head with his garment and reclined against a pillar. The guards who accompanied Archias, imagining this to be a mere trick, laughed and called him coward, whilst Archias began to renew his false persuasions. Demosthenes, feeling the poison work--for such it was that he had concealed in the reed now bade him lead on. "You may now," said he, "enact the part of Creon, and cast me out unburied; but at least, O gracious Poseidon, I have not polluted thy temple by my death which Antipater and his Macedonians would not have scrupled at." But whilst he was endeavouring to walk out, he fell down by the altar and expired. The history of Alexander's successors is marked from first to last by dissension, crimes, and unscrupulous ambition. It is only necessary for the purpose of the present work to mention very briefly the most important events. Alexander on his death-bed is said to have given his signet-ring to Perdiccas, but he had left no legitimate heir to his throne, though his wife Roxana was pregnant. On the day after Alexander's death a military council was assembled, in which Perdiccas assumed a leading part; and in which, after much debate, an arrangement was at length effected on the following basis: That Philip Arrhidaeus, a young man of weak intellect, the half-brother of Alexander (being the son of Philip by a Thessalian woman named Philinna), should be declared king, reserving however to the child of Roxana if a son should be born, a share in the sovereignty: that the government of Macedonia and Greece should be divided between Antipater and Craterus: that Ptolemy should preside over Egypt and the adjacent countries: that Antigonus should have Phrygia Proper, Lycia, and Pamphylia: that the Hellespontine Phrygia should be assigned to Leonnatus: that Eumenes should have the satrapy of Paphlagonia and Cappadocia, which countries, however, still remained to be subdued: and that Thrace should be committed to Lysimachus. Perdiccas reserved for himself the command of the horse-guards, the post before held by Hephaestion, in virtue of which he became the guardian of Philip Arrhidaeus, the nominal sovereign. It was not for some time after these arrangements had been completed that the last rites were paid to Alexander's remains. They were conveyed to Alexandria, and deposited in a cemetery which afterwards became the burial-place of the Ptolemies. Nothing could exceed the magnificence of the funeral car, which was adorned with ornaments of massive gold, and was so heavy, that it was more than a year in being conveyed from Babylon to Syria, though drawn by 84 mules. In due time Roxana was delivered of a son, to whom the name of Alexander was given, and who was declared the partner of Arrhidaeus in the empire. Roxana had previously inveigled Statira and her sister Drypetis to Babylon, where she caused them to be secretly assassinated.