[1] “Gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus.”

[2] About £20.

[3] Philip, King of Macedonia, who by this time was very nearly master of Greece, had, it was said, consulted the Delphic oracle as to his plans, and had received from the priestess an answer which may be thus Englished:—

To the king himself a witticism of similar import was attributed: “I have never found,” he said, “a citadel impregnable, into which I could send an ass laden with silver.”

[4] This sentence was that the city of Thebes should be razed to the ground and all its territory distributed among the allies; that all the captive Thebans, with a few exceptions, should be sold as slaves; that all who had escaped might be arrested and put to death wherever they might be found.

[5] Homer insists on the beauty of Achilles.

[6] A complete description of the organization of the Macedonian army would be out of place in a book of this kind. Any reader who may be anxious to make himself acquainted with the subject will find it treated with much fulness in Grote’s “History of Greece” (vol. xii. pp. 75-89). For my purposes a brief outline will suffice. The Macedonian infantry consisted (1) of the PezetÆri, or Foot Companions, who made up the phalanx, of which I shall have occasion to say something hereafter; (2) the HypaspistÆ, i.e., “shield-bearers,” originally a bodyguard for the person of the king, but afterwards, as has been in the case of many modern armies, our own included, enlarged into a considerable force of light infantry; (3) irregular troops, javelin-throwers, archers, &c. A select corps of actual body-guards was chosen out of the HypaspistÆ. The horse was divided into (1) heavy cavalry, armed with a xyston or thrusting pike; (2) light cavalry, who carried a lighter weapon. These may be called Lancers.

[7] On the Hellespont, the nearest point of Europe to Asia.

[8] When Lysander the Spartan was urged to destroy Athens, then at his mercy, he replied that he could not “put out one of the eyes of Greece!”

[9] The names of the two were Charidemus and Ephialtes. Ephialtes was killed at the siege of Halicarnassus. Of Charidemus we shall hear again.

[10] As a matter of fact Phocion was born in 401, and was therefore sixty-seven years old.

[11] He was one of the “Royal Youths.” Q. Curtius gives this description of this corps: “It was the custom among the Macedonian nobles to hand over their grown-up sons to the king, for the performance of functions which differed but little from domestic service. They took it in turns to pass the night close to the door of the house in which the king slept. They received the king’s horses from the grooms, and brought them to him when he was ready to mount. They accompanied him when he hunted, and they stood close to him in battle. In return, they were carefully instructed in all the branches of a liberal education. They had the especial distinction of sitting down to meals with the king. No one but the king himself was allowed to inflict corporal punishment upon them. This company was the Macedonian training-ground for generals and officers.”

[12] This soothsayer was Aristander, who was attached to the retinue of the king, and accompanied him in all his campaigns.

[13] Choerilus was a notoriously bad poet, to whom Alexander committed the task of celebrating his achievements, a curious contradiction, Horace thinks, to the discrimination which he showed in forbidding any one to paint his portrait except Apelles, or to make a statue of him except Lysippus. The joke about Choerilus was that, having agreed to receive a gold piece for every good verse and a stripe for every bad one, the balance against him was so heavy that he was beaten to death.

[14] The oracle had declared that the first of the Greeks who should leap on shore in the expedition against Troy would be slain. ProtesilaÜs, a Thessalian prince, unhesitatingly took the doom upon himself, leapt from his ship and was slain by Hector.

[15] The animal was probably stupefied with drugs. Otherwise it is difficult to account for its standing still. It was considered a most disastrous omen when an ox attempted to escape, and the occurrence was probably rare. It must have happened very frequently unless some such means had been used to prevent it.

[16] There was even then a fierce dispute about the site of Homer’s Troy. Curiously enough it has been recently renewed, but the reader need not be troubled with it either in its ancient or its modern form.

[17] The phalanx was a development due to the military genius of Philip of Macedon on the tactics adopted by Epaminondas. This great Theban commander massed his troops in a heavy column which he brought to bear on one point of the enemy’s line. But the Theban column was powerless to deal with the phalanx. At ChÆronea it was utterly broken by it, all the front rank soldiers falling on the ground. They were met by an impassable chevaux de frise. Polybius writes (the passage is a fragment of his twenty-ninth book): “The consul Lucius Æmilius [Paullus] had never seen a phalanx till he saw it in the army of Perseus on this occasion [the battle of Pydna]; and he often confessed to some of his friends at Rome subsequently that he had never beheld anything more alarming and terrible than the Macedonian phalanx; and yet he had been, if any one ever had, not only a spectator, but an actor in many battles.” It is interesting to note that the historian was himself one of the “friends at Rome,” to whom the great general related this experience. “It is impossible,” he writes elsewhere, “to confront a charge of the phalanx, so long as it retains its proper formation and strength.” But he goes on to show that it could not do this except when it could choose its own ground.

[18] Historians are unusually well agreed about the total of the force which Alexander carried over into Asia. The highest numbers are 43,000 infantry and 6,500 cavalry; the lowest, 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry.

[19] By this phrase are meant the seven nobles who conspired to slay the Magian usurper, who, after the death of Cambyses, personated the dead Smerdis, and held the Persian throne for a few months. Darius, one of the seven, became king, but to his fellow-conspirators and their descendants certain privileges, as immunity from taxes and free access to the person of the king, were accorded in perpetuity.

[20] The battle of the Granicus was fought on May 25th.

[21] Parmenio had been in command of the other wing of the army.

[22] A talent, I may remind my readers, was about equivalent to £200; a drachma to something less than tenpence, a franc, it may be said, for convenience of recollection, though, strictly speaking, the drachma and the franc stand in the proportions of 39 to 38.

[23] The Taurus range may be said, speaking roughly, to be the eastern boundary of Lesser Asia.

[24] The legend was that in the reign of this king a lion’s cub was born in some marvellous way, that an oracle declared that if the creature were carried round the fortifications of the city they never could be taken; that it was so carried round, but that when the bearers came to the citadel, it seemed so absurd that a place so strong could be in any danger of capture, the king ordered that it should not be carried any further. But this was the very place which was successfully attacked by the soldiers of Cyrus, when that king was besieging Croesus the Lydian in his capital.

[25] The Princess Ada was one of the five children of Hecatomnus, King of Caria, who was descended from the famous queen, “the Carian Artemisia, strong in war,” as Tennyson describes her, who fought at Salamis. It was the custom of the Carian reigning house (as it was afterwards of the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt) for brothers to marry sisters. Hecatomnus, dying in 379, was succeeded by his son Mausolus and his daughter Artemisia. Mausolus died in 352, and was succeeded by his widow. She reigned alone for two years, and was succeeded by Idrieus and Ada, her father’s second son and second daughter. Idrieus died 344, and Ada reigned alone, till in 340 she was expelled by her youngest brother, Pixodarus. The daughter of the usurper was married to a Persian noble who, on his father-in-law’s death in 335, received Caria as a satrapy.

[26] “First in the large-experienced craft” is the title with which the writer or transcriber of his epitaph apostrophises him. I say “transcriber” because the epigram is found in the Greek Anthology as well as among the remains of Halicarnassus.

[27] In the epitaph on Herodotus, it is said that he left Halicarnassus, his native town, to “escape from ridicule.”

[28] “Let no one enter who knows not geometry,” was written on the door of the house in which Plato taught the chosen few. His popular lectures were addressed to much larger audiences.

[29] These are allusions to the story in the Odyssey. It is “Memnon the god-like, the goodliest man in the host,” the “son of the Day-dawn light,” by whom Antilochus was slain. But the story is told by post-Homeric writers. Dictys Cretensis says, that Memnon came with an army of Ethiopians and Indians from Caucasus to Troy, that he slew Antilochus, when that hero tried to rescue his father the aged Nestor, and that he was himself slain by Achilles.

[30] B.C. 371.

[31] Gibraltar.

[32] This island was Britain, and is so described by the Massilian geographer Pytheas.

[33] About £400.

[34] Alexander did send such of his troops as were newly married to spend the winter of 334-3 at home, and made himself exceedingly popular by so doing.

[35] The Peplos was the sacred robe destined to adorn the statue of the goddess. It was carried, spread like a sail on a mast, much after the fashion of the banners used in processions now-a-days. It was embroidered with figures, the Battle of the Giants, in which AthenÉ was represented as playing an important part, being one of the chief subjects. The Basket-bearers were maidens who carried baskets on their heads containing various sacred things used in the worship. It was necessary that they should be of unmixed Athenian descent, and the office was considered a great honour. Their hair was powdered; they carried strings of figs in their hands, and parasols were held over their heads.

[36] It was about seventy feet.

[37] This was the crushing defeat which led to the capture of Athens and the termination of the Peloponnesian War.

[38] The Lyceum was a gymnasium, i.e., a place where athletic exercises were practised, in the eastern suburb of Athens, with covered walks round it. In the largest of these, called for distinction’s sake The Walk, Aristotle was accustomed to teach. It was thus that his school got the name of the “Peripatetics.”

[39] Antipater, who was left in charge of Macedonia and the home provinces by Alexander when he started on his Asian expedition.

[40] 333 B.C.

[41] It was founded by Sardanapalus (Assur-bani-pal), built, according to the legend, along with Anchialus, in a single day.

[42] Charidemus, it will be remembered, was one of the Athenians exiled at the demand of Alexander after the fall of Thebes. He had taken refuge with Darius.

[43] The modern Thipsach (the Passage).

[44] Three thousand talents, equivalent to about £600,000.

[45] At Susa fifty thousand talents, or about £11,500,000, were found; at Persepolis one hundred and twenty thousand, or £27,600,000; huge sums, but nevertheless not equal to the amounts held in bullion and coin by the Banks of England and France.

[46] Since Ahab (about 900 B.C.) had made peace with Benhadad, King of Syria, on condition that he should have “streets” in Damascus, as Benhadad’s father had had them in Samaria.

[47] Tyre stood a siege of nearly thirteen years from Nebuchadnezzar’s army, but was at last compelled to capitulate. “Her prestige and her commerce dwindled; she was not allowed to rebuild her suburb upon the mainland (PalÆ-tyrus), which remained in ruins till the time of Alexander; and she lost for a time the leading position among Phoenician cities, which seems to have passed to Sidon.” (Professor Rawlinson’s “Phoenicia,” pp. 173-4.)

[48] Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, hurled the young Scamandrius or Astyanax, son of Hector and AndromachÉ, from the walls of Troy.

[49] Very possibly this had something to do with the extravagancies of his later years, when he assumed the Persian dress, lived in Persian fashion, and even demanded Oriental prostrations from his attendants. The attempt which he made to combine Macedonian and Persian soldiers in the phalanx was certainly a part of the same scheme.

[50] This was by the caravan road from Damascus to Egypt. The road crossed the Jordan at the north of the Lake of Galilee, and then struck westward across the country till it reached the Maritime Plain. Somewhere about Joppa a traveller to Jerusalem left the caravan road turning eastward to make his way up to Jerusalem. The distance would be 136 miles.

[51] According to Herodotus (viii. 97) the work was commenced as a blind to conceal from the Greeks and from his own people the king’s resolution to return to Asia, after his defeat at Salamis.

[52] Thirteen years.

[53] This was not, as my readers may fancy, an anticipation of Peter the Great’s sojourn at Deptford, for the purpose of learning the art of shipbuilding. Abdalonymus (Abd-Elomin, “servant of the gods”), whom Hephaestion, acting for Alexander, had made King of Sidon, though of royal descent, was a working man (“on account of his poverty he cultivated a garden near the city for a humble remuneration,” says Curtius), and his son may well have gone to work for his livelihood in the dockyards of Tyre.

[54] When Tyre was taken the crews of the Sidonian galleys did actually rescue a number of the inhabitants, who would otherwise have been slain or sold into captivity.

[55] Herodotus says it was of emerald, but Sir J. G. Wilkinson (in Prof. Rawlinson’s “Herodotus”) notes that it was doubtless of green glass, glass having been manufactured in Egypt even thousands of years before the time of Herodotus.

[56] Nearly two hundred miles.

[57] Democedes was a physician of Crotona, whose services were engaged by the cities of Ægina and Athens and by Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, in succession, at increasing salaries (£344, £406, £487 10s.). He was taken prisoner in company with Polycrates and sent up to Susa. Here he remained for a time unnoticed among the king’s slaves. Darius chanced to sprain his ankle, in leaping from his horse, and the Egyptian physicians who were called in failed to effect a cure. Some courtier had chanced to hear that Polycrates had had a famous physician in attendance on him, and suggested that his advice should be asked. He was brought as he was, “clothed in rags and clanking his chains,” into the king’s presence. It was only under threat of torture that he confessed his knowledge of medicine. But he treated the injury with success, and was amply rewarded, the king giving him two pairs of golden chains, and each of the royal wives dipping a saucer into a chest of gold coins and pouring the contents into his hands so bountifully that the slave who followed him was enriched by the stray pieces. He afterwards healed Atossa, Darius’s principal queen, of a dangerous carbuncle. By a stratagem which I have not space here to describe he got back to his native city, where he married the daughter of the great athlete Milo, and finally settled.

[58] About £1,220.

[59] Between two and three in the morning.

[60] “Its name,” says Curtius, “is given to it from its rapidity, for in the Persian tongue Tigris is the word for an arrow” (iv. 9, 16). The Biblical word Chiddekel or Hiddekel (Genesis ii. 14) is said to be compounded of two forms Chid or Hid, “river,” and dekel an arrow.

[61] Now Erbil, a station on the caravan-route between Erzeroum and Baghdad.

[62] So Arrian says, writing with the two contemporary memoirs of Alexander’s generals before him. These two were Ptolemy, afterwards King of Egypt, and Aristobulus, a soldier of considerable repute.

[63] Now called the Great Zab.

[64] Susa was the official capital of the kingdom; Babylon, though fallen somewhat from its former greatness, was still the largest city. One might compare them to St. Petersburg and Moscow, but that Moscow is intensely Russian in feeling, while Babylon was probably strong by Anti-Persian. It had not forgotten its own independence, an independence which it tried more than once to assert by arms.

[65] That described in 2 Kings xxiv. 13-16 as having happened in the eighth year of Jehoiachin (B.C. 602).

[66] It seems probable that Astyages is to be identified with “Darius the Mede” mentioned in the Book of Daniel as succeeding to the government of Babylon after the death of Belshazzar.

[67] Five “darics” would be about equal to about £5 10s. The coin got its name from the first Darius.

[68] The walls of Babylon were built of brick.

[69] Not even by Cortes and his Spaniards in the newly-conquered Mexico, or by Pizarro in the still richer Peru.

[70] Equal to about eleven millions and a half. Two-thirds were in uncoined gold and silver; the rest in gold darics. The average stock of bullion and coin held by the Bank of England is about half as much again.

[71] The phrase is taken from the historian Curtius.

[72] About £150.

[73] We may compare, as a somewhat similar incident in modern times, the plunder of the Chinese Emperor’s Summer Palace in Pekin in the Chinese War of 1860. Happily modern feelings forbade the massacre which accompanied the spoil of Persepolis; but the destruction of the palace was a distinct act of vengeance on the wanton aggression and the brutality of the Chinese ruler, who was personally punished by the loss of his palace, just as the Persians were punished by the destruction of their metropolis. A famous English poem, Dryden’s “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day,” attributes the destruction of Persepolis to a drunken freak of Alexander; but there is no doubt that it was a deliberate act. Curtius speaks of it as having been proposed at a council of war, and other historians mention the unavailing resistance of Parmenio.

[74] Nine o’clock at night. The time of year seems to have been July.

[75] Maracanda is the modern Samarcand.

[76] The kingdom of Porus consisted of the eastern portion of the Punjaub. The Hydaspes is the Djalan or Jelam, sometimes called BehÂt.

[77] This may be reckoned to have been midsummer in the year 326 B.C. He reached Susa in the winter of 324. But the chronology of the latter part of the campaign is uncertain.

[78] Nearchus had been in command of the fleet which had taken part in Alexander’s operations in the further East, and he was now about to command it again in the expedition which was about to be made against Arabia.

[79] The funeral games would be the wars fought by his successors to determine who was the “strongest,” named as the legatee of his power. The prediction was amply fulfilled.

[80] As this child does not come into my story, a few words may be given to describe his fate. The name given to him was Heracles, Heracles being the Greek divinity with whom the Tyrian Melkarth was commonly identified. Brought up by his mother in the retirement described above, he was mentioned as a possible successor after Alexander’s death. The proposition met with no favour at the time, but eleven years later his claims were advanced by Polysperchon, one of the generals who engaged in the struggle for the fragments of Alexander’s empire. He was persuaded to leave his retirement, and, as being the only surviving child of the emperor, seemed likely to become an important person. Cassander, who had usurped the throne of Macedonia, marched against Polysperchon, who had the young prince and his mother in his camp, but found his troops unwilling to act against Alexander’s son. He proceeded to bribe Polysperchon with the offer of the government of the Peloponnese, if he would abandon the young man’s cause. Polysperchon caused him to be murdered, and BarsinÉ with him.

[81] “The Rabbins distinguish two classes of proselytes, viz., proselytes of righteousness, who received circumcision, and bound themselves to keep the whole Mosaic law, and to comply with all the requirements of Judaism, and proselytes of the gate, who dwelt among the Jews, and although uncircumcised, observed certain specified laws, especially the seven precepts of Noah (as the Rabbins called them), i.e., against the seven chief sins, idolatry, blasphemy against God, parricide, unchastity, theft or plundering, rebellion against rulers, and the use of ‘flesh with the blood thereof.’”