[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 Phœnician cities, which seems to have passed to Sidon.” (Professor Rawlinson’s “Phœnicia,” 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.