Alexander

In the second place, having discovered that the tomb of Cyrus had been rifled, he put to death the perpetrator of the deed, although the culprit was a prominent Macedonian native of Pella, by name Polymachus. After reading the inscription upon this tomb, he ordered it to be repeated below in Greek letters. It ran thus: O man, whosoever thou art and whencesoever thou comest, for I know that thou wilt come, I am Cyrus, and I won for the Persians their empire. Do not, therefore, begrudge me this little earth which covers my body.

These words, then, deeply affected Alexander, who was reminded of the uncertainty and mutability of life.[*](Cf. Arrian, Anab. vi. 29, 4-8.) In Persia, too, Calanus, who had suffered for a little while from intestinal disorder, asked that a funeral pyre might be prepared for him.[*](The self-sacrifice of Calanus is narrated by Arrian (Anab. vii. 3).) To this he came on horseback, and after offering prayers, sprinkling himself; and casting some of his hair upon the pyre, he ascended it,greeting the Macedonians who were present, and exhorting them to make that day one of pleasure and revelry with the king, whom, he declared, he should soon see in Babylon.

After thus speaking, he lay down and covered his head, nor did he move as the fire approached him, but continued to lie in the same posture as at first, and so sacrificed himself acceptably, as the wise men of his country had done from of old. The same thing was done many years afterwards by another Indian who was in the following of Caesar,[*](Augustus Caesar.) at Athens; and the Indian’s Tomb is shown there to this day.

But Alexander, after returning from the funeral pyre and assembling many of his friends and officers for supper, proposed a contest in drinking neat wine, the victor to be crowned. Well, then, the one who drank the most, Promachus, got as far as four pitchers;[*](The chous, or pitcher, held about three quarts.) he took the prize, a crown of a talent’s worth, but lived only three days afterwards. And of the rest, according to Chares, forty-one died of what they drank, a violent chill having set in after their debauch.