death-bed he gave his ring to Perdiccas, and it was supposed that by this singular present he wished to make him his successor. Some time before his death, his officers asked him whom he appointed to succeed him on the throne; and he answered, “The worthiest among you; but I am afraid,” added he, “my best friends will perform my funeral obsequies with bloody hands.” Alexander, with all his pride, was humane and liberal, easy and familiar with his friends, a great patron of learning, as may be collected from his assisting Aristotle with a purse of money to effect the completion of his natural history. He was brave often to rashness; he frequently lamented that his father conquered everything, and left him nothing to do; and exclaimed, in all the pride of regal dignity, “Give me kings for competitors, and I will enter the lists at Olympia.” All his family and infant children were put to death by Cassander. The first deliberation that was made after his decease, among his generals, was to appoint his brother Philip Aridæus successor, until Roxane, who was then pregnant by him, brought into the world a legitimate heir. Perdiccas wished to be supreme regent as Aridæus wanted capacity; and, more strongly to establish himself, he married Cleopatra, Alexander’s sister, and made alliance with Eumenes. As he endeavoured to deprive Ptolemy of Egypt, he was defeated in a battle by Seleucus and Antigonus, on the banks of the river Nile, and assassinated by his own cavalry. Perdiccas was the first of Alexander’s generals who took up arms against his fellow-soldiers, and he was the first who fell a sacrifice to his rashness and cruelty. To defend himself against him, Ptolemy made a treaty of alliance with some generals, among whom was Antipater, who had strengthened himself by giving his daughter Phila, an ambitious and aspiring woman, in marriage to Craterus, another of the generals of Alexander. After many dissensions and bloody wars among themselves, the generals of Alexander laid the foundation of several great empires in the three quarters of the globe. Ptolemy seized Egypt, where he firmly established himself, and where his successors were called Ptolemies, in honour of the founder of their empire, which subsisted till the time of Augustus. Seleucus and his posterity reigned in Babylon and Syria. Antigonus at first established himself in Asia Minor, and Antipater in Macedonia. The descendants of Antipater were conquered by the successors of Antigonus, who reigned in Macedonia till it was reduced by the Romans in the time of king Perseus. Lysimachus made himself master of Thrace; and Leonatus, who had taken possession of Phrygia, meditated for a while to drive Antipater from Macedonia. Eumenes established himself in Cappadocia, but was soon overpowered by the combinations of his rival Antigonus, and starved to death. During his lifetime, Eumenes appeared so