yed landed
at the Piraeus. All the civil and religious authorities of the city
went down to the port, in a grand procession, to receive and welcome
the exile on his arrival, and a large portion of the population
followed in the train, to witness the spectacle, and to swell by their
acclamations the general expression of joy.

In the mean time, the preparations for Alexander's funeral had been
going on, upon a great scale of magnificence and splendor. It was two
years before they were complete. The body had been given, first, to be
embalmed, according to the Egyptian and Chaldean art, and then had
been placed in a sort of sarcophagus, in which it was to be conveyed
to its long home. Alexander, it will be remembered, had given
directions that it should be taken to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, in
the Egyptian oasis, where he had been pronounced the son of a god. It
would seem incredible that such a mind as his could really admit such
an absurd superstition as the story of his divine origin, and we must
therefore suppose that he gave this direction in order that the place
of his interment might confirm the idea of his superhuman nature in
the general opinion of mankind. At all events, such were his orders,
and the authorities who were left in power at Babylon after his death,
prepared to execute them.

It was a long journey. To convey a body by a regular funeral
procession, formed as soon after the death as the arrangements could
be made, from Babylon to the eastern frontiers of Egypt, a distance of
a thousand miles, was perhaps as grand a plan of interment as was ever
formed. It has something like a parallel in the removal of Napoleon's
body from St. Helena to Paris, though this was not really an
interment, but a transfer. Alexander's was a simple burial procession,
going from the palace where he died to the proper cemetery--a march
of a thousand miles, it is true, but all within his own dominions The
greatness of it resulted simply from the magnitude of the scale on
which every thing pertaining to the mighty here was performed, for
it was nothing but a simple passage from the dwelling to the
burial-ground on his own estates, after all.

A very large and elaborately constructed carriage was built to convey
the body. The accounts of the richness and splendor of this vehicle
are almost incredible. The spokes and staves of the wheels were
overlaid with gold, and the extremities of the axles, where they
appeared outside at