Harper's Round Table, August 6, 1895

Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

It was all glory and glitter one bright day in Babylon. It was that eventful morning, ages and ages ago, when the armies of the East and the armies of the West, with the epigonoi , or brilliant young sons of the King, twenty thousand in line, with horse-archers and foot-archers, and slingers and spearmen, and war-elephants and war-chariots, and all the galleys and barges of the King's navy, marched and countermarched, sailed and manœuvred, all in honor of one very small boy, who was yet a very important one.
He sat under a gorgeous canopy upon the gleaming portico of the palace of the kings at Babylon, and clapped his hands, and crowed his praises, and laughed aloud in glee, as spears were tossed and shields were clashed aloft, and soldiers shouted and generals saluted, and princes of vassal nations bowed themselves to the ground in homage and admiration—all in honor of this very small boy with a very great name. For he was Alexander, the Shield, the Great Lord, Blessed, That liveth forever. He was constitutional King of Macedon, Captain-General of Greece, Lord of Egypt, and monarch of Asia. He was the son of Alexander, King of Macedon, called by men the Great and Conqueror of the World.
But Alexander the Great was dead. And in the palace of the kings whose empire he had conquered, the palace in which Belshazzar had feasted and Cyrus had ruled, and in which the all-conquering Macedonian had died at thirty-two, this helpless baby, less than a year old, and who had never seen his father of the mighty name, held the sovereignty that Alexander the Great had established.
It was a vast possession. It stretched from Greece to India, from Egypt to Siberia; it was such as only a genius could have conquered and only a genius could rule. With Alexander dead and only a baby as its lord it was already in danger. But Roxana the Queen said, boldly, My boy shall be King, and all the Companions of Alexander, as his generals and ministers were called, echoed her words: The boy shall be King! And so it came to pass that at the great display in Babylon the little son of Alexander was honored and sainted and adored as the successor of his imperial father.