donians, by his wish to cheat the troops out of part of their pay. The pay of the soldiers was due on the first day of each month, but on that day he took care to be out of the way, and the soldiers were paid a few days later; and by doing the same on each following month, he at length changed the pay-day to the last day of the month, and cheated the army out of a whole month's pay.

On

(16) Another act for which Cleomenes was blamed was not so certainly wrong. One summer, when the harvest had been less plentiful than usual, he forbade the export of corn, which was a large part of the trade of Egypt, thereby lowering the price to the poor so far as they could afford to purchase such costly food, but injuring the landowners. this, the heads of the provinces sent to him in alarm, to say that they should not be able to get in the usual amount of tribute; he therefore allowed the export as usual, but raised the duty; and he was reproached for receiving a larger revenue while the landowners were suffering from a smaller crop.

Arrian.

(17) At Ecbatana, the capital of Media, Alexander lost his friend Hephæstion, and in grief for his death lib. vii. he sent to Egypt to inquire of the oracle at the temple of Kneph, in the Oasis of Ammon, what honours he might pay to the deceased. The messengers brought him an answer, that he might declare Hephæstion a demigod, and order that he should be worshipped. Accordingly Alexander then sent a command to Cleomenes that he should build a temple to his lost favourite in his new city of Alexandria, and that the lighthouse which was to be built on the island of Pharos should be named after him; and as modern insurances against risks by sea usually begin with the words 'In the name of God; Amen;" so all contracts between merchants in the port of Alexandria were to be written solemnly "In the name of Hephaestion." Feeling the difficulty of getting obeyed at the mouth of the Nile, while he was himself writing from the sources of the Indus, he added that if when he came to Egypt he found his wish carried into effect, he would pardon Cleomenes for those acts of misgovernment of which he had been accused, and for any others which might then come to his ears. It must remain doubtful with what feelings the priests gave their advice in

Egypt.

favour of these commands that Hephaestion should be worshipped, or that Alexander himself should be called a god. They certainly never looked upon either of them as one of the creators of the world. They perhaps rather viewed them as canonised saints, as mediators between gods and men; and a Greek inscription on Inscript. a votive slab, in which Alexander and Hephæstion 2nd Ser. 57. are standing before the god Amun-Kneph, helps to explain this when it declares that Alexander is able to appease Olympic Jove. They ranked them perhaps with the four lesser gods of the dead whom they painted upon the funereal tablets as coming before the judge Osiris as advocates, and presenting to him an atoning sacrifice on behalf of every man on his death.

Arrian.

lib. iii.

(18) A somatophylax in the Macedonian army was no doubt at first, as the word means, one of the officers who had to answer for the king's safety; perhaps in modern language a colonel in the body-guards or household troops; but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful officer who was nearest the king's person, to whose watchfulness he trusted in the hour of danger, often found himself the adviser in matters of state, so, in the time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given to those generals on whose wisdom the king chiefly leaned, and by whose advice he was usually guided. Among these, and foremost in Alexander's love and esteem, was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. Pausanias Philip, the father of Alexander, had given Arsinoë, one of his relations, in marriage to Lagus; and her eldest son Ptolemy, born soon after the marriage, was always thought to be the king's son, though never so acknowledged. As he grew up, he was put into the highest offices by Philip, without raising in the young Alexander's mind the distrust which might have been felt if Ptolemy could have boasted that he was the elder brother. He earned the good opinion of Alexander by his military successes in Asia, and gained his gratitude by saving his life when he was in danger among the Oxydracæ, near the River Indus; and moreover, Alexander looked up to him as the historian whose literary powers and knowledge of military tactics were to hand down to the wonder of future ages those conquests of which he was an eye-witness.

Q. Curtius,

lib. x.

lib. xiii.

(19) Alexander's victories over Darius, and march to the River Indus, are no part of this history: it is enough to say that he died at Babylon eight years Justinus, after he had entered Egypt; and his half-brother B.C. 323. Philip Arridæus, a weak-minded unambitious young man, was declared by the generals assembled at Babylon to be his successor. His royal blood united more voices in the army in his favour than the warlike and statesmanlike character of any one of the rival generals. They were forced to be content with sharing the provinces between them as his lieutenants; some hoping to govern by their power over the weak mind of Arridæus, and others secretly meaning to make themselves independent.

(20) In this weighty matter, Ptolemy showed the wisdom and judgment which had already gained him his high character. Though his military rank and skill were equal to those of any one of Alexander's generals, and his claim by birth perhaps equal to that of Arridæus, he was not one of those who aimed at the throne; nor did he even aim at the second place, but left to Perdiccas the regency, with the care of the king's person, in whose name that ambitious general vainly hoped to govern the whole of Alexander's conquests. But Ptolemy, more wisely measuring his strength with the several tasks, chose the province of Egypt, the province which, cut off as it was from the rest by sea and desert, was of all others the easiest to be held as an independent kingdom against the power of Perdiccas. Photium, When Egypt was given to Ptolemy by the council of generals, Cleomenes was at the same time and by the same power made second in command, and he governed Egypt for one year before Ptolemy's arrival, that being in name the first year of the reign of Philip Arridæus, or, according to the chronologer's mode of dating, the first year after Alexander's death.

Arrian. ap.

lib. x.

(21) The death of Alexander is one of the great epochs from which the Greek historians count their years. Other kings have made the beginning of their reigns an epoch for history, but in the case of Alexander his death seemed to his countrymen more important than his conquests. He had been as unsuccessful in strengthening his own throne as he had been successful in overthrowing others. When his

active mind ceased to direct the united armies of Greece, Macedonia sunk to that rank as a state which it held before his wiser father raised it; but the kingdoms which he had overthrown did not again rise. It was at once seen that the great empires of the East, which had so long employed Greek mercenaries, were now wholly unable to throw off a yoke which had been riveted more by their own consent during the last two centuries than by Alexander's brilliant victories during a short reign of twelve years. Our history also at this time changes its character. Having been dug with the mummies out of the tombs, and put together like the pieces of a broken statue, it has wanted life and warmth. It has been far from performing that higher task, in which the historian has an advantage even over the moralist, of describing the action and pointing out its consequences; of showing how in nations, as in individuals, goodness and crime, wisdom and folly, are each followed by its own reward. But henceforth it will be less of an antiquarian inquiry, and we may hope to see more of men's good and evil passions, of their aims, their motives, and their feelings.

In the next four pages are set forth the three principal lists of the early kings of Thebes and Memphis before the time of Rameses II.; namely that of Eratosthenes, that of Manetho, and that of the tablet of Abydos. They show that Eratosthenes and the tablet agree in making Manetho's eighteenth dynasty follow immediately upon his twelfth; and that Eratosthenes places the builders of the pyramids at no earlier point of time before the great Theban kings than the foregoing pages do.

The chronological table which follows shows which kings reigned over part of Egypt, and which over the whole, and what little kingdoms sunk into others. The names before which a star (*) is placed, are those whose date is fixed by independent reasons, and by the help of which the other names are placed.

1

www