Book 10

1.1. About the same time Cleander and Sitalces, and with Agathon Heracon, arrived—the men who had killed Parmenion by the king's order.

1.2. They had with them five thousand foot and a thousand horse; but accusers also followed them from the province over which they had been set.

1.3. Nor could all the crimes they had committed be balanced by their service in a slaughter most welcome to the king. For when they had plundered everything profane, they had not even kept their hands from sacred things, and maidens and the foremost of the women, having suffered violation, bewailed the dishonouring of their bodies.

1.4. Their greed and lust had made the name of the Macedonians hateful to the barbarians.

1.5. Yet among them all the madness of Cleander stood out, who had given a noble maiden, after violating her, to his slave as a concubine.

1.6. Most of Alexander's friends looked not so much to the atrocity of the charges openly laid against them, as to the memory of Parmenion, killed by their hands—a thing which, though unspoken, could weigh against the accused before the king—glad that anger had recoiled upon the ministers of anger, and that no power gained by crime is lasting for anyone.

1.7. The king, having heard the case, declared that the accusers had passed over one charge, and that the greatest—their despair of his safety: for never would men have dared such things who had either wished, or believed, that he would return safe from India.

1.8. And so these men he put in chains; but six hundred of the soldiers who had been the ministers of their cruelty he ordered to be killed.

1.9. On the same day punishment was exacted also of those whom Craterus had brought as authors of the revolt of the Persians.

1.10. Not long after, Nearchus and Onesicritus, whom he had ordered to advance farther into the Ocean, arrived.

1.11. They reported some things heard, others ascertained: that an island lying off the river's mouth abounded in gold but was destitute of horses—they had learned that single horses were bought, by those who dared to cross from the mainland, at a talent apiece;

1.12. that the sea was full of beasts: that, with the tide, these were carried along, matching in bulk the hulls of great ships; that, frightened off by the blast of a trumpet, they had followed the fleet, and with a great roar of the deep had sunk beneath the waters like ships going down.

1.13. The rest they had believed on the word of the inhabitants, and among it this: that the Red Sea is named not from the colour of its waves, as most believe, but from King Erythrus:

1.14. that there was, not far from the mainland, an island thickly planted with palm-groves, and that in about the middle of the grove there rose a column, a monument of King Erythrus, inscribed with the letters of that nation.

1.15. They added that boats which had carried sutlers and merchants, their pilots following the report of gold, had crossed to the island, and were never afterward seen by these men.

1.16. The king, kindled by a craving to learn more, ordered them again to coast along the land, until they should bring the fleet to the mouth of the Euphrates: from there they would go up the stream to Babylon.

1.17. He himself, embracing boundless designs in his mind, had resolved that, once the whole seaboard toward the east was subdued, he would make for Africa from Syria, in his enmity against Carthage; thence, having traversed the deserts of Numidia, he would direct his course to Gades—for report had spread abroad that the Pillars of Hercules were there—;

1.18. then he would go to the Spains, which the Greeks called Iberia from the river Iberus, and sail past the Alps and the coast of Italy, from where the course to Epirus is short.

1.19. He therefore ordered the governors of Mesopotamia to fell timber on Mount Libanus, convey it down to Thapsacus, a city of Syria, and lay there the keels of seven hundred ships: all of them were to be seven-banked, and to be brought down to Babylon. The kings of the Cyprians were ordered to furnish bronze, tow, and sails.

1.20. While he was busied with these matters, a letter from the kings Porus and Taxiles was delivered to him: that Abisares had died of disease, that Philippus, his own governor, had died of a wound, and that those who had wounded him had been crushed.

1.21. So he put Eudaemon—a leader of the Thracians—in Philippus's place, and assigned the kingdom of Abisares to his son.

1.22. They then came to Parsagada: it is a Persian nation, whose satrap was Orsines, eminent among all the barbarians for his nobility and his wealth.

1.23. He traced his descent from Cyrus, once king of the Persians: he had both the riches handed down from his ancestors, and had himself heaped them up by his long tenure of office.

1.24. He came to meet the king with gifts of every kind, meaning to give them not to him alone but to his friends as well. Herds of broken horses followed, and chariots adorned with silver and gold, costly furniture and noble gems, golden vessels of great weight, purple garments, and three thousand talents of coined silver.

1.25. But so great a generosity was the cause of the barbarian's death. For when he had honoured all the king's friends with gifts beyond their wishes, to Bagoas the eunuch—who had bound Alexander to himself by the compliance of his body—

1.26. he paid no honour; and when admonished by certain men that Bagoas was dear to Alexander, he answered that he honoured the king's friends, not his harlots, and that it was not the custom of the Persians to treat as men those who had been made effeminate by debauchery.

1.27. When the eunuch heard this, he turned the power, sought by infamy and disgrace, against the life of a most noble and guiltless man. For he secretly suborned with false charges the basest men of that same nation, warning them to bring forward these accusations only when he himself should so order.

1.28. Meanwhile, whenever he was without witnesses, he filled the king's credulous ears, dissembling the cause of his anger, so that the authority of the accuser might be the weightier.

1.29. Orsines was not yet suspected, yet was already held cheaper: for, accused in secret, he was being tried, ignorant of the hidden peril. And that most pestilent harlot, not forgetting his treachery even in his debauchery and his endurance of disgrace, whenever he had kindled the king's love toward himself, charged Orsines now with greed, sometimes even with revolt.

1.30. Already the lies were ripe for the destruction of the innocent man, and fate, whose lot is inevitable, was drawing near. For by chance Alexander had ordered the tomb of Cyrus to be opened, in which his body had been laid, to which he wished to pay funeral honours.

1.31. He had believed the resting-place to be filled with gold and silver—for so the Persians had spread the report—but, besides his decayed shield, two Scythian bows, and a scimitar, he found nothing.

1.32. However, having placed a golden crown upon it, he covered the coffin in which the body lay with the very cloak that he himself was accustomed to wear, marvelling that a king of so great a name, endowed with such great wealth, had been buried no more richly than if he had been of the common people.

1.33. Next to his side stood the eunuch, who, looking at the king, said: "What wonder is it that the tombs of kings are empty, when the houses of the satraps cannot hold the gold carried out of them?

1.34. For my own part, I had not seen this sepulchre before; but I learned from Darius that three thousand talents had been buried with Cyrus.

1.35. Hence that generosity of his toward you—so that, by giving away what Orsines could not keep with impunity, he might even win favour."

1.36. He had already roused the king's spirit to anger, when those to whom he had given the same task arrived. On this side Bagoas, on that the men suborned by him, beset his ears with false charges.

1.37. Before Orsines suspected that he was being accused, he was handed over to chains. Not content with the punishment of the innocent man, the eunuch himself laid his hand upon him as he was about to die. Orsines, looking at him, said: "I had heard that long ago women reigned in Asia: but this is something new—that a gelding reigns!"

1.38. Such was the end of the noblest of the Persians, a man not only guiltless but of extraordinary generosity toward the king.

1.39. At the same time Phradates, suspected of having aspired to the throne, was killed. The king had begun to be headlong in inflicting punishments, and likewise in believing the worse:

1.40. for prosperity, no doubt, has the power to change one's nature, and rarely is anyone sufficiently cautious in the face of his own good fortune. The same man, a little before, had been unable to bring himself to condemn Alexander Lyncestes, denounced by two informers,

1.41. had suffered humbler defendants too to be acquitted against his own will, because they seemed innocent to the rest, and had restored their kingdoms to conquered enemies:

1.42. at the last of his life he degenerated so far from his own self that, with a spirit once unconquered against lust, he gave kingdoms to some at the bidding of a harlot, and took life from others.

1.43. About the same time he received a letter from Coenus concerning the things done in Europe and Asia while he himself was subduing India.

1.44. Zopyrion, set over Thrace, while he was making an expedition against the Getae, had been overwhelmed, with his whole army, by storms and tempests suddenly arising.

1.45. On learning of this disaster, Seuthes had driven the Odrysae, his own countrymen, to revolt. With Thrace all but lost, not even Greece remained unshaken by disturbances. For Alexander, having punished the insolence of certain satraps who, while he was held by the arms of the Indians at the edge of the world, had committed the gravest crimes and outrages against the provincials, had struck fear into the rest. These, fearing the same penalty for their crimes in like offences, took refuge in the loyalty of mercenary soldiers, meaning to protect themselves by their hands if they should be summoned to punishment, or, having collected as much money as they could, sought safety in flight. When this became known, letters were sent to all the governors of Asia, on inspecting which they were ordered to dismiss at once all the foreign soldiers who were serving under them. Among these was Harpalus, whom Alexander—because, on account of friendship with himself, he had once been expelled by Philip and gone into exile—counted among his most faithful men, and after the death of Mazaeus had assigned the satrapy of Babylonia and set him over the custody of the treasures. He therefore, when he had consumed by the magnitude of his crimes the confidence which he might have had in the king's singular favour, carried off five thousand talents from the royal treasury and, having hired a band of six thousand mercenaries, escaped into Europe. For, long since drawn headlong by luxury and lust, and despairing of the king's pardon, he had looked about him for foreign support against his anger, and had assiduously cultivated the Athenians, whose power and authority among the rest of the Greeks, and whose hidden hatred of the Macedonians, he knew. And so he held out hope to his men that the Athenians, on learning of his arrival, and having seen with their own eyes the forces and the money he was bringing, would at once join their arms and counsels with his. For he supposed that from a people unskilled and fickle he could obtain everything, through wicked and venal men, by bribes.

2.1. And so with thirty ships they crossed to Sunium—it is a promontory of the Attic land—from where they had resolved to make for the harbour of the city.

2.2. On learning this, the king, equally hostile to Harpalus and the Athenians, ordered a fleet to be prepared, meaning to make for Athens at once.

2.3. While he was secretly turning over this plan, a letter was delivered to him: that Harpalus had indeed entered Athens, and had won over to himself by money the minds of the leading men; that soon, an assembly of the people being held, he was bidden to leave the city, and had come to the Greek soldiers; that, having crossed thence to Crete, he had been killed by treachery on the advice of a certain friend.

2.4. Gladdened by this, he gave up his plan of crossing into Europe, but ordered the exiles—except those who were stained with the blood of citizens—to be received by all the cities of the Greeks from which they had been driven.

2.5. And the Greeks, not daring to spurn the command, although they judged this to be the beginning of the dissolution of their laws, restored also to the condemned such of their property as remained.

2.6. The Athenians alone, the champions not of themselves only but of Greece, bore ill the mingling of ranks and of men, accustomed as they were to be ruled not by a king's command but by the laws and customs of their fathers:

2.7. they therefore kept the exiles from their territory, ready to endure anything rather than admit men who had once been the refuse of their city, and now of exile too.

2.8. Alexander, having sent the older soldiers home to their homeland, ordered thirteen thousand foot and two thousand horse, to be retained in Asia, to be chosen, judging that he could hold Asia with a moderate army, because he had stationed garrisons in many places, and had filled the cities he had founded with colonists eager to keep things as they were.

2.9. But before he sorted out those whom he was to retain, he proclaimed that all the soldiers should declare their debts. He had learned that the burden was heavy for most, and,

2.10. although it had been incurred by their own extravagance, he had nevertheless resolved to discharge it himself. They, thinking themselves put to the test, so that he might the more easily distinguish the spendthrifts from the solvent, by delaying had drawn the matter out for some time. And the king, well aware that it was shame, not stubbornness, that stood in the way of the declaration of debt, ordered tables to be set up throughout the whole camp and ten thousand talents to be brought out.

2.11. Then at last the declaration was made in good faith. Nor did more than a hundred and thirty talents remain over from so great a sum. To such a degree did that army, the conqueror of so many richest nations, carry off from Asia more of victory than of plunder.

2.12. But when it was learned that some were being sent home and others retained, supposing that he would hold the permanent seat of his rule in Asia, frantic and forgetful of military discipline, they filled the camp with mutinous cries, and, assailing the king more fiercely than at other times, all together began to demand their discharge, displaying their faces disfigured with scars and the grey of their heads.

2.13. And, deterred neither by the rebuke of their officers nor by reverence for the king, with tumultuous shouting and soldierly violence they kept him, who wished to speak, from speaking, openly declaring that they would not move a step from there except toward their homeland.

2.14. At last silence was made—rather because they believed him to be moved, than because they themselves could be moved—and they waited to see what he would do, when he said:

2.15. "What does this sudden consternation, and this so insolent and unbridled licence, portend? I am afraid to say it—at least openly: you have broken my command, and I am a king on sufferance, to whom you have left no right of addressing you, of recognizing, of admonishing, or even of looking upon you.

2.16. For my part, since I have resolved to send some home and a little later to take others with me, I see both those who are to depart shouting, and these, with whom I have resolved to follow after those sent ahead.

2.17. What is the meaning of this? With a different cause, the shout of all is the same! I should very much like to know whether it is those who are leaving, or those who are retained, that complain of me."

2.18. You would have believed that all had raised the shout with one mouth: so equally from the whole assembly came the answer that all complained.

2.19. Then he said: "By Hercules, it cannot be that I should be brought to believe that this cause of complaint is common to all, as you make out—a cause in which the greater part of the army is not concerned, since I have dismissed more than I am to retain.

2.20. There lies beneath, without doubt, a deeper evil, which turns you all away from me. For when has a whole army deserted its king? Not even slaves flee their masters in a single herd, but there is in them a certain shame at leaving those forsaken by the rest.

2.21. But I, forgetting so frenzied a consternation, am trying to apply remedies to incurable men. By Hercules, I renounce all the hope I had conceived of you, and have resolved to deal with you not as with my soldiers—for you have ceased to be such—but as with most ungrateful hirelings.

2.22. In the prosperity that flows around you, you have begun to go mad, forgetful of the state from which you were stripped by my kindness—worthy, by Hercules, to grow old in the same condition, since it is easier for you to govern adverse fortune than prosperous.

2.23. Behold your insolence! A little while ago tributaries of the Illyrians and Persians, now Asia and the spoils of so many nations are a weariness to you! Lately, half-naked under Philip, you now find cloaks of purple cheap! Your eyes cannot bear gold and silver! For you long for wooden vessels and shields of wicker and the rust of swords.

2.24. In this fine array I received you, and with five hundred talents of debt, when the whole royal furniture was no more than sixty talents—the foundations soon of my own works. With these, nevertheless—be there no envy in the saying—I laid empire upon the greatest part of the earth.

2.25. Are you wearied of Asia, which by the glory of your deeds has made you equal to the gods? You are in haste to go to Europe, deserting your king, when most of you would have lacked travelling-money, had I not paid your debts—and that, mark you, out of Asiatic plunder.

2.26. Nor are you ashamed, carrying about in your insatiable bellies the spoils of conquered nations, to wish to return to your children and wives, to whom few of you can show the rewards of victory: for as for the rest of you, while you went to meet even your own hopes, your very arms are in pledge.

2.27. Fine soldiers indeed I shall be deprived of—the concubines of their own harlots, to whom this alone is left out of such great wealth, the thing on which it is spent! Therefore let the frontiers lie open to those who flee me! Be off from here this instant! I, with the Persians, will protect the backs of those departing. I hold no one: free my eyes of you, most ungrateful citizens!

2.28. Gladly will your parents and children receive you, returning without your king! They will go out to meet deserters and runaways!

2.29. I will triumph, by Hercules, over your flight, and, wherever I am, I will exact penalties by honouring and preferring above you these men, with whom you leave me. And you shall soon learn both how much an army is worth without its king, and what help there is in me alone."

2.30. Then, gnashing his teeth, he leapt down from the tribunal and threw himself into the midst of the armed throng; he seized with his own hand, one by one, those whom he had marked as having spoken most fiercely, and, when they did not dare to resist, handed over thirteen of them to his bodyguards to be kept under guard.

3.1. Who would believe that the assembly, savage a little while before, was suddenly benumbed by fear,

3.2. even when it saw men dragged off to punishment who had dared nothing graver than the rest?

3.3. Whether it was the king's name—for nations that live under kings worship their kings among the gods—or his own personal majesty, or the confidence of one wielding command with such force, that terrified them:

3.4. at any rate they gave a singular example of patience, and so far were they from being inflamed by the punishment of their comrades, when they learned that they had been killed toward nightfall, that they omitted nothing which each man might do more obediently and dutifully.

3.5. For when, on the next day, they were forbidden access, only the Asiatic soldiers being admitted, they sent up a mournful cry throughout the camp, declaring that they would at once die, if the king persisted in his anger.

3.6. But he, of a spirit obstinate in everything he had set in motion, ordered an assembly of the foreign soldiers to be summoned, the Macedonians being confined within the camp, and, when they had gathered in great numbers, with an interpreter brought in, delivered an oration such as this:

3.7. "When I was crossing from Europe into Asia, I hoped to add many noble nations and a great multitude of men to my empire. Nor was I deceived

3.8. in what I believed about them on report. But to that this too has been added, that I see brave men of unconquered loyalty toward their kings.

3.9. I had believed that you flowed with every luxury and were sunk in pleasures by excessive good fortune: but, by Hercules, you bear the duties of soldiering with this strength of spirit and body just as energetically, and, brave men though you are, you cultivate loyalty no less than valour.

3.10. This indeed I now profess for the first time, but I have long known it. And so I have both held a levy of the younger men among you, and have mingled you with the body of my own soldiers. The same bearing, the same arms are yours: but your obedience and submission to command is far more excellent than the rest's.

3.11. Therefore I myself joined to myself in marriage the daughter of Oxyartes the Persian, not disdaining to raise children from a captive.

3.12. Then soon after, when I desired to propagate my line more widely, I took to wife the daughter of Darius, and prevailed upon those nearest among my friends to beget children from captives, so that by this sacred bond I might do away with all distinction between the conquered and the conqueror.

3.13. Therefore believe yourselves to be soldiers begotten of me, not enlisted! Asia and Europe are one and the same kingdom; I give you the arms of the Macedonians; I have made your foreign newness an old thing: you are both my citizens and my soldiers.

3.14. All things take on the same colour: it is unseemly neither for the Persians to copy the custom of the Macedonians, nor for the Macedonians to imitate the Persians. They ought to be under the same law who are to live under the same king." Having delivered this speech, he entrusted the guardianship of his own person to Persians, made Persians his attendants, Persians his ushers. When, by their hands, the Macedonians who were the leaders of this mutiny were being dragged in chains to punishment, one of them, of weight by his authority and his age, is said to have spoken thus to the king:

4.1. "How long," he said, "will you indulge your own anger even by punishments, and those of a foreign fashion? Your soldiers, your citizens, their cause untried, are dragged to punishment, with their own captives leading them. If you judge that I have deserved death, at least change the ministers of my punishment."

4.2. With a friendly spirit, had he been able to endure the truth, he was being admonished; but his anger had passed into frenzy. And so once more—for those who had been ordered had hesitated a little—he ordered them, bound as they were, to be drowned in the river.

4.3. Not even this punishment stirred up a mutiny among the soldiers. For the leaders of his forces and his friends came to him in their companies, asking that, if he judged any still tainted with the former guilt, he would order them to be killed. They offered their bodies to his anger: let him slaughter them. At last, scarcely masters of their minds for grief, they all ran together to the royal quarters and, throwing down their arms before the doors, standing in their tunics, begged with tears that their naked bodies, exposed to punishment, might be admitted. They did not, they said, beg off the expiation of the guilty by punishment for what they had committed through their insubordination; the king's wrath was more grievous to them than death. And when, day and night, persisting before the royal quarters, they proved their repentance by their piteous cry and bearing, yet for two days the king's anger held out against the most humble entreaties of his own men. On the third day, overcome by the steadfastness of the suppliants, he came forth, and, having gently reproached the immoderation of the army, professed, not without many tears on both sides, that he was reconciled with them. Yet the matter seemed worthy to be expiated with greater victims. And so, a sacrifice magnificently performed, he invited the chief men of the Macedonians and of the Persians together to a feast. Nine thousand, it is recorded, were received at that banquet, and all of them, at the king's invitation, poured libations from the same mixing-bowl, while Greek and barbarian seers led the way in other auspicious vows, but especially in this, that the partnership of both empires, coalesced into one body, might be everlasting. Then the discharge was hastened, and all the weakest were released from service. To certain of the older men among his friends too he gave leave to depart. Of these were Clitus surnamed the White, Gorgias, Polydamas, and Antigenes. To those departing he not only paid faithfully the wages of the past time, but even added a talent to each soldier by way of travelling-money. The sons born of Asiatic wives—they are said to have been about ten thousand—he ordered to be left behind with him, lest, crossing into Macedonia with their parents and mingling with their former wives and children, they should fill families with quarrels and discords: he promised that he would take care that they should be brought up in the manner of their fathers and taught the arts of war. Thus more than ten thousand veterans were dismissed, and one was added to lead them home—Craterus, of the chief among the king's friends. If anything human should befall him, they were ordered to obey Polyperchon. He wrote also to Antipater, ordering that honour be paid to those who had served their time, so that, whenever games and contests were held, they should watch from the first rows, garlanded, and that the under-age children of those who had died should succeed to their fathers' pay. It was decided that Craterus should preside over Macedonia and the neighbouring regions with command, but that Antipater should come to the king with a reinforcement of the younger Macedonians. For he feared that, through the discord of the governor with Olympias, some grave disaster might be incurred. For his mother had sent many letters to Alexander, and Antipater many, and in turn each accused the other of doing most things arrogantly and harshly—things that pertained to the disgrace or detriment of the royal majesty. For after the rumour of the king's death, rashly spread abroad, had reached Macedonia, his mother and his sister Cleopatra had stirred up a disturbance, and the latter had seized her father's kingdom, Olympias Epirus. It chanced that, while letters of this kind were being delivered, Hephaestion, who was held to be a partner in all his secrets, was inspecting them with Alexander after they were unsealed. Nor did the king restrain him, but, drawing the ring from his finger, applied it to the reader's lips, signifying that none of the things written there should be carried to others. It is said that he reproached them both, and, moved by his mother's insolence, exclaimed that she was exacting a heavy rent for the ten months' lodging she had afforded him in her womb; but that he held Antipater suspect of taking on airs since his victory over the Spartans, and, with his command now prolonged for so many years, of being raised above the measure of a governor. And so, when his weight and integrity were being praised by certain men, he answered that outwardly indeed he seemed white, but, if one looked deeper within, he was wholly purple. Yet he suppressed his suspicion and brought forth no plainer sign of an estranged spirit. Most believed, however, that Antipater, supposing that he was summoned for the sake of punishment, was the author, by impious plots, of the king's death, which followed a little later. Meanwhile the king, to repair the losses of his diminished army, enrolled all the best of the Persians into the Macedonian ranks: he set apart also a thousand of the most outstanding for the guard of his person; another band of spearmen, no fewer than ten thousand, he ordered to keep watch at the royal tent. While he was busied with these things, Peucestes arrived with twenty thousand archers and slingers, whom he had collected from his own province. These being distributed throughout the army, he set out from Susa and, crossing the river Pasitigris, measured out his camp among the Carae. Then, his troops being led for four days through Sittacene, he advanced to Sambana, and there he halted for seven days. Then, having accomplished a three days' march, he came to Celonae. This town is held by men who set out from Boeotia, whom Xerxes, having roused them from their seats, carried over into the East: and they preserved, as evidence of their origin, a peculiar dialect consisting for the most part of Greek words; but, because of the necessities of commerce, they used the language of their neighbouring barbarians. From there he entered Bagistane, a region wealthy and abounding in pleasant and fertile growth of trees and in other things pertaining not only to the use but also to the delight of life. Amid these things a grave quarrel had arisen between Eumenes and Hephaestion. For Hephaestion drove out the slaves of Eumenes from a lodging which they had taken for their master, so that Euius the flute-player might be received there. And not long after, when the hatreds seemed already laid to rest, a new contention arose, and they so revived that they broke out even into fierce wrangling and bitter abuse on both sides. But by Alexander's intervention and command the enmities were abolished, at least in appearance, since he had even threatened Hephaestion, who, being in the highest favour with the king, more obstinately turned away from Eumenes, however eager for reconciliation. They then came into the plains of Media, where the largest herds of horses were reared: they call them Nisaean, remarkable for size and beauty. More than fifty thousand were found there when Alexander passed through, as was noted by his companions: once they had been three times that number, but amid the turmoil of wars robbers had driven off the greatest part of them. There the king halted for thirty days. There Atropates, satrap of Media, brought a hundred barbarian women skilled in horsemanship and armed with light shields and axes: whence some believed that they were remnants of the race of the Amazons. Then in seven marches he came to Ecbatana, the capital of Media. There he made the customary sacrifices to the gods, held games, and relaxed his spirit with banquets and festal days, so that he might be the stronger for new undertakings. But as he was revolving these things, fate, as if laying its hand upon him, drew him elsewhere, and tore his life from the dearest of his friends, and a little later from the king himself as well. He was watching boys contending in the stadium, when it was announced that Hephaestion was failing, who, after a debauch, had now lain sick for the seventh day. Terrified at his friend's peril, he at once rose and hurried quickly to his lodging. Yet he did not reach it before death had overtaken him. It is held for certain that this was the most sorrowful of all the misfortunes he had borne in his life, and that, overcome by the magnitude of his grief into tears and lamentations, he gave many proofs of a spirit cast down from its station. But these things are variously reported: this is agreed among all, that Alexander, to give him the most seemly possible obsequies, would not have him buried at Ecbatana, but conveyed by Perdiccas to Babylon, where he himself was about to go; and that there he provided for the funeral, by an unheard-of precedent, twelve thousand talents. Throughout his whole empire, at any rate, he ordered him to be mourned, and, so that his memory should not fade in the army, he set no leader over the cavalry he had commanded, but willed that it be called Hephaestion's squadron, and that the standards he had instituted be not changed. Planning funeral contests and games such as had never been held, he gathered three thousand performers: who, not long after, are said to have competed at his own obsequies. Nor did his friends, with so overflowing an affection, slothfully use the chance of winning his favour, but vied in finding means by which the memory of the dead man might become more illustrious and honoured. Eumenes, therefore, when he perceived that, on account of his quarrel with Hephaestion, he had incurred the king's displeasure, prompted many, and consecrated himself and his arms to Hephaestion, and contributed money lavishly toward dignifying the funeral. The rest imitated this example: and the shamelessness of the flatterers went so far that the king, mad with grief and longing for the dead, was at last persuaded that Hephaestion was a god. At which time, indeed, of the leaders of his forces Agathocles of Samos came into the utmost peril, because, passing by his tomb, he was seen to weep. And had not Perdiccas falsely sworn, by all the gods and by Hephaestion himself, that Hephaestion had appeared to him while hunting, and that he had learned from him that Agathocles had wept not as for one dead and vainly adorned with the titles of an empty divinity, but had not held back his tears out of memory of their old companionship, a brave man, and one who had deserved well of the king, would have paid, though innocent, a heavy penalty for his loyalty to a friend. But, that he might for a while call his spirit away from grief, he undertook an expedition into the land of the Cossaei. The Cossaei hold the heights neighbouring Media, a rough and warlike race, accustomed to live by plunder. From them the kings of the Persians were wont to purchase peace by an annual tribute, lest, running down into the subject land, they should make the region unsafe by their robberies. For the Persians, attempting force, they had easily driven off, protected by the harshness of the places into which they withdrew whenever they were overcome in arms. The same men were appeased every year by gifts, so that the king, returning from Ecbatana, where he was wont to spend the summer, to Babylon, might have safe passage through those places. These, then, Alexander, attacking with his column in two divisions, subdued within forty days. For, often defeated by the king himself and by Ptolemy, who led part of the army, they surrendered to the victor, to recover their captives. He ordered strong cities to be founded in suitable places, lest, when the army was withdrawn, the wild race should shake off the yoke. Moving his camp from there, so that he might refresh his soldiers, wearied by their recent expedition, he advanced at a slow pace to Babylon. And he was now scarcely thirty stadia from the city, when Nearchus met him—whom he had sent ahead to Babylon by way of the Ocean and the mouths of the Euphrates—and begged him not to wish to enter a city fatal to him. He had learned this, he said, from the Chaldaeans, who, by the outcome of many predictions already, had abundantly proved the trustworthiness of their art. The king, moved by the report of those men and by their constant asseveration, dismissed most of his friends into the city, and led by another way past Babylon, and there set up a standing camp two hundred stadia off. But, taught by the philosopher Anaxarchus, scorning the warnings of the Chaldaeans, whose discipline he judged empty or superfluous, he entered the city. Embassies had flowed together there from almost the whole world. Having heard these zealously for several days, he next turned his attention to the obsequies of Hephaestion. These were celebrated with the utmost zeal of all, so that no king's funeral rites down to that time surpassed them in the magnitude of the expense and the splendour of the preparation. After this a craving came upon the king to sail by the river Pallacopas to the borders of the Arabs: carried there, having found a fitting site for founding a city, he settled there those of the Greeks who were disabled by age or wounds and any who remained of their own accord. These things accomplished to his mind, now free of care for the future, he mocked the Chaldaeans, because he had not only entered Babylon unharmed but had even departed from it. But, in truth, as he was returning through the marshes which the Euphrates, overflowing into the Pallacopas, forms, a foul omen was presented to him. For branches overhanging from above pulled off the diadem from the king's head and threw it into the waters. And when one prodigy after another was announced, to avert them continuous sacrifices were made in both Greek and barbarian fashion. Yet they could not be expiated except by the king's death. He, having received Nearchus at a banquet, and being now about to go to bed, yielded to the urgent entreaties of Medius the Larisaean, to come to him to revel. There, after he had drunk hard through the whole night, he began to feel ill. The disease then growing heavier so exhausted all his strength within the sixth day that he had not even the power of speech. Meanwhile the soldiers, anxious with concern and longing for him, although their leaders warned them not to burden the king's health, forced their way in to be admitted into his sight.

5.1. To those who looked upon him, the tears that rose presented the appearance of an army now visiting not its king, but his funeral:

5.2. yet the grief of those who stood about the couch was conspicuous above all. When the king saw them, he said: "Will you find, when I am gone, a king worthy of such men?"

5.3. It is incredible to tell and to hear, that, in the same posture of body into which he had composed himself when he was about to admit the soldiers, he held out until he had been saluted that last time by the whole army. And the throng dismissed, as if freed from all debt to life, he let his wearied limbs fall back, and, having ordered his friends to sit nearer—

5.4. for his voice too had now begun to fail—he drew the ring from his finger and handed it to Perdiccas, adding instructions that they should order his body to be carried to Ammon.

5.5. And when they asked to whom he left the kingdom, he answered: "To him who is the best." But he foresaw already, he said, that on account of that contest great funeral games were being prepared for him.

5.6. And when Perdiccas again asked when he wished divine honours to be paid to him, he said that he wished it then, when they themselves should be happy.

5.7. This was the last word of the king, and a little later he died. And at first the whole palace rang with weeping and lamentations and beatings of the breast: then, as if in a vast solitude, all things lay numb in a gloomy silence, their grief turned to thoughts of what would happen next.

5.8. The noble youths accustomed to the guard of his person could neither contain the magnitude of their grief nor hold themselves within the vestibule of the palace. Wandering and like men frenzied, they had filled so great a city with mourning and sorrow, omitting none of the complaints which grief suggests in such a calamity:

5.9. and so those who had stood without the palace, Macedonians and barbarians alike, ran together. Nor could the conquered be distinguished from the conquerors in their common grief: the Persians invoking a most just and gentle lord, the Macedonians a best and bravest king, they held a kind of contest of mourning.

5.10. Nor were the voices only of the sorrowful heard, but also of the indignant—that one so young, in the flower of his age and his fortune, had been snatched from human affairs by the envy of the gods. His vigour and his look as he led his soldiers into battle, besieged cities, climbed onto walls, rewarded brave men before the assembly, came before their eyes.

5.11. Then the Macedonians repented of having denied him divine honours, and confessed that they had been impious and ungrateful, in cheating his ears of the title that was his due. And when they had long dwelt now on veneration, now on longing for the king, their pity turned upon themselves.

5.12. Having set out from Macedonia beyond the Euphrates, they saw themselves left forsaken in the midst of enemies who spurned the new rule: without a sure heir of the king, without an heir of the kingdom, each man would draw the public forces to himself.

5.13. They forecast in their minds the civil wars which followed: that again blood must be shed by them, not for the kingdom of Asia, but for a king, that old scars must be torn open with new wounds:

5.14. that old men, weak, who had just sought their discharge from a lawful king, were now to die perhaps for the power of some ignoble underling.

5.15. As they were revolving these thoughts, night came on and increased their terror. The soldiers kept watch in arms; the Babylonians looked out, one from the walls, another from the top of his own roof, as if they were to see something more certain.

5.16. Nor did anyone dare to kindle lights, and, because the use of their eyes failed, they caught at sounds and voices with their ears, and, often terrified by groundless fear, were carried along through the dark lanes, one running upon another, mutually suspected and anxious.

5.17. The Persians, their hair shorn after their custom, in mourning dress, with their wives and children, lamented him with true longing, not as a conqueror and lately an enemy, but as the most just king of their own nation, and, accustomed to live under a king, they confessed that none other had been more worthy to rule them.

5.18. Nor was the mourning confined within the walls of the city, but the report of so great an evil had spread over the region nearest it, and then over a great part of Asia this side of the Euphrates.

5.19. To the mother of Darius too it was swiftly carried: having therefore torn the garment she had put on, she assumed mourning dress, and, her hair rent, threw her body upon the ground.

5.20. Beside her sat one of her granddaughters, mourning Hephaestion, whom she had lately lost, to whom she had been married, and recalling her own private causes of grief amid the common sorrow.

5.21. But Sisigambis alone took up the woes of all her people: she wept her own lot, she wept her granddaughters'. The fresh grief had recalled even the past. You would have believed that Darius had just been lost, and that the wretched woman had at once two sons to bury. She wept the dead and the living together.

5.22. For who, she asked, would take care of the girls? Who would be another Alexander? Again they were captives, again the kingdom had fallen away.

5.23. Who, after Darius was dead, would protect them? They had found one who would have regard for them after Alexander—but assuredly they would find no such one again. There came into her mind, amid these thoughts, that eighty brothers of hers had been slaughtered on the same day by Ochus, cruellest of kings, and their father added to the slaughter of so many sons; that of the seven children she had herself borne, one survived; that Darius himself had flourished but for a little while, only that he might be the more cruelly destroyed.

5.24. At last she succumbed to grief, and, with her head covered, turning away from her granddaughter and grandson who fell at her knees, abstained alike from food and from the light. On the fifth day after she had resolved to die, she expired.

5.25. A great proof, assuredly, of Alexander's kindness toward her and of his justice toward all the captives, is the death of this woman: she who had borne to live after Darius blushed to survive Alexander.

5.26. And, by Hercules, to those who judge the king justly it is clear that the good qualities were of his nature, the vices either of his fortune or of his age.

5.27. An incredible force of spirit; an endurance of toil almost excessive; a courage outstanding not among kings only, but even among those

5.28. whose sole virtue this was; a generosity often bestowing more than is asked of the gods; clemency toward the conquered; so many kingdoms either restored to those from whom he had taken them in war, or given as a gift;

5.29. a perpetual contempt of death, the fear of which unmans the rest; a craving for glory and praise, greater than is just, yet, in a young man and amid such great deeds, to be condoned;

5.30. then his piety toward his parents, of whom he had resolved to consecrate Olympias to immortality, and had avenged Philip;

5.31. then a kindness toward nearly all his friends, goodwill toward his soldiers, a judgement equal to the greatness of his spirit, and a shrewdness such as his age could scarcely contain;

5.32. moderation in immoderate desires, the use of love within natural appetite, and no pleasure but what was permitted—these assuredly were the endowments of his nature.

5.33. Those of his fortune were these: to make himself the equal of the gods and to summon to himself celestial honours; to believe oracles that advised such things; to be more vehemently angry than was fitting with those who disdained to venerate him; to change the fashion of his bodily attire to a foreign one; to imitate the customs of conquered nations, which before his victory he had despised.

5.34. For his irascibility and his craving for wine, as youth had inflamed them, so age might have softened.

5.35. Yet it must be confessed that, though he owed most to his valour, he owed more to fortune, which alone of all mortals he had in his power. How often did she recall him from death!

5.36. how often did she protect him, when he had rashly rushed into dangers, by her unbroken favour! She set the same limit to his life as to his glory: the fates awaited him, until, the East subdued and the Ocean reached, he should fulfil whatever mortality could attain.

5.37. For this king and leader a successor was sought, but the burden was too great for one man to take up: and so his name too, and the fame of his deeds, spread kings and kingdoms over almost the whole world, and those were held most illustrious who clung even to the smallest part of so great a fortune.

6.1. But at Babylon—for thither my discourse turns aside—the guards of his person summoned the chief of his friends and the leaders of his forces into the palace. There followed a throng of soldiers, eager to know to whom the fortune of Alexander would pass.

6.2. Many of the leaders, shut out by the press of the soldiers, could not enter the palace, since a herald forbade any to approach but those who were summoned by name.

6.3. But a command held on sufferance was spurned. And at first a vast wailing and weeping was renewed; then the expectation of the future, the tears being checked, made silence.

6.4. Then Perdiccas, the royal seat being set in the sight of the multitude—on which were Alexander's diadem and robe with his arms—placed in the same seat the ring handed to him the day before by the king. At the sight of these, the tears that rose again in all renewed their grief, and Perdiccas said:

6.5. "For my part, the ring with which he was wont to seal the affairs of his kingdom and empire, handed to me by himself, I render back to you.

6.6. But, although no disaster equal to this, with which we are stricken, could be devised by the angry gods, yet, to those who look upon the magnitude of the things he did, it is permitted to believe that so great a man the gods lent to human affairs, that, his allotted task being completed, they might quickly recall him to his own stock.

6.7. Therefore, since nothing else is left of him but what is always parted from immortality, let us at any rate pay the last rites to his body as soon as may be, not forgetful in what city, among whom we are, of what governor and king we are bereft.

6.8. We must consider, comrades, and take thought, how we may keep the victory won among those over whom it was won. A head is needed: to name this is in your power. This you ought to know, that a soldiery without a leader is a body without a spirit.

6.9. It is the sixth month since Roxane became pregnant: we pray that she may bear a male, whose kingdom, the gods approving, it will be, whenever he has grown up. Meanwhile appoint those by whom you wish to be ruled." This said Perdiccas.

6.10. Then Nearchus said that no one could deny that only the blood and stock of Alexander befitted the royal majesty,

6.11. but that to await a king not yet born, and to pass over one who already existed, suited neither the temper of the Macedonians nor their circumstances. There was a son of the king by Barsine: to him the diadem must be given.

6.12. The speech pleased no one: and so, in their fashion, beating their shields with their spears, they persisted in drowning him out. And they had now nearly come to mutiny, as Nearchus too obstinately maintained his opinion, when Ptolemy said:

6.13. "Worthy indeed is the offspring to rule the nation of the Macedonians—the son of Roxane or of Barsine, whose very name Europe will be loath to learn, sprung for the greater part from a captive!

6.14. Have we conquered the Persians for this, to be the slaves of their stock—a thing which those lawful kings of theirs, Darius and Xerxes, sought in vain with the columns of so many thousands and with such great fleets?

6.15. My opinion is this: that, the seat of Alexander being set in the palace, those who were admitted to his counsels should meet, whenever there is need of a common deliberation, and that they should abide by what the greater part of them shall decree; that the leaders and commanders of the forces should obey these."

6.16. Some assented to Ptolemy, fewer to Perdiccas. Then Aristonus began to say that Alexander, when consulted to whom he should leave the kingdom, had wished the best to be chosen; that the best had been judged by himself to be Perdiccas, to whom he had handed the ring.

6.17. For not one man alone had sat beside him as he died, but, casting his eyes about, he had chosen out of the throng of friends the one to whom he should hand it. It was his opinion, therefore, that the supreme command should be conferred upon Perdiccas.

6.18. Nor did he doubt that he judged truly. And so all bade Perdiccas come forward into the midst and take up the king's ring. He hung between desire and shame, and believed that, the more modestly he sought what he had his eye on, the more obstinately they would offer it.

6.19. And so, having hesitated, and long uncertain what to do, at last he nevertheless drew back and took his stand behind those who were nearest the seat.

6.20. But Meleager, one of the leaders, his spirit strengthened, which Perdiccas's hesitation had emboldened, said: "May the gods not allow that the fortune of Alexander and the summit of so great a kingdom should fall upon those shoulders: men, at any rate, will not endure it. I say nothing of men nobler than this one, but only of men, against whose will there is no necessity to suffer anything.

6.21. Nor indeed does it matter whether you have the son of Roxane, whenever he shall be born, or Perdiccas for king, since the latter, under the guise of guardianship, will seize the kingdom. And so no king pleases him but one not yet born, and, amid so great a haste of all, he alone awaits the months not merely lawfully but as a necessity, and already divines that a male has been conceived. And do you doubt that he is ready even to substitute one?

6.22. If, so help me god, Alexander had left us this man as king in his place, that alone of his commands I should judge ought not to be carried out.

6.23. Why, then, do you not run off to plunder the treasures? For of these royal riches, at any rate, the people is the heir."

6.24. Having uttered this, he burst through the midst of the armed men, and those who had given way to him as he departed followed him to the plunder he had proclaimed.

7.1. And now there was a dense throng of armed men around Meleager, the assembly turned to mutiny and discord, when a certain man, unknown to most of the Macedonians, from the lowest of the common people, said: "What need is there of arms and civil war, when you have the king you seek?

7.2. Arrhidaeus, begotten of Philip, brother of Alexander, lately your king, a partner just now in the sacred rites and ceremonies, now the sole heir, is passed over by you. By what desert of his own? What has he done, that he should be defrauded even of the common right of nations? If you seek one like Alexander, you will never find him: if the next to him, this man alone is such."

7.3. On hearing this, the assembly at first kept silence as if commanded, then with one voice cried out that Arrhidaeus must be summoned, and that those who had held the assembly without him deserved death.

7.4. Then Pithon, full of tears, began to say that now above all Alexander was to be pitied, who had been defrauded of the enjoyment and presence of such good citizens and soldiers. For, looking only to the name and memory of their king, they were blind to all else.

7.5. Then unambiguously he heaped reproaches upon the man for whom the kingdom was destined: but the things he objected brought hatred upon himself rather than contempt upon Arrhidaeus.

7.6. For while they pitied him, they began even to favour him. And so with stubborn shouting they declared that they would suffer no other king but the one born to this hope, and ordered Arrhidaeus to be summoned.

7.7. Meleager, hostile and hateful to Perdiccas, briskly brought him into the palace: and the soldiers, saluting him as king, called him Philip.

7.8. But this was the voice of the common people; the chief men were of another mind. Of these, Pithon began to carry out the plan of Perdiccas, and appointed as guardians of the son to be born of Roxane, Perdiccas and Leonnatus, men sprung from the royal line.

7.9. He added that in Europe Craterus and Antipater should administer affairs. Then an oath was exacted from each man that they would be under the command of one begotten of Alexander.

7.10. Meleager—not without reason terrified by fear of punishment, had withdrawn with his men—again burst into the palace, dragging Philip with him, crying out that the strength of mature age spoke in favour of the hope lately conceived of a new king: let them only make trial of the stock of Philip, the son and brother of two kings: let them trust above all in their own selves.

7.11. No deep sea, no vast and stormy strait stirs up such great waves as the disturbances of a multitude have, especially if it runs riot in a new and short-lived liberty.

7.12. A few gave the command to Perdiccas, just chosen; more to Philip, whom they had spurned. They could neither will nor refuse anything for long, and repented now of their decision, now of their repentance itself. At last, however, they inclined in their zeal toward the royal line.

7.13. Arrhidaeus had withdrawn from the assembly, terrified by the authority of the chief men, and at his departure the soldiers' favour had grown quiet rather than faint: and so, recalled, he was clothed in his brother's robe, the very one that had been placed on the seat.

7.14. And Meleager, taking up a breastplate, seized his arms, the satellite of the new king. The phalanx followed, beating their shields with their spears, ready to glut themselves with the blood of those who had aspired to a kingdom that did not concern them.

7.15. They rejoiced that the strength of empire would remain in the same house and family: that the royal line would claim a hereditary command: that they were accustomed to honour and venerate the very name, and that no one took it up but one born to reign.

7.16. So Perdiccas, terrified, ordered the chamber in which Alexander's body lay to be barred: six hundred men of proven valour were with him; Ptolemy too had joined himself to him, and the royal cohort of the pages.

7.17. But the bars were broken through, not without difficulty, by so many thousands of armed men. And the king too had burst in, surrounded by a throng of satellites, at whose head went Meleager:

7.18. and so Perdiccas called aside those who were willing to protect Alexander's body. But those who had burst in hurled their weapons at him from a distance. And, with many wounded, at last the older men, removing their helmets so that they might more easily be recognized, began to entreat those who were with Perdiccas to desist from war and to yield to the king and to the greater number.

7.19. First Perdiccas laid down his arms, and the rest did the same. Then, when Meleager urged them not to leave Alexander's body, thinking that a place was being sought for an ambush, they directed their flight to the Euphrates through another part of the palace.

7.20. The cavalry, which consisted of the noblest of the young men, followed Perdiccas and Leonnatus in great numbers, and it was their wish to leave the city and encamp in the plains.

7.21. But Perdiccas despaired that even the infantry would follow him: and so, lest by leading off the cavalry he should seem to have broken away from the rest of the army, he stayed in the city.

8.1. But Meleager did not cease to warn the king that the right of empire must be secured by the death of Perdiccas: unless that ungovernable spirit were forestalled, he would make a revolution. Let him remember what Perdiccas had deserved of the king; and no one was faithful enough to him whom he feared.

8.2. The king endured rather than assented: and so Meleager took silence for consent, and sent in the king's name those who should summon Perdiccas. The same men were charged to kill him, if he hesitated to come.

8.3. Perdiccas, when the arrival of the satellites was announced, attended by no more than sixteen pages of the royal cohort, took his stand on the threshold of his house, and, rebuking them and repeatedly calling them the chattels of Meleager, so terrified them by the steadfastness of his spirit and countenance that, scarcely masters of their minds, they fled.

8.4. Perdiccas ordered the pages to mount their horses, and with a few of his friends came to Leonnatus, meaning now, with a stronger guard, to repel force, if anyone should bring it.

8.5. The next day the matter seemed unworthy to the Macedonians, that Perdiccas had been brought to the peril of death, and they had resolved to avenge Meleager's rashness by arms.

8.6. . . . And he, foreseeing the mutiny, when he had approached the king, began to ask him whether he himself had ordered Perdiccas to be seized. The king answered that he had ordered it at Meleager's instigation: but that they ought not to be in an uproar; for Perdiccas was alive.

8.7. So, the assembly dismissed, Meleager, terrified above all by the defection of the cavalry, and at a loss for counsel—for the very peril had recoiled upon himself which a little before he had aimed at his enemy—spent nearly three days revolving uncertain plans.

8.8. And the former appearance of royalty indeed remained: for envoys of the nations approached the king, and the leaders of the forces were present, and satellites and armed men filled the vestibule.

8.9. But a great despondency, arising of its own accord, was the sign of utter despair, and, mutually suspicious, they dared not approach nearer nor converse, each resolving his secret thoughts within himself, and from the comparison with the new king the longing for the lost one was kindled.

8.10. They asked where he was, whose command, whose auspices they had followed: forsaken, they would have to seek, amid hostile and untamed nations, the penalties for so many of their own disasters, whenever the occasion should be offered.

8.11. With these thoughts they ate at their own spirits, when it was announced that the cavalry under Perdiccas, having occupied the plains around Babylon, had detained the grain that was being conveyed into the city.

8.12. And so first there was scarcity, then famine, and those who were in the city judged that they must either be reconciled with Perdiccas or contend with arms.

8.13. It had so chanced that those who were in the fields, fearing the plundering of their farms and villages, took refuge in the city, while the townspeople, when provisions failed them, went out of the city, and to each class another's abode seemed safer than its own.

8.14. The Macedonians, fearing their consternation, gathered in the palace, and set forth what each man's opinion was. It was their pleasure that envoys be sent to the cavalry concerning the ending of the discord and the laying down of arms.

8.15. And so by the king were sent Pasias the Thessalian, and Damyllus of Megalopolis, and Perilaus: who, when they had delivered the king's commands, brought back the answer that the cavalry would not lay down their arms unless the king surrendered the authors of the discord.

8.16. When this was reported back, the soldiers of their own accord took up their arms. Roused by their uproar from the palace, Philip said: "There is no need of mutiny: for those who keep quiet will seize the rewards of those who contend among themselves.

8.17. At the same time remember that the matter is with fellow-citizens: and to cut off from them the hope of favour swiftly is the act of men hastening to civil war.

8.18. Let us try, by a second embassy, whether they can be appeased. And I believe that, the king's body being not yet buried, all will gather to render him his rites.

8.19. For what concerns me, I would rather give back this command than wield it with the blood of citizens: and if there is no other hope of concord, I beg and beseech you, choose someone preferable."

8.20. Then, with tears rising, he drew the diadem from his head, stretching out the right hand with which he held it, so that, if anyone should profess himself worthier, he might receive it.

8.21. So moderate a speech roused a great hope of a character which, before that day, had been suppressed by his brother's brilliance. And so all began to press him to be willing to carry out what he had set in motion.

8.22. He sent the same men again to ask that they receive Meleager as a third leader. This was obtained without difficulty: for Perdiccas both desired to draw Meleager away from the king, and judged that one would be no match for two.

8.23. And so, Meleager having gone out to meet him with the phalanx, Perdiccas, leading the troops of cavalry, came up before him. The two columns, having exchanged a mutual salutation, came together in concord and peace established for ever, as they supposed.

9.1. But now civil wars were being drawn by the fates upon the nation of the Macedonians: for a kingdom is incapable of partnership, and was sought by many.

9.2. First, then, they clashed their forces together, then dispersed them: and when they had burdened the body with more than it could hold, the other members began to fail, and what could have stood under one man, while it is upheld by many, fell.

9.3. Therefore with justice and desert does the Roman people profess that it owes its safety to its emperor, who shone forth as a new star upon the night which we held to be almost our last.

9.4. The rising of this star, by Hercules—not of the sun—gave back light to a darkened world, when the members, without their head, trembled in discord.

9.5. How many torches did he then extinguish! how many swords did he sheathe! how great a tempest did he scatter by a sudden serenity! Therefore the empire not only revives, but even flourishes.

9.6. Only let envy be absent, and a posterity of the same house—everlasting, may it be, certainly long-lasting—will succeed to the times of this age.

9.7. But, to return to the order from which the contemplation of the public felicity had turned me away, Perdiccas placed the sole hope of his safety in the death of Meleager: that same fickle and faithless man, who would swiftly make a revolution and was most hostile to himself, must be forestalled.

9.8. But he hid his design under deep dissimulation, that he might catch him off his guard. So he secretly suborned certain men of the forces he commanded to complain openly, as if he himself knew nothing of it, that Meleager had been made equal to Perdiccas.

9.9. When their talk was reported back to Meleager, raging with anger, he set forth to Perdiccas what he had learned. He, as if terrified by a new thing, began to marvel, to complain, and to put on the appearance of a man grieved: at last it was agreed that the authors of so mutinous a saying should be seized.

9.10. Meleager gave thanks, and, embracing Perdiccas, praised his fidelity and goodwill toward himself.

9.11. Then by common counsel they entered upon a plan for crushing the guilty. It was their pleasure that the army be purified after the manner of their fathers: and the recent discord seemed a plausible occasion.

9.12. The kings of the Macedonians were wont to purify their soldiers thus: at the farther end of the plain into which the army was to be led, they would cast the entrails of a dog, cut in two, on either side; within that space all the armed men would stand, on this side the cavalry, on that the phalanx.

9.13. And so on the day they had appointed for this rite, the king with the cavalry and the elephants stood opposite the infantry, over whom Meleager presided.

9.14. The mounted column was now in motion, and the infantry, in sudden alarm on account of the recent discord, expecting nothing peaceful at all, hesitated for a little whether they should withdraw their troops into the city—

9.15. for the plain favoured the cavalry—but, fearing lest they should rashly condemn the good faith of their comrades, they halted, their spirits made ready to fight, if anyone should bring force. The columns were now coming together, and there was a small interval that divided the two battle-lines:

9.16. and so the king with one squadron began to ride round the infantry, demanding for punishment, at Perdiccas's instigation, the authors of the discord—whom he himself ought to have protected—and threatening that he would lead in all the squadrons, with the elephants, against those who refused.

9.17. The infantry were stupefied at the unforeseen evil, nor was there in Meleager himself more either of counsel or of spirit. The safest thing of the moment seemed to be to await rather than to provoke fortune.

9.18. Then Perdiccas, when he saw them benumbed and submissive, separated from the rest about thirty men who had followed Meleager when he burst from the assembly that was held first after the death of Alexander, and cast them before the elephants in the sight of the whole army. And all were trampled under the beasts' feet, neither Philip forbidding nor authorizing it:

9.19. and it was plain that he would claim as his own only what the outcome should approve. This was for the Macedonians both an omen and a beginning of civil wars.

9.20. Meleager, having understood too late the treachery of Perdiccas, then indeed, because no violence was being offered to his own person, stood quiet in the column,

9.21. but soon, the hope of safety condemned, when he saw his enemies abusing for his destruction the name of him whom he himself had made king, he took refuge in a temple, and, not even defended by the sanctity of the place, was killed.

10.1. Perdiccas, having led the army back into the city, held a council of the chief men, in which it was their pleasure that the empire be so divided that the king indeed should hold the sum of it, while Ptolemy should hold the satrapy of Egypt and the African nations that were under his sway:

10.2. to Leomedon was given Syria with Phoenice; to Philotas Cilicia was assigned; Antigonus was ordered to hold Lycia with Pamphylia and Greater Phrygia; into Caria Cassander, into Lydia Menander were sent: the Lesser Phrygia, adjoining the Hellespont, they ordered to be the province of Leonnatus.

10.3. Cappadocia fell to Eumenes, with Paphlagonia: he was charged to defend that region as far as Trapezus, and to wage war with Ariarathes: he alone refused obedience to the command.

10.4. Pithon was ordered to hold Media, Lysimachus Thrace and the Pontic nations adjoining Thrace. As for those who were set over India, and over the Bactrians and Sogdiani and the rest who dwell by either the Ocean or the Red Sea, it was decreed that each should hold command within whatever bounds he had held them: it was decreed that Perdiccas should be with the king and command the forces that accompanied the king.

10.5. Some have believed that the provinces were distributed by the testament of Alexander, but we have ascertained that the report of this matter, though handed down by authorities, was false.

10.6. And indeed each man would have established his own power, the parts of the empire being divided as seemed good to themselves—if ever a limit could be set against immoderate desires.

10.7. For, a little before, the king's ministers, under the appearance of administering an empire belonging to another, had each seized vast kingdoms, the causes of contention being removed, since they were all of the same nation and each was separated from the rest by the region of his own command.

10.8. But it was difficult to be content with what occasion had offered: for everything first won grows cheap, when greater things are hoped for. And so to all it seemed easier to enlarge their kingdoms than it had been to receive them.

10.9. It was the seventh day since the king's body had lain in its coffin, the cares of all being turned away from so solemn a duty toward shaping the public state.

10.10. And there is no hotter summer anywhere than in the region of Mesopotamia, so that it kills most of the animals it catches on the bare ground: so great is the vapour of the sun and of the sky, by which all things are scorched as if by fire.

10.11. The springs of water are both rare and concealed by the cunning of the inhabitants: their use lies open to themselves, but is unknown to strangers.

10.12. I report what is handed down rather than what is believed: when at last the friends had leisure to attend to the lifeless body, those who had entered saw it corrupted by no decay, not even by the slightest discoloration.

10.13. The vigour, too, which comes from the breath, had not yet abandoned his face. And so the Egyptians and Chaldaeans, ordered to tend the body after their own manner, at first did not dare to lay their hands on him as on one breathing: then, having prayed that it might be lawful and right for mortals to handle a god, they cleansed the body, and the golden coffin was filled with perfumes, and the emblems of his fortune were set upon his head.

10.14. Most believed that he was killed by poison: that a son of Antipater, Iollas by name, one of his attendants, had given it by his father's order. For often, in truth, had been heard the saying of Alexander, that Antipater aspired to the royal eminence, and was greater than the resources of a governor, and, puffed up by the title of his Spartan victory, claimed for himself all that had been given by Alexander.

10.15. They believed too that Craterus had been sent with a band of veteran soldiers to kill him.

10.16. Now it is agreed that the force of the poison which is produced in Macedonia is such that it burns even iron, and that only a beast's hoof can endure the juice:

10.17. they call Styx the spring from which this pestilent venom flows. This, they say, was brought by Cassander, handed to his brother Iollas, and put by him into the king's last drink.

10.18. These things, however they may be, were believed of those whom rumour had bespattered, but power soon extinguished the belief: for Antipater seized the kingdom of Macedonia and Greece as well,

10.19. and his offspring then succeeded, all having been killed who had touched Alexander even by remote kinship.

10.20. But his body was conveyed by Ptolemy, to whom Egypt had fallen, to Memphis, and thence, a few years later, to Alexandria, and every honour is paid to his memory and his name.