TO BABYLON
[324-323 B.C.]
At the distance of some days’ march from the city, he was met by presages of impending calamity. A deputation of the Chaldean priests came to the camp, and requested a private audience, in which they informed him that their god Belus had revealed to them that some danger threatened him, if he should at that time enter Babylon. Alexander is said to have replied with a verse of Euripides, expressing disbelief in divination. But it is certain that the warning sank deep into his mind. The state of his feelings was apt for gloomy forebodings: and there was a strange harmony between the words of the Chaldeans, and an intimation which he had lately received from a Greek soothsayer, named Peithagoras.
Greek Urn
Still the priests found that they could not induce the king to give up his intention of visiting the capital of his empire, where many important affairs were to be transacted, and embassies from remote parts of the world were awaiting his arrival. They then urged him at least not to enter the city by the eastern gate, so as to have his face turned towards the dark west. This mysterious advice struck Alexander’s fancy; he altered the course of his march, and proceeded some distance along the bank of the Euphrates. But he then found that the lakes and morasses formed by the inundations of the river to the west of Babylon would prove an insurmountable obstacle. He was still reluctant to neglect the warning of the Chaldeans, but yet not now indisposed to listen to Anaxarchus, and the other philosophical Greeks about him, who treated the occult science, and especially its Babylonian professors, with contempt. There was however another motive for distrust, a suspicion that his priestly counsellors were less concerned about his safety than their own. Alexander, before he left Babylon, had ordered the great temple, which Xerxes had demolished, to be rebuilt under the superintendence of the priests. The revenues which had been assigned by the Assyrian kings, for the maintenance of the temple-worship, were also managed by the priests, and, while the temple lay in ruins, had been applied by them to their own use. They knew that Alexander’s presence would soon put an end to such abuses.
Thus then he at length entered Babylon, not without a secret misgiving, by the ominous quarter.[36] The Great City had probably never before witnessed so stirring a scene as was exhibited by the crowds now assembled for various purposes within its walls. Nearchus had brought in the fleet from Opis: the vessels transported over land from Phœnicia had come down from Thapsacus: the harbour was in progress, and other ships were on the stocks in the arsenals of Babylon itself. Another crowd of workmen and artists were busied with Hephæstion’s funeral pile, and with the preparations for his obsequies. And never before had Alexander’s imperial greatness been so conspicuously displayed as in the embassies from foreign states, which were now in attendance at his court.[37] It seems indeed that there was a disposition among some of his historians to exaggerate the number and variety of those embassies. We must perhaps pass over as doubtful those which are said to have come—surprising the Macedonians and the Greeks by the novelty and strangeness of their names and garb—from the European Scythians, from Celtic and Iberian tribes, from Ethiopia, from Carthage, from Libya, and from at least three of the Italian nations, the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Tyrrhenians.
The object of the Italian embassies is not mentioned: those of the Bruttians and Lucanians may be easily accounted for, since, only six or seven years before, the conqueror’s kinsman and namesake, Alexander of Epirus, had perished in war with them. We are prepared to accept the testimony that they were met at Babylon by envoys from Rome, and though the scene may appear to us so memorable as to have afforded temptation for fiction, the fact was recorded before the greatness of the Roman name could have suggested the thought. Strabo mentions an occasion which might have led to this embassy. Alexander—we know not precisely when—had sent remonstrances to the Romans on account of injuries which his subjects had suffered from the pirates of Antium, which was subject to Rome. Alexander would probably have been satisfied with such a supremacy in Italy as he had acquired in Greece: that no general confederacy would have been formed against him by the Italian states: and Rome, single-handed, could not long have withstood such an army as he could have brought against her, backed by the forces and treasure of Greece, Asia, and Africa.
Among the embassies were several from Greek cities. He gave precedence according to the dignity of their temples. So Elis took the lead, and was followed by Delphi and Corinth: but the shrine of Ammon was recognised as second to Olympia. The Epidaurians received an offering for their god, though Alexander added the remark, that Æsculapius might have treated him better, than to suffer him to lose his dearest friend.
The honours designed for Hephæstion continued to share his earnest attention with graver business. The funeral pile was at length completed, and was a marvel of splendour, such as the gorgeous East had never beheld. A part of the wall of Babylon, to the length of about a mile, was thrown down to furnish materials for the basement, and the shell of the building. It was a square tower, and each side, at least at the foot, measured a stade in breadth: the height was about two hundred feet, divided into thirty stories, roofed with the trunks of palm trees. The whole of the outside was covered with groups of colossal figures, and other ornaments, all of gold, ivory, and other precious materials, and it was surmounted by statues of sirens, so contrived as to emit a plaintive melody. All who courted the king’s favour contributed their offerings to the work, or to the obsequies. As to the magnificence of the concluding ceremony, of the funeral games and banquet, nothing more need be said than that it corresponded to the richness of this astonishing work of art, which was raised at an expense about ten times exceeding that of the Parthenon, merely to be devoured by the flames.
Alexander was not of a character to continue long brooding over melancholy thoughts.[38] He appears now to have resumed his great plans with his wonted energy. It was about this time, that he sent out three expeditions to explore the coast of Arabia. He was impressed with the belief, that the Caspian Sea was connected by some outlet at its northern extremity with the ocean which girded the earth, and perhaps hoped that a passage might be found through this channel to the coast of India. With this view he sent Heraclides, with a party of shipwrights, to the shores of the Caspian, to build a fleet, which might survey its coasts, and ascertain its limits. In the meanwhile, he undertook an excursion from Babylon on the Euphrates, to inspect the canal called the Pallacopas, which branched from it to the southwest. He then sailed down the Pallacopas into the lakes which received its waters, and examined the channels by which they were connected with each other. On a part of the shore his eye was struck by a point, which seemed to him well adapted for the site of a city, and he ordered one to be built there, which he afterwards peopled with a colony of Greek mercenaries. The circuit was large, and the passages so intricate, that he was once separated for some time from the main body of the squadron. On his return through this maze of waters, an accident occurred, trifling in itself, but sufficiently ominous, it seems, to revive the uneasy feelings with which he had entered Babylon, and which had subsided when he saw himself once more out of it, and the prediction of the Chaldeans apparently belied. As the royal galley, which Alexander steered himself, passed over the lake, a sudden gust of wind carried away his causia into the water, and lodged the light diadem which circled it on one of the reeds that grew out of a tomb. One of the sailors immediately swam off to recover it, and, to keep it dry, placed it on his own head. Alexander rewarded him with a talent, but at the same time ordered him to be flogged, for the thoughtlessness with which he had assumed the ensign of royalty. The diviners, it is said, took the matter more seriously, and advised the king to avert the omen by the infliction of death on the offender.
On his return he found all the preparations for his intended expedition nearly complete. Fresh troops had arrived from the western provinces, and Peucestas had brought an army of twenty thousand Persians, and a body of mountaineers from the Kossæan and Tapurian highlands. The Persians Alexander incorporated with his Macedonian infantry; so as in every file of sixteen to combine twelve Persians, armed with bows or javelins, with four heavy-armed Macedonians. And now the envoys whom he had sent to the oracle of Ammon returned with the answer, that Hephæstion was to be worshipped as a hero. This was probably as much as Alexander had desired. He immediately proceeded to give effect to the injunction, and sent orders to his satrap Cleomenes, to erect two temples to the new hero, one in Alexandria, the other on the isle of Pharos.
Ruins of Greek Wall at Alatrium
Fresh envoys had also arrived from Greece—from what states we are not informed—to render him the divine honours which he had demanded. They came crowned, according to the custom of persons sent on a sacred mission to a temple, offered golden crowns to him, and saluted him with the title of a god. But, Arrian observes with emphatic simplicity, he was now not far from his end. It seemed to be announced by another sinister omen. The king had been busied with the enrolment of the newly-arrived troops, in council with his officers, who were seated on each side of the throne. Feeling thirst, he withdrew to refresh himself; the council rose for a time, and none were left in the hall but the attendant eunuchs. Before he returned, a man entered the apartment, mounted the steps of the throne, and seated himself on it. The slaves had probably been kept motionless by amazement, when they should have prevented him: but when the deed was done, the etiquette of the Persian court forbade them to lay their hands on one who occupied the seat of royalty, and they rent their clothes and beat their breasts in helpless consternation. The man was examined, and put to the torture, by Alexander’s orders, who suspected a treasonable design. According to some accounts, he was a Messenian, named Dionysius, who had been a long time in prison, and had just made his escape. We may infer, that he was out of his senses. He could give no explanation of his act, but that it had come into his mind. Hence it seemed the more manifest to the soothsayers, that it must be viewed as a sign of impending evil. Alexander himself probably so considered it, and it was the more alarming, as it followed so many others. That he was haunted by his gloomy forebodings, and superstitious fancies, to the degree which Plutarch describes, is hardly credible, unless he was already unconsciously affected by the disorder which proved fatal to him: as on the other hand it seems probable that its secret germs may have been cherished by the dejected state of his spirits.
From the presence of the disease, before its symptoms had become manifest, we may perhaps best explain the behaviour which Plutarch attributes to him in the interview which he had with Antipater’s son, Cassander, shortly before his death; a scene which appears to have been attended with very important consequences. Alexander confronted Cassander with Antipater’s accusers: and when Cassander treated their charges as groundless calumnies, sternly interrupted him, and asked whether men who had suffered no wrong would have travelled so far to prefer a calumnious charge. Cassander pleaded, that the greater the distance from the scene of the alleged injury, the safer was the calumny. But the king indignantly replied that Cassander showed how well he had studied Aristotle’s sophistry, by which every argument might be turned two opposite ways, but that it should avail nothing, if the complaints proved to be in any degree well-founded. So far indeed we only see a proof that Alexander retained the full vigour of his mind and character. Plutarch however adds, what is more difficult to believe, that because Cassander, at his first audience, could not keep his countenance at the sight of the Persian ceremonial, which was entirely new to him, Alexander seized him by the hair, and dashed his head against the wall. This may be a gross exaggeration; but that Cassander’s reception was so harsh and violent as to leave an indelible impression of fear and hatred on his soul, is confirmed, as strongly as such a fact can be, by his subsequent conduct.