ries of horror and despair testified
to the awful atrocity of the crimes attendant on the sacking of a
city. At length the soldiery were restrained. Order was restored. The
army retired to the posts assigned them, and Alexander began to
deliberate what he should do with the conquered town.

He determined to destroy it--to offer, once for all, a terrible
example of the consequences of rebellion against him. The case was not
one, he considered, of the ordinary conquest of a _foe_. The states of
Greece--Thebes with the rest--had once solemnly conferred upon him the
authority against which the Thebans had now rebelled. They were
_traitors_, therefore, in his judgment, not mere enemies, and he
determined that the penalty should be utter destruction.

But, in carrying this terrible decision into effect, he acted in a
manner so deliberate, discriminating, and cautious, as to diminish
very much the irritation and resentment which it would otherwise have
caused, and to give it its full moral effect as a measure, not of
angry resentment, but of calm and deliberate retribution--just and
proper, according to the ideas of the time. In the first place, he
released all the priests. Then, in respect to the rest of the
population, he discriminated carefully between those who had favored
the rebellion and those who had been true to their allegiance to him.
The latter were allowed to depart in safety. And if, in the case of
any family, it could be shown that one individual had been on the
Macedonian side, the single instance of fidelity outweighed the
treason of the other members, and the whole family was saved.

And the officers appointed to carry out these provisions were liberal
in the interpretation and application of them, so as to save as many
as there could be any possible pretext for saving. The descendants and
family connections of Pindar, the celebrated poet, who has been
already mentioned as having been born in Thebes, were all pardoned
also, whichever side they may have taken in the contest. The truth
was, that Alexander, though he had the sagacity to see that he was
placed in circumstances where prodigious moral effect in strengthening
his position would be produced by an act of great severity, was swayed
by so many generous impulses, which raised him above the ordinary
excitements of irritation and revenge, that he had every desire to
make the suffering as light, and to limit it by as narrow bounds, as
the nature of the c