his path, he was met by ambassadors not only from Illyrians and Thrakians, from Sicily and Sardinia, from Libya and Carthage, but from Lucanians and Etruscans, and, as some said, from Rome itself. He received the worship of Ethiopians and Scythians, of Iberians and Gauls, and even of Greeks, who entered his presence with wreaths on their heads, offering him golden crowns. (323 B.C.) The lord of all the earth could scarcely look for wider acknowledgement or more devout submission; but his self-gratulation may have been damped by the warning of the Chaldean priests, that it would be safer for him not to enter the walls of Babylon. For a while he hesitated; but he had more to do than to heed their words. The preparations for his Arabian campaign must be hurried on. But more than all, he had to celebrate the obsequies of Hephaistion, whose body had been brought to Babylon from Agbatana. The feasting which everywhere accompanied the funeral rites of the ancient Aryans was always exaggerated by the Makedonians into prolonged revelry. Alexander spent the whole night in the house of his friend Medios in drinking, and the whole of the next day in sleeping off his drunkenness. Throughout the following night the same orgies were repeated. When he awoke in the morning, he was unable to rise. Fever had laid its grasp upon him, and each day its grasp became tighter, while he busied himself incessantly with giving orders about his army, his fleet, his generals, until at length the powers of speech began to fail. When asked to name his successor, he said that he left his kingdom to the strongest (or the worthiest). His signet ring he took from his finger and gave to Perdikkas. Throughout the army the tidings of his illness spread consternation. His veterans forced themselves into his presence, and with tears bade farewell to their general whose signs showed that he still knew them. A few hours later Alexander died, after a reign of less than thirteen years, and before he had reached the age of thirtythree years.

That the schemes with which almost to the last moment he had been absorbingly busied must, had he lived, have been in great part realised, can scarcely be doubted, unless we suppose that causes were at work which at no distant period would disturb and upset the balance of his military judgement. It would be rash to say that such a darkening of his splendid powers might not have been brought about even before he could

reach middle age. In truth, except as a general, he had lost the balance of his mind already. The despot who fancied himself a god, who could thrust a pike through the body of one friend, and sneer, as it is said, at the cries drawn forth from another by the agonies of torture, who could order the massacre of hundreds or of thousands for the offences of their remote forefathers, was already far removed from the far-sighted prudence of the politic statesman and ruler. His conquests served great ends; and before he set out on his career of victory, he may have had some faint and distant vision of these ends. But there is little evidence or none that these higher motives retained their power as he advanced further on his path of victory, while there seems to be evidence only too abundant that all other motives were gradually and even fast losing strength as the mere lust of conquest grew with his belief or his fancy of his superhuman power and origin. During his sojourn with Aristotle he must have learnt that real knowledge can be reached, and good government insured, only where there is freedom of thought and speech, and where the people obey their own laws. A few years later he had come to look on Aristotle as an enemy to be punished with scarcely less severity than Kallisthenes; he had put on the robes and the habits of a Persian despot, and substituted his own arbitrary will for the judicial processes of law. It is impossible to deny that with a higher sense of duty Alexander would better have deserved the title of Great. As it is, we must be content to say that in dealing with the necessities of the moment he is unsurpassed by any general, whether of ancient or of modern times.

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BOOK V I.

LATER FORTUNES OF THE HELLENIC PEOPLE.

CHAPTER I.

GREEK HISTORY DURING THE CAMPAIGNS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT-LAMIAN WAR.

FROM the splendid but rapidly shifting scenes of Alexander's Eastern conquests we can turn to no movements of large or abiding interest in the several Hellenic cities. Isolated in her desperate struggle, Thebes had been levelled with the dust; a catastrophe scarcely less complete had put an end to the rising of the Spartan king, Agis, in the Peloponnesos. (330 B.C.) The victory of Alexander's viceroy, Antipatros, had fastened the Makedonian yoke more firmly on all the Greek states, and nothing remained, even for those who most heartily loathed it, but to continue their confidence in the men who had done what they could to avert the humiliation. Six years earlier, Æschines had arrested, by the writ of illegal procedure, the proposal of Ktesiphon to crown Demosthenes. (336 B.C.) The issuing of this writ made it impossible to bring before the people the motion which had received the sanction of the Senate, until the question should have been judicially tried. But Æschines was in no hurry to bring it forward; and on his part Demosthenes, especially after the ruin of Thebes, might hesitate to provoke by a formal challenge a discussion which would involve a minute scrutiny of his whole political career.

With the defeat and death of Agis things were changed. The Athenian Demos might still place their trust in the integrity of Demosthenes: but it was the hour of triumph for the partisans of the Makedonian conquerors, and Eschines could venture to denounce the policy of his rival as from beginning to end the cause of disaster, and of nothing but disaster, to the city. In his reply Demosthenes confined himself

to the period which had passed since the Peace of Philokrates, and contended that the disasters which had befallen the Hellenic world in no way affected the wisdom and the righteousness of his policy. He might have gone back to the earlier time when the adoption of his counsel would beyond doubt have arrested the military career of Philip almost at the outset. But he was content to show that in making common cause with the Thebans they had at least done their duty, and that if they had failed to do it, the keen sense of disgrace would have been added to the bitter pain of defeat. Still the memory of counsels and efforts which, whatever may have been the motives which prompted them, had brought little gain and enormous loss, would seem to furnish but a frail support against the insinuations and falsehoods of unscrupulous adversaries. Demosthenes could rely on nothing else, and his triumphant acquittal shows the depth of the sympathy which the main body of the people had learnt to feel for him. More than four-fifths of his judges pronounced him by their votes to be deserving of their gratitude; and his accuser went into voluntary banishment.

Æschines never saw Athens again. Five years later, Demosthenes was himself an exile. When, on his return from the regions watered by the Indus, Alexander, resting at Sousa, summoned before him the satraps who, counting on his death, had done pretty much as they pleased, Harpalos, the satrap of Babylonia, put his treasures on ship-board and fled to Athens. (324 B.C.) Here he hoped that his wealth lavishly spent would rouse the people to a determined rebellion against their Makedonian masters. But, although the orator Hypereides took up his cause with a vehemence which is at once explained if he shared in the golden harvest, Demosthenes agreed with Phokion that any attempt which might bring down on Athens the vengeance of the Makedonian king would be an act of madness. By their advice Harpalos was arrested, and an order made that his treasure should be lodged in the Akropolis.

Before the Assembly the satrap stated that his treasure amounted to 720 talents; on being counted, it was found to be no more than 350 talents. So vast a sum could not be counted without much time and trouble, and for such purposes there were special officers in whose responsibility Demosthenes could have no share. At the end of six months their report charged Demosthenes, among many other citizens, with embezzlement,

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the extent of his criminality being put down at 20 talents. On this charge he was tried and condemned to a fine of 50 talents. His whole property was found to fall short of this sum, and the orator sought a refuge in the Peloponnesian Troizen. That there had been gross corruption it is impossible to doubt: the question is only whether the right persons were punished. The case is briefly this. Hypereides had done all that he could to make his countrymen rush into a war with Alexander on behalf of Harpalos: Demosthenes had done all that he could to prevent them. The satrap had every motive for attaching Hypereides to himself by bribes: with Demosthenes he knew that his money would be only wasted. The pretence that Demosthenes could have filched from the treasure after its sequestration is absurd. Far more significant is the furious but barren invective of Hypereides, the stormy rhetoric of a man who can hide his own guilt only by throwing dirt upon one who is innocent. The dread of Alexander's vengeance would furnish to those who had received the bribes ample motives for turning the thoughts of the people into a wrong channel; and the same dread would influence largely the votes of the jurymen. Had Hypereides been the defendant, they would have been as eager to condemn him as he had been earnest in his advocacy of Harpalos. But the defendant was Demosthenes, and, although it might be with more reluctance, they were ready to condemn him also, in order to prove to Alexander that if there had been embezzlement the criminals had been punished.

A few months later the death of Alexander re-awakened hopes which were to end in a servitude still more ignominious than that which they had endured already. Athenian envoys were sent round to the chief Greek cities to stir up the spirit of resistance to foreign rule. To those who came into the Peloponnesos Demosthenes, who was then at Troizen, gave aid so effectual that the Demos, filled with all their old affection, sent a trireme to bring him back from Aigina. (323 B.C.) The whole body of the citizens was waiting to welcome him at the Peiraieus. - Lifting his hands heavenwards, the orator uttered, it is said, a prayer of thanksgiving that he had been allowed to see so happy a day. His penalty could not in terms be remitted; but the people chose to assign to him 50 talents for tending the altar of Zeus the Saviour in his yearly festival, and his discharge of this office was taken as the payment of the fine.