Mutilation of Bessus.
He is sent to Sysigambis.
Terrible punishment of Bessus.
Alexander ordered him to be publicly scourged; then he caused his face to be mutilated in a manner customary in those days, when a tyrant wished to stamp upon his victim a perpetual mark of infamy. In this condition, and with a mind in an agony of suspense and fear at the thought of worse tortures which he knew were to come, Alexander sent him as a second present to Sysigambis, to be dealt with, at Susa, as her revenge might direct. She inflicted upon him the most extreme tortures, and finally, when satiated with the pleasure of seeing him suffer, the story is that they chose four very elastic trees, growing at a little distance from each other, and bent down the tops of them toward the central point between them. They fastened the exhausted and dying Bessus to these trees, one limb of his body to each, and then releasing the stems from their confinement, they flew upward, tearing the body asunder, each holding its own dissevered portion, as if in triumph, far over the heads of the multitude assembled to witness the spectacle.
Chapter XI.
Deterioration of Character.
B.C. 329
Alexander at the summit of his ambition.
Sad changes.
Alexander becomes dissipated.
Alexander was now twenty-six years of age. He had accomplished fully the great objects which had been the aim of his ambition. Darius was dead, and he was himself the undisputed master of all western Asia. His wealth was almost boundless. His power was supreme over what was, in his view, the whole known world. But, during the process of rising to this ascendency, his character was sadly changed. He lost the simplicity, the temperance, the moderation, and the sense of justice which characterized his early years. He adopted the dress and the luxurious manners of the Persians. He lived in the palaces of the Persian kings, imitating all their state and splendor. He became very fond of convivial entertainments and of wine, and often drank to excess. He provided himself a seraglio of three hundred and sixty young females, in whose company he spent his time, giving himself up to every form of effeminacy and dissipation. In a word, he was no longer the same man. The decision, the energy of character, the steady pursuit of great ends by prudence, forethought, patient effort, and self-denial, all disappeared; nothing now seemed to interest him but banquets, carousals, parties of pleasure, and whole days and nights spent in dissipation and vice.
His officers became estranged.