Abbott Jacob
Alexander the Great
The body deposited at Alexandria.
Notwithstanding all this pomp and parade, however, the body never reached its intended destination. Ptolemy, the officer to whom Egypt fell in the division of Alexander's empire, came forth with a grand escort of troops to meet the funeral procession as it came into Egypt. He preferred, for some reason or other, that the body should be interred in the city of Alexandria. It was accordingly deposited there, and a great monument was erected over the spot. This monument is said to have remained standing for fifteen hundred years, but all vestiges of it have now disappeared. The city of Alexandria itself, however, is the conqueror's real monument; the greatest and best, perhaps, that any conqueror ever left behind him. It is a monument, too, that time will not destroy; its position and character, as Alexander foresaw, by bringing it a continued renovation, secure its perpetuity.
Alexander's true character.
Conclusion.
Alexander earned well the name and reputation of the Great. He was truly great in all those powers and capacities which can elevate one man above his fellows. We can not help applauding the extraordinary energy of his genius, though we condemn the selfish and cruel ends to which his life was devoted. He was simply a robber, but yet a robber on so vast a scale, that mankind, in contemplating his career, have generally lost sight of the wickedness of his crimes in their admiration of the enormous magnitude of the scale on which they were perpetrated.
Footnotes:
[A] At the commencement of Chapter iii.
[B] There are different statements in respect to the size of this island, varying from three to nine miles in circumference.
[C] It was the birth of an infant that caused her death, exhausted and worn down as she doubtless was, by her captivity and her sorrows.
[D] A eunuch, a sort of officer employed in Eastern nations in attendance upon ladies of high rank.
[E] It receives its name from a kind of thistle called the caltrop.
[F] The modern Ispahan.
[G] Pylæ Caspiæ on the map, which means the Caspian Gates.
