When at Ectabana with Alexander, Dinocrates had still another opportunity to display his resourceless originality, in directing the obsequies of Hephæstion, which were of a most extraordinarily elaborate nature, costing, it is recorded, 12,000 talents, or what would be equivalent to over $1,300,000. Hephæstion was a Macedonian and a close and warm friend of Alexander, accompanying the young king in a military capacity throughout most of his early foreign campaigns. So attached was Alexander to his friend that he not only showed him many marks of his personal esteem, but bestowed upon him in marriage Drypetis, the sister of his own bride, Statira. At Ectabana Hephæstion was attacked by a fever which had a fatal termination after an illness of seven days. Alexander’s grief over the loss of his brother-in-law was violent and extreme, and is said to have found vent in the most extravagant demonstrations. He ordered general mourning throughout the entire empire, and Dinocrates to build a funeral pile and monument to him in Babylon, where the body had been conveyed from Ectabana, at a cost of $1,000,000. But the richest occasion afforded Dinocrates to display to the fullest his great talents and genius was the laying out of the city which Alexander determined to found in Egypt, and which, bearing the conqueror’s name, was destined to become the centre of the commercial activity of the new empire. This great city, which rapidly grew to be one of the most populous of ancient times, and which has maintained, if not its original share of industrial supremacy, at least an important existence throughout the ages that have elapsed from its nativity to the present time, we cannot resist thinking was probably as much the inspiration of Alexander’s favorite architect, realizing its professional possibilities, as it was that of Alexander himself. Pliny informs us that Dinocrates died before he could give the city the full proportions which he had planned, but not certainly until its principal features were executed. Strabo, the “squint-eyed” geographer, gives a more circumstantial account of the planning of the new city by Dinocrates and his powerful and ambitious patron. It must have been indeed an interesting sight to see the two Macedonians upon the plane which was selected for the site of the city, laying out the streets and avenues, marking the run of the walls that were to surround it, locating the different sites where were to stand the public buildings, parks, palaces and temples, and perhaps disputing and arguing over the questions that arose, as two such dominant intellects might very naturally be supposed to do.