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Darius refreshed, amidst the agonies of death, by the cooling draught, 

 embraced the opportunity which Providence seemed to afford him, 

 in having the Persian for his interpreter, to desire that his warmest 

 acknowledgements might, through Polystratus, be tendered to 

 Alexander, for the humane attention which he had shewn to 1 his 

 family ; he implored " heaven to grant him that success which his 

 valour and generosity so highly merited ; and expressed an ardent 

 hope that he would revenge a murdered sovereign on his rebellious 

 subjects. Then, grasping the hand of Polystratus with all the strength 

 that yet remained to him, he entreated of him that he would, in 

 the same manner, grasp the hand of Alexander, as the only humble 

 pledge of genuine and grateful affection in his power to bequeath to 

 the Macedonian monarch*. Having faintly uttered these affecting 

 words, he expired in the arms of Polystratus. A Greek embittered 

 his living, a Greek soothed his dying, moments. Alexander, at that 

 instant, coming up, on beholding the mangled and breathless body 

 of his rival, could not refrain from bursting into a flood of tears. 

 Penetrated with anguish, anguish not, perhaps, untinctured with 

 remorse, he tore the royal mantle from his own shoulders, and 

 spread it over the body of Darius. He then gave orders for its 

 being embalmed, and sent it in a rich coffin, adorned with the 

 most costly robes and embalmed with the richest aromatics, to the 

 disconsolate Sisigambis, to be interred in the mausolea of the Persian 

 kings. 



Such was the melancholy end of the last monarch of the Caianian 

 dynasty, who thus prematurely perished, after a disastrous reign of 

 six years, in the fiftieth year of his age, and in the month 

 Hecatomboeon, (August,) before Christ 330-f. The varying accounts 



* Curtius, lib. v. cap. ult. 



t According to Usher, the first day of this month answers to our 24th of July. Uskcrii 

 Aunal. p. 167. 



