ely
good. Each of the personified principles of light and darkness, Ormuzd
and Ahriman, had his subordinate angels, his counselors, his armies. It
is the duty of a good man to cultivate truth, purity, and industry. He
may look forward, when this life is over, to a life in another world,
and trust to a resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul,
and a conscious future existence.

In the later years of the empire, the principles of Magianism had
gradually prevailed more and more over those of Zoroaster. Magianism was
essentially a worship of the elements. Of these, fire was considered as
the most worthy representative of the Supreme Being. On altars erected,
not in temples, but under the blue canopy of the sky, perpetual fires
were kept burning, and the rising sun was regarded as the noblest object
of human adoration. In the society of Asia, nothing is visible but the
monarch; in the expanse of heaven, all objects vanish in presence of the
sun.

DEATH OF ALEXANDER. Prematurely cut off in the midst of many great
projects Alexander died at Babylon before he had completed his
thirty-third year (B.C. 323). There was a suspicion that he had been
poisoned. His temper had become so unbridled, his passion so ferocious,
that his generals and even his intimate friends lived in continual
dread. Clitus, one of the latter, he in a moment of fury had stabbed to
the heart. Callisthenes, the intermedium between himself and Aristotle,
he had caused to be hanged, or, as was positively asserted by some who
knew the facts, had had him put upon the rack and then crucified. It
may have been in self-defense that the conspirators resolved on his
assassination. But surely it was a calumny to associate the name of
Aristotle with this transaction. He would have rather borne the worst
that Alexander could inflict, than have joined in the perpetration of so
great a crime.

A scene of confusion and bloodshed lasting many years ensued, nor did it
cease even after the Macedonian generals had divided the empire. Among
its vicissitudes one incident mainly claims our attention. Ptolemy, who
was a son of King Philip by Arsinoe, a beautiful concubine, and who
in his boyhood had been driven into exile with Alexander, when they
incurred their father's displeasure, who had been Alexander's comrade
in many of his battles and all his campaigns, became governor and
eventually king of Egypt.

FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDER. At the siege of Rhodes, Ptolemy