100 
HEPHESTION’S DEATH IN ECBATANA. 
well as Persia, was ransacked to afford amusements for the demi¬ 
god ; and three thousand actors crossed the Hellespont, to per¬ 
form the sublimities of Eschylus, the terrors of Sophocles, the 
subduing tenderness of Euripides, before the inebriated deity, on 
the theatres of Mount Orontes. In the midst of these festivities, 
Hephestion, who was always called the Patroclus of this Achilles, 
fell suddenly ill of a fever, and died. Inflamed by the various 
intoxications of these scenes, to a state bordering on madness, 
the king’s grief was furious ; he did not shed tears, but blood. He 
ordered that the physician, who had suffered his beloved Hephes¬ 
tion to die, should be crucified; that all merriment should cease ; 
and, that the groans and anguish of multitudes might accom¬ 
pany his own, he sallied forth at the head of a part of his 
army, attacked a defenceless neighbouring district, and put all 
the inhabitants to the sword : this he called sacrificing to He- 
phestion’s ghost; and, not satisfied with the immolation of these 
human hecatombs, he sent a solemn deputation, to enquire at 
the shrine of Jupiter Ammon, what further honours he could 
yet pay to the memory of the hero. Meanwhile, he ordered a 
sepulchre of such extraordinary magnificence to be prepared for 
his friend’s remains, that ten thousand talents were to be ex¬ 
pended in the preparations ; and the celebrated Stasicrates, the 
boldest and most lofty architect of Greece, was employed to make 
and complete the design. Plow far it was carried into execution, 
cannot now be said ; for, after all, it is not exactly known where 
Hephestion was buried; whether the gorgeous monument was 
erected here, and is now crumbled into dust; or that the la¬ 
menting king took the embalmed relics with him to Babylon ; 
and soon both the mourned and the mourner slept under the 
same cemetery. Some writers speak of the favourite’s ashes 
