ALEXANDER AT ECBATANA. 
99 
regular removals of his court, the great founder of the empire 
was imitated by all his successors of his own line, till the unfor¬ 
tunate Darius Codomanus lost it to the Greeks ; and then we 
find, that even the conqueror followed this ancient usage of the 
country, marching from one capital to another, giving sumptuous 
entertainments in all; and, according to the humour that struck 
him, playing the benefactor or the tyrant. To see Alexander in 
the latter light, is a glimpse of human character, perhaps more 
painful when considered with relation to him, than did it belong 
to almost any other hero of ancient story ; there was so much to 
admire, in the splendour of his talents, and to love, in the 
general magnanimity of his conduct to friends and enemies, that 
we cannot but doubly deplore the final dominion of acquired 
vices over so much natural virtue. His unshaken reliance on 
the good faith of his physician, Philip ; his noble behaviour to 
the family of Darius, and his generous grief over the remains of 
Darius himself; all these, and many more instances of the most 
amiable and magnanimous mind, might be produced, to show 
how worthy Alexander might have been, of the empire of the 
world. But after he became its master, he laid aside the tem¬ 
perate habits of a soldier and a great king, by which it had been 
won. He feasted, he caroused, he gave his company to flatterers, 
and to courtezans ; and, in the phrenzy of their drunken orgies, 
we already have seen what an ending he made of his visit to 
Persepolis. At Susa, his better spirit was with him ; he there 
married Statira, the daughter of Darius, and celebrated the rites 
with a nuptial banquet, as full of munificence as splendour. But 
when he came to Ecbatana, and took up his residence in the 
golden palace of the Medes, he appears to have forgotten all hu¬ 
manity in his self-deification of the son of Ammon. Greece, as 
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