entering the city was foretold by the magicians as fatal, and their prediction was fulfilled. He died at Babylon the 21st of April, in the 32nd year of his age, after a reign of 12 years and 8 months of brilliant and continued success, 323 B.C. His death was so premature that some have attributed it to the effects of poison, and excess of drinking. Antipater has been accused of causing the fatal poison to be given him at a feast; and perhaps the resentment of the Macedonians, whose services he seemed to forget, by entrusting the guard of his body to the Persians, was the cause of his death. He was so universally regretted, that Babylon was filled with tears and lamentations; and the Medes and Macedonians declared that no one was able or worthy to succeed him. Many conspiracies were formed against him by the officers of his army, but they were all seasonably suppressed. His tender treatment of the wife and mother of king Darius, who were taken prisoners, has been greatly praised; and the latter, who had survived the death of her son, killed herself when she heard that Alexander was dead. His great intrepidity more than once endangered his life; he always fought as if sure of victory, and the terror of his name was often more powerfully effectual than his arms. He was always forward in every engagement, and bore the labours of the field as well as the meanest of his soldiers. During his conquests in Asia, he founded many cities, which he called Alexandria, after his own name. When he had conquered Darius, he ordered himself to be worshipped as a god; and Callisthenes, who refused to do it, was shamefully put to death. He also murdered at a banquet, his friend Clitus, who had once saved his life in a battle, because he enlarged upon the virtues and exploits of Philip, and preferred them to those of his son. His victories and success increased his pride; he dressed himself in the Persian manner, and, giving himself up to pleasure and dissipation, he set on fire the town of Persepolis in a fit of madness and intoxication, encouraged by the courtesan Thais. Yet, among all his extravagances, he was fond of candour and of truth; and when one of his officers read to him, as he sailed on the Hydaspes, a history which he had composed of his wars with Porus, and in which he had too liberally panegyrized him, Alexander snatched the book from his hand, and threw it into the river, saying, “What need is there of such flattery? Are not the exploits of Alexander sufficiently meritorious in themselves, without the colourings of falsehood?” He in like manner rejected a statuary, who offered to cut mount Athos like him, and represent him as holding a town in one hand, and pouring a river from the other. He forbade any statuary to make his statue except Lysippus, and any painter to draw his picture except Apelles. On his