99 163 IV. as to the cure of their complaints." Such a SECT. custom might be attended with peculiar advantages in a city frequented by a succession of travelling merchants, headed, as we have seen, by persons conversant with medicine and all branches of useful science known in their times, 164 When Herodotus says, "the Babylonians had not physicians 165," he means only that they had not a distinct cast or family exercising exclusively as in Greece anciently, and always in Egypt, the different branches of the healing art. 16 The profession was open for all who chose to engage in it, and the cordiality between natives and strangers, so desirable in a place of traffic, would be promoted by the maxim that it was uncivil in either to view, with insensibility, a suffering individual, or to decline entering into conversation with him. 167 Of Babylonians, as well as strangers at leisure for this office of humanity, there was always a sufficient number; for though the inferior classes were busily employed in trade and manufactures, in repairing or embellishing their immense city, and in retailing or transporting the different productions of their land and labour, yet the spacious squares of Babylon abounded with pompous idlers dressed in flowing robes 168, breathing precious perfumes, their heads adorned by the mitra, and bearing each in his hand, as a badge 164 See above, p. 108. et seq. 166 Aristot. Politic. 163 Herodot. l.i. c. 197. 252 IV. SURVEY OF ALEXANDER'S CONQUESTS. SECT. of distinction, a staff or cane 169, shaped at top into the form of a flower, a bird, or some other characteristic emblem. 170 Their hereditary opulence relieved such persons from care and labour; and it should seem, that the fashion of their country imposed on them the duty of using their best endeavours to mitigate disease and soothe sorrow. 169 In remote times and places, the cane has been the badge of a gentleman. Addison somewhere says of a person remarkable for his native good breeding, that he seemed "born to a cane." The expression would now convey quite a different meaning. 170 Herodot. ubi supra. SURVEY OF ALEXANDER'S CONQUESTS. SECTION V. - Application of the preceding Survey to Alexander's Undertakings in the East. His Views with regard to the West.- The Historian Livy's Defiance. State of Rome at that Period. ·Of Carthage. Alexander's Helps towards executing his boldest Projects.—Especially from Greeks in the three Divisions of the World. -Alexander's last Operations in Babylonia, connected with useful Establishments on his most remote Frontiers. His Death and Testament. V. tion of BY way of preparation for what is to follow, SECT. descriptions, particularly copious and circumstantial, belonged to royal residences and their Applica surrounding imperial districts, because, in the this surcourse of the history, our attention will more vey. frequently be recalled to them. Upon a similar principle I have adjusted the proportion assigned to subordinate kingdoms and provinces, that, wherever the scene is transported, the reader SECT. may have some previous knowledge of the V. actors; especially of their local circumstances, and of their moral and military habits. From the whole survey, we shall be enabled to discern the intent of undertakings which Alexander, indeed, lived not to carry into execution, but which serve to evince his knowledge, both of the materials with which he had to work, and of the lessons which historical experience afforded. Two circumstances, chiefly, cast an air of romance on the reign of a conqueror, equally sagacious and successful. First, designs altogether extravagant have been ascribed to him; and secondly, no clear explanation has been given of his helps towards accomplishing the vast projects which he really entertained. Should we credulously listen to later writers among the Greeks and Romans, when those nations had too evidently lost a due relish for truth together with their manly spirit and their liberty, Alexander aimed at nothing less than the subjugation of the whole habitable world: poets and artists carried the exaggeration farther, and represented him in the childish attitude of crying for new worlds to conquer: ridiculous and tasteless fictions! totally disclaimed by Aristobulus and Ptolemy, his companions in arms, and biographers. From such contemporary authorities, it is yet possible to assign the real and proper limits which Alexander had Ælian. Var. Histor. l. iv. c. 29. Conf. Juvenal, Satyr xv. v. 168. lian whimsically ascribes Alexander's mad ambition to his perusal of Democritus's treatise on the plurality of worlds. V. prescribed to himself in the North, South, East, SECT. and West; to explain the measures which he had taken or projected for securing his most remote boundaries; to describe his arrangements towards uniting all of them with the centre, Babylon; and thus cementing, by laws and arts, as well as by arms and victories, the extremities, as they were then deemed, of the commercial world. Having discussed these topics, I shall relate circumstantially his operations in the imperial district of Babylonia, where chiefly, he spent the last fifteen months of his life; and where the scene of the following history opens, with the dissensions among his generals, about the succession to his empire. Alexan blished his ries. According to authentic historians, Alexander Principles bounded his empire northward, by the Da- on which nube and the Jaxartes. In a former part of der estathis work, we have seen his proceedings on the bounda banks of these great rivers, which flow respectively into the Euxine and Caspian; and had occasion to observe with what admirable prudence he avoided an useless conflict with the Scythian nations beyond them, at the same time, that he adopted the surest means for overawing such irreclaimable barbarians, and confining them in future within their native wilderness. The bleak Scythian desert led to nothing more valuable beyond it: the reverse was the case with the burning sands of Arabia. The southern shores of that peninsula were immemorially inhabited by the Sabæans, an industrious and enlightened people, cultivating the |