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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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But the festival was interrupted by an event, which Alexander felt as the greatest calamity of his life. Hephæstion had been attacked some days before by a fever, which at first did not show any alarming symptoms. Trusting to his youth and strong constitution, he had, it appears, neglected the directions of his physician, and by his imprudence so inflamed the disease, that it carried him suddenly off. It was a day which was to have been devoted to the gymnastic exercises of the boys. Alexander was witnessing a footrace, when a message was brought to him that Hephæstion was worse. He instantly hurried to his friend’s bedside, but before he arrived Hephæstion had expired.
Alexander’s grief, though not embittered by self-reproach, was passionate and violent, as that which he showed at the death of Clitus. There is no evidence that Hephæstion possessed any qualities that deserved the preference with which Alexander distinguished him: and indeed there are intimations that, even in Alexander’s judgment, his chief merit was the devotion and obsequiousness with which he requited his master’s partiality. Perhaps if the attachment had been more considerately formed, the loss would have been less keenly felt. After the first transports of anguish had subsided, Alexander sought consolation in the extravagant honours which he paid to his departed favourite, and in the vain semblance of grief, which he forced all persons and things around him to put on.
We may refuse, with Arrian, to believe that he was so barbarous and frantic, as to put the innocent physician to death, and to pull down the temple of Æsculapius, if there was one, at Ecbatana. But there is no reason why we should question Plutarch’s statement, that he ordered the horses and mules to be shorn, and the town walls to be dismantled of their battlements.[35] These were probably among the customary signs of a general mourning on the death of the Persian kings: and it is certain that he directed one to be observed throughout his Asiatic dominions. He also commanded that, as was usual on the same occasions, the sacred fire should be quenched in all the Persian sanctuaries until the funeral was over. For this, preparations were made on a scale of more than royal magnificence. He ordered Perdiccas to convey the corpse to Babylon, where a pile was to be built at the expense of ten thousand talents [£2,000,000 or $10,000,000], and funeral games were to be celebrated with a splendour never before witnessed: for which purpose all the artists assembled at Ecbatana were to repair to the capital. The courtiers, especially those who might be suspected to entertain very different feelings, endeavoured to prove their sympathy with the king by extraordinary tokens of veneration for the departed favourite. Eumenes, who had lately had a violent quarrel with him, which was only composed by the royal authority, dexterously set the example, and dedicated himself and his arms to the deceased; perhaps anticipating Alexander’s wish, that Hephæstion should receive sacred honours. He was anxious that this should be done under the sanction of religious authority, and therefore sent to consult the oracle of Ammon on the question, whether Hephæstion should be worshipped as a hero or a god. In the meanwhile, it is said, he ordered the sound of music to cease in the camp. The division of the cavalry which had been commanded by Hephæstion, was to retain his name, and the officer to whom it was committed was to be regarded only as his lieutenant.
These fantastic cares, however, served but to cherish his melancholy, and his officers endeavoured to divert him by some fitter occupation, which might draw him from Ecbatana, where he was constantly reminded of his bereavement. He at length began to rouse himself, and complied with their wishes. An object opportunely presented itself, which called him again into action, and in the manner most suited to the present temper of his soul. The Kossæans, who inhabited the highlands on the confines of Media and Persia, were still unsubdued; and, relying on their mountain strongholds, continued from time to time to make predatory inroads on their neighbours. Though it was now the depth of winter, Alexander set out to punish and quell them. He divided his forces into two columns, and gave the command of one to Ptolemy. The obstacles opposed by the country and the season were such as he was used to overcome: the barbarians could do little to bar his progress. They were hunted like wild beasts into their lairs, and every man taken capable of bearing arms was put to the sword. It was a sacrifice to the shade of Hephæstion, in which Alexander might see another resemblance to Achilles. He then crossed the mountains, and, coming down upon the Tigris, took the direct road to Babylon.
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.