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spirit of the factious Greeks ; the insolence of the veteran soldier ; 

 the arrogance of the unbending philosopher; the spirit of com- 

 petition that pervades a camp, and of jealousies that distract a 

 court. Let it be remembered, that, in requiring the ceremony of 

 prostration in salutation, however abhorrent it might be, from Gre- 

 cian customs and prejudices, Alexander demanded no more than the 

 peformance of an ancient civil custom, a reverential distinction 

 which the kings of Persia had always enjoyed, as the presumed 

 vicegerents of deity, equally the dispensers of its benevolence and its 

 vengeance ; impregnated with a portion of the sacred fire that came 

 down from heaven, and was constantly carried before them in the 

 camp and in the temple. It might have been attended with danger 

 to have, on a sudden, dispensed with a homage thus immemorially 

 paid to them ; a homage which the law prescribed and religion 

 sanctioned. I am far from meaning to become an apologist for the 

 vices of Alexander, but so obscurely and confusedly have many of 

 the leading events in his life been handed down to us by varying 

 biographers, that, where there is room for the mitigation of error in a 

 distinguished personage of antiquity, it is consistent with benevo- 

 lence and justice to attempt it. 



The spring, so impatiently expected, of that auspicious year 

 which was to add India to the conquests of Alexander, at length 

 began to dawn. A seasonable supply of sixteen thousand fresh re- 

 cruits from Greece had also recently arrived ; and the king had pre- 

 viously ordered a body of thirty thousand young men, of the first 

 families, the most brave, the most comely, and in the flower of their 

 age, to be collected from every province of the Persian empire, to be 

 trained in the Macedonian way of fighting, and to attend the army 

 during his absence from his Persian dominions, both as hostages and 

 soldiers. It is also asserted by Plutarch, though the circumstance is 

 not mentioned by Arrian, that, at this period, Alexander, finding his 



