The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls
- Автор: Macgregor Mary
- Год: 1914
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Зарубежная литература для детей
Электронная книга - «The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls». Краткое содержание книги:
The Story of Greece: Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Macgregor
The Story of Rome, From the Earliest Times to the Death of Augustus, Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
This terrible battle made the Macedonians still more unwilling to advance farther into India.
Before them lay a desert which would take eleven days to cross. The soldiers could not face a long march in a strange land, without water and without guides.
When Alexander ordered the army to advance, the Macedonians who had followed him loyally through every difficulty, refused to obey.
Nothing he could say would make them advance a step farther.
‘There they stood, looking hard at the ground with tears trickling down their cheeks, yet resolute still not to go forward.’
Then Alexander dismissed them in anger. But the next day he sent for them again and told them that he was going to advance. They, if they chose to forsake him in a hostile land, could go back to Macedon.
Still in anger the king left them and went to his tent, and shut himself up for two days, refusing to see any of his companions.
Perhaps he thought his obstinate Macedonians would yield. But although it grieved them to thwart their king, the soldiers remained firm.
On the third day Alexander left his tent and offered sacrifices to the gods, as he always did before beginning a new adventure. But the signs were unfavourable, and against this the king was not proof. So he sent to tell the army that he had determined to lead them in the direction of home.
In a transport of joy the faithful Macedonians hastened to the king’s tent. Some of them wept as they thanked ‘the unconquered king that he had permitted himself to be conquered for once by his Macedons.’
CHAPTER CI
ALEXANDER IS WOUNDED
Alexander determined to begin the homeward journey by sailing down the Hydaspes to the Indus in order to reach the ocean.
The king himself with part of the army embarked in the ships which awaited them on the Hydaspes. The rest of the army was divided into two companies, and marched on either bank of the river, one being under Hephæstion, the king’s friend.
On the way the fleet and the army joined their forces in order to subdue some of the warlike tribes that refused to submit to them.
One of these tribes, the Malli, Alexander pursued to their chief city, which stood where the town of Multan has since been built.
The city was easily taken, but not so the citadel in which the Malli had taken refuge.
Before the walls surrounding it could be scaled, ladders were needed, and two were hurriedly brought to the spot. But it was difficult to place them in position, for the Malli hurled upon the soldiers every missile on which they could lay their hands.
Alexander growing impatient, seized one of the ladders, and covering himself with his shield he placed it in position and began to mount.
Peucestas, carrying the sacred shield of Troy, and Leonnatus, two of the companions, followed closely after their king, while Abreas began to climb the second ladder which was now also ready for use.
The king was soon standing alone on the top of the wall, having flung down those of the Malli who were keeping guard at that point.
In despair the Macedonians saw the danger to which their king had exposed himself. He was a mark for every weapon hurled from the citadel.
They rushed in a body to the ladders, and began to mount in such numbers that the ladders both gave way, Peucestas, Leonnatus and Abreas alone having first reached the top of the wall.
His friends called aloud to Alexander, entreating him to come back. But he leaped down on the other side among his foes. Fortunately he landed on his feet, and at once placing his back against the wall, he strove to keep back the enemy as they rushed upon him.
The foremost fell before the swift stroke of the king’s sword, as did also those who followed him. At two more the king hurled stones which felled them to the ground. After that the Malli were afraid to approach close to the great king, but they began to throw at him stones and great pieces of rock.
A moment later his three companions had leaped down and were by the side of their king, ready to defend him with their lives.
Abreas fell at his feet almost at once, pierced by a dart. Alexander himself was wounded, but fought on until at length, faint through loss of blood, he fell fainting on his shield.
Peucestas covered him with the sacred shield, while Leonnatus fought on desperately until help came.
A few of the Macedonians, maddened by the thought of their king’s danger, scrambled up on each other’s shoulders, and leaped down on the other side to rescue him and his three companions if they still lived.
Some ran to the gates, and opened them, and the anxious soldiers poured in and took the citadel. They believed that their king was dead, and they wreaked their fury on the miserable inhabitants, leaving neither men, women nor children alive.
Alexander was not dead, and although his wound was severe, he recovered. But the rumour of his death had reached the camp near the river where the main body of the army had been left. No letters, no messages could make the grief-stricken soldiers believe that their king still lived.
Alexander was brought down the river in a ship. He was lying on a couch in the stern of the vessel as he drew near to the camp, and he ordered the canopy which screened him to be raised that his soldiers might see him.
At first they thought it was but his lifeless body which they beheld, but as he drew nearer still, the king waved his hand. Then a great shout of joy rent the air.
CHAPTER CII
THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER
In the autumn of 325 B.C. Alexander began to march through the desert of Gedrosia on his way to Babylon.
The heat was terrible, and the soldiers were soon parched with thirst, while sinking sand added to the hardship of the march.
Alexander tramped by the side of his men across the dreary waste, sharing all their privations and cheering them by his presence. But before he left the desert of Gedrosia, the king had lost more than a fourth part of the army that had set out with him from India two short months before.
At length the exhausted soldiers reached Susa, and here the king allowed them to rest. He himself found much to do, for many of the satraps whom he had left in charge of different provinces had betrayed their trust. They had treated cruelly those who were in their power, and had formed plots to make themselves kings over their own provinces. It may be that they thought Alexander would never come back from his perilous journey in the East.
When he had punished those who had proved faithless, were they Macedonians or Persians, he turned to a matter on which his heart was set—the union of the peoples of the East and the West.
The king tried to accomplish this in different ways. He had already built cities in the East, and left in them Greeks and Macedonians along with the native Asiatics.
Now he himself wedded Statira, the daughter of Darius, Hephæstion married her sister, while several Macedonian generals, following the example of the king, took the daughters of Persian nobles to be their wives. Many of the soldiers, too, married women of the East.
Alexander hoped that little by little the two races would learn to know each other better and to have the same interests.
In the spring of 324 B.C. Alexander went to Ecbatana, where the Persian kings had been used to spend the summer months. Shortly afterwards he met his whole army at Opis, not far from Babylon, and discharged many of the Macedonian veterans who were no longer fit to fight because of old age or because of the wounds from which they had suffered. The king promised to provide for these old warriors for the rest of their lives. He expected them to welcome their dismissal and their reward.
But the Macedonians had been growing more and more jealous of the favours Alexander had been showing to the Persians, and now the feelings that they had been forced to hide found words.