eastward as Cabul, nay, as Lahore, where then stood Sangala. On his death it was discovered that he had issued orders likewise for the formation of Asiatic colonies in the west. While promoting the intermarriage of the races, he was ever careful to provide for the Greek culture of the young.

Mr. Grote, who does ample justice to Alexander's military genius, science, and sagacity, as well as to his unrivalled power as an organizer, and who thinks that, had he lived, he must have succeeded in those plans which occupied him at the time of his death, for the subjugation of Europe, Northern Asia, and Northern Africa, yet maintains that his empire would have differed from that of Persia only in its universality, and its more perfect military system. In defence of this opinion he alleges that Alexander, like the Persian kings, left some of the conquered princes undisturbed on their acknowledging him as their suzerain, and governed his provinces mainly through native satraps. But with those satraps he joined in authority Greek or Macedonian military chiefs; and, unlike the Persian kings, he trod down the predatory hordes, declared war against the pirates, lightened taxation,

b

punished administrative abuses, and took the best means for their eventual suppression by piercing the deserts with roads, and showing an example of that inflexible justice which he required from his servants. Mr. Grote censures Alexander for his adoption of the Persian court ceremonial, despite the angry jealousies of the Greeks. Alexander's conduct in this respect proves only that, although he had great "ideas," he was not an idealist. His mind was at once idealistic and practical. Those who thought him a dreamer discovered speedily and painfully their mistake. His temper likewise, domineering as it was, while it recoiled before no opposition, yet evaded the battle with the impossible. He knew that no rule is lasting except where the ruler, however despotic, is yet the virtual representative of the ruled-the exponent of what they most deeply revere and love. He knew that if he remained an alien in his subject realms, his dominion could but pass over them, like a meteor, and be extinguished. Alexander had been advised by Aristotle not to place the Asiatics on a political or military equality with the Greeks. Such had probably been his intended policy when he embarked on his career; but such

a policy was rendered impracticable by the vastness Little Greece could not per

of his conquests.

manently hold down all Asia by material pressure.

But, as a presiding mind, it might, even under conditions of equality, lift it up, wield the mass, and rule by not claiming to rule. He doubtless knew that in hellenizing the East he incurred a risk of partially orientalizing the West; but not to have faced such a danger would have been to relinquish the greatest enterprise which had ever presented itself to the imagination of warrior or statesman.

Mr. Grote remarks that Alexander's character was not pre-eminently Greek; nay, that he was but slightly touched by national sympathies. National, he was not; because his being and his aims alike were imperial. The Greece to which he considered himself as belonging was that of Achilles and the kings who fought against Troy: -republican Greece belonged to him, and he despised its sophists, its orators, and its talkers. Thus far he had something in common with Napoleon; but he was without Napoleon's untruthfulness, his selfishness, and his littlenesses.

Bishop Thirlwall's estimate of Alexander appears far more philosophical and just. It recognizes him

as "great, not merely in the vast compass, and the persevering ardour of his ambition; nor in the qualities by which he was enabled to gratify it, and to crowd so many memorable actions within so short a period; but in the course which his ambition took, in the collateral aims which ennobled and purified it, so that it almost grew into one with the highest of which man is capable, the desire of knowledge, and the love of good. It may be

truly asserted, that his was the first of the great monarchies founded in Asia that opened a prospect of progressive improvement, and not of continual degradation to its subjects: it was the first that contained any element of moral and intellectual progress,'

"1

This is high praise: nor is it undeserved. The severest of the accusations brought against Alexander relates to the death of Philotas and Parmenio. But these two cases stand wholly apart, and must be separately judged. Philotas by his own confession—a confession made before he was put to the torture, had received distinct information of a plot against the king's life, and up to the moment when the murder was to be per

1 66 'History of Greece," vol. vii. p. 109, 111 (1840).

:

petrated he had never divulged it, either to the king with whom he was in constant intercourse, or to any other person; neither apparently had he taken any steps, during three whole days, to ascertain whether his information was correct, or to frustrate the crime. He alleged that he regarded the plot as an idle rumour. The credit due to that defence depended on the estimate in which his character was held. That estimate was low his sharp tongue had done much to alienate the army from Alexander, who had made him commander of the horse-guard, a position which brought him close to the royal person, and who had maintained him in that place, though not without just cause for distrusting him. His ostentation and selfishness had made him an object of general dislike; and his loyalty had been in question at the time of the pretender Amyntas. At an early period of the trial he had been denounced by his own brother-in-law as a traitor, and a parricide; and he had been condemned after the ordinary forms of trial by the military assembly-a tribunal, as Curtius states, to whose authority even the king owed great deference, and whose impartiality derives a serious attestation from the fact, that