rrived with him in Persia (325 B.C.).

[Illustration: Alexander discovering the Body of Darius.]

At Susa he married Stateira, the daughter of Darius, and he bestowed
presents on those Macedonians (some ten thousand in number) who had
married Persian women, his design being to unite the two nations. He
also distributed liberal rewards among his soldiers. Soon afterward he
was deprived, by death, of his favorite Hephestion. His grief was
unbounded, and he interred the dead man with kingly honors. As he was
returning from Ecbatana to Babylon, it is said that the Magi
foretold that the latter city would prove fatal to him; but he
despised their warnings. On the way, he was met by ambassadors from
all parts of the world--Libya, Italy, Carthage, Greece, the Scythians,
Celts, and Iberians.

At Babylon he was busy with gigantic plans for the future, both of
conquest and civilization, when he was suddenly taken ill after a
banquet, and died eleven days later, 323 B.C., in the thirty-second
year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign. His body was
deposited in a golden coffin at Alexandria, by Ptolemaeus, and divine
honors were paid to him, not only in Egypt, but in other countries. He
had appointed no heir to his immense dominions; but to the question of
his friends, "Who should inherit them?" he replied, "The most worthy."
After many disturbances, his generals recognized as Kings the
weak-minded Aridaeus--a son of Philip by Philinna, the dancer--and
Alexander's posthumous son by Roxana, Alexander AEgus, while they
shared the provinces among themselves, assuming the title of satraps.
Perdiccas, to whom Alexander had, on his death-bed, delivered his
ring, became guardian of the kings during their minority. The empire
of Alexander soon broke up, and his dominions were divided among his
generals.

Alexander was more than a conqueror. He diffused the language and
civilization of Greece wherever victory led him, and planted Greek
kingdoms in Asia, which continued to exist for some centuries. At the
very time of his death, he was engaged in devising plans for the
drainage of the unhealthy marshes around Babylon, and a better
irrigation of the extensive plains. It is even supposed that the fever
which he caught there, rather than his famous drinking-bout, was the
real cause of his death. To Alexander, the ancient world owed a vast
increase of its knowledge in geography, natural history, etc. He
taught Europeans the road to I