ed by their dead bodies corrupting on the plain.
The corpses of three hundred thousand men, and an equal bulk of the
bodies of elephants and horses, was too enormous a mass to be buried.
It had to be abandoned; and the horrible effluvia and pestilence which
it emitted drove all the inhabitants of the country away. Alexander
marched his troops rapidly off the ground, leaving, as the direct
result of the battle, a wide extent of country depopulated and
desolate, with this vast mass of putrefaction and pestilence reigning
in awful silence and solitude in the midst of it.

Alexander went to Babylon. The governor of the city prepared to
receive him as a conqueror. The people came out in throngs to meet
him, and all the avenues of approach were crowded with spectators. All
the city walls, too, were covered with men and women, assembled to
witness the scene. As for Alexander himself, he was filled with pride
and pleasure at thus arriving at the full accomplishment of his
earliest and long-cherished dreams of glory.

The great store-house of the royal treasures of Persia was at Susa, a
strong city east of Babylon. Susa was the winter residence of the
Persian kings, as Ecbatana, further north, among the mountains, was
their summer residence. There was a magnificent palace and a very
strong citadel at Susa, and the treasures were kept in the citadel. It
is said that in times of peace the Persian monarchs had been
accustomed to collect coin, melt it down, and cast the gold in earthen
jars. The jars were afterward broken off from the gold, leaving the
bullion in the form of the interior of the jars. An enormous amount of
gold and silver, and of other treasures, had been thus collected.
Alexander was aware of this depository before he advanced to meet
Darius, and, on the day of the battle of Arbela, as soon as the
victory was decided, he sent an officer from the very field to summon
Susa to surrender. They obeyed the summons, and Alexander, soon after
his great public entrance into Babylon, marched to Susa, and took
possession of the vast stores of wealth accumulated there. The amount
was enormous, both in quantity and value, and the seizing of it was a
very magnificent act of plunder. In fact, it is probable that
Alexander's slaughter of the Persian army at Arbela, and subsequent
spoliation of Susa, constitute, taken together, the most gigantic
case of murder and robbery which was ever committed by man; so that,
in performing the