and darting from his own perfon a glory fcarcely lefs refplendent than that of the fun, whom he reprefented. He appeared feated on a throne, elevated above the chariot that bore him, and fuftained by coloffal figures of the Genii of the Perfian mythology, caft in pure gold. The chariot was of gold, and from the centre of the beam, that glittered with jewels, rofe two ftatues of pure gold, each a cubit in height, the one reprefenting PEACE, the other WAR; over whose heads a golden eagle, the banner of Perfia, spread its wings, as if to fanction the choice of the nations, whether hoftile or pacific. Two thousand chosen horfe, the king's body-guard, followed the royal car; fucceeded by twenty thousand foot, armed with javelins, decked with pomegranates of gold and filver. Ten thousand horfe brought up the rear of the army of native Perfians. The rest of the innumerable hoft followed at a distance, in fepa rate divifions, according to the nations which they refpectively reprefented. The citadel of Sufa is faid to have been the great treafure-houfe of the kingdom: in it the ancient records of the Perfian empire, from its foundation, were preserved. We are informed, informed, by Diodorus, that Alexander car ried away from this plundered capital no less than nine thousand talents of coined gold, and of gold and filver bullion forty thousand talents.* It muft, however, have been in the more ancient periods of the empire that Sufa was the chief treasury; because, great as this fum appears, it is comparatively trifling to what, according to the fame author, that infatiable plunderer of the wealth of Afia found at Persepolis, which amounted to fuch an enormous fum, that, befides three thousand camels which were loaded with it, all the adjoining countries were drained of their mules, affes, and other beasts of burthen, to convey it away from a city, on which he wreaked his particular and unrelenting vengeance, in return for the impolitic burning of the Grecian temples by Xerxes. The total aggregate, in bullion, obtained at Persepolis, Diodorus states at one hundred and twenty thousand talents of gold, independent of the precious gems, the coftly furniture, the veffels of chrystal and agate, the vefts of Tyrian purple and gold * Diodorus Siculus, lib. xviii. cap. 66. + Ibid. lib. xvii. p. 63. embroidery, embroidery, found in profufion in the houses of the Perfian nobles and merchants. At the taking of Damafcus, after the battle of Iflus, he found in the royal coffers two thousand fix hundred talents, in coined money, and five hundred in bullion, and with the other treasures, taken in that wealthy city, loaded feven thousand mules. Ten thousand talents, at one time, and thirty thousand at another, were the fums offered by Darius to Alexander, as the ransom of his captive wife and daughters. The battle of Arbela put him in posfeffion of all the coftly utenfils and fplendid equipages of Darius, with four thousand talents in money. In Pafargada he found fix thousand talents; and, in the royal city of Ecbatana, according to Strabo,* no less than one hundred and eighty thousand talents. Of these immenfe fums heaped up together by Alexander in his rapid conquest of Perfia, he was by no means fparing in the ufe; his largeffes to his foldiers at different times were great beyond calculation; and, in his fumptuous and repeated banquets, he aimed to display the magnificence rather of a god than a man. Sarabonis Geograph. lib. xv. p. 741. Towards Towards his friends and favourites, too, he manifefted his liberality in a manner equally unparalleled, fince he prefented Aristotle, his preceptor, for his natural history of animals, with no less a fum than eight hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty-five thousand pounds;* and, on the funeral only of his beloved Hephæftion, he expended twelve thousand taJents, confiderably above two millions fterling. Having transported all these myriads to Babylon, which city there is every reason to think he meant to make the metropolis of his new empire, THE WORLD, as Alexandria was to be the staple of its commerce, this mighty conqueror there perished, the victim of intemperance. Not content with the laurels obtained by the fubjugation of Afia, and the honour of having rewarded Aristotle, the invincible Alexander muft ravish from his comrades the chaplet of the bacchanal ; and the capacious Herculean goblet of two CHO, CONsigned him in the bloom of life and glory to that grave into which his cruel ambition had re Athenæus, lib. xii. + Diod. Sic. lib. xvii. The xs was an Athenian measure, holding feven pints, frequently used at festivals, and drank off by way of bravado. VOL. VII. I cently cently precipitated the unfortunate Darius, After his decease, independent of gold and filver ftatues, vafes, and other ornamental furniture of the palace of Babylon, in the treasury of that city were found one hundred thousand talents, a fum exceeding nineteen millions fterling, but which will excite no wonder in the reader's mind, when he is informed, from Justin, that the total amount of the tribute annually arifing from his conquest of Persia, India, and the other empires of Afia and Africa, amounted to three hundred thousand talents, or upwards of fifty-eight millions of our money.* What became of this enormous treasure, the greatest the fun ever shone upon, will presently be unfolded, when we display new empires bursting from the ashes of this coftly phoenix, confumed by its own blaze; and exhibit Egypt, Syria, and Macedon, glittering in the spoils of the Higher Afia. But before I introduce my readers once more to the splendid courts of the Ptolemies, the Seleucidæ, and the new Macedonian dynasty, fome important collateral events must be recapi *Juftin Hift. lib. xiii. p. 147, tulated |