The death of Alexander the Great was followed by some days of indescribable confusion. When a certain semblance of order was restored the view was officially promulgated that he had not died at all, but had simply "departed from the life among men." His memory was, accordingly, not damned; and, in a sense, his presence in the world which he had transformed continued to be recognized. But not in any real sense. The imperial coins, wherever issued, bore for some time the great king's face as Zeus Ammon; but no imperial cult existed to bring steadily to men's consciousness the idea that their dead lord had an honored place among the Olympians. It was not by the will of those who succeeded to his power, but by the force of historic developments, that his _acta_ were validated. His heirs were the Macedonians whom he had recently tried to oust from their ancestral partnership with him. They were now to be found, partly in Macedon, partly in detachments throughout the empire, and partly in Babylon where Alexander had died. Those in Babylon took it upon themselves to act for the whole people; and what they did was to establish a regency in the interest of Philip Arrhidæus and the son whom Roxane was expected to bear, and to concur in the "grab" of the important western satrapies which was at once made by their chief officers. It was they, too, who decided not to proceed with Alexander's ambitious projects. These, as read to them from his papers,[77] were "to build in Phoenicia, Syria, Cilicia, and Cyprus one thousand battleships of the super-trireme pattern for the campaign against the Carthaginians and the other peoples dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean from Libya and Iberia clear round to Sicily; to construct a road along the coast from Cyrene to the Pillars of Hercules, and prepare harbors and naval stations at suitable places; to erect six temples at the enormous cost of $1,890,000 each (fifteen hundred talents); to found cities and transplant men and women both from Asia into Europe and from Europe into Asia, thus linking the two greatest continents by understandings based upon friendly intercourse and by brotherly feeling due to intermarriages." Alexander, it appeared, had looked upon his work as only half done: the Macedonians were eager to enjoy the fruits of an enterprise which they regarded as already finished.