nor the Persian princess Statira to whom he gave his hand out of policy, could boast that they ever influenced by one hairsbreadth the direction of his sovereign will. As for his justice, the swift punishment that he measured out on his return from India to those of his officers whom he found guilty of oppression and malversation showed that under his far-seeing eye there would be none of those abuses of delegated power from which the satrapial system had suffered under his predecessors[61]. Modern historians have sometimes called him cruel; but in political matters severity is often the truest mercy, and the blood that he shed at Thebes and in Bactria probably saved a hundred times the number of lives which unchecked rebellion would have made it necessary to sacrifice; while the accidental and unpremeditated death of Clitus may well be pardoned to one who found not only his dignity as man but his royal authority wantonly outraged by a friend whom he had distinguished by exceptional marks of kindness. In every other respect his record is stainless. Although opposed at every step of his short career by orators and demagogues who saw in him the only obstacle to their unrestrained plunder of the fatherland, no legend has survived to his dishonour. On the contrary, all that we hear of him shows us for the first time in the world’s history a conqueror who was at the same time a just and wise ruler, merciful to his fallen foe, scorning even in war to take mean advantage[62], and chivalrous to the weak to a degree that his age could neither understand nor imitate[63]. And with all this, he united in his own person those superficial advantages which have always been quick to win for their possessor the devotion of the mob. To a talent for generalship which neither Hannibal, Caesar, nor any modern general has equalled, he joined a personal bravery which often reached the level of recklessness and was always to be found in the forefront of the hottest battle. Whether we see him charging at the head of the Companion cavalry in the three great battles with Darius, pursuing with a handful of his guard the routed Persian army after Arbela, or first over the wall at Mooltan, Alexander is always performing these feats of hardihood which in a leader strike more than anything the imagination of his soldiers. Add to this a generosity which made him willing to strip himself of his possessions to enrich his friends, a personal delight in that pomp and pageantry which forms the most direct road to the hearts of the proletariat, and a form, face and figure so distinguished that their one defect was for centuries after imitated by all who wished to be thought models of manly beauty[64], and we can no longer wonder that his contemporaries looked upon him as more than human. This wise and provident ruler of the world that he had conquered was at the same time a youth beautiful as Apollo, chivalrous as Bayard, clean as Galahad. Is