456 JAMES WATT. 
officers, the conqueror of Arbela exclaimed: “ Let that 
be reserved for me; it shall contain my Homer. It is 
the best and most faithful counsellor I have in my mili- 
tary affairs. Besides, it is but just that the richest pro- 
duction of art should preserve the most precious work of 
the human mind.” 
The sacking of Thebes had already shown, still more 
clearly, the unlimited respect and admiration that Alex- 
ander entertained for letters. Only one family out of 
that populous city escaped death and slavery: this was 
the family of Pindar. Only one house remained intact 
amidst the ruined temples, palaces, and private dwellings : 
this was the house where Pindar was born, not Epami- 
nondas ! 
When Pompey, after finishing the war against Mithri- 
dates, went to visit the celebrated philosopher Posidonias, 
he prohibited the lictors from knocking at the door with 
their sticks, as was the custom. Thus, says Pliny, were 
the fasces of the man who had seen the East and the 
West prostrated before him, lowered before the humble 
. dwelling of a learned man ! 
Cesar, who may also be claimed as a man of letters, 
allows us to perceive, in at least twenty places in his im- 
mortal Commentaries, what rank was occupied in his own 
esteem by the various faculties with which nature had so 
liberally endowed him. How brief he is, how rapid in 
relating combats and battles! See, on the contrary, 
whether he thinks any detail superfluous in the descrip- 
tion of the temporary bridge by means of which his army 
crossed the Rhine. It is because success depended here 
on the conception, and the conception was exclusively 
his own. 
_ It has also been already remarked, that the part which 
