VIII. THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER.
For some time after his return Alexander's attention was engrossed with plans for organizing, on a permanent basis, the government of the mighty empire that he had won. Aiming to unite the conquerors and the conquered, so as to form out of both a nation independent alike of Macedonian and Persian prejudices, he married Stati'ra, the oldest daughter of Darius, and united his principal officers with Persian and Median women of the noblest families, while ten thousand of his soldiers were induced to follow the example of their superiors. But while he was occupied with these cares, and with dreams of future conquests, his career was suddenly terminated by death. On setting out to visit Babylon, in the spring of 324, soon after the decease of an intimate friend —Hephæs'tion—whose loss caused a great depression of his spirits, he was warned by the magicians that Babylon would be fatal to him; but he proceeded to the city to conclude his preparations for his next ambitious scheme—the subjugation of Arabia. Babylon was now to witness the consummation of his triumphs and of his life. "As in the last scene of some well-ordered drama," says a modern historian, "all the results and tokens of his great achievements seemed to be collected there to do honor to his final exit." Although his mind was actively occupied in plans of conquest, he was haunted by gloomy forebodings and superstitious fancies, and endeavored to dispel his melancholy by indulging freely in the pleasures of the table. Excessive drinking at last brought to a crisis a fever which he had probably contracted in the marshes of Assyria, and which suddenly terminated his life in the thirty-third year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign (323 B.C.). He was buried in Babylon. From the Latin poet LUCAN we take the following estimate of
His Career and His Character.
Here the vain youth, who made the world his prize,
That prosperous robber, Alexander, lies:
When pitying Death at length had freed mankind,
To sacred rest his bones were here consigned:
His bones, that better had been tossed and hurled,
With just contempt, around the injured world.
But fortune spared the dead; and partial fate,
For ages fixed his Pha'rian empire's date.
[Footnote: Pharian. An allusion to the famous light-house, the Pharos of Alexandria, built by Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Soter, who succeeded Alexander in Egypt.]
If e'er our long-lost liberty return,
That carcass is reserved for public scorn;
Now it remains a monument confessed,
How one proud man could lord it o'er the rest.
To Maçedon, a corner of the earth,
The vast ambitious spoiler owed his birth:
There, soon, he scorned his father's humbler reign,
And viewed his vanquished Athens with disdain.
Driven headlong on, by fate's resistless force,
Through Asia's realms he took his dreadful course;
His ruthless sword laid human nature waste,
And desolation followed where he passed.
Red Ganges blushed, and famed Euphrates' flood,
With Persian this, and that with Indian blood.
Such is the bolt which angry Jove employs,
When, undistinguishing, his wrath destroys:
Such to mankind, portentous meteors rise,
Trouble the gazing earth, and blast the skies.
Nor flame nor flood his restless rage withstand,
Nor Syrts unfaithful, nor the Libyan sand:
[Footnote: Syrts. Two gulfs—Syrtis Minor and Syrtis Major—on the northern coast of Africa, abounding in quicksands, and dangerous to navigation.]
O'er waves unknown he meditates his way,
And seeks the boundless empire of the sea.
E'en to the utmost west he would have gone,
Where Te'thys' lap receives the setting sun;
[Footnote: Tethys, the fabled wife of Ocean, and daughter of Heaven and Earth.]
Around each pole his circuit would have made,
And drunk from secret Nile's remotest head,
When Nature's hand his wild ambition stayed;
With him, that power his pride had loved so well,
His monstrous universal empire, fell;
No heir, no just successor left behind,
Eternal wars he to his friends assigned,
To tear the world, and scramble for mankind.
—LUCAN. Trans. by ROWE.
The poet JUVENAL, moralizing on the death of Alexander, tells us that, notwithstanding his illimitable ambition, the narrow tomb that be found in Babylon was sufficiently ample for the small body that had contained his mighty soul.
One world sufficed not Alexander's mind;
Cooped up, he seemed in earth and seas confined,
And, struggling, stretched his restless limbs about
The narrow globe, to find a passage out!
Yet, entered in the brick-built town, he tried
The tomb, and found the straight dimensions wide.
Death only this mysterious truth unfolds:
The mighty soul, how small a body holds!
—Tenth Satire. Trans. by DRYDEN.
The body of Alexander was removed from Babylon to Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter, one of his generals, subsequently King of Egypt, and was interred in a golden coffin. The sarcophagus in which the coffin was enclosed has been in the British Museum since 1802—a circumstance to which BYRON makes a happy allusion in the closing lines of the following verse:
How vain, how worse than vain, at length appear
The madman's wish, the Macedonian's tear!
He wept for worlds to conquer; half the earth
Knows not his name, or but his death and birth,
And desolation; while his native Greece
Hath all of desolation, save its peace.
He "wept for worlds to conquer!" he who ne'er
Conceived the globe he panted not to spare!
With even the busy Northern Isle unknown,
Which holds his urn, and never knew his throne.
CHAPTER XVI.
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER TO THE CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS.