288 
DEATH OF ALEXANDER. 
ander’s approach to it, than the word retiring; since, according 
to the route he was then on, he must rather have advanced than 
retired ; also have crossed the Euphrates, and marched far onward, 
over much marshy ground, before he could have reached even 
the neighbourhood of the present most stupendous monument 
of the Babylonian age. Our Greek accounts of the intemperance, 
which really induced his fate, is dishonourable to their hero; but 
Persian authors, in writing of Alexander, (who, though their 
conqueror, they idolized under the name of Secunder Roomee, 
and derived his birth from one of their own monarchs, rejecting 
both Philip of Macedon, and Jupiter Ammon, as his reputed 
fathers !) speak of the manner of his death with an interesting, as 
well as romantic legend. The Zeenut-ul-Tuarikh relates, that as¬ 
trologers foretold, that whenever he should find himself seated 
on a throne where the ground was iron, and the sky above it gold, 
he might then be sure that his death drew near. This account 
seemed to promise him immortality ; but one day on a march, 
returning from some field of conquest, he found himself on a 
sudden seized with a bleeding at the nose ; when an officer who 
was by, unbracing his coat of mail, laid it down for the king to 
rest on ; and to defend him from the sun, held a golden shield 
over his head. When Alexander observed himself in this situa¬ 
tion, he exclaimed, “ The word of prediction is accomplished! 
I no longer belong to the living ! Alas ! that the work of my 
youth should be finished ! that I die in the bloom of my years!” 
He wrote to his mother to be comforted, for that he was passing 
away to the quiet regions of the dead; and desiring her to give 
large alms in honour of his memory, added, that it was his par¬ 
ticular request they should be bestowed on those only, who had 
never known the miseries of this life, nor experienced the loss 
