At length, after eleven years of almost incessant war, the conqueror returned to Babylon, and here, while preparing for new wars in Arabia and elsewhere, indulged with reckless freedom in that intoxication which was his principal form of relaxation from warlike schemes and duties. As a result he was seized with fever, and in a week's time died, just at the time he had fixed to set out with army and fleet on another great career of conquest. It was in June, 323 B.C., in his thirty-third year. He had reigned only twelve years and eight months. _THE WORLD'S GREATEST ORATOR._ During the days of the decline of Athens, the centre of thought to Greece, there roamed about the streets of that city a delicate, sickly lad, so feeble in frame that, at his mother's wish, he kept away from the gymnasium, lest the severe exercises there required should do him more harm than good. His delicate clothing and effeminate habits were derided by his playmates, who nicknamed him Batalus, after, we are told, a spindle-shanked flute-player. We do not know, however, just what Batalus means. As the boy was not fit for vigorous exercise, and never likely to make a hardy soldier or sailor, it became a question for what he was best fitted. If the body could not be exercised, the mind might be. At that time Athens had its famous schools of philosophy and rhetoric, and the art of oratory was diligently cultivated. It is interesting to know that outside of Athens Greece produced no orators, if we except Epaminondas of Thebes. The Boeotians, who dwelt north of Attica, were looked upon as dull-brained and thick-witted. The Spartans prided themselves on their few words and hard blows. The Athenians, on the contrary, were enthusiastically fond of oratory, and ardently cultivated fluency of speech. It was by this art that Themistocles kept the fleet together for the great battle of Salamis. It was by this art that Pericles so long held control of Athens. The sophists, the philosophers, the leaders of the assembly, were all adepts in the art of convincing by eloquence and argument, and oratory progressed until, in the later days of Grecian freedom, Athens possessed a group of public speakers who have never been surpassed, if equalled, in the history of the world. It was the orators who particularly attracted the weakly lad, whose mind was as active as his body was feeble. He studied grammar and rhetoric, as did the sons of wealthy Athenians in general. And while still a mere boy he begged his tutors to take him to hear Callistratus, an able public speaker, who was to deliver an oration on some weighty political subject. The speech, delivered with all the eloquence of manner and logic of thought which marked the leading orators of that day, deeply impressed the susceptible mind of the eager lad, who went away doubtless determining in his own mind that he would one day, too, move the world with eloquent and convincing speech.