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To return to our narration : Alexander, having consigned the 

 charge of this great concern to Dinocrates, the immortal architect of 

 the second temple of Diana, immediately commenced that extra- 

 ordinary and perilous visit to the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the 

 deserts of Lybia, the incentives to which in the mind of a general of 

 such foresight, and intent as he was upon the accomplishment 

 of such arduous schemes, have proved the cause of infinite per- 

 plexity to all his biographers. The motives more generally assigned 

 are, the example of Hercules, and his vanity to be thought the son 

 of the Lybian, as Hercules was of the Grecian, Jupiter, who, in that 

 superb and secluded sanctuary, was Avorshipped under the form of a 

 .ram. On this account, the tiara of Alexander, and, after him, of all 

 the Macedonian sovereigns, was generally decorated with the HORN 

 of that animal, his ambition aiming to be considered as his de- 

 scendant ; not that he was absurd enough to think so himself, but he 

 politically yielded to the prevailing prejudices of the day, in regard 

 to the celestial descent of heroes, and to the general impression 

 that the conqueror of the world ought to be somewhat more than a 

 mortal. It is remarkable, too, that the Oriental denomination of 

 Escander is DULCARNEI.N, oiTwo-Horned, because, as they explain 

 it, in his career of conquest, he seemed to have passed from one 

 horn of the sun to the other, or from west to east : it is, however, 

 far more probable to have been derived from some adulatory Greek 

 title, allusive to this Ammonian genealogy. Whatever might have 

 been the motive, whether to rival Hercules, Or to have himself pub- 

 licly acknowledged the son of the Lybian Jove, and however ex- 

 aggerated by historians may have been the sufferings of the army, 

 during this expedition, there can be no doubt but that great peril 

 was run in traversing those immense deserts immediately under a 

 tropical sun, from the failure of water and the drifting of the sands in 

 that arid region ; as well as much unnecessary delay in the critical 



