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together in great heaps, and thrown in for the purpose. That 

 arduous task was immediately undertaken, and, by the united efforts 

 of the troops, was accomplished in nine days, during which Alex- 

 ander recovered of his wound. The king of the Assaceni was 

 recently dead, and the queen-mother, by name Cleophes, had taken 

 into her pay, for the better defence of the city, seven thousand stout 

 Indians from the interior districts, (a proof, that, in those as well as 

 in later periods, the war-tribe of India let out its services for hire,) 

 and these seemed determined to. fulfil the duty of faithful merce- 

 naries. The besieged, astonished as they were at the new species of 

 military engine brought against them, and that from a quarter which 

 they conceived utterly inaccessible, yet exerted themselves vigo- 

 rously in repelling the assault, and stood firm at their posts amidst 

 the torrent of darts, arrows, and other missile weapons, hurled from 

 the towers, which did infinite execution among them. For four 

 successive days did Alexander ineffectually bring his engines against 

 the walls, and, though a breach had been early made in them, yet, 

 from the united skill and valour of the enemy, they attempted in 

 vain to take it by storm, and the trumpets sounded more than once 

 that retreat which was so unusual and so degrading to Macedonian 

 soldiers. In ancient as in modern times, the death of the com- 

 mander-in-chief, in Indian warfare, has ever been the forerunner 

 of the defeat of his troops, and thus it happened at Massaga; for, 

 while their general survived, the mercenaries were invincible ; but 

 the chief, on this occasion, being slain by an arrow, and the greater 

 part of the troops themselves wounded or exhausted by incessant 

 fatigue, they at length surrendered on honourable conditions ; the 

 queen herself, issuing forth from the gates, at the head of a train of 

 noble females, all bearing golden goblets, full of wine, by way of 

 oblation to Alexander as a god. The queen, according to Curtius, 

 was equally beautiful and brave, and presented her infant son to 



