haft of the
arrow, and then, enlarging the wound by incisions, they drew out the
barbed point. The soldiers were indignant that Alexander should
expose his person in such a fool-hardy way, only to endanger himself,
and to compel them to rush into danger to rescue him. The wound very
nearly proved fatal. The loss of blood was attended with extreme
exhaustion; still, in the course of a few weeks he recovered.

Alexander's habits of intoxication and vicious excess of all kinds
were, in the mean time, continually increasing. He not only indulged
in such excesses himself, but he encouraged them in others. He would
offer prizes at his banquets to those who would drink the most. On one
of these occasions, the man who conquered drank, it is said, eighteen
or twenty pints of wine, after which he lingered in misery for three
days, and then died; and more than forty others, present at the same
entertainment, died in consequence of their excesses.

Alexander returned toward Babylon. His friend Hephaestion was with him,
sharing with him every where in all the vicious indulgences to which
he had become so prone. Alexander gradually separated himself more and
more from his old Macedonian friends, and linked himself more and more
closely with Persian associates. He married Statira, the oldest
daughter of Darius, and gave the youngest daughter to Hephaestion. He
encouraged similar marriages between Macedonian officers and Persian
maidens, as far as he could. In a word, he seemed intent in merging,
in every way, his original character and habits of action in the
effeminacy, luxury, and vice of the Eastern world, which he had at
first so looked down upon and despised.

Alexander's entrance into Babylon, on his return from his Indian
campaigns, was a scene of great magnificence and splendor. Embassadors
and princes had assembled there from almost all the nations of the
earth to receive and welcome him, and the most ample preparations were
made for processions, shows, parades, and spectacles to do him honor.
The whole country was in a state of extreme excitement, and the most
expensive preparations were made to give him a reception worthy of one
who was the conqueror and monarch of the world, and the son of a god.

When Alexander approached the city, however, he was met by a
deputation of Chaldean astrologers. The astrologers were a class of
philosophers who pretended, in those days, to foretell human events by
means of the motions of t