For two nights and a day he continued in this state, without either amendment or repose. Meanwhile, the news of his malady had spread through the army, filling them with grief and consternation. Many of the soldiers, eager to see him once more, forced their way into the palace, and were admitted unarmed. They passed along by the bedside, with all the demonstrations of affliction and sympathy: Alexander knew them, and made show of friendly recognition as well as he could; but was unable to say a word. Several of the generals slept in the temple of Serapis, hoping to be informed by the god in a dream whether they ought to bring Alexander into it, as a suppliant to experience the divine healing power. The god informed them in their dream, that Alexander ought not to be brought into the temple—that it would be better for him to be left where he was. In the afternoon he expired—June 323 B. C.—after a life of thirty-two years and eight months—and a reign of twelve years and eight months.[617]
The death of Alexander, thus suddenly cut off by a fever in the plenitude of health, vigor, and aspirations, was an event impressive as well as important, in the highest possible degree, to his contemporaries far and near. When the first report of it was brought to Athens, the orator Demades exclaimed:—“It cannot be true: if Alexander were dead, the whole habitable world would have smelt of his carcass.”[618] This coarse but emphatic comparison illustrates the immediate, powerful, and wide-reaching impression produced by the sudden extinction of the great conqueror. It was felt by each of the many remote envoys who had so recently come to propitiate this far-shooting Apollo—by every man among the nations who had sent these envoys—throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, as then known,—to affect either his actual condition or his probable future.[619] The first growth and development of Macedonia, during the twenty-two years preceding the battle of Chæroneia, from an embarrassed secondary State into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment of contemporaries, and admiration for Philip’s organizing genius. But the achievements of Alexander, during his twelve years of reign, throwing Philip into the shade, had been on a scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of human expectation, but almost of human belief. The Great King (as the king of Persia was called by excellence) was, and had long been, the type of worldly power and felicity, even down to the time when Alexander crossed the Hellespont. Within four years and three months from this event, by one stupendous defeat after another, Darius had lost all his Western Empire, and had become a fugitive eastward of the Caspian Gates, escaping captivity at the hands of Alexander only to perish by those of the satrap Bessus. All antecedent historical parallels—the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Crœsus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition,—sank into trifles compared with the overthrow of this towering Persian colossus. The orator Æschines expressed the genuine sentiment of a Grecian spectator, when he exclaimed (in a speech delivered at Athens shortly before the death of Darius):—“What is there among the list of strange and unexpected events, that has not occurred in our time? Our lives have transcended the limits of humanity; we are born to serve as a theme for incredible tales to posterity. Is not the Persian king—who dug through Athos and bridged the Hellespont,—who demanded earth and water from the Greeks,—who dared to proclaim himself, in public epistles, master of all mankind from the rising to the setting sun—is not he now struggling to the last, not for dominion over others, but for the safety of his own person?”[620]
Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the middle of 330 B. C., more than seven years before his death. During the following seven years, his additional achievements had carried astonishment yet farther. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense treasure and military force which had once rendered the Great King so formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.[621]
Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old—the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome;[622] two years younger than the age at which Timour first acquired the crown, and began his foreign conquests.[623] His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military experience; and what was still more important, his appetite for farther conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger, as complete, as it had been when he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future achievements, with such increased means and experience, were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known;[624] and if his life had been prolonged, he would probably have accomplished it. Nowhere (so far as our knowledge reaches) did there reside any military power capable of making head against him; nor were his soldiers, when he commanded them, daunted or baffled by any extremity of cold, heat, or fatigue. The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain[625] that Alexander, had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans or Samnites, would have failed and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army, the same cannot be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the Macedonian Companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have been found a match for Alexander in military genius and combinations; nor, even if personally equal, would he have possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose—nor the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort. I do not think that even the Romans could have successfully resisted Alexander the Great; though it is certain that he never throughout all his long marches encountered such enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and Lucanians—combining courage, patriotism, discipline, with effective arms both for defence and for close combat.[626]
Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous courage—sometimes indeed both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him—we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingences. Amidst constant success, these precautionary combinations were never discontinued. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity, by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force—as an individual warrior, and as organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in Athênê. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies; in which category indeed were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns, amidst tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defence, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains, are alike pursued and slaughtered.
Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a soldier and a general, some authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government, and for intentions highly favorable to the improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever-repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded until he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal dominion—conceived not metaphorically, but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time—was the master-passion of his soul. At the moment of his death, he was commencing fresh aggression in the south against the Arabians, to an indefinite extent;[627] while his vast projects against the western tribes in Africa and Europe, as far as the pillars of Herakles, were consigned in the orders and memoranda confidentially communicated to Kraterus.[628] Italy, Gaul, and Spain, would have been successively attacked and conquered; the enterprises proposed to him when in Baktria by the Chorasmian prince Pharasmanes, but postponed then until a more convenient season, would have been next taken up, and he would have marched from the Danube northward round the Euxine and Palus Mæotis against the Scythians and the tribes of Caucasus.[629] There remained moreover the Asiatic regions east of the Hyphasis, which his soldiers had refused to enter upon, but which he certainly would have invaded at a future opportunity, were it only to efface the poignant humiliation of having been compelled to relinquish his proclaimed purpose. Though this sounds like romance and hyperbole, it was nothing more than the real insatiate aspiration of Alexander, who looked upon every new acquisition mainly as a capital for acquiring more.[630] “You are a man like all of us, Alexander—except that you abandon your home (said the naked Indian to him[631]) like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself, and inflicting hardship upon others.” Now, how an empire thus boundless and heterogeneous, such as no prince has ever yet realized, could have been administered with any superior advantages to subjects—it would be difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining—of keeping satraps and tribute-gatherers in authority as well as in subordination—of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions distant by months of march[632]—would occupy the whole life of a world-conqueror, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited to peace and stability, if we give him credit for such purposes in theory.
But even this last is more than can be granted. Alexander’s acts indicate that he desired nothing better than to take up the traditions of the Persian empire; a tribute-levying and army-levying system, under Macedonians, in large proportion, as his instruments; yet partly also under the very same Persians who had administered before, provided they submitted to him. It has indeed been extolled among his merits that he was thus willing to re-appoint Persian grandees (putting their armed force however under the command of a Macedonian officer)—and to continue native princes in their dominions, if they did willing homage to him, as tributary subordinates. But all this had been done before him by the Persian kings, whose system it was to leave the conquered princes undisturbed, subject only to the payment of tribute, and to the obligation of furnishing a military contingent when required.[633] In like manner Alexander’s Asiatic empire would thus have been composed of an aggregate of satrapies and dependent principalities, furnishing money and soldiers; in other respects, left to the discretion of local rule, with occasional extreme inflictions of punishment, but no systematic examination or control.[634] Upon this, the condition of Asiatic empire in all ages, Alexander would have grafted one special improvement: the military organization of the empire, feeble under the Achæmenid princes, would have been greatly strengthened by his genius, and by the able officers formed in his school, both for foreign aggression and for home control.[635]
The Persian empire was a miscellaneous aggregate, with no strong feeling of nationality. The Macedonian conqueror who seized its throne was still more indifferent to national sentiment. He was neither Macedonian nor Greek. Though the absence of this prejudice has sometimes been mounted to him as a virtue, it only made room, in my opinion, for prejudices yet worse. The substitute for it was an exorbitant personality and self-estimation, manifested even in his earliest years, and inflamed by extraordinary success into the belief in divine parentage; which, while setting him above the idea of communion with any special nationality, made him conceive all mankind as subjects under one common sceptre to be wielded by himself. To this universal empire the Persian king made the nearest approach,[636] according to the opinions then prevalent. Accordingly Alexander, when victorious, accepted the position and pretensions of the overthrown Persian court as approaching most nearly to his full due. He became more Persian than either Macedonian or Greek. While himself adopting, as far as he could safely venture, the personal habits of the Persian court, he took studied pains to transform his Macedonian officers into Persian grandees, encouraging and even forcing intermarriages with Persian women according to Persian rites. At the time of Alexander’s death, there was comprised, in his written orders given to Kraterus, a plan for the wholesale transportation of inhabitants, both out of Europe into Asia, and out of Asia into Europe, in order to fuse these populations into one by multiplying intermarriages and intercourse.[637] Such reciprocal translation of peoples would have been felt as eminently odious, and could not have been accomplished without coercive authority.[638] It is rash to speculate upon unexecuted purposes; but, as far as we can judge, such compulsory mingling of the different races promises nothing favorable to the happiness of any of them, though it might serve as an imposing novelty and memento of imperial omnipotence.
In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental violence of impulse, unmeasured self-will,[639] and exaction of reverence above the limits of humanity—have been already recounted. To describe him as a son of Hellas, imbued with the political maxims of Aristotle, and bent on the systematic diffusion of Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind[640]—is, in my judgment, an estimate of his character contrary to the evidence. Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aristotle as to the best mode of colonizing; but his temper altered so much, after a few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not only to lose all deference for Aristotle’s advice, but even to hate him bitterly.[641] Moreover, though the philosopher’s full suggestions have not been preserved, yet we are told generally that he recommended Alexander to behave to the Greeks as a leader or president, or limited chief—and to the Barbarians (non-Hellenes) as a master;[642] a distinction substantially coinciding with that pointed out by Burke in his speeches at the beginning of the American war, between the principles of government proper to be followed by England in the American colonies, and in British India. No Greek thinker believed the Asiatics to be capable of that free civil polity[643] upon which the march of every Grecian community was based. Aristotle did not wish to degrade the Asiatics below the level to which they had been accustomed, but rather to preserve the Greeks from being degraded to the same level. Now Alexander recognized no such distinction as that drawn by his preceptor. He treated Greeks and Asiatics alike, not by elevating the latter, but by degrading the former. Though he employed all indiscriminately as instruments, yet he presently found the free speech of Greeks, and even of Macedonians, so distasteful and offensive, that his preferences turned more and more in favor of the servile Asiatic sentiment and customs. Instead of hellenizing Asia, he was tending to asiatize Macedonia and Hellas. His temper and character, as modified by a few years of conquest, rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle towards the Greeks—quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise, and smart from free criticism, which is inseparable from the position of a limited chief. Among a multitude of subjects more diverse-colored than even the army of Xerxes, it is quite possible that he might have turned his power towards the improvement of the rudest portions. We are told (though the fact is difficult to credit, from his want of time) that he abolished various barbarisms of the Hyrkanians, Arachosians, and Sogdians.[644] But Macedonians as well as Greeks would have been pure losers by being absorbed into an immense Asiatic aggregate.
Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in Asia.[645] So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon up simple military posts, or borrow from the list of foundations really established by his successors. Except Alexandria in Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to have attained any great development. Nearly all were planted among the remote, warlike, and turbulent peoples eastward of the Caspian Gates. Such establishments were really fortified posts to hold the country in subjection: Alexander lodged in them detachments from his army; but none of these detachments can well have been large, since he could not afford materially to weaken his army, while active military operations were still going on and while farther advance was in contemplation. More of these settlements were founded in Sogdiana than elsewhere; but respecting the Sogdian foundations, we know that the Greeks whom he established there, chained to the spot only by fear of his power, broke away in mutiny immediately on the news of his death.[646] Some Greek soldiers in Alexander’s army on the Jaxartes or the Hydaspes, sick and weary of his interminable marches, might prefer being enrolled among the colonists of a new city on one of these unknown rivers, to the ever-repeated routine of exhausting duty.[647] But it is certain that no volunteer emigrants would go forth to settle at distances such as their imaginations could hardly conceive. The absorbing appetite of Alexander was conquest, to the East, West, South, and North; the cities which he planted were established, for the most part, as garrisons to maintain his most distant and most precarious acquisitions. The purpose of colonization was altogether subordinate; and that of hellenizing Asia, so far as we can see, was not even contemplated, much less realized.