148 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



detested in Persia ; and the great lords exhorted Alexander to assert his right to 

 the empire. Encouraged by those general discontents, he resolved upon the 

 attempt; and, as a leading step, informed the ambassadors of Darab, when 

 demanding the annual tribute of the golden eggs ; ' that the bird who laid them, 

 had flown to the other world.' This refusal, with the raillery which accom- 

 panied it, enraged the King of Persia. He marched immediately, to reduce the 

 Macedonian to obedience. The monarchs met ; a bloody battle ensued ; and 

 Darab was worsted. He retired to his tent, to take some repose before renewing 

 the engagement ; but was stabbed by two of his attendants, who fled immediately 

 to the Grecian camp. Alexander, informed of the murder, hastened to Darab's 

 pavilion ; he found him in the agonies of death ; he threw himself on his knees, 

 wept, and protested his ignorance of the treason. The dying prince believed 

 him ; named him as his successor ; gave him his daughter Roshana in marriage ; 

 requested him to revenge his assassination ; to govern Persia by Persian nobles ; 

 and expired in his arms. Alexander, they add, chiefly by the counsels of Aris- 

 totle, whom they call his Vizir, punctually fulfilled these last injunctions of the 

 dying king ; the great men of Persia being appointed to the government of the 

 provinces and dependent kingdoms; which they were permitted to hold on 

 feudal principles of homage, subsidies, and military service, to their conqueror, 

 as paramount sovereign of the empire. — Here is a detail which corresponds with 

 the writers of Greece and Rome in nothing but the catastrophe; and yet, in the 

 whole annals of Persia, there is not, perhaps, a single passage which boasts a more 

 intimate agreement." — Dissertation, &c. pp. xviii, xix. 



Mr. Richardson seems to have conceived that the ancient Grecian accounts 

 are preferred to this one by Europeans, merely because the mind is prejudiced 

 in favor of the statements with which it is first acquainted ; but surely the inhe- 

 rent improbabilities and inconsistencies in the narrative before us are, even 

 without any reference to older documents, sufficient to prove it a gross fabrica- 

 tion. We have here a father disinheriting his son in favor of a daughter, and 

 the son, with the nation at large, submitting to this decree without resistance ; — 

 the daughter endeavouring secretly to destroy her only child, a son, to whose 

 preservation alone she could look with confidence as the means of ensuring to her 

 protection in old age ; — that son passing his life in poverty and ignorance up to 

 thirty years of age, and yet immediately after turning out a most accomplished 



