(M745) On the fall of this ancient and wealthy capital, whose pride and wealth are spoken of in the Scriptures, Alexander received a second letter from Darius, offering ten thousand talents, his daughter in marriage, with the cession of all the provinces of his empire west of the Euphrates, for the surrender of his family. To which the haughty and insolent conqueror replied: “I want neither your money nor your cession. All your money and territory are mine already, and you are tendering me a part instead of the whole. If I choose to marry your daughter I _shall_ marry her, whether you give her to me or not. Come hither to me, if you wish for friendship.” (M746) Darius now saw that he must risk another desperate battle, and summoned all his hosts. Yet Alexander did not immediately march against him, but undertook first the conquest of Egypt. Syria, Phœnicia, and Palestine were now his, as well as Asia Minor. He had also defeated the Persian fleet, and was master of all the islands of the Ægean. He stopped on his way to Egypt to take Gaza, which held out against him, built on a lofty artificial mound two hundred and fifty feet high, and encircled with a lofty wall. The Macedonian engineers pronounced the place impregnable, but the greater the difficulty the greater the eagerness of Alexander to surmount it. He accordingly built a mound all around the city, as high as that on which Gaza was built, and then rolled his engines to the wall, effected a breach, and stormed the city, slew all the garrison, and sold all the women and children for slaves. As for Batis, the defender of the city, he was dragged by a chariot around the town, as Achilles, whom Alexander imitated, had done to the dead body of Hector. The siege of these two cities, Tyre and Gaza, occupied nine months, and was the hardest fighting that Alexander ever encountered. (M747) He entered and occupied Egypt without resistance, and resolved to found a new city, near the mouth of the Nile, not as a future capital of the commercial world, but as a depot for his ships. While he was preparing for this great work, he visited the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the desert, and was addressed by the priests as the Son of God, not as a mortal, which flattery was agreeable to him, so that ever afterward he claimed divinity, in the arrogance of his character, and the splendor of his successes, and even slew the man who saved his life at the Granicus, because he denied his divine claims—the most signal instance of self-exaggeration and pride recorded in history, transcending both Nebuchadnezzar and Napoleon.