in order to encourage his men to second his views, he took care to
inspire them with the belief that heaven was on their side and would
soon crown their labors with the wished-for success. At one time he gave
out that Apollo was about to abandon the Tyrians to their doom, and
that, to prevent his flight, they had bound him to his pedestal with a
golden chain; at another, he pretended that Hercules, the tutelar deity
of Macedon, had appeared to him, and, having opened prospects of the
most glorious kind, had invited him to proceed to take possession of
Tyre.

These favorable circumstances were announced by the augurs as
intimations from above; and every heart was in consequence cheered. The
soldiers, as if that moment arrived before the city, forgetting all the
toils they had undergone and the disappointments they had suffered,
began to raise a new mole, at which they worked incessantly.

To protect them from being annoyed by the ships of the enemy, Alexander
fitted out a fleet, with which he not only secured his own men, but
offered the Tyrians battle, which, however, they thought proper to
decline, and withdrew all their galleys into the harbor.

The besiegers, now allowed to proceed unmolested, went on with the work
with the utmost vigor, and in a little time completed it and brought it
close to the walls. A general attack was therefore resolved on, both by
sea and land, and with this in view the King, having manned his galleys
and joined them together with strong cables, ordered them to approach
the walls about midnight and attack the city with resolution. But just
as the assault was going to begin, a dreadful storm arose, which not
only shook the ships asunder, but even shattered them in a terrible
manner, so that they were all obliged to be towed toward the shore,
without having made the least impression on the city.

The Tyrians were elated with this gleam of good fortune; but that joy
was of short duration, for in a little time they received intelligence
from Carthage that they must expect no assistance from that quarter, as
the Carthaginians themselves were then overawed by a powerful army of
Syracusans, who had invaded their country. Reduced, therefore, to the
hard necessity of depending entirely upon their own strength and their
own resources, the Tyrians sent all their women and children to
Carthage, and prepared to encounter the very last extremities. For now
the enemy was attacking the place with greater