved as an antagonist for himself. Nor did Alexander decline the contest; but his horse being wounded in the first shock, he fell headlong to the ground, and was saved by his guards gathering round him. Porus, covered with a number of wounds, was made prisoner, and was so grieved at being defeated, that when his life was granted him by the enemy, he would neither take food nor suffer his wounds to be dressed, and was scarcely at last prevailed upon to consent to live. Alexander, from respect to his valour, sent him back in safety to his kingdom. Here he founded two cities, one called Nicaea, and the other, from the name of his horse, Bucephale.

He then overthrew the Adrestae, the Gesteani, the Presidae, and the Gangaridae, with great slaughter among their troops. When he had reached the Cuphites, where the enemy awaited him with two thousand cavalry, the whole army, wearied not less with the number of their victories than with their toils in the field, besought him with tears that "he would at length make an end of war, and think on his country and his return; considering the years of his soldiers, whose remainder of life would scarcely suffice for their journey home." One pointed |114 to his hoary hairs, another to his wounds, another to his body worn out with an age, another to his person disfigured with scars,³¹ saying "that they were the only men who had endured unintermitted service under two kings, Philip and Alexander;" and conjuring him in conclusion that "he should restore their remains at least to the sepulchres of their fathers, since they failed not in zeal but in age; and that, if he would not spare his soldiers, he should yet spare himself, and not wear out his good fortune by pressing it too far." Moved with these reasonable supplications, he ordered a camp to be formed, as if to mark the termination of his conquests, of greater size than usual, by the works of which the enemy might be astonished, and an admiration of himself be left to posterity. No task did the soldiers execute with more alacrity. After great slaughter of the enemy, they returned to this camp with mutual congratulations.

IX. From hence Alexander proceeded to the river Acesines, and sailed down it into the ocean. In his way he received the submission of the Hiacensanae ³² and the Silei, whom Hercules settled; next he sailed to the Ambri and Sigambri,³³ who met him with eighty thousand foot and sixty thousand horse. Gaining the victory in a battle, he led his army against their city; and supposing, as he looked from the wall, which he had been the first to mount, that the place was destitute of defenders, he leaped down into the area of the city without a single attendant. The enemy, seeing him alone, gathered round upon him with a shout, to try if by taking one life they could put an end to war in the world, and exact vengeance for the defeats of so many nations. Alexander withstood them with equal spirit, fighting alone against thousands. It is, indeed, incredible, that neither the multitude of enemies, nor the thick showers of javelins, nor the loud outcries of his assailants, could in the least alarm him; and that he alone should have spread havoc and terror among so many thousands. But seeing that he was likely to be overpowered by numbers, |115 he fixed himself against the trunk of a tree that stood by the wall, by the help of which he long resisted a host, when, his danger being known, his friends leaped down to him, many of whom were slain, and the battle continued doubtful, till the whole army, making a breach in the wall, came to his aid. Being wounded in the struggle by an arrow, and likely to faint through loss of blood, he placed his knee on the ground, and fought till he had killed the man by whom he had been wounded. The curing of the wound caused him more suffering than the wound itself.

X. Being at length restored to health, after there had been great despair of it, he sent Polysperchon with the army to Babylon, while he himself, with a select band of followers, went on board the fleet, and sailed along the shore of the ocean. When he came to the city of king Ambiger, the inhabitants, hearing that he was invincible to the sword, tipped their arrows with poison; and thus repulsing the enemy from their walls with wounds doubly fatal, they killed a great number of them. Ptolemy, with many others, being wounded, and seeming to be at the point of death, a herb was shown to the king in a, dream as a cure for poison; this being taken in a drink, he was freed from danger, and the greater part of the army were saved by the same remedy. Taking the city afterwards by storm, and returning to the fleet, he made oblations to the ocean, praying for a prosperous return to his country; and having thus, as it were, driven his chariot round the goal, and fixed the boundaries of his empire, as far as either the deserts would suffer him to proceed by land, or the sea was navigable, he sailed up the mouth of the river Indus with the tide. There he built the city Barce, in memory of the exploits achieved by him, and erected altars, leaving one of his friends as governor of the Indians on the coast. As he intended to march from thence by land, and as the parts in the middle of his route were said to be dry, he ordered wells to be made in suitable places, from which he got abundance of fresh water, and so returned to Babylon. Hither many of the conquered people sent deputations to accuse their governors, whom Alexander, without any regard to his former friendship for them, commanded to be put to death in the sight of the deputies.

Soon after he married Statira, the daughter of king Darius; but, at the same time, he gave the noblest virgins, chosen from |116 all the conquered natives, as wives to the chiefs of the Macedonians; in order that the impropriety of the king's conduct ³⁴ might be rendered less glaring by the practice becoming general.

XI. He next assembled the army, and promised that "he would pay all their debts at his own expense," so that they might carry home their spoil and prizes undiminished. This munificence was highly prized, not only for the sum given, but for the character of the gift, and was received not more thankfully by the debtors than by the creditors, exaction being as troublesome to the one as payment to the other. Twenty thousand talents were expended in this largess. Discharging some of the veterans, he recruited the army with younger soldiers. But those that were retained, murmuring at the discharge of the older men, demanded that they themselves should be released likewise; desiring that "their years, not of life, but of service, should be counted," and thinking it reasonable that "those who had been enlisted in the service together, should together be set free from the service." Nor did they address the king only with entreaties, but also with reproaches, bidding him "carry on his wars alone, with the aid of his father Ammon, since he looked with disdain on his soldiers." Alexander, on the other hand, sometimes upbraided his men, and sometimes charged them in gentle terms, "not to tarnish their glorious services by mutiny." At last, when he could produce no effect by words, he leaped unarmed from his tribunal among the armed multitude, to lay hands on the authors of the mutiny; and not a man daring to oppose him, he led thirteen of them, whom he had seized with his own hand, to punishment. Such submission to death did the fear of their king produce in the men; or such courage in inflicting punishment had his knowledge of military discipline given the king.

XII. He then addressed himself, in a public speech, to the auxiliary troops of the Persians apart from the Macedonians. He extolled their constant fidelity, as well as to himself as to their former kings; he mentioned the kindnesses which he had shown them, saying that "he had never treated them as |117 a conquered people, but always as sharers in his successes; that he had gone over to the usages of their nation, not they to those of his; and that he had mingled the conquerors with the conquered by matrimonial connexions. And now," he added, "he would entrust the guardianship of his person, not to the Macedonians only, but also to them." Accordingly, he enrolled a thousand of their young men among his bodyguard; and at the same time incorporated into his army a portion of the auxiliaries, trained after the discipline of the Macedonians. At this proceeding the Macedonians were much dissatisfied, exclaiming that "their enemies were put into their places by their king;" and at length they all went to Alexander in a body, beseeching him with tears "to content himself rather with punishing than ill-treating them." By this modest forbearance they produced such an effect upon him, that he released eleven thousand veterans more. Of his own friends, too, were sent away the old men, Polysperchon, Clitus, Gorgias, Polydamas, Amadas, and Antigènes. Of those that were sent home Craterus was appointed leader, and commissioned to take the government of Macedonia in the room of Antipater, whom he sent for, with a body of recruits, to supply the place of Craterus. Pay was allowed to those that went home, as if they had been still in the service. In the course of those proceedings, Hephaestion, one of his friends, died; a man who was a great favourite with Alexander, at first on account of his personal qualities in youth, and afterwards from his servility. Alexander mourned for him longer than became his dignity as a king, built a monument for him that cost twelve thousand talents, and gave orders that he should be worshipped as a god.

XIII. As he was returning to Babylon, from the distant shores of the ocean, he was acquainted that embassies from, the Carthaginians, and other states of Africa, as well as from the Spains, Sicily, Gaul, and Sardinia, and some also from Italy, were waiting his arrival at that city. So powerfully had the terror of his name diffused itself through the world, that all nations were ready to bow to him as their destined monarch. When he was hastening to Babylon, therefore, to hold an assembly, as it were, of the states of the world, one of the Magi warned him "not to enter the city," for that the "place would be fatal to him." He accordingly |118 avoided Babylon, and turned aside to Borsippa, a city on the other side of the Euphrates, that had been for some time uninhabited. Here again be was persuaded by Anaxarchus the philosopher, to slight the predictions of the Magi as fallacious and uncertain; observing that, "if things were fixed by fate, they were unknown to mortals, and, if they were dependent on the course of nature, were unchangeable." Returning, therefore, to Babylon, and allowing himself several days for rest, he renewed, in his usual manner, the entertainments which had been for some time discontinued, resigning himself wholly to mirth, and joining in his cups the night to the day. As he was returning, on one occasion, from a banquet, Médius, a Thessalian, proposing to renew their revelling, invited him and his attendants to his house. Taking up a cup, he suddenly uttered a groan while he was drinking, as if he had been stabbed with a dagger, and being carried half dead from the table, he was excruciated with such torture that he called for a sword to put an end to it, and felt pain at the touch of his attendants as if he were all over wounds. His friends reported that the cause of his disease was excess in drinking, but in reality it was a conspiracy, the infamy of which the power of his successors threw into the shade.

XIV. The author of this conspiracy was Antipater, who, seeing that ³⁵ his dearest friends were put to death, that Alexander Lyncestes, his son-in-law, was cut off, and that he himself, after his important services in Greece, was not so much liked by the king as envied by him, and was also persecuted with various charges by his mother Olympias; reflecting, too, on the severe penalties inflicted, a few days before, on the governors of the conquered nations, and hence imagining that he was sent for from Macedonia, not to share in the war, but to suffer punishment, secretly, in order to be beforehand with Alexander, furnished his son Cassander with poison, who, with his brothers Philippus and Iollas, was accustomed to attend on the king at table. The strength of this poison was so great, that it could be contained neither in brass, nor iron, nor shell, nor could be conveyed in any other way than in the hoof of a horse. Cassander had been warned |119 to trust nobody but the Thessalian and his brothers; and hence it was that the banquet was prepared and renewed in the house of the Thessalian. Philippus and Iollas, wko used to taste and mix the king's drink, had the poison ready in cold water, which they put into the drink after it had been tasted.

XV. On the fourth day, Alexander, finding that death was inevitable, observed that "he perceived the approach of the fate of his family, for the roost of the Aeacidae had died under thirty years of age."³⁶ He then pacified the soldiers, who were making a tumult, from suspecting that the king was the victim of a conspiracy, and, after being carried to the highest part of the city, admitted them to his presence, and gave them his right hand to kiss. While they all wept, he not only did not shed a tear, but showed not the least token of sorrow; so that he even comforted some who grieved immoderately, and gave others messages to their parents; and his soul was as undaunted at meeting death, as it had formerly been at meeting an enemy. When the soldiers were gone, he asked his friends that stood about him, "whether they thought they should find a king like him?" All continuing silent, he said that, "although he did not know that, he knew, and could foretel, and almost saw with his eyes, how much blood Macedonia would shed in the disputes that would follow his death, and with what slaughters, and what quantities of gore, she would perform his obsequies." At last he ordered his body to be buried in the temple of Jupiter Ammon. When his friends saw him dying, they asked him "whom he would appoint as the successor to his throne?" He replied, "The most worthy." Such was his nobleness of spirit, that though he left a son named Hercules,³⁷ a brother called Aridaeus,³⁸ and his wife Roxane ³⁹ with child, yet, forgetting his relations, he named only "the most worthy" as his successor; as though it were unlawful for any but a brave man to succeed a brave man, or for the power of so great an empire to be left to any but approved governors. But as if, by this reply, he had |120 sounded the signal for battle among his friends, or had thrown the apple of discord amongst them, they all rose in emulation* against each other, and tried to gain the favour of the army by secretly paying court to the common soldiers. On the sixth day from the commencement of his illness, being unable to speak, he took his ring from his finger, and gave it to Perdiccas; an act which tranquillized the growing dissension among his friends; for though Perdiccas was not expressly named his successor, he seemed intended to be so in Alexander's judgment.

XVI. Alexander, when he died, was thirty-three years and one month old. He was a man endowed with powers of mind far beyond ordinary human capacity. His mother Olympias, the night in which she conceived him, dreamed that she was entwined with a huge serpent; nor was she deceived by her drearn; for she certainly bore in her womb a conception superior to mortality; and though her descent from the Aeacidae, a family of the remotest antiquity, and the royal dignity of her father, brother, husband, and indeed of all her ancestors, conferred sufficient splendour upon her, yet by no one's influence was she rendered more illustrious than that of her son. Some omens of his future greatness appeared at his birth. Two eagles sat the whole of the day on which he was born on the top of his father's palace, giving indication of his double empire over Europe and Asia. The very same day, too, his father received the news of two victories, one in the war with the Illyrians, the other in the Olympic games, tc which he had sent some four-horse chariots; an omen which portended to the child the conquest of the world. As a boy, he was ably instructed in elementary learning; and, when his boyhood was past, he improved himself, for five years, under his famous instructor Aristotle.⁴⁰ On taking possession of the throne, he gave orders that he should be styled "King of all the earth and of the world; " and he inspired his soldiers with such confidence in him, that, when he was present, they |121 feared the arms of no enemy, though they themselves were unarmed. He, in consequence, never engaged with any enemy whom he did not conquer, besieged no city that he did not take, and invaded no nation that he did not subjugate. He was overcome at last, not by the prowess of any enemy, but by a conspiracy of those whom he trusted, and the treachery of his own subjects.

BOOK XIII.

Feelings of the Macedonians on the death of Alexander, I.----Opinions of the generals about a successor, II.----Mutiny among the infantry, III.----Aridaeus chosen king; the generals divide the provinces among them, IV.----The Aetolians and Athenians fight for the liberty of Greece; the services of Demosthenes, V.----Perdiccas defeats the Cappadocians; goes to war with Antigonus; conduct of Ptolemy, VI.----Account of Cyrene, VII.----Ptolemy goes to war with Perdiccas; acts of Eumenes, VIII.

I. WHEN Alexander was thus cut off in the flower of his age, and at the height of his successes, a mournful silence prevailed among all people throughout Babylon. But the conquered nations could not give credit to the report of his death, because, as they had believed him to be invincible, they had also conceived that he was immortal, reflecting how frequently he had been snatched from imminent destruction, and how often, when he was given up for lost, he had suddenly presented himself to his soldiers, not only safe, but victorious. As soon, however, as the report of his death was confirmed, all the barbarous nations, whom he had shortly before subdued, lamented for him, not as an enemy, but as a father. The mother, too, of King Darius, who, though she had been reduced, after the death of her son, from the summit of royal dignity to the state of a captive, had, till that day, through the kindness of the conqueror, never felt weary of life, com mitted suicide when she heard of the death of Alexander; not that she felt more for an enemy ⁴¹ than she had felt for her son, but because she had experienced the attention of a son from him whom she had feared as an enemy. The Macedonians, on the other hand, did not mourn for him as a |122 countryman, and a prince of such eminence, but rejoiced at his death as at that of an enemy, execrating his excessive severity and the perpetual hardships of war to which he exposed them. The chiefs, moreover, were looking to sovereignty and offices of command; the common soldiers to the treasury and heaps of gold, as a prize unexpectedly presented to their grasp; the one meditating on the possibility of seizing the throne, the other on the means of securing wealth and plenty; for there were in the treasury fifty thousand talents, while the annual tribute produced thirty thousand. Nor did the friends of Alexander look to the throne without reason; for they were men of such ability and authority, that each of them might have been taken for a king. Such was the personal gracefulness, the commanding stature, and the eminent powers of body and mind, apparent in all of them, that whoever did not know them, would have thought that they had been selected, not from one nation, but from the whole earth. Never before, indeed, did Macedonia, or any other country, abound with such a multitude of distinguished men; whom Philip first, and afterwards Alexander, had selected with such skill, that they seemed to have been chosen, not so much to attend them to war, as to succeed them on the throne. Who then can wonder, that the world was conquered by such officers, when the army of the Macedonians appeared to be commanded, not by generals, but by princes?----men who would never have found antagonists to cope with them, if they had not quarrelled with one another; while Macedonia would have had many Alexanders instead of one, had not Fortune inspired them with mutual emulation for their mutual destruction.

II. But, when Alexander was taken off, their feelings of security were not in proportion to their exultation; for they were all competitors for the same dignity; nor did they fear one another ⁴² more than the soldiery, whose licence was less controllable, and whose favour was more uncertain. Their very equality inflamed their discord, no one being so far superior to the rest, that any other would submit to him. |123 They therefore met in the palace under arms to settle the present state of affairs. Perdiccas gave his opinion that "they ought to wait till Roxane was delivered, who was now eight months gone with child by Alexander; and that, if she brought forth a boy, he should be appointed his father's successor." Meleager argued that "their proceedings should not be suspended for the result of an uncertain birth; nor ought they to wait till kings were born, when they might choose from such as were already born; for if they wished for a boy, there was at Pergamus a son of Alexander by Barsine, named Hercules; or, if they would rather have a man, there was then in the camp Aridaeus, a brother of Alexander, a person of courteous manners, and acceptable to every body, not only on his own account, but on that of his father Philip. But that Roxane was of Persian origin, and that it was unlawful that kings should be chosen for the Macedonians from the blood of those whose kingdoms they had overthrown; a choice to which Alexander himself would not have consented, who, indeed, when he was dying, made no mention of Roxane's issue." Ptolemy objected to Aridaeus as king, "not only on account of the meanness of his mother (he being the son of a courtezan of Larissa), but because of the extraordinary weakness with which he was affected, lest, while he had the name of king, another should exercise the authority;" and said that "it would be better for them to choose from those who were next in merit to the king, and who could govern the provinces and be entrusted with the conduct of wars, than to be subjected to the tyranny of unworthy men under the authority of a king." The opinion of Perdiccas was adopted with the consent of all; and it was resolved to wait for the delivery of Roxane; and, if a boy should be born, they appointed Leonatus, Perdiccas, Craterus, and Antipater, his guardians, to whom they at once took an oath of obedience.

III. When the cavalry had also taken the oath, the infantry, indignant that no share in the deliberation had been granted to them, proclaimed Aridaeus, the brother of Alexander, king, chose him guards from their own body, and appointed that he should be called Philip, after the name of his father. These proceedings being reported to the cavalry, they despatched two of their officers, Attalus and Meleager, to quell the excitement; but they, hoping for power for |124 themselves by flattering the multitude, neglected their commission, and took part with the soldiers. The insurrection soon gathered strength, when it once began to have a head and regular management. The infantry rushed in a body, under arms, to the palace, with a resolution to cut the cavalry to pieces; but the cavalry, hearing of their approach, retreated in haste from the city, and after pitching their camp, began to threaten the infantry in return. Nor did the animosity of the chiefs, meanwhile, abate. Attalus despatched some of his men to assassinate Perdiccas, the leader of the opposite party, but, as he was armed, the assassins durst not go near him, though he freely invited them to approach; and such was the resolution of Perdiccas, that he went of his own accord to the infantry, and, summoning them to an assembly, represented to them the atrocity of their conduct; admonishing them "to consider against whom they had taken arms; that they were not Persians, but Macedonians; not enemies, but their own countrymen; most of them their kinsmen, but certainly all of them their fellow soldiers, sharers of the same camp and of the same dangers; that they would present a striking spectacle to their enemies, who would rejoice at the mutual slaughter of those by whose arms they grieved at having been conquered; and that they would atone with their own blood to the manes of their slaughtered adversaries."

IV. Perdiccas having enforced these arguments with eloquence peculiar to himself, produced such an effect upon the infantry, that his admonitions were obeyed, and he was unanimously chosen general. The cavalry, soon after, being reconciled with the infantry, agreed to have Aridaeus for their king. A portion of the empire was reserved for Alexander's son, if a son should be born. These proceedings they conducted with the body of Alexander placed in the midst of them, that his majesty might be witness to their resolutions; Such an arrangement being made, Antipater was appointed governor of Macedonia and Greece; the charge of the royal treasure was given to Craterus; the management of the camp, the army, and the war, to Meleager and Perdiccas; and king Aridaeus was commissioned to convey the body of Alexander to the temple of Jupiter Ammon. Perdiccas, who was still enraged at the authors of the late disturbance, suddenly gave notice, without the knowledge of his colleague, that there |125 would be a lustration of the camp on the following day on account of the king's death. Having drawn up the troops under arms in the field, he, with the general consent, gave orders, as he passed along, that the offenders, selected from each company, should be secretly given up to punishment. On his return, he divided the provinces among the chief men, in order both to remove his rivals out of the way, and to make the gift of a prefectship appear a favour from himself. In the first place Egypt, with part of Africa and Arabia, fell by lot to Ptolemy, whom Alexander, for his merit, had raised from the condition of a common soldier: and Cleomenes, who had built Alexandria,⁴³ was directed to put the province into his hands. Laomedon of Mitylene was allotted Syria, which bordered ou Ptolemy's province; Philotas, Cilicia; and Philo, Illyria. Atropatus was set over the Greater Media; the father-in-law of Perdiccas over the Less. Susiana was assigned to Scynus, and the Greater Phrygia to Antigonus, the son of Philip. Nearchus received Lycia and Pamphylia; Cassander, Caria; and Menander, Lydia. The Lesser Phrygia fell to Leonatus; Thrace, and the coasts of the Pontic sea, to Lysimachus; Cappadocia and Paphlagonia were given to Eumenes. The chief command of the camp fell to Seleucus the son of Antiochus. Cassander, the son of Antipater, was made commander of the king's guards and attendants. In Ulterior Bactriana, and the countries of India, the present governors were allowed to retain their office. The region between the rivers Hydaspes and Indus, Taxiles received. To the colonies settled in India, Python, the son of Agenor, was sent. Of Paropamisia, and the borders of mount Caucasus, Extarches had the command. The Arachosians and Gedrosians were assigned to Sibyrtius; the Drancae and Arci to Stasanor. Amyntas was allotted the Bactrians, Scythaeus the Sogdians, Nicanor the Parthians, Philippus the Hyrcanians, Phrataphemes the Armenians, Tleptolemus the Persians, Peucestes the Babylonians, Archon the Pelasgians, Arcesilaus, Mesopotamia. When this allotment, like a gift from the fates, was made to |126 each, it was to many of them a great occasion for improving their fortunes; for not long after, as if they had divided kingdoms, not governments, among themselves, they became princes instead of prefects, and not only secured great power to themselves, but bequeathed it to their descendants.

V. While these transactions were passing in the east, the Athenians and Aetolians proceeded with all their might to prosecute the war which they had begun in the life of Alexander. The cause of the war was, that Alexander, on his return from India, had written certain letters to Greece, according to which the exiles from all the states, except such as had been convicted of murder, were to be recalled. These letters, being read before all Greece, assembled at the Olympic games,⁴⁴ had excited a great commotion; because many had been banished, not by legal authority, but by a faction of the leading men, who were afraid that, if they were recalled, they would become more powerful in their states than themselves. Many states therefore at once expressed open discontent, and said that their liberty must be secured by force of arms. The leaders among them, all, however, were the Athenians and Aetolians.

This being reported to Alexander, he gave orders that a thousand ships of war should be raised among his allies, with which he might carry on war in the west; and he intended to make an expedition, with a powerful force, to level Athens with the ground. The Athenians, in consequence, collecting an army of thirty thousand men and two hundred ships, went to war with Antipater, to whom the government of Greece had been assigned; and when he declined to come to battle, and sheltered himself within the walls of Heraclea, they besieged him there; At that time Demosthenes, the Athenian orator, who had been banished from his country on the charge of taking gold from Harpalus (a man who had fled from Alexander's severity), bribing him to prevail on the city ⁴⁵ to go to war with Alexander, happened then to be living in exile at Megara, and learning that Hyperides was sent as an ambassador by the Athenians to persuade the Peloponnesians to join |127 in the war, followed him, and, by his eloquence, brought over Sicyon, Argos, Corinth, and other states, to the Athenian interest. For this service a ship was sent for him by the Athenians, and he was recalled from banishment. Meanwhile Leosthenes, the general of the Athenians, was killed, while he was besieging Antipater, by a dart hurled at him from the wall as he was passing by. This occurrence gave so much encouragement to Antipater, that he ventured to break down the Athenian rampart. He then sought assistance from Leonatus, who was soon reported to be approaching with his army; but the Athenians met him in battle array, and he was severely wounded in an action of the cavalry, and died. Antipater, though he saw his auxiliaries defeated, was yet rejoiced at the death of Leonatus, congratulating himself that his rival was taken off, and his force added to his own. Taking Leonatus's army under his command, therefore, and thinking himself a match for the enemy, even in a regular battle, he immediately released himself from the siege, and marched away to Macedonia. The forces of the Greeks, too, having driven the enemy ⁴⁶ from the territory of Greece, went off to their several cities.

VI. Perdiccas, in the meantime, making war upon Ariarathes, king of the Cappadocians, defeated him in a pitched battle, but got no other reward for his efforts but wounds and perils; for the enemy, retreating from the field into the city, killed each his own wife and children, and set fire to his house and all that he possessed; throwing their slaves too into the flames, and afterwards themselves, that the victorious enemy might enjoy nothing belonging to them but the sight of the conflagration that they had kindled. Soon after, that he might secure royal support to his present power, he turned his thoughts to a marriage with Cleopatra, sister of Alexander the Great, and formerly wife of the other Alexander,⁴⁷ her mother Olympias showing no dislike to the match. But he wished first to outwit Antipater, by pretending a desire for an alliance with him, and therefore made a feint of asking his daughter in marriage, the more easily to procure from him young recruits from Macedonia. Antipater, however, seeing |128 through, his deceit, he courted two wives at once, but obtained neither.

Afterwards a war arose between Antigonus and Perdiccas; Craterus and Antipater (who, having made peace with the Athenians, had appointed Polysperchon to govern Greece and Macedonia) lent their aid to Antigonus. Perdiccas, as the aspect of affairs was unfavourable, called Aridaeus, and Alexander the Great's son,⁴⁸ then in Cappadocia (the charge of both of whom had been committed to him), to a consultation concerning the management of the war. Some were of opinion that it should be transferred to Macedonia, to the very head and metropolis of the kingdom, where Olympias, the mother of Alexander, was, who would be no small support to their party, while the good will of their countrymen would be with them, from respect to the names of Alexander and Philip; but it seemed more to the purpose to begin with Egypt, lest, while they were gone into Macedonia, Asia should be seized by Ptolemy. Paphlagonia, Caria, Lycia, and Phrygia were assigned to Eumenes, in addition to the provinces which he had already received; and he was directed to wait in those parts for Craterus and Antipater, Alcetas, the brother of Perdiccas, and Neoptolemus being appointed to support him with their forces. The command of the fleet was given to Clitus. Cilicia, being taken from Philotas, was given to Philoxenus. Perdiccas himself set out for Egypt with a large army. Thus Macedonia, while its commanders separated into two parties, was armed against its own vitals, and turned the sword from warring against the enemy to the effusion of civil blood, being ready, like people in a fit of madness, to hack her own hands and limbs. But Ptolemy, by his wise exertions in Egypt, was acquiring great power; he had secured the favour of the Egyptians by his extraordinary prudence; he had attached the neighbouring princes by acts of kindness and courtesy; he had extended the boundaries of his kingdom by getting possession of the city Cyrene, and was grown so great that he did not fear his enemies so much as he was feared by them.

VII. Cyrene was founded by Aristaeus, who, from being tongue-tied, was also called Battus. His father Grinus, king of |129 the isle of Thera, having gone to the oracle at Delphi, to implore the god to remove the ignominy of his son, who was grown up but could not speak, received an answer by which his son Battus was directed "to go to Africa, and found the city of Cyrene, where he would gain the use of his tongue." This response appearing but a jest, by reason of the paucity of inhabitants in the island of Thera, from which a colony was desired to go to build a city in a country of such vast extent as Africa, the matter was neglected. Some time after, the Therans, as being guilty of disobedience, were forced by a pestilence to comply with the god's directions. But the number of the colonists was so extremely small that they scarcely filled one ship. Arriving in Africa, they dislodged the inhabitants from a hill named Cyras, and took possession of it for themselves, on account both of the pleasantness of the situation and the abundance of springs in it. Here Battus, their leader, the strings of his tongue being loosed, began to speak; which circumstance, as one part of the god's promises was fulfilled, gave them encouragement to entertain the further hope of building a city. Pitching their camp, accordingly, they received information of an old tradition, that Cyrene, a maiden of extraordinary beauty, was carried off by Apollo from Pelion, a mountain in Thessaly, and brought to that very mountain on which they had seized a hill, where, becoming pregnant by the god, she brought forth four sons, Nomius, Aristaeus, Authocus, and Argaeus; and that a party being sent by her father Hypsaeus, king of Thessaly, to seek for the damsel, were so attracted by the charms of the place, that they settled there with her. Of her four sons, it was said that three, when they grew up, returned to Thessaly, and inherited their grandfather's kingdom; and that the fourth, Aristaeus, reigned over a great part of Arcadia, and taught mankind the management of bees and honey, and the art of making cheese, and was the first that observed the solstitial risings of Sirius.⁴⁹ On hearing this account, Battus built the city in obedience |130 to the oracle, calling it Cyrene,⁵⁰ from the name of the maiden.

VIII. Ptolemy, having increased his strength from the forces of this city, made preparations for war against the coming of Perdiccas. But the hatred which Perdiccas had incurred by his arrogance did him more injury than the power of the enemy; for his allies, detesting his overbearingness, went over in troops to Antipater. Neoptolemus, too, who had been left to support Eumenes, intended not only to desert himself, but also to betray the force of his party; when Eumenes, understanding his design, thought it a matter of necessity to engage the traitor in the field. Neoptolemus, being worsted, fled to Antipater and Polysperchon, and persuaded them to surprise Eumenes, by marching without intermission, while he was full of joy for his victory, and freed from apprehension by his own flight. But this project did not escape Eumenes; the plot was in consequence turned, upon the contrivers of it; and they who expected to attack him unguarded, were attacked themselves when they were on their march, and wearied with watching through the previous night. In this battle, Polysperchon was killed.⁵¹ Neoptolemus, too, engaging hand to hand with Eumenes, and maintaining a long struggle with him, in which both were wounded more than once, was at last overpowered and fell. Eumenes, therefore, being victorious in two successive battles, supported in some degree the spirits of his party, which had been cast down by the desertion of their allies. At last, however, Perdiccas being killed,⁵² Eumenes was declared an enemy by the army together with Pitho, Illyrius, and Alcetas, the brother of Perdiccas; and the conduct of the war against them was committed to Antigonus. |131 

BOOK XIV.

Conduct of Eumenes in the war with Antigonus, I.----Being unsuccessful, he flees to the Argyraspides, II.----They, being defeated, resolve to deliver Eumenes to Antigonus, III.----Eumenes addresses the army; he and the Argyraspides fall into the power of Antigonus, IV.----Proceedings of Cassander and Olympias, V.----Death of Olympias, VI.

I. WHEN Eumenes found that Perdiccas was slain, that he himself was declared an enemy by the Macedonians, and that the conduct of the war against him was committed to Antigonus, he at once made known the state of affairs to his troops, lest report should either exaggerate matters, or alarm the minds of the men with the unexpected nature of the events; designing at the same time to learn how they were affected towards him, and to take his measures according to the feeling expressed by them as a body. He boldly gave notice, however, that "if any one of them felt dismayed at the news, he had full liberty to depart." By this declaration he so strongly attached them to his side, that they all immediately exhorted him to prosecute the war, and protested that "they would annul the decrees of the Macedonians with their swords." Having then led his army into Aetolia,⁵³ he exacted contributions from the different cities, and plundered, like an enemy, such as refused to pay. Next he went to Sardis, to Cleopatra, the sister of Alexander the Great, that with her influence he might encourage his captains and chief officers, who would think that the royal authority was on that side on which the sister of Alexander stood. Such veneration was there for the greatness of Alexander, that the influence of hig sacred name was sought even by means of women.

When he returned to his camp, letters were found scattered through it, in which great rewards were offered to any that should bring the head of Eumenes to Antigonus. This coming to his knowledge, Eumenes, assembling his men, first offered them his congratulations that "none had been found |132 among them who preferred the expectation of a reward stained with blood to the obligation of his military oath." He then craftily added that these letters had been forged by himself to sound their feelings; but that his life was in the hands of them all; and that neither Antigonus nor any other general would be willing to conquer by such means as would afford the worst of examples against himself." By acting thus, he both preserved for the present the attachment of such as were wavering, and made it likely that if anything similar should happen in future, the soldiers would think that they were not tampered with by the enemy, but sounded by their own general. All of them in consequence zealously offered him their services for the guard of his person.

II. In the meantime Antigonus came up with his army, and having pitched his camp, offered battle on the following day. Nor did Eumenes delay to engage with him; but, being defeated, he fled to a fortress, where, when he saw that he must submit to the hazard of a siege, he dismissed the greater part of his army, lest he should either be delivered to the enemy by consent of the multitude, or the sufferings of the siege should be aggravated by too great a number. He then sent a deputation to Antipater, who was the only general that seemed a match for the power of Antigonus, to entreat his aid; and Antigonus, hearing that succour was despatched by him to Eumenes, gave up the siege. Eumenes was thus for a time, indeed, relieved from fear of death; but, as so great a portion of his army was sent away, he had no great hope of ultimate safety. After taking everything into consideration, therefore, he thought it best to apply to the Argyraspides of Alexander the Great, a body of men that had never yet been conquered, and radiant with the glory of so many victories. But the Argyraspides disdained all leaders in comparison with Alexander, and thought service under other generals dishonourable to the memory of so great a monarch. Eumenes had, therefore, to address them with flattery; he spoke to each of them in the language of a suppliant, calling them his "fellow-soldiers," his "patrons," or his "companions in the dangers and exploits of the east;" sometimes styling them "his refuge for protection, and his only security;" saying that "they were the only troops by whose valour the east had been subdued, the only troops that had gone beyond the achievements of |133 Bacchus and the monuments of Hercules; that by them Alexander had become great, by them had attained divine honours and immortal glory;" and he begged them "to receive him, not so much in the character of a general, as in that of a fellow-soldier, and to allow him to be one of their body." Being received on these terms, he gradually succeeded, first by giving them hints individually, and afterwards by gently correcting whatever was done amiss, in gaining the sole command. Nothing could be done in the camp without him; nothing managed without the aid of his judgment.

III. At length, when it was announced that Antigonus was approaching with his army, he obliged them to march into the field; where, slighting the orders of their general, they were defeated by the bravery of the enemy. In this battle they lost, with their wives and children, not only their glory from so many wars, but also the booty obtained in their long service. But Eumenes, who was the cause of their disaster,⁵⁴ and had no other hope of safety remaining, encouraged them after their repulse, assuring them that "they had the superiority in courage, as five thousand of the enemy had been slain by them; and that if they persevered in the war, their enemies would gladly sue for peace;" adding, that "the losses, by which they estimated their defeat, were two thousand women, and a few children and slaves, which they might better recover by conquering, than by yielding the victory." The Argyraspides, on the other hand, declared that "they would neither attempt a retreat, after the loss of their property and wives, nor would they war against their own children,"⁵⁵ and pursued him with reproaches "for having involved them, when they were returning home after so many years of completed service, and with the fruits of so many enterprises, and when on the point of being disbanded, in fresh efforts and vast struggles in the field; for having deluded them, when they were recalled, as it were, from their own hearths, and from the very threshold of their country, with vain promises; and for not allowing them, after having lost all the gains of their fortunate service, to support quietly under their defeat the burden of a poor and unhappy |134 old age." Immediately after, without the knowledge of their leaders,⁵⁶ they sent deputies to Antigonus, requesting that "he would order what was theirs ⁵⁷ to be restored to them." Antigonus promised that "he would restore what they asked, if they would deliver up Eumenes to him." Hearing of this reply, Eumenes, with a few others, attempted to flee, but being brought back, and finding his condition desperate, he requested, as a great crowd gathered around him, to be allowed to address the army for the last time.

IV. Being desired by them all to speak, and silence being made, and his chains loosed, he held out his hand, fettered as he was, and said, "Soldiers, ye behold the dress and equipments of your general, which it is not any one of the enemy that has put upon me; for that would be even a consolation to me; but it is you that have made me of a conqueror conquered, and of a general a prisoner. Four times ⁵⁸ within the present year have you bound yourselves by oath to obey me; but on that point I shall say nothing, for reproaches do not become the unfortunate. One favour only I entreat, that, if the performance of Antigonus's promises depends on my life, you would allow me to die among yourselves; for to him it signifies nothing how or where I fall, and I shall be delivered from an ignominious end. If I obtain this request, I release you from the oath by which you have so often devoted yourselves to me. Or if you are ashamed to offer violence to me at my entreaty, give me a sword, and permit your general to do for you,⁵⁹ without the obligation of an oath, that which you have taken an oath to do for your general." Not being able, however, to obtain his request, he changed his tone of entreaty to that of anger, and exclaimed, "May the gods, then, the avengers of perjury, look down in judgment upon you, ye accursed wretches, and bring upon you such deaths as you have brought upon your leaders. It was you, the same who now stand before me, that were lately sprinkled with the blood of |135 Perdiccas, and that planned a similar end for Antipater. You would even have killed Alexander himself, if it had been possible for him to fall by a mortal hand: ⁶⁰ what was next to it,⁶¹ you harassed him with your mutinies. I, the last victim of your perfidy, now pronounce on you these curses and imprecations: may you live your whole lives in poverty, far from your country, in this camp where you are exiled; and may your own arms, by which you have killed more generals of your own than of your enemies, sink you in utter destruction." Then, full of indignation, he began to walk before his guards towards the camp of Antigonus. The army followed, surrendering their general, and being themselves made prisoners; and, leading up a triumph over themselves to the camp of their conqueror, resigned to him, together with their own persons, all their honour gained under king Alexander,⁶² and the palms and laurels of so long a warfare; and, that nothing might be wanting to the procession, the elephants and auxiliaries of the east ⁶³ brought up the rear. This single victory was so far more glorious to Antigonus than so many other victories had been to Alexander, that whereas Alexander subdued the east, Antigonus defeated those by whom the east had been subdued. These conquerors of the world, then, Antigonus distributed among his army, restoring to them what he had taken in the victory; and directed that Eumenes, whom, from regard to their former friendship, he did not allow to come into his presence, should be committed to the care of a guard.

V. In the meantime Eurydice, the wife of king Aridaeus, when she learned that Polysperchon was returning from Greece into Macedonia, and that Olympias was sent for by him, being prompted by a womanish emulation, and taking advantage of her husband's weakness, whose duties she took upon herself, wrote in the king's name to Polysperchon, desiring him "to deliver up the army to Cassander, on whom the king had con ferred the government of the kingdom." She made a similar |136 communication to Antigonus, in a letter which she wrote to him in Asia. Cassander, attached to her by such a favour, managed everything according to the will of that ambitious woman. Marching into Greece, he made war upon several cities; by the calamities of which, as by a fire in the neighbourhood, the Spartans were alarmed, and, distrusting their power in arms, enclosed their city (which they had always defended, not with walls, but with their swords) with works of defence, in disregard both of the predictions of the oracles, and of the ancient glory of their forefathers. Strange, that they should have so far degenerated from their ancestors, that, when the valour of the citizens had been for many ages a wall to the city, the citizens could not now think themselves secure unless they had walls to shelter them. But during the course of these proceedings, the disturbed state of Macedonia obliged Cassander to return home from Greece; for Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, coming from Epirus to Macedonia, with Aeacides, king of the Molossians, attending her, and being forbidden to enter the country by Eurydice and king Aridaeus, the Macedonians being moved, either by respect for the memory of her husband, or the greatness of her son, or by the indignity with which she was treated, went over to Olympias, by whose order both Eurydice and the king were put to death, he having held the kingdom six years since the decease of Alexander.

VI. But neither did Olympias reign long; for having committed great slaughter among the nobility throughout the country, like a furious woman rather than a queen, she turned the favour with which she was regarded into hatred. Hearing, therefore, of the approach of Cassander, and distrusting the Macedonians, she retired, with her daughter-in-law Roxane, and her grandson Hercules, to the city of Pydna. Deidamia, the daughter of king Aeacides, and Thessalonice, her step-daughter, rendered illustrious by the name of Philip, who was her father, and many others, wives of the leading men, a retinue showy rather than serviceable, attended her on her journey. When the news of her retreat was brought to Cassander, he marched immediately, with the utmost expedition, to Pydna, and laid siege to the city. Olympias, distressed with famine and the sword, and the wearisomeness of a long siege, surrendered herself to the conqueror, stipulating only for life. But |137 Cassander, on summoning the people to an assembly, to inquire "what they would wish to be done with Olympias," induced the parents of those whom she had killed to put on mourning apparel, and expose her cruelties; when the Macedonians, exasperated by their statements, decreed, without regard to her former majesty, that she should be put to death; utterly unmindful that, by the labours of her son and her husband, they had not only lived in security among their neighbours, but had attained to vast power, and even to the conquest of the world. Olympias, seeing armed men advancing towards her, bent upon her destruction, went voluntarily to meet them, dressed in her regal apparel, and leaning on two of her maids. The executioners, on beholding her, struck with the recollection of her former royal dignity,⁶⁴ and with the names of so many of their kings, that occurred to their memory in connexion with her, stood still, until others were sent by Cassander to despatch her; she, at the same time, not shrinking from the sword or the blow, or crying out like a woman, but submitting to death like the bravest of men, and suitably to the glory of her ancient race, so that you might have perceived the soul of Alexander in his dying mother. As she was expiring, too, she is said to have settled her hair,⁶⁵ and to have covered her feet with her robe, that nothing unseemly might appear about her. After these events, Cassander married Thessalonice, the daughter of king Aridaeus, and sent the son of Alexander,⁶⁶ with his mother to the citadel of Amphipolis, to be kept under guard. |138 

BOOK XV.

War of Antigonas against his opponents; defeat of his son Demetrius, I.----Cruelty of Cassander towards the family of Alexander the Great; successes of Antigonus, II.----Acts of Lysimachus, III.----Account of Seleucus; of Sandrocottus; death of Antigonus, IV.

I. PERDICCAS and his brother, with Eumenes and Polysperchon, and other leaders of the opposite party, being killed, the contention among the successors of Alexander seemed to be at an end; when, on a sudden, a dispute arose among the conquerors themselves; for Ptolemy, Cassander, and Lysimachus, demanding that "the money taken amongst the spoil, and the provinces, should be divided," Antigonus said that "he would admit no partners in the advantages of a war of which he alone had undergone the perils." And that he might seem to engage in an honourable contest with his confederates, he gave out that "his object was to avenge the death of Olympias, who had been murdered by Cassander, and to release the son of Alexander, his king, with his mother, from their confinement at Amphipolis." On hearing this news, Ptolemy and Cassander, forming an alliance with Lysimachus and Seleucus, made vigorous preparations for war by land and sea. Ptolemy had possession of Egypt, with the greater part of Africa, Cyprus, and Phoenicia. Macedonia and Greece were subject to Cassander. Antigonus had taken possession of Asia and the eastern countries.

Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, was defeated in the first engagement by Ptolemy, at Gamala.⁶⁷ In this action, the renown gained by Ptolemy for his moderation was greater than that which he obtained from the victory itself; for he let the friends of Demetrius depart, not only with their baggage, but with presents in addition; and he restored Demetrius himself all his private property, together with his family, making, at the same time, this honourable declaration, that "he had not engaged in the war for plunder, but for the maintenance of his own character, being indignant that when the leaders of the opposite faction were conquered, Antigonus claimed the fruits of their common victory for himself."

II. During these transactions, Cassander, returning from |139 Apollonia, fell in with the Antariatae,⁶⁸ who, having abandoned their country on account of the vast number of frogs and mice that infested it, were seeking a settlement. Fearing that they might possess themselves of Macedonia, he made a compact with them, received them as allies, and assigned them lands at the extremity of the country. Afterwards, lest Hercules, the son of Alexander, who had nearly completed his fourteenth year, should be called to the throne on Macedonia through the influence of his father's name, he sent secret orders that he should be put to death, together with his mother Barsine, and that their bodies should be privately buried in the earth lest the murder should be betrayed by a regular funeral.⁶⁹ As if, too, he had previously incurred but small guilt, first in the case of the king himself,⁷⁰ and afterwards in that of his mother Olympias and her son, he cut off his other son, and his mother Roxane, with similar treachery; as though he could not obtain the throne of Macedonia, to which he aspired, otherwise than by crime.

Ptolemy meanwhile engaged a second time with Demetrius at sea; ⁷¹ and, having lost his fleet, and left the victory to the enemy, fled back to Egypt, whither Demetrius sent Leontiscus, the son of Ptolemy, his brother Menelaus, and his friends, with all their baggage, being induced to this act by like kindness previously shown ⁷² to himself; and that it might appear that they were stimulated, not by hatred, but by desire of glory and honour, they vied with one another, even amidst war itself, in kindnesses and services. So much more |140 honourably were wars then conducted than private friendships are now maintained! ⁷³

Antigonus, being elated with this victory, gave orders that he himself, as well as his son Demetrius, should be styled king by the people. Ptolemy also, that he might not appear of less authority among his subjects, was called king by his army. Cassander and Lysimachus, too, when they heard of these proceedings, assumed regal dignity themselves. They all abstained, however, from taking the insignia of royalty, as long as any sons of their king survived. Such forbearance was there in them, that, though they had tbe power, they yet contentedly remained without the distinction of kings, while Alexander had a proper heir. But Ptolemy and Cassander, and the other leaders of the opposite faction, perceiving that they were individually weakened by Antigonus, while each regarded the war, not as the common concern of all, but as merely affecting himself, and all were unwilling to give assistance to one another, as if victory would be only for one, and not for all of them, appointed, after encouraging each other by letters, a time and place for an interview, and prepared for the contest with united strength. Cassander, being unable to join in it, because of a war near home, despatched Lysimachus to the support of his allies with a large force.

III. Lysimachus was of a noble family in Macedonia, but was exalted far above any nobility of birth by the proofs which he had given of personal merit, which was so great, that he excelled all those by whom the east was conquered, in greatness of mind, in philosophy, and in reputation for prowess. For when Alexander the Great, in his anger, had pretended that Callisthenes the philosopher, for his opposition to the Persian mode of doing obeisance, was concerned in a plot that had been formed against him, and, by cruelly mangling all his limbs, and cutting off his ears, nose, and lips, had rendered him a shocking and miserable spectacle, and had had him carried about, also, shut up in a cage with a dog, for a terror to others, Lysimachus, who was accustomed to listen to Callisthenes, and to receive precepts of virtue from him, took pity |141 on so great a man, undergoing punishment, not for any crime, but for freedom of speech,⁷⁴ and furnished him with poison to relieve him from his misery. At this act Alexander was so displeased, that he ordered Lysimachus to be exposed to a fierce lion; but when the beast, furious at the sight of him, had made a spring towards him, Lysimachus plunged his hand, wrapped in his cloak, into the lion's mouth, and, seizing fast hold of his tongue, killed him. This exploit being related to the king, his wonder at it ended in pleasure, and he regarded Lysimachus with more affection than before, on account of his extraordinary bravery. Lysimachus, likewise, endured the ill-treatment of the king with magnanimity, as that of a parent. At last, when all recollection of this affair was effaced from the king's mind, Lysimachus was his only attendant in an excursion through vast heaps of sand, when he was in pursuit of some flying enemies, and had left his guards behind him in consequence of the swiftness of his horse. His brother Philip,⁷⁵ having previously attempted to do him the same service, had expired in the king's arms. Alexander, however, as he alighted from his horse, happened to wound Lysimachus in the forehead with the point of his spear, so severely that the blood could not by any means be stopped, till the king, taking off his diadem, placed it on his head by way of closing the wound; an act which was the first omen of royal dignity to Lysimachus. And after the death of Alexander, when the provinces were divided among his successors, the most warlike nations were assigned to Lysimachus as the bravest of them all; so far, by general consent, had he the pre-eminence over the rest in military merit.

IV. Before the war with Antigonus was commenced by Ptolemy and his allies, Seleucus, on a sudden, leaving the Greater Asia,⁷⁶ came forward as a fresh enemy to Antigonus. The merit of Seleucus was well known, and his birth had been attended with extraordinary circumstances. His mother Laodice, being married to Antiochus, a man of eminence among Philip's generals, seemed to herself, in a dream, to have conceived from a union with Apollo, and, after becoming |142 pregnant, to have received from him, as a reward for her compliance, a ring, on the stone of which was engraved an anchor, and which she was desired to give to the child that she should bring forth. A ring similarly engraved, which was found the next day in the bed, and the figure of an anchor, which was visible on the thigh of Seleucus when he was born, made this dream extremely remarkable. This ring Laodice gave to Seleucus, when he was going with Alexander to the Persian war, informing him, at the same time, of his paternity. After the death of Alexander, having secured dominion in the east, he built a city, where be established a memorial of his twofold origin; for he called the city Antioch from the name of his father Antiochus, and consecrated the plains near the city to Apollo. This mark of his paternity continued also among his descendants; for his sons and grandsons had an anchor on their thigh, as a natural proof of their extraction.; After the division of the Macedonian empire among the followers of Alexander, he carried on several wars in the east. He first took Babylon, and then, his strength being increased by this success, subdued the Bactrians. He next made an expedition into India, which, after the death of Alexander, had shaken, as it were, the yoke of servitude from its neck, and put his governors to death. The author of this liberation was Sandrocottus, who afterwards, however, turned their semblance of liberty into slavery; for, making himself king, he oppressed the people whom he had delivered from a foreign power, with a cruel tyranny. This man was of mean origin, but was stimulated to aspire to regal power by supernatural encouragement; for, having offended Alexander by his boldness of speech, and orders being given to kill him, he saved himself by swiftness of foot; and while he was lying asleep, after his fatigue, a lion of great size having come up to him, licked off with his tongue the sweat that was running from him, and after gently waking him, left him. Being first prompted by this prodigy to conceive hopes of royal dignity, he drew together a band of robbers, and solicited the Indians to support his new sovereignty. Some time after, as he was going to war with the generals of Alexander, a wild elephant of great bulk presented itself before him of its own accord, and, as if tamed down to gentleness,⁷⁷ took him on its back, and |143 became his guide in the war, and conspicuous in fields of battle. Sandrocottus, having thus acquired a throne, was in possession of India, when Seleucus was laying the foundations of his future greatness; who, after making a league with him, and settling his affairs in the east, proceeded to join in the war against Antigonus. As soon as the forces, therefore, of all the confederates were united, a battle was fought,⁷⁸ in which Antigonus was slain, and his son Demetrius put to flight.

But the allied generals, after thus terminating the war with the enemy, turned their arms again upon each other, and, as they could not agree about the spoil, were divided into two parties. Seleucus joined Demetrius, and Ptolemy Lysimachus. Cassander dying, Philip, his son, succeeded him. Thus new wars arose, as it were, from a fresh source, for Macedonia.

BOOK XVI.

Antipater, son of Cassander, puts his mother to death; Demetrius Poliorcetes becomes master of Macedonia, I.----Demetrius is driven from Macedonia; deaths of Antipater and Cassander, II.----War between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus; account of the city Heraclea, in Pontus, III.----Tyranny of Clearchus there, IV.----Death of Clearchus; subsequent condition of Heraclea, V.

I. AFTER the deaths, in rapid succession,⁷⁹ of Cassander and Philip, queen Thessalonice, the wife of Cassander, was soon killed by her son Antipater, though she conjured him by the bosom of a mother to spare her life. The cause of this matricide was that, in the division of the kingdom between the brothers, she seemed to have favoured Alexander. This deed appeared the more atrocious to every one, as there was no proof of injustice on the part of the mother; although, indeed, in a case of matricide, no reason can be alleged sufficient to justify the crime. Alexander, in consequence, resolving to go to war |144 with his brother, to avenge his mother's death, solicited aid from Demetrius; and Demetrius, in hopes of seizing the throne of Macedonia, made no delay in complying with his request. Lysimachus, alarmed at his approach, persuaded Antipater, his son-in-law, rather to be reconciled to his brother than to allow his father's enemy to enter Macedonia. Demetrius, therefore, finding that à reconciliation was commenced between the brothers, removed Alexander by treachery, and, having seized on the throne of Macedonia, called an assembly of the army, to defend himself before them for the murder. He alleged that "his life had been first attempted by Alexander, and that he had not contrived treachery, but prevented it; and that he himself was the more rightful king of Macedonia, both from experience attendant on greater age, and from other con siderations; for that his father ⁸⁰ had been a follower of king Philip, and of Alexander the Great, in the whole of their wars, and afterwards an attendant on the children of Alexander, and a leader in the punishment of the revolters. That Antipater, on the other hand, the grandfather of these young men, had always been more cruel as the governor of the kingdom than the kings themselves; and that Cassander, their father, had been the extirpator of the king's family, sparing neither women nor children, and not resting till he had cut off the whole of the royal house. That vengeance for these crimes, as he could not exact it from Cassander himself, had been inflicted on his children; and that accordingly Philip and Alexander, if the dead have any knowledge of human affairs, would not wish the murderers of them and their issue, but their avengers, to fill the throne of Macedonia." The people being pacified by these arguments, he was saluted king of Macedonia. Lysimachus, too, being pressed with a war with Doricetes, king of Thrace, and not wishing to have to fight with Demetrius at the same time, made peace with him, resigning into his hands the other half of Macedonia, which had fallen to the share of his son-in-law Antipater.

II. When Demetrius, therefore, supported by the whole strength of Macedonia, was preparing to invade Asia, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus, having experienced in the former contest how great the power of unanimity was, formed an alliance a second time, and having joined their forces, carried |145 the war against Demetrius, into Europe. With these leaders Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, united himself, as a friend and sharer in the war, hoping that Demetrius might lose Macedonia not less easily than he had obtained it. Nor were his expectations vain; for he himself, having corrupted Demetrius's army, and put him to flight, seized on the throne of Macedonia.

During the course of these transactions, Lysimachus put to death his son-in-law Antipater, who complained that he had been deprived of the throne of Macedonia by the treachery of his father-in-law, and put his daughter Eurydice, who had joined with him in his complaints, into prison; and thus the whole house of Cassander made atonement to Alexander the Great, whether for killing himself or destroying his offspring, partly by violent deaths, partly by other sufferings, and partly by shedding the blood of one another.

Demetrius, surrounded by so many armies, preferred, when he might have fallen honourably, to make an ignominious surrender to Seleucus. At the termination of the war died Ptolemy, after having attained great glory by his military exploits. Contrary to the custom among nations, he had resigned his kingdom, before his illness, to the youngest of his sons, and had stated his reasons for that proceeding to the people, who showed themselves no less indulgent in accepting the son for their king than the father had proved himself in delivering the kingdom to him. Among other instances of mutual affection between the father and the son, the following had procured the young man favour from the people, that the father, having publicly resigned the throne to him, had done duty as a private soldier among his guards, thinking it more honour to be the father of a king than to possess any kingdom whatsoever.

III. But the evil of discord, constantly arising among equals, had produced a war between Lysimachus and King Pyrrhus, who had just before been allies against Demetrius. Lysimachus, gaining the advantage, had expelled Pyrrhus, and made himself master of Macedonia. He then made war on Thrace, and afterwards on Heraclea, a city of which the origin and the subsequent fortunes were objects of wonder: for when the Baeotians were suffering from a pestilence, the oracle at Delphi had told them, that "they must plant a |146 colony in the country of Pontus, dedicated to Hercules. But as, through dread of a long and dangerous voyage, and all the people preferring death in their own country, the matter was neglected, the Phocians made war upon them; and after suffering from unsuccessful struggles with that people, they had recourse to the oracle a second time. The answer which they received was, that "what was a remedy for the pestilence would also be a remedy for the war." Raising therefore a body of colonists, and sailing to Pontus, they built the city Heraclea; and as they had been led to that settlement by the guidance of fate, they soon acquired great power. In process of time the city had many wars with its neighbours, and many dissensions among its own people. Among other noble acts that they performed, the following is one of the most remarkable. When the Athenians were at the height of power, and, after the overthrow of the Persians, had imposed a tax on Greece and Asia for the support of a fleet, and when all were promptly contributing to the maintenance of their safety, the Heracleans alone, from friendship for the kings of Persia, refused to pay. Lamachus was accordingly despatched by the Athenians with an army to exact from them what was withheld; but leaving his ships on the coast, and going to ravage the lands of the Heracleans, he lost his fleet, with the greater part of his army, by shipwreck, in a tempest that came on suddenly. As he was not able, therefore, to return by sea, from having lost his ships, and did not dare, with so small a body of men, to return by land through so many warlike nations, the Heracleans, thinking this a more honourable opportunity for kindness than for revenge, sent the invaders away with a supply of provisions and troops to protect them; deeming the devastation of their lands no loss, if they could but make those their friends who had formerly been their enemies.

IV. Among many other evils they endured also that of tyranny; for when, on the populace violently clamouring for an abolition of debts, and a division of the lands of the rich, the subject was long discussed in the senate, and no settlement of it was devised, they at last sought assistance against the commons, who were grown riotous by too long idleness, from Timotheus general of the Athenians, and afterwards from Epaminondas general of the Thebans. As, |147 both, however, refused their request, they had recourse to Clearchus, whom they themselves had exiled; such being the urgency of their distresses, that they recalled to the guardian ship of his country him whom they had forbidden to enter his country. But Clearchus, being rendered more desperate by his banishment, and regarding the dissension among the people as a means of securing to himself the government, first sought a secret interview with Mithridates,⁸¹ the enemy of his countrymen, and made a league with him on the understanding that when he was re-established in his country, he should, on betraying the city into his hands, be made lieutenant-governor of it. But the treachery which he had conceived against his countrymen, he afterwards turned against Mithridates himself; for on returning from banishment, to be as it were the arbiter of the disputes in the city, he, at the time appointed for delivering the town to Mithridates, made Mithridates himself prisoner, with a party of his friends, and released him from captivity only on the receipt of a large sum of money. And as, in this case, he suddenly changed himself from a friend into an enemy, so, in regard to his countrymen, he soon, from a supporter of the senate's cause, became a patron of the common people, and not only inflamed the populace against those who had conferred his power upon him, and by whom he had been recalled into his country and established in the citadel, but even exercised upon his benefactors the most atrocious inflictions of tyrannic cruelty. Summoning the people to an assembly, he declared that "he would no longer support the senate in their proceedings against the populace, but would even interpose his authority, if they persisted in their former severities; and that, if the people thought themselves able to check the tyranny of the senate, he would retire with his soldiers, and take no further part in their dissensions; but that, if they distrusted their ability to make resistance, he would not be wanting to aid them in taking revenge. They might therefore," he added, "determine among themselves; they might bid him withdraw, if they pleased, or might request him to stay as a sharer in the popular cause." The people, induced by these fair speeches, conferred on him the supreme authority, and, while they were incensed at the power of the senate, surrendered  |148  themselves, with their wives and children, as slaves to the power of a single tyrant. Clearchus then apprehended sixty senators (the rest had taken flight), and threw them into prison. The people rejoiced that the senate was overthrown, and especially that it had fallen by means of a leader among the senators, and that, by a reverse of fortune, their support was turned to their destruction. Clearchus, by threatening all his prisoners with death, made the price offered for their ransom the higher; and, after receiving from them large sums of money, as if he would secretly withdraw them from the violence threatened by the people, despoiled those of their lives whom he had previously despoiled of their fortunes.

V. Learning, soon after, that war was prepared against him by those who had made their escape (several cities being moved by pity to espouse their cause), he gave freedom to their slaves; and that no affliction might be wanting to distress the most honourable families, he obliged their wives and daughters to marry their slaves, threatening death to such as refused, that he might thus render the slaves more attached to himself, and less reconcileable to their masters. But such marriages were more intolerable to the women than immediate death; and many, in consequence, killed themselves before the nuptial rites were celebrated, and many in the midst of them, first killing their new husbands, and delivering themselves from dishonourable sufferings by a spirit of noble virtue. A battle was then fought, in which the tyrant, being victorious, dragged such of the senators as he took prisoners before the faces of their countrymen in triumph. Returning into the city, he threw some into prison, stretched others on the rack, and put others to death; and not a place in the city was unvisited by the tyrant's cruelty. Arrogance was added to severity, insolence to inhumanity. From a course of continued good fortune, he sometimes forgot that he was a man, sometimes called himself the son of Jupiter. When he appeared in public, a golden eagle, as a token of his parentage, was carried before him; he wore a purple robe, buskins like kings in tragedies, and a crown of gold. His son he named Ceraunos,⁸² to mock the gods, not only with false statements, but with impious names. Two noble youths, Chion and Leonides, incensed that he should dare to commit such outrages, and desiring to |149 deliver their country, formed a conspiracy to put him to death. They were disciples of Plato the philosopher, and being desirous to exhibit to their country the virtue in which they were daily instructed by the precepts of their master, placed fifty of their relations, as if they were their attendants, in ambush; while they themselves, in the character of men who had a dispute to be settled, went into the citadel to the tyrant.⁸³ Gaining admission, as being well known, the tyrant, while he was listening attentively to the one that spoke first, was killed by the other. But as their accomplices were too late in coming to their support, they were overpowered by the guards; and hence it happened that though the tyrant was killed, their country was not liberated. Satyrus, the brother of Clearchus, made himself tyrant in a similar way; and for many years, with various successive changes, the Heracleans continued under the yoke of tyrants.

BOOK XVII.

Fall of Lysimachia; Lysimachus kills his son; Seleucus declares war against him, I.----Death of Lysimachus; Seleucus killed by Ptolemy Ceraunus; Pyrrhus prepares to invade Italy, II.----History of Epirus, III.

I. ABOUT the same time there was an earthquake in the regions round the Hellespont and the Chersonese; ⁸⁴ but the chief effect of it was, that the city of Lysimachia, founded two and twenty years before by king Lysimachus, was sunk in ruins; a prodigy which portended disasters to Lysimachus and his family, destruction to his kingdom, and calamity to the disturbed provinces. Nor was fulfilment wanting to these omens; for, in a short time after, conceiving towards his son Agathocles (whom he had appointed to succeed him on the throne, and through whose exertions he had managed several wars with success), a hatred unnatural in him not only as a father but |150 as a man, he took him off by poison, using as his agent in the affair his step-mother Arsinoë. This was the first commencement of his calamities, the prelude to approaching rain; for executions of several great men were added to the murder of his son, who were put to death for expressing concern at the young prince's fate; and, in consequence, both those about the court who escaped this cruelty, and those who were in command of the troops, began at once to desert to Seleucus, and incite him to make war upon Lysimachus; an enterprise to which he was already inclined from a desire to emulate his glory. This was the last contest between the fellow soldiers of Alexander; and the two combatants were reserved, as it were, for an example of the influence of fortune. Lysimachus was seventy-four years old; Seleucus seventy-seven. But at this age they both had the fire of youth, and an insatiable desire of power; for though they alone possessed the whole world,⁸⁵ they yet thought themselves confined within narrow limits, and measured their course of life, not by their length of years, but by the extent to which they carried their dominion.

II. In this war, Lysimachus (who had previously lost, by various chances of fortune, fifteen children) died, with no small bravery, and crowned the ruin of his family. Seleucus, overjoyed at such a triumph, and what he thought greater than the triumph, that he alone survived of all Alexander's staff,⁸⁶ the conqueror of conquerors, boasted that "this was not the work of man, but a favour from the gods," little thinking that he himself was shortly after to be an instance of human instability; for in the course of about seven months, he was treacherously surprised by Ptolemy,⁸⁷ whose sister Lysimachus had married, and put to death, losing the kingdom of Macedonia, which he had taken from Lysimachus together with his life.

Ptolemy, being ambitious to please his subjects, both for the honour of the memory of the great Ptolemy his father, |151 and for the sake of palliating the revenge which he had taken on behalf of Lysimachus, resolved, in the first place, to conciliate the sons of Lysimachus, and sought a marriage with their mother Arsinoë, his sister,⁸⁸ promising to adopt the young men, so that, when he should succeed to the throne of their father, they might not venture, through respect for their mother, or the influence of the name of father, to attempt anything against him. He solicited, too, by letter, the friendship of his brother the king of Egypt, professing that "he laid aside all feelings of resentment at being deprived of his father's kingdom, and that he would no longer ask that from a brother which he had more honourably obtained from his father's enemy." ⁸⁹ He also in every way flattered Nicomedes,⁹⁰ that as he was about to have a war with Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, and Antiochus the son of Seleucus, he might not come upon him as a third enemy. Nor was Pyrrhus of Epirus, neglected by him, a king who would be of great assistance to whichsoever side he attached himself, and who, while he desired to spoil them one by one, sought the favour of all. On going to assist the Tarentines, therefore, against the Romans, he desired of Antigonus the loan of vessels to transport his army into Italy; of Antiochus, who was better provided with wealth than with men, a sum of money; and of Ptolemy, some troops of Macedonian soldiers. Ptolemy, who had no excuse for holding back for want of forces, supplied him with five thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry, and fifty elephants, but for not more than two years' service. In return for this favour, Pyrrhus, after marrying the daughter of Ptolemy, appointed him guardian of his kingdom in his absence; lest, on carrying the flower of his army into Italy, he should leave his dominions a prey to his enemies.

III. But since I have come to speak of Epirus,⁹¹ a few |152 particulars should be premised concerning the rise of that kingdom. The first regal power in this country was that of the Molossi. Afterwards Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, having been deprived of his father's dominions ⁹² during his absence in the Trojan war, settled in these parts; the inhabitants of which were first called Pyrrhidae, and afterwards Epirots. This Pyrrhus, going to the temple of Jupiter at Dodona to consult the oracle, seized there by force Lanassa, the granddaughter of Hercules, and by a marriage with her had eight children. Of his daughters he gave some in marriage to the neighbouring princes, and by means of these alliances acquired great power. He gave to Helenus,⁹³ the son of King Priam, for his eminent services, the kingdom of the Chaonians, and Andromache the widow of Hector in marriage, after she had been his own wife, he having received her at the division of the Trojan spoil. Shortly after he was slain at Delphi, at the very altar of Apollo, by the treachery of Orestes the son of Agamemnon. His successor was his son Pielus. The throne afterwards passed in regular descent to Arrybas, over whom, as he was an orphan, and the only survivor of a noble family, guardians were publicly appointed, the concern of all being so much the greater to preserve and educate him. He was also sent to Athens for the sake of instruction; and, as he was more learned than his predecessors, so he became more popular with his subjects. He was the first, accordingly, that established laws, a senate, annual magistrates, and a regular form of government; and as a settlement was found for the people by Pyrrhus, so a more civilized way of life was introduced by Arrybas. A son of this king was Neoptolemus, the father of Olympias (mother of Alexander the great), and of Alexander, who occupied the throne of Epirus after him, and died in Italy in a war with the Bruttii. On the death of Alexander his brother Aeacides became king, who, by wearying his people with constant wars against the Macedonians, incurred |153 their dislike, and was in consequence driven into exile, leaving his little son Pyrrhus, about two years old, in the kingdom. The child, too, being sought for by the populace to be put to death, through their hatred to the father, was concealed and carried off into Illyricum, and delivered to Beroë, who was the wife of king Glaucias, and of the family of the Aeacidae, to be brought up. This king, moved either by pity for the boy's misfortunes, or by his infantine caresses, protected him for a long time against Cassander, king of Macedonia, (who demanded him with menaces of war,) having the kindness also to adopt him for his better security. The Epirots, being moved by these acts, and turning their hatred into pity* brought him back, when he was eleven years old, into the kingdom, appointing him guardians to keep the throne for him till he became of age. When he grew up he engaged in many wars, and, by a train of success, attained such eminence as a leader, that he was the only man who was thought capable of defending the Tarentines against the Romans.

BOOK XVIII.

War of Pyrrhus with, the Romans, I.----The Romans refuse aid from Carthage; make peace with Pyrrhus; send an embassy to Ptolemy Philadelphus; Cineas; Pyrrhus retires to Sicily, II.---- Account of Tyre; rise of Strato, III.----Dido leaves Tyre, IV.----Founds Carthage; its prosperity, V.----Iarbas; death of Dido; human sacrifices at Carthage, VI.----Disasters of the Carthaginians in Sardinia; mutiny of the army; Malchus; Carthalo, VII.

I. PYRRHUS, king of Epirus, therefore, being solicited by a second embassy from the Tarentines, to which were added the entreaties of the Samnites and Lucanians, who likewise needed assistance against the Romans, was induced to comply, not so much by the prayers of the suitors, as by the hope of making himself master of Italy, and promised to come to them with an army. When his thoughts, indeed, were once directed to that enterprise, the examples of his predecessors began to impel him violently towards it, in order that he might not appear inferior to his uncle Alexander, whom the Tarentines had had for a defender against the Bruttii, or to have less spirit than Alexander the Great, who had subdued the east in |154 so distant an expedition from his native country. Having left his son Ptolemy, therefore, who was but fifteen years old, as guardian of his kingdom, he landed his army in the harbour of Tarentum, taking with him his two younger sons, Alexander and Helenus, as a comfort to him in so long a voyage. The Roman consul, Valerius Laevinus, hearing of his arrival, and hastening to come to battle with him before the forces of his allies were assembled, led forth his army into the field. Nor did the king, although he was inferior in number of forces, hesitate to engage. But as the Romans were getting the advantage, the appearance of the elephants, previously unknown to them, made them at first stand amazed, and afterwards quit the field; and the strange monsters of the Macedonians ⁹⁴ at once conquered the conquerors. The triumph of the enemy, however, was not bloodless; for Pyrrhus himself was severely wounded, and a great number of his soldiers killed; and he had more glory from his victory than pleasure. Many cities of Italy, moved by the result of this battle, surrendered to Pyrrhus; among others also Locri, betraying the Roman garrison, revolted to him. Of the prisoners, Pyrrhus sent back two hundred to Rome without ransom, that the Romans, after experiencing his valour, might experience also his generosity. Some days after, when the forces of his allies had come up, he fought a second battle with the Romans, of which the event was similar to that of the former.

II. In the meantime, Mago, general of the Carthaginians, being sent to the aid of the Romans with a hundred and twenty ships, went to the senate, saying that "the Carthaginians were much concerned that they should be distressed by war in Italy from a foreign prince; and that for this reason he had been despatched to assist them; that, as they were attacked by a foreign enemy, they might be supported by foreign aid." The thanks of the senate were given to the Carthaginians, and the succours sent back. But Mago, with the cunning of a Carthaginian, went privately, a few days after, to Pyrrhus, as if to be a peace-maker from the people of Carthage, but in reality to discover the king's views with regard to Sicily, to which island it was reported that he was |155 sent for; since the Carthaginians had the same reason ⁹⁵ for sending assistance to the Romans, namely that Pyrrhus might be detained by a war with that people in Italy, and prevented from crossing over into Sicily. During the course of these transactions, Fabricius Luscinus, being commissioned by the senate of Rome, had made peace with Pyrrhus. To ratify the treaty, Cineas was sent to Rome by Pyrrhus with valuable presents, but found nobody's house open for their reception. To this instance of Roman incorruptibility, another, very similar, happened about the same time. Certain ambassadors, who were sent by the senate into Egypt, having refused some costly presents offered them by Ptolemy, and being invited to supper some days after, golden crowns were sent to them, which, from respect to the king, they accepted, but placed them the next day on the king's statues. Cineas, bringing word that "the treaty with the Romans was broken off by Appius Claudius," and being asked by Pyrrhus "what sort of city Rome was," replied that "it appeared to him a city of kings." Soon after, ambassadors from the Sicilians arrived, to offer Pyrrhus the dominion of the whole island, which was harassed by constant wars with the Carthaginians. Leaving his son Alexander, therefore, at Locri, and securing the cities of his allies with strong garrisons, Pyrrhus transported his army into Sicily.

III. Since I come to speak of the Carthaginians, a short account shall be given of their origin, tracing back, to some extent, the history of the Tyrians, whose misfortunes were much to be pitied. The nation of the Tyrians was founded by the Phaenicians, who, suffering from an earthquake, and abandoning their country, settled at first near the Syrian lake, ⁹⁶ and afterwards on the coast near the sea, where they built a city, which, from the abundance of fish, they named Sidon, for so the Phaenicians call a fish in their language. Many years after, their city being stormed by the king of the |156 Ascalonians,⁹⁷ sailing away to the place where Tyre stands, they built that city the year before the fall of Troy. Here, harassed for a long time, and in various ways, by attacks from the Persians, they resisted, indeed, successfully, but, as their strength was exhausted, they suffered the most cruel treatment from their slaves, who were then extraordinarily numerous. These traitors, having entered into a conspiracy, killed their masters and all the free people of the city, and thus, becoming masters of the place, took possession of the houses of their owners, assumed the government, appropriated wives to themselves, and begot, what they themselves were not, freemen. Out of so many thousands of slaves, there was one who was moved to compassion by the mild disposition of his aged master and the hard fortune of his little son, and looked upon them, not with savage fierceness, but with humanity, affection, and pity. He put them out of the way, therefore, as if they had been killed; and when the slaves came to deliberate about the condition of their government, and had resolved that a king should be elected from their own body, and that he should be preferred, as most acceptable to the gods, who should first see the rising sun, he mentioned the matter to Strato (for that was the name of his master), who was then in concealment. Being instructed by him, and proceeding with the rest, about the middle of the night, to a certain plain, he alone, when they were all looking towards the east, kept his eye directed towards the west. This at first seemed madness to the others, to look in the west for the rising sun; but when day began to advance, and the rising luminary to shine on the highest eminences of the city, he, while all the rest were watching to see the sun itself, was the first to point out to them the sunshine on the loftiest pinnacle of the town. This thought seemed above the wit of a slave; and when they asked him who had put it into his head, he confessed that it was his master. It was then seen how far the abilities of freemen surpass those of slaves, who, though they may be first in viciousness, are not first in wisdom. The old man and his son were therefore spared; and the slaves, thinking that they had been preserved by the interposition of some deity, made Strato king. After his death, the throne descended to his son, and |157 subsequently to his grandsons. This atrocity of these slaves was much noticed, and was a terrible example to the whole world. Alexander the Great, when he was prosecuting his wars, some time after, in the east, having taking the city, crucified, as an avenger of the general safety, and in memory, of the former massacre, all those who survived the siege; preserving from injury only the family of Strato, and restoring the throne ⁹⁸ to his descendants; and sending to the island, at the same time, inhabitants that were free-born and guiltless, that, as the race of slaves was extirpated, an entirely new generation might be established in the city.

IV. The Tyrians, being thus settled under the auspices of Alexander, quickly grew powerful by frugality and industry.

Before the massacre of the masters by the slaves, when they abounded in wealth and population, they sent a portion of their youth into Africa, and founded Utica. Meanwhile their king died at Tyre, appointing his son Pygmalion and his daughter Elissa, a maiden of extraordinary beauty, his heirs. But the people gave the throne to Pygmalion, who was quite a boy. Elissa married Acerbas, ⁹⁹ her uncle, who was priest of Hercules, a dignity next to that of the king. Acerbas had great but concealed riches, having laid up his gold, for fear of the king, not in his house, but in the earth; a fact of which, though people had no certain knowledge of it, report was not silent. Pygmalion, excited by the account, and forgetful of the laws of humanity, murdered his uncle, who was also his brother-in-law, without the least regard to natural affection. Elissa long entertained a hatred to her brother for his crime, but at last, dissembling her detestation, and assuming mild looks for the time, she secretly contrived a mode of flight, admitting into her confidence some of the leading men of the city, in whom she saw that there was a similar hatred of the king, and an equal desire to escape. She then addressed her brother in such a way as to deceive him; pretending that "she had a desire to remove to his house, in order that the home of her husband might no longer revive in her, when she was desirous to forget him, the oppressive recollection of her sorrows, and that the sad |158 remembrances of him might no more present themselves to her eyes." To these words of his sister, Pygmalion was no unwilling listener, thinking that with her the gold of Acerbas would come to him. But Elissa put the attendants, who were sent by the king to assist in her removal, on board some vessels in the early part of the evening, and sailing out into the deep, made them throw some loads of sand, put up in sacks, as if it was money, into the sea. Then, with tears and mournful ejaculations, she invoked Acerbas, entreating that "he would favourably receive his wealth which he had left behind him, and accept that as an offering to his shade, which he had found to be the cause of his death." Next she addressed the attendants, and said that "death had long been desired by her, but as for them, cruel torments and a direful end awaited them, for having disappointed the tyrant's avarice of those treasures, in the hopes of obtaining which he had committed fratricide." Having thus struck terror into them all, she took them with her as companions of her flight. Some bodies of senators, too, who were ready against that night, came to join her, and having offered a sacrifice to Hercules, whose priest Acerbas had been, proceeded to seek a settlement in exile.

V. Their first landing place was the isle of Cyprus, where the priest of Jupiter, with his wife and children, offered himself to Elissa, at the instigation of the gods, as her companion and the sharer of her fortunes, stipulating for the perpetual honour of the priesthood for himself and his descendants. The stipulation was received as a manifest omen of good fortune. It was a custom among the Cyprians to send their daughters, on stated days before their marriage, to the sea-shore, to prostitute themselves, and thus procure money for their marriage portions, and to pay, at the same time, offerings to Venus for the preservation of their chastity in time to come. Of these Elissa ordered about eighty to be seized and taken on board, that her men might have wives, and her city a population. During the course of these transactions, Pygmalion, having heard of his sister's flight, and preparing to pursue her with unfeeling hostility, was scarcely induced by the prayers of his mother and the menaces of the gods to remain quiet; the inspired augurs warning him that "he would not escape with impunity, if he interrupted the founding of a city that was to become the most prosperous in the |159 world." By this means some respite was given to the fugitives; and Elissa, arriving in a gulf of Africa, attached the inhabitants of the coast, who rejoiced at the arrival of foreigners, and the opportunity of bartering commodities with them, to her interest. Having then bargained for a piece of ground, as much as could be covered ¹⁰⁰ with an ox-hide, where she might refresh her companions, wearied with their long voyage, until she could conveniently resume her progress, she directed the hide to be cut into the thinnest possible strips, and thus acquired a greater portion of ground than she had apparently demanded; whence the place had afterwards the name of Byrsa. The people of the neighbourhood subsequently gathering about her, bringing, in hopes of gain, many articles to the strangers for sale, and gradually fixing their abodes there, some resemblance of a city arose from the concourse. Ambassadors from the people of Utica, too, brought them presents as relatives, and exhorted them "to build a city where they had chanced to obtain a settlement." An inclination to detain the strangers was felt also by the Africans; and, accordingly, with the consent of all, Carthage was founded, an annual tribute being fixed for the ground which it was to occupy. At the commencement of digging the foundations an ox's head was found, which was an omen that the city would be wealthy, indeed, but laborious and always enslaved. It was therefore removed to another place, where the head of a horse was found, which, indicating that the people would be warlike and powerful, portended an auspicious site. In a short time, as the surrounding people came together at the report, the inhabitants became numerous, and the city itself extensive.

VI. When the power of the Carthaginians, from success in their proceedings, had risen to some height, Hiarbas, king of the Maxitani,¹⁰¹ desiring an interview with ten of the chief men of Carthage, demanded Elissa in marriage, denouncing war in case of a refusal. The deputies, fearing to report this message to the queen, acted towards her with Carthaginian artifice, |160 saying that "the king asked for some person to teach him and his Africans a more civilized way of life, but who could be found that would leave his relations and go to barbarians, and people that were living like wild beasts?" Being then reproached by the queen, "in case they refused a hard life for the benefit of their country, to which, should circumstances require, their life itself was due," they disclosed the king's message, saying that "she herself, if she wished her city to be secure, must do what she required of others." Being caught by this subtlety, she at last said (after calling for a long time with many tears and mournful lamentations on the name of her husband Acerbas), that "she would go whither the fate of her city called her." Taking three months for the accomplishment of her resolution, and having raised a funeral pile at the extremity of the city, she sacrificed many victims, as if she would appease the shade of her husband, and make her offerings to him before her marriage; and then, taking a sword, she ascended the pile, and, looking towards the people, said, that "she would go to her husband as they had desired her," and put an end to her life with the sword. As long as Carthage remained unconquered, she was worshipped as a goddess. This city was founded seventy-two years ¹⁰² before Rome; but while the bravery of its inhabitants made it famous in war, it was internally disturbed with various troubles, arising from civil differences. Being afflicted, among other calamities, with a pestilence, they adopted a cruel religious ceremony, an execrable abomination, as a remedy for it; for they immolated human beings as victims, and brought children (whose age excites pity even in enemies) to the altars, entreating favour of the gods by shedding the blood of those for whose life the gods are generally wont to be entreated.

VII. In consequence of the gods, therefore, being rendered |161 adverse by such atrocities, after they had long fought unsuccessfully in Sicily, and had transferred the war into Sardinia, they were defeated in a great battle with the loss of the greater part of their army; a disaster for which they sentenced their general Malchus,¹⁰³ under whose conduct they had both conquered a part of Sicily and achieved great exploits against the Africans, to remain in exile with the portion of his army that survived. The soldiers, indignant at this sentence, sent deputies to Carthage, to beg, in the first place, permission for them to return, and pardon for their ill success in the field; and, in the second place, to announce that "what they could not obtain by entreaty, they would obtain by force of arms." The prayers and threats of the deputies being alike slighted, the troops, after some days, went on board ship, and came under arms to the city, when they called gods and men to witness that "they were not come to overthrow, but to recover their country; and that they would show their countrymen that it was not valour, but fortune, that had failed them in the preceding war." By stopping the supplies, and besieging the city, they reduced the Carthaginians to the greatest despair. At this time Cartalo, the son of Malchus the exiled general, returning by his father's camp from Tyre (whither he had been sent by the Carthaginians, to carry the tenth of the plunder of Sicily, which his father had taken, to Hercules), and being desired by his father to wait on him, replied that "he would discharge his religious duties to the public,¹⁰⁴ before those of merely private obligation." His father, though he was indignant at his conduct, was nevertheless afraid to obstruct him in the performance of his religious offices. Some days after, Cartalo, having obtained leave of absence from the people, and returning to his father, presented himself before all the people, dressed in the purple and fillets of his sacerdotal dignity, when his father took him aside, and said, "Hast thou dared, most unnatural wretch, to appear before so many of thy miserable countrymen, thus arrayed in purple and gold, and to enter, with all the marks of peaceful prosperity about thee, and exulting as it were in triumph, into |162 this sad and mournful camp? Couldst thou display thyself nowhere else to thy fellow creatures? Was no place fitter for it than where the misery of thy father, and the distress of his unhappy banishment, were to be seen? I have to add, too, that when thou wast summoned a short time ago, thou proudly despisedst, I do not say thy father, but certainly the general of thy countrymen. And what else dost thou exhibit in that purple and those crowns, but the titles of my victories? Since thou, therefore, acknowledgest nothing in thy father but the name of an exile, I also will assume the character, not of a father, but of a general, and will make such an example of thee, that no one may hereafter dare to sport with the miseries and sorrows of a parent." He accordingly ordered him to be nailed, in all his finery, on a high cross within view of the city. A few days after he took Carthage, and assembling the people, complained of the injustice of his banishment, pleaded necessity as his excuse for making war upon them, and added that "being content with his victory, and the punishment of the authors of their country's misery,¹⁰⁵ he granted a free pardon for his unjust banishment to all the rest." Having accordingly put ten senators to death, he left the city to the government of its laws. But being accused himself, shortly after, of aspiring to be king, he paid the penalty of his twofold cruelty to his son and his country. He was succeeded, as commander-in-chief, by Mago, by whose exertions the power of Carthage, the extent of its territories, and its military glory, was much increased. |163 

BOOK XIX

Hasdrubal and Hamilcar, sons of Mago; Hasdrubal dies in Sardinia; war of the Carthaginians in Sicily, I.----The Carthaginians defeated in Sicily; Himilco succeeds Hamilcar; pestilence in the army, II. ----Return of Himilco to Carthage; his speech, and death, III.

I. MAGO, the general of the Carthaginians, after having been the first, by regulating their military discipline, to lay the foundations of the Punic power, and after establishing the strength of the state, not less by his skill in the art of war than by his personal prowess, died, leaving behind him two sons, Hasdrubal and Hamilcar, who, pursuing the honourable course of their father, were heirs to his greatness as well as to his name. Under their generalship war was made upon Sardinia; and a contest was also maintained against the Africans, who demanded tribute for many years for the ground on which the city stood. But as the cause of the Africans was the more just, their fortune was likewise superior, and the struggle with them was ended----not by exertions in the field----by the payment of a sum of money. In Sardinia Hasdrubal was severely wounded, and died there, leaving the command to his brother Hamilcar; and not only the mourning throughout his country, but the fact that he had held eleven dictatorships and enjoyed four triumphs,¹⁰⁶ rendered his death an object of general notice. The courage of the enemy, too, was raised by it, as if the power of the Carthaginians had expired with their general. The people of Sicily, therefore, applying, in consequence of the perpetual depredations of the Carthaginians, to Leonidas, the brother of the king of Sparta, for aid, a grievous war broke out, which continued, with various success, for a long period.

During the course of these transactions, ambassadors came to Carthage from Darius king of Persia, bringing an edict, by which the Carthaginians were forbidden to offer human sacrifices, and to eat dog's flesh, and were commanded to burn the |164 bodies of the dead rather than bury them in the earth; ¹⁰⁷ and requesting, at the same time, assistance against Greece, on which Darius was about to make war. ¹⁰⁸ The Carthaginians declined giving him aid, on account of their continual wars with their neighbours, but, that they might not appear uncompliant in every thing, willingly submitted to the decree.

II. Hamilcar, meanwhile, was killed in battle in Sicily, leaving three sons, Himilco, Hanno, and Gisco. Hasdrubal also had the same number of sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Sappho. ¹⁰⁹ By these the affairs of the Carthaginians were managed at this period. War was made upon the Moors, a contest was maintained with the Numidians, and the Africans were compelled to remit the tribute paid for the building of the city. At length, however, as so numerous a family of commanders was dangerous to the liberty of the state, since they themselves managed and decided every thing, a hundred judges were chosen out of the senate, who were to demand of the generals, when they returned from war, an account of their proceedings, in order that, under this control, they might exercise their command ¹¹⁰ in war with a regard to the judicature and laws at home. |165 

In Sicily, Himilco succeeded as general in the room of Hamilcar, but, after fighting several successful battles, both by land and sea, and taking many towns, he suddenly lost his army by the influence of a pestilential constellation.¹¹¹ When the news of this arrived at Carthage, the country was overwhelmed with grief, and all places rung with lamentations, as if the city had been taken by an enemy; private houses were closed, the temples of the gods were shut, all religious ceremonies were intermitted, and all private business suspended. They all then crowded to the harbour, and inquired of the few that came out of their ships, survivors of the calamity, respecting their relatives. But when, after wavering hope, dread attended with suspense, and uncertain apprehensions of bereavement, the loss of their relatives became known to the unhappy inquirers, the groans of mourners, and the cries and sorrowful lamentations of unhappy mothers, were heard along the whole shore.

III. In this state of things, the bereaved general came out of his ship, ungirt, and in a mean dress like that of a slave, at eight of whom the troops of mourners gathered into one body. He, lifting up his hands to heaven, sometimes bewailed his own lot, sometimes the misfortune of the state, and sometimes complained of "the gods, who had deprived him of such honours obtained in the field, and the glory of so many victories, who, after he had taken so many cities, and had defeated the enemy by land and sea, had destroyed his victorious army, not by war, but by a pestilence. Yet he brought," he said, "this important consolation to his countrymen, that though the enemy might rejoice at their ill-success, they could assume no glory from it, as they could neither say that those who had died were slain by them, nor that those who had returned had been put to flight. That the plunder which they had taken in their deserted camp was not what they could exhibit as the spoils of a conquered enemy, but what they had seized, as falling to them for want of owners, through the accidental deaths of its possessors. That, as far as the enemy was concerned, they had come off conquerors; as |166 to the pestilence, they were certainly conquered; but that, for himself, he took nothing more to heart than that he could not die among the brave, and was reserved, not to enjoy life, but to be the sport of calamity. However, as he had brought the wretched remains of his army to Carthage, he would follow his fellow soldiers, and prove to his country that he had not prolonged his life to that day because he was desirous to live, but that he might not desert by his death, and abandon to the army of the enemy, those whom the horrible disease had spared." When he had walked, with such lamentations, through the city, and had arrived at the entrance to his own house, he dismissed the crowd that followed him, as if it were the last time that he should speak to them, and then, locking his door and admitting no one, not even his sons, to his presence, he put an end to his life.

BOOK XX.

Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, makes an expedition to Magna Graecia; Greek origin of many people of Italy, I.---- Of Metapontum; Crotona; Locri, II.----War between Crotona and Locri, III. ---- Pythagoras at Crotona; his death, IV.----Dionysius attacks Crotona; embassy of the Gauls to him; settlements of the Gauls in Italy; Dionysius recalled to Sicily; his death, V.

I. DIONYSIUS, after expelling the Carthaginians from Sicily, and making himself master of the whole island, thinking that peace might be dangerous to his power, and idleness in so great an army fatal to it, transported his forces into Italy; with a wish, at the same time, that the strength of his soldiers might be invigorated by constant employment, and his dominions enlarged. His first contest was with the Greeks, who occupied the nearest parts of the coast on the Italian sea; and, having conquered them, he attacked their neighbours, looking upon all of Grecian origin who were inhabitants of Italy, as his enemies; and these settlers had then spread, not merely through a part of Italy, but through almost the whole of it. Many Italian cities, indeed, after so long a lapse of time, still exhibit some traces of Greek manners; for the Etrurians, who occupy the shore of the Tuscan sea, came from Lydia; and Troy, after it was taken and overthrown, sent thither the Veneti (whom we see on the coast of the Adriatic), under the |167 leadership of Antenor. Adria, too, which is near the Illyrian sea, and which gave name also to the Adriatic, is a Greek city; and Diomede, being driven by shipwreck, after the destruction of Troy, into those parts, built Arpi. Pisae, likewise, in Liguria, had Grecian founders; and Tarquinii, in Etruria, as well as Spina in Umbria, has its origin from the Thessalians; Perusia was founded by the Achaeans. Need I mention Caere?¹¹² Or the people of Latium, who were settled by Aeneas? Are not the Falisci, are not Nola and Abella, colonies of the Chalcidians? What is all the country of Campania? What are the Bruttii ¹¹³ and Sabines? What are the Samnites?¹¹⁴ What are the Tarentines,¹¹⁵ whom we understand to have come from Lacedaemon, and to have been called Spurii? The city of Thurii they say that Philoctetes built; and his monument is seen there to this day, as well as the arrows of Hercules, on which the fate of Troy depended, laid up in the temple of Apollo.

II. The people of Metapontum, too, show in their temple of Minerva, the iron tools with which Epeus, by whom their city was founded, built the Trojan horse. Hence all that part of Italy was called Greater Greece.¹¹⁶ But soon after they were settled, the Metapontines, joining with the Sybarites and Crotonians, formed a design to drive the rest of the Greeks from Italy. Capturing, in the first place, the city Siris, they slew, as they were storming it, fifty young men that were embracing the statue of Minerva, and the priest of the goddess dressed in his robes, between the very altars, suffering, on this account, from pestilence and civil discord, the Crotonians, first of all, consulted the oracle at Delphi, and answer was made to them, that "there would be an end of their troubles, if they appeased the offended deity of Minerva, and the manes of the slain." After they had begun, accordingly, to make statues of proper size for the young men, and especially for Minerva, the Metapontines, learning what the oracle was, and thinking it expedient to anticipate them |168 in pacifying the manes of the goddess, erected to the young men smaller images of stone, and propitiated the goddess with offerings of bread.¹¹⁷ The plague was thus ended in both places, one people showing their zeal by their magnificence, and the other by their expedition. After they had recovered their health, the Crotonians were not long disposed to be quiet; and being indignant that, at the siege of Siris, assistance had been sent against them by the Locrians, they made war on that people. The Locrians, seized with alarm, had recourse to the Spartans, begging their assistance with humble entreaties. But the Spartans, disliking so distant an expedition, told them "to ask assistance from Castor and Pollux.'' This answer, from a city in alliance with them, the deputies did not despise, but going into the nearest temple, and offering sacrifice, they implored aid from those gods. The signs from the victims appearing favourable, and their request, as they supposed, being granted, they were no less rejoiced than if they were to carry the gods with them; and, spreading couches for them in the vessel, and setting out with happy omens, they brought their countrymen comfort though not assistance.

III. This affair becoming known, the Crotonians themselves also sent deputies to the oracle at Delphi, asking the way to victory and a prosperous termination of the war. The answer given was, that "the enemies must be conquered by vows, before they could be conquered by arms." They accordingly vowed the tenth of the spoil to Apollo, but the Locrians, getting information of this vow, and the god's answer, vowed a ninth part, keeping the matter however secret, that they might not be outdone in vows. When they came into the field, therefore, and a hundred and twenty thousand Crotonians stood in arms against them, the Locrians, contemplating the smallness of their own force (for they had only fifteen thousand men), and abandoning all hope of victory, devoted themselves to certain death; and such courage, arising out of despair, was felt by each, that they thought they would be as conquerors, if they did not fall without avenging themselves. But while they sought only to die with honour, they had the good fortune to gain the victory; nor was there any other |169 cause of their success but their desperation. While the Locrians were fighting, an eagle constantly attended on their army, and continued flying about them till they were conquerors. On the wings, also, were seen two young men fighting in armour different from that of the rest, of an extraordinary stature, on white horses and in scarlet cloaks; nor were they visible longer than the battle lasted. The incredible swiftness of the report of the battle made this wonderful appearance more remarkable; for on the same day on which it was fought in Italy, the victory was published at Corinth, Athens, and Lacedaemon.

IV. After this event the Crotonians ceased to exercise their valour, or to care for distinction in the field. They hated the arms which they had unsuccessfully taken up, and would have abandoned their former way of life for one of luxury, had not Pythagoras arisen among them. This philosopher was born at Samos, the son of Demaratus, a rich merchant, and after being greatly advanced in wisdom, went first to Egypt, and afterwards to Babylon, to learn the motions of the stars and study the origin of the universe, and acquired very great knowledge. Returning from thence, he went to Crete and Lacedaemon, to instruct himself in the laws of Minos and Lycurgus, which at that time were in high repute. Furnished with all these attainments, he came to Crotona, and, by his influence, recalled the people, when they were giving themselves up to luxury, to the observance of frugality. He used daily to recommend virtue, and to enumerate the ill effects of luxury, and the misfortunes of states that had been ruined by its pestilential influence; and he thus produced in the people such a love of temperance, that it was at length thought incredible that any of them should be extravagant. He frequently gave instruction to the women apart from the men, and to the children apart from their parents. He impressed on the female sex the observance of chastity, and submission to their husbands; on the rising generation, modesty and devotion to learning. Through his whole course of instruction he exhorted all to love temperance, as the mother of every virtue; and he produced such an effect upon them by the constancy of his lectures, that the women laid aside their vestments embroidered with gold, and other ornaments and distinctions, as instruments of luxury, and, bringing them |170 into the temple of Juno, consecrated them to the goddess, declaring that modesty, and not fine apparel, was the true adornment of their sex. How much he gained upon the yoking men, his victory over the stubborn minds of the women may serve to indicate. Three hundred of the young men, however, being united by an oath of fraternity, and living apart from the other citizens, drew the attention of the city upon them, as if they met for some secret conspiracy; and the people, when they were all collected in one building, proceeded to burn them in it. In the tumult about sixty lost their lives; the rest went into exile.

Pythagoras, after living twenty years at Crotona, removed to Metapontum, where he died; and such was the admiration of the people for his character, that they made a temple of his house, and worshipped him as a god.

V. Dionysius the tyrant, who, we have said, had transported an army from Sicily into Italy, and made war upon the Greeks there, proceeded, after taking Locri by storm, to attack the Crotonians, who, in consequence of their losses in the former war, were scarcely recovering their strength in a long peace. With their small force, however, they resisted the great army of Dionysius more valiantly than they had before, with so many thousands, resisted the smaller number of the Locrians. So much spirit has weakness in withstanding insolent power; and so much more sure, at times, is an unexpected than an expected victory. But as Dionysius was prosecuting the war, ambassadors from the Gauls, who had burned Rome some months before,¹¹⁸ came to him to desire an alliance and friendship with him; observing that "their country lay in the midst of his enemies, and could be of great service to him, either by supporting him in the field, or by annoying his enemies in the rear when they were engaged with him." The embassy was well received by Dionysius, who, having made an alliance with them, and being reinforced with assistance from Gaul, renewed the war as it were afresh.

The causes of the Gauls' coming into Italy, in quest of new settlements, were civil discords and perpetual contentions at home; and when, from impatience of those feuds, they had |171 sought refuge in Italy, they expelled the Tuscans from their country, and founded Milan,¹¹⁹ Como, Brescia, Verona, Bergamo, Trent, and Vicenza. The Tuscans, too, when they were driven from their old settlements, betook themselves, under a captain named Rhaetus, towards the Alps, where they founded the nation of Rhaetia, so named from their leader.

An invasion of Sicily by the Carthaginians obliged Dionysius to return thither; for that people, having recruited their army, had resumed the war, which they had broken off in consequence of the plague, with increased spirit. The leader in the expedition was Hanno the Carthaginian, whose enemy Juniatus, the most powerful of the Carthaginians at that time, having, from hatred to him, given friendly notice to Dionysius, in a letter written in Greek, of the approach of the army and the inactivity of its leader, was found, through the letter being intercepted, guilty of treason; and a decree of the senate was made, "that no Carthaginian should thenceforward study the Greek literature or language, so that no one might be able to speak with the enemy, or write to him, without an interpreter." Not long after, Dionysius, whom a little before neither Sicily nor Italy could hold, being reduced and weakened by continual wars, was at last killed by a conspiracy among his own subjects.

[Footnotes moved to the end and numbered]

1. * That is, Greece.

2. + So called from Lyncestis, a region bordering on Macedonia, the inhabitants of which are called Lugkh&stai by Thucydides. Concerning this Alexander, see Quint. Curt. vii. 1; Diod. Sic. xvii. 32, 80; Arrian, i. 25; Justin, xi. 7; xii. 14.---- Wetzel.

3. ++ Caranum fratrem, &c.] Only his half-brother; he was the son of Cleopatra, ix. 5, 7.

4. * See vii. 6.

5. + The Aeacidae were the descendants of Aeacus, the father of Peleus, and grandfather of Achilles, whose son Pyrrhus is said to have been the first of the kings of Epirus, from whom Olympias, Alexander's mother, was descended.---- Wetzel. She was the daughter of Neoptolemus, king of the Molossi. See vii. 6.

6. * Credulitatis.] Tauchnitz's edition has crudelitatis, by an error, apparently of the press.

7. + That is, Hercules and Bacchus.---- Wetzel.

8. ++ Quorum pretium non ex ementium, commodo, sed ex inimicorum odio extenditur.] "The greatness of the price asked for them," saya Berneccerus, "was in proportion to the eagerness with which they were bought by their enemies." If any one of the purchasers wished to get an old enemy into his power to torture him as a slave, he offered a high price for him.

9. * Among whom was Attalus. Compare ch. ii. init.----Wetzel.

10. * Tripudianti similis] The tripudium was a sort of dance in which the performers beat the earth with their feet in measured tread. Cicero, de Div. ii. 34, supposes the derivation to be from terra and pavire: terripavium, terripudium, tripudium. Cicero, indeed, is here speaking of the corn that fell from the beaks of the sacred chickens when they were feeding; and Turnebus and others accordingly suppose that his derivation is confined to that signification of the word, and that the dance is derived from ter and pes; agreeably to Horace's Gaudet invisam pepulisse fossor ter pede terram, Od. iii. 18, 15, and Ovid's Et viridem celeri ter pede pulsat humum, Fast. vi. 329. Compare Lucret. v. 1393. seqq. 

11. + Under Alexander and Perdiccas against the Illyrians.---- Wetzel.

12. ++ Ordines duxit.] A phrase borrowed from the military affairs of the Romans, among whom ordines ducere meant "to be a centurion." 

13. § Principia castrorum.] See note on Florus, iii. 10, Bohn's Classical Library.

14. * Campis Adrastiae.] Through which flows the river Granicus, from which the battle is generally named.

15. + He was, however, afterwards put to death. See xii. 14, init.

16. ++ Bubus conductis.] It is specified that they were hired, to denote his poverty.

17. * About fifty-seven miles and a half, the Greek stadium being equal to 606 feet 9 inches. See Dr. Smith's Classical Dict. sub voc.

18. * Cum infulis.] Denoting that they were suppliants.

19. * Tyro vetere.] Which had been besieged for thirteen years, and at last taken by Nebuchadnezzar, B.c. 590. The new city of Tyre had been built on an island.---- Wetzel.

20. + Not she herself, but her successors, extended their dominion over a great part of Africa.

21. ++ Or rather, after being besieged seven months, they were forced to surrender. See Diod. Sic. xvii. 40----47; Q. Curt. iv. 2----4. Compare also Justin, xviii. 3, sub fin.---- Wetzel.

22. § Isaac Vossius conjectures Syria, as Cilicia had been already taken

23. * Very similar to what is said by Agamemnon, ll. ii., of the comparative numbers of the Greeks and Trojans:

So small their numbers, that if wars were ceas'd, 
And Greece triumphant held a gen'ral feast, 
All rank'd by tens; whole decads, when they dine, 
Must want a Trojan slave to pour the wine.----Pope.

24. * See note on vi. 11.

25. + The Parthians, revolting from the Syrians, founded a new empire, B.C. 255. See xli. 4.---- Wetzel.

26. * Luxuria destructa.] Graevius, not knowing what to make of destructa, conjectures restricted. Wetzel explains the words thus: "Lest, as the empire of the Persians was destroyed, the luxury of the Persians should seem also to be destroyed." I incline to think with Graevius that the word is corrupt.

27. * That is, with a kind of prostration. See Corn. Nep. Con. c. 3; Justin, vi. 2. Proskune/ein to_n basile/a prospi/ptontaj, Herod. vii. 136; see also i. 134. On the question about paying adoration to Alexander, see Arrian, iv. 11.

28. + Explosa.] Scheffer conjectures expulsa, which Lemaire approves.

29. ++ From a!rguroj, silver, and a)spi\j, a shield.

30. § Montes Daedalos.] Quintus Curtius, viii. 10, has Regio quae Daedala vocatur; but there is no allusion to the name in any other author.

31. * Cicatricibus exhausta.] Exhausta cannot surely have been Justin's word. Faber conjectures distincta.

32. + Bongarsius conjectures Acesinae, as taking their name from the neighbouring river.

33. ++ For Ambros et Sigambros, Fabricius, from Arrian, and Curtius, ix, 4, proposes Mallos et Oxydracas, which some editors have adopted.

34. * Crimen regis] Crimen, in this place, has not the ordinary signification of crime, but means simply opprobrium, a reproach, dishonour. ----Faber.

35. * In the original there is no grammatical construction. Either the text has been mutilated, or Justin commenced his sentence in one way, and proceeded with it in another.

36. * Intra trigesimum annum.] Yet he himself had passed his thirtieth year. However intra will not bear any other signification.

37. + Son of Barsine. See xi. 10; xiii. 2; xiv. 6.

38. ++ See ix. 8, init.; xiii. 2; xiv. 5.

39. § Daughter of Oxyartes, king of the Bactrians, Diod. Sic. xviii. 3. She afterwards gave birth to Alexander Aegus, Comp. Q. Curt. x. 3,13; Justin, xiii. 2, 6; xv. 2.

40. * Sub Aristotele doctore inclyto [omnium philosophorum]. The words in brackets, condemned by Faber, Scheffer, and Wetzel, I have omitted in the translation. They are unsatisfactory, both as regards sense and construction; for if we connect them with doctore, we make Justin say what was not true; and if with inclyto, we give that adjective a government to which it has no right.

41. * She survived the death of Darius, and killed herself on that of Alexander.

42. * The text stands thus in Wetzel's and Gronovius's editions: nec minus milites invicem se timebant. Vorstius and Scheffer advocate the other reading, quam invicem se, which, as giving much bettor sense, I have followed.

43. * Cleomenes had indeed authority in Africa and Europe, but it was only over the revenues; and it was not he that built Alexandria, but Dinocrates. Hence I conjecture that there is some deficiency in the text.----Scheffer. See Val. Max. i. 5; Q. Curt. iv. 8, 9; Plin. H. N. vii. 38.

44. * In mercatu Olympiaco.] "For at those games," says Pythagoras in Cicero, Tusc. Quaest. v. 3, "alii corporibus exercitatis gloriam et nobilitatem coronae petunt; alii emendi aut vendendi quaestu et lucro ducuntur,"---- Wetzel.

45. + We must read quo civitatem impelleret, with Freinshemius, Vorstius, and Lemaire.

46. * Pulso hoste.] The word pulso is inconsistent with what is said just above, that the enemy "marched away," concessit, of their own accord.

47. + Alexander of Epirus. See ix. 6.

48. * His posthumous son by Roxane, called Alexander Aegus. See xii, 15, xiii. 2.

49. * Solstitiales ortus sideris.] Aristaeus first observed the risings of Sirius or the dog-star, and taught the Ceans to watch them and sacrifice to it. This is the general account, and that Justin may agree with it, I think that we should read solstitialis ortus sideris. By solstitiale sidus, I think that Sirius is meant, because it rises soon after the solstice.----Salmasius.

50. * The word agnito, which Faber, Scheffer, and Lemaire unite in condemning, I have not translated.

51. + This is a mistake, for Justin, xiv. 5, speaks of him as being alive. Bongarsius and others have supposed that Justin wrote Cratertus instead of Polysperchon, but it seems to be otherwise, for Orosius iiii. 23, who follows Justin, has the same account of Polysperchon's death. That it was Craterus who was killed, and not Polysperchon, appears from Corn. Nep. Eum. c. 4. See also Plut. Eum. c. 9; Diod. Sic. xviii. 38.

52. ++ By his own cavalry, when he wanted to cross the Nile; Diod. Sic. xviii; 33-37.----Wetzel.

53. * So stands the name in Wetzel's text, and in most others, except that of Tauchnitz, which has Aeolia, the conjecture of Glareanus. But Isaac Vossius conjectures Aetulane, from a passage of Ptolemy, who gives that name to a part of Armenia Minor, lying to the north-east of Cappadocia. Vossius's suggestion is approved by Vorstius and Faber.

54. * Auctor cladis.] Inasmuch as he had impelled them to take the field ---- Wetzel.

55. + The Argyraspides were veterans, and some of them, doubtless, had sons in the army to which they were now opposed.

56. * Eumenes, and those who adhered to him; those few with whom he afterwards attempted to escape.

57. + Their wives, children, and money.

58. ++ Quater.] Three times, says Cornelius Nepos in his life of Eumenes.----Bongarsius. Perhaps we should here read qui ter.----Berneccerus.

59. § Namely, to die.

60. * This is quite at variance with Justin's account of Alexander's death.

61. + All the editions, I believe, have quod maximum erat; I follow the conjecture of Freinshemius (ad Flor. ii. 6, 8), quod proximuin erat.

62. ++ Omnia auspicia régis Alexandri.] Commoda praeliis felicibus, duce rege, parta.---- Wetzel.

63. § Auxilia Orientalia.] The Persian soldiers that had been in Alexander's army.

64. * Fortuna majestatis prioris.

65. + Wetzel's text has, Insuper expirans capillis et veste crura contexisse fertur. Some manuscripts, as Graevius and Scheffer state, have compsisse imsuper expirans capillos et veste crura, &c., which I have followed; for as Graevius and others ask, how could she cover her feet with her hair? Scheffer conjectures cooperuisse capillis os; Grsevius, papillas veste et crura contexisse: but both these attempts are inferior to the reading compsisse, &c.

66. ++ Alexander Aegus, with his mother Roxane.

67. * Near Gaza. Diod. Sic. xix. 84.---- Wetzel.

68. * Wetzel, in his text, has the old reading Abderitas, but expresses himself, in his notes, in favour of Freinshemius's conjecture, Antariatas, from Diodor. Sic. xx. 19, and Athen. viii. 2; which Graevius adopted. The Antariatae bordered on Dardania and Paeonia. See Strabo, lib. xix. The inhabitants of the island of Gyarus are also said by Pliny, H. N. viii. 43, to have been driven from their country by mice; also those of Troas, x. 85.

69. + Sepulturâ.] That is, by burning the bodies on a funeral pile.----Wetzel.

70. ++ See xii. 14.

71. § Cum Demetrio navali proelio iterato congreditur.] "There was," says Scheffer, "no previous battle by sea, as is apparent from Diod. Sic. lib. xix.; and the adverb iterato is, therefore, to be referred, not to proelio, but to congreditur. He had engaged with Demetrius previously by land; he now engages him a second time by sea."

72. || See c. 1, sub fin.

73. * A foolish observation. Did Justin or Trogus suppose that friendships were better observed in the days of Cassander and Demetrius than in his own?

74. * Libertatis.] Liberias pro libertate loquendi. Sic saepe et alii.----Vorstius.

75. + The brother of Lysimachus. See Q. Curt. viii. 2, 35. 

76. ++ In opposition to Asia Minor.

77. * Veluti domita mansuetudine stands in Wetzel's text, and I believe in all others. Scheffer asks whether there is mansuetudo not domita. Dübner, the editor of a small edition with French notes (Par. 18mo. 1847), says that Cuper, de Elephantis, p. 47, proposes to read domitus ad mansuetudinem.

78. *At Ipsus in Phrygia.

79. + Philip died in the same year with Cassander, B.c. 297. Concern« tog Thesaalonice, see xiv. 6, and Diod. Sie. xxi. Fragm. 10.---- Wetzel.

80. * Antigonus.

81. * King of Pontus, father of the Great Mithridates.

82. * Kerauno&j, thunder.

83. * Ad tyrannum.] The words veluti ad regem, which follow tyrannum, and which Wetzel condemns as a gloss, are omitted from the translation. He also condemns the preceding veluti clientes; but for this I see no necessity.

84. + The Chersonesus Taurica; now the Crimea.

85. * Orbem terrarum duo soli tenerent.] A great exaggeration. Seleucus had Upper Asia and Syria; Lysimachus Thrace, Greece, Macedonia, and several provinces of Asia Minor. The dominions of Ptolemy Philadelphus were therefore much more extensive.---- Wetzel.

86. + De cohorte Alexandra.

87. ++ Ptolemy Ceraunus, the eldest son of Ptolemy Lagus, and brother of Ptolemy Philadelphus; xvi. 2. His mother's name was Eurydice; that of Philadelphus's mother Berenice, Pausan. i. 6, 8.---- Wetzel.

88. * The sister of Ptolemy. See the Index.

89. + Seleucus, the enemy of Ptolemy Lagus, xv. 4.

90. ++ Wetzel retains Eumeni in his text, though Gronovius had seen that the passage must be thus read: Omnique arte adulatur Nicomedi, ne cùm Antigono Demetrii, Antiocho Seleuci filiis bellum habituro, tertius sibi hostis accederet. This emendation is approved by Graevius, Vorstius, Scheffer, and Faber. The Antigonus here mentioned is Antigonus Gonnatas, and the Antiochus Antiochus Soter, the successor of Seleucus.

91. § He had, however, mentioned it before, as Wetzel observes, xvi. 2.

92. * Phthia in Thessaly.

93. + The words atque, ita, which precede Heleno in the text, are not expressed in the translation; for the giving of the kingdom and the wife to Helenus could hardly have been consequent on the marriages of Pyrrhus's daughters by Lanassa; or Andromache must have been very old when Helenus took her. On this subject, see Virg. Aen. iii. 294.

94. * As having been sent to Pyrrhus by Ptolemy Ceraunus, king of Macedonia, xvii. 2.

95. * Nam Romanis eadem causa mittendi auxilii Carthaginiensibus fuit, &c.] Berneccerus and Vorstius think that this passage requires correction. Scheffer supposes that some words are lost, as there is nothing to which eadem can be referred.

96. + Assyrium stagnum.] Assyrium for Syrium.----Glareanus. He means the lake of Gennesaret.----Bongarsius: with whom Berneccerus and Faber agree.

97. * Ascaloniorum.] Inhabitants of Ascalon, between Azotus and Gaza.

98. * It does not appear how they were deprived of it. 

99. + Called by Virgil Sichaeus. Servius thinks that the real name was Sicharbas, which Faber would insert in Justin's text.

100. * Tegi posset.] Justin misapplies this word. A better account is given by Appian, de Bell. Pun. init: #Oson bu&rsa tau&rou perilabh| and Livy says, Quantum loci bovis tergo amplecti potuerint. Virgil also Aen. i. 372: Taurino quantum passent circumdare tergo.----Berneccerus Scheffer thinks that we should read cingi_:

101. + Four old editions have Mauritania two manuscripts Mauri.----Wetzel

102. * There is a strange variety of opinions among authors as to the time when this city was founded. Some make it thirty years prior to the Trojan war, as Philistas in Eusebius, or fifty, as Appian, both of whom deny that Dido was the founder of it; some say that it was founded after Troy was taken, but before the building of Rome; but, do not agree as to the number of years. Vell. Paterculus, i. 6, makea it fifty-six years older than Rome; Livy, Epit. li., says that it stood seven hundred years, and was destroyed A.U.C. 607; a calculation which makes it ninety-three years older than Rome.----Lemaire, See also Bongarsius and Berneccerus.

103. * Wetzel has the name Maleus in his text, but favours Malchus, a conjecture of Is. Vossius, in his note.

104. + Publicae religionis officia.] The public payment of his vows for his safe return.---- Wetzel.

105. * Auctoribus miserorum civium is the reading of all the texts, but cannot be right. Faber conjectures auctoribus miseriarum civilium, which I have adopted. Vorstius proposed miseries civiitm; and Vossius observes that "doctissimus Peyraredus" read misertum civium, which Vossius himself approved, but which certainly cannot be adopted unless further changes are made in the context.

106. * He calls a Carthaginian office by a Roman name. Suffetes was the Punic word for their two chief magistrates. As for triumphal processions, the Africans, according to Servius, Aen. iv. 37, were the first people that had them, long before they were introduced at Rome.

107. * Mortuorumque corpora cremare potius quam, terra obruere, à rege jubebantur.] As the Persians did not burn, but bury, the bodies of the dead, thinking that fire was polluted by corpses, Freinshemius, on Curt. ii. 13, 15, would reject the words à rege jubebantur, and make the infinitives cremare and obruere depend on prohibebantur, which precedes; so that the sense may be, "they were forbidden to burn the dead rather than bury them in the earth;" that is, they were commanded to bury rather than burn them. Whoever thinks this construction harsh, may perhaps be better pleased with the correction of Gronovius, mortuorumque corpora cremare [prohibebantur] quae potius terra obruere à rege jubebantur.----Lemaire. But Gronovius's construction is not less harsh than that of Freinshemius. Kirchmann, de Fun. Rom. i. 2, would make cremare and obruere change places; an alteration which Berneccerus and Vorstius approve. But perhaps Justin or Trogus merely made a mistake.

108. + He was prevented by death. See ii. 10.

109. ++ A name that does not occur in any other author. It is perhaps corrupt. In one manuscript it was written Sapho. Should we read Psapho? This certainly is a Punic name. See the "Proverbs" of Apostolius and the "Apophthegms" of Arsenius.---- Vossius. Vossius's emendation is approved by Graevius, Scheffer, Faber, and Wetzel.

110. § Imperia agitarent.] I read agitarent with Bongarsius, Berneccerus, Vorstius, and Faber, not cogitarent, which is in the oldest editions The alteration, says Bongarsius, was made by G. Major.

111. * Pestilentus sideris.] The disease was thought to have been an infliction from heaven on the Carthaginians, because they had plundered the temples of Ceres and Proserpine. See Diod. Sic. xiv. 70-72.

112. * It is said by Strabo to have been settled by the Pelasgi.

113. + They are said to have sprung from the Lucanians, xxiii. 1, and on the coast of Lucania were many Greek towns.

114. ++ I know not why he intimates that either of these peoples were of Greek origin. Strabo regards the Sabines as autochthones of Italy.

115. § See iii. 4.

116. || Major Graecia, or more commonly Magna Graecia, Great Greece.

117. * Panificiis.] We might, with Ostertagius, read pannificiis (cloths or garments), which were more appropriate to Minerva ---- Wetzel.

118. * Ante menses.] As a number seems to be wanting, Scheffer would read ante menses sex, taking the last word from Florus, i. 13. Vossius would read ante mensem. But the longer period seems the more eligible.

119. * I have given the modern names. The ancient were Mediolanum, Comum, Brixia, Verona, Bergomum, Tridentum, Vicentia.

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