Next morning he was carried in a high fever to the great reservoir and offered sacrifice with difficulty; he then gave audience to the officers, issued some orders concerning the sailing of the fleet, discussed the appointments to certain posts with his generals, and left the selections of the officers to be promoted, to them, with the admonition to make a strict examination. The sixth came, the king was prostrated by sickness, nevertheless he had himself carried to the altar, offered sacrifices and prayers, and gave orders for the departure of the fleet to be postponed. A melancholy night followed, and the next morning the king was hardly able to offer sacrifice. He commanded the generals to assemble in the anteroom of the palace and the captains and officers to keep together in the courtyard. He had himself carried back from the gardens to the palace. He grew weaker every moment; when the leaders were admitted he recognised them but was not able to speak. The fever continued through the night, and through the following day and night the king lay speechless.
The impression produced by the king’s illness in both the army and the city was beyond description; the Macedonians thronged round the palace, they begged to see their king, they feared that he was dead already and that his death was kept secret; they did not cease their lamentations, threats, and entreaties until the doors were opened to them. Then they filed past their king’s bed, and Alexander raised his head slightly, gave his hand to each and looked his silent farewell to his veterans. On the following day (it was the tenth of June) Pithon, Peucestas, Seleucus, and others went to the temple of Serapis and inquired of the god whether the king would be better if he were carried into his temple and prayed to him. The answer was “Bring him not, if he remains where he is he will soon be better.” And on the day after, towards the evening of the eleventh of June, Alexander died.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[35] Droysen[d] rejects these reports with the utmost contempt; perhaps forgetting what Herodotus (IX, 24) relates of the mourning for Masistius, in which the Persians shaved themselves, and the horses, and the beasts of burden: a precedent, which at least proves that there is nothing absurd or incredible in Plutarch’s account; if it does not render it certain that the same marks of grief were a necessary part of the general mourning ordered by Alexander.
[36] That Alexander’s return to Babylon took place early in 323, may now be considered as sufficiently certain.
[37] [Niebuhr[f] compares this period with Napoleon’s stay in Dresden before he made his fatal march to Moscow. He was similarly surrounded by embassies in crowds.]
[38] [Here again, Droysen’s[d] picture of Alexander’s dejection: “With Hephæstion his youth had sunk into the grave: and, though scarcely beyond the threshold of manhood, he began fast to grow old,” seems violently overcharged.]
[39] [Niebuhr[f] thinks that Alexander could hardly have been poisoned as the poisons of that day always acted within twenty-four hours. This is, however, by no means certain. Aratus, the hero of the Achæan League, died of slow poisoning, according to the high authority of Polybius.]
