OF THE BANQUETING-HOUSE, BY ALEXANDER. 549 
destroyed the city he had just before spared with the noblest 
clemency, when his soldiers had taken it sword in hand. He 
now burnt it to the ground, not leaving a vestige of its lofty 
buildings to mark the spot on which it stood ; and only to be 
traced in our times by the stream of the Araxes, said to have 
flowed twenty stades from its walls.” But so far from this ac¬ 
count being correct, we find, both from Strabo and Arrian, that 
Alexander inhabited the royal palace of Persepolis, after his 
return from India : hence, only one detached part of it could 
have been consumed. And a hundred and sixty years after¬ 
wards, Antiochus Epiphanius formed a project to pillage the 
city of Persepolis and its temple. (2 Maccabees.) This is one 
evidence, that even the riches of the ancient capital existed long 
after the Macedonian conquest. Plutarch’s description of the 
disgraceful scene which led to the disaster I am discussing, con¬ 
firms me in the idea that it was the banqueting-house alone, 
where the king and his companions were feasting, to which they 
set fire. The historian mentions, that in the midst of the revels 
the courtesan Thais, an Athenian by birth, boasted of the plea¬ 
sure she felt in thus triumphing over Persia in the stately palace 
of its monarchs, and expatiated on the glory it would be to set 
fire to the court of Xerxes with her own hands, while the con¬ 
queror should stand by and approve the deed. Excited by this, 
and the wine he had drunk, the king starts from his seat, seizes 
a burning torch, and with his chaplet of feasting on his head, 
rushes forward, with his party in the same way armed, and sets 
the whole in a blaze. “ However,” adds his biographer, “ all 
writers agree that he soon repented of his rashness, and made 
every effort to extinguish the flames.” Had he left the place he 
was in to kindle any other building of the palace, it must have 
4 0 
VOL. I. 
