t his old comrades. No man regretted
more than he the untimely death of so many heroes. Perdiccas was the
cause of this calamity; he had but received his just punishment. Now all
enmity was to be ended. He had saved as many as he could from death in
the water, and the corpses which the river had brought to the shore he
had buried with all honour; and finally he told them that he had given
orders for the immediate alleviation of the want which he knew was being
felt in the camp. His speech was received with loud cheers. He stood
there unhurt and admired before the Macedonians, who but a few hours
earlier had been his bitterest foes. Now they looked upon him as their
saviour; they all acknowledged him as the conqueror, and for the moment
he stood in unequivocal possession of that power for which Perdiccas
had worked so hard, and which he had so much abused. Who was now to
be Perdiccas' successor, and to manage the kingdom in the name of the
kings? With one voice the people begged Ptolemy to undertake this task.
The foresight and presence of mind of the son of Lagus were not clouded
by the allurement of such an offer gained by his sudden change of
fortune. At this supreme moment he acted with consummate sagacity. He
divined that a refusal of the proffered honour would make him in reality
more powerful, although, at the moment, he would seem to be acting in an
unselfish manner. He recommended to the army, as a favour which he had
to bestow, those he thought worthy of his thanks; they were Python,
the Median strategist, who had taken the first decisive step against
Perdiccas; and Arridaeus, who, in spite of Perdiccas' orders, had taken
the body of the king to Egypt. These two were nominated regents with
loud cheers.

The Macedonian army, accordingly, chose Python and Arridaeus as
guardians, and as rulers with unlimited power over the whole of
Alexander's conquests; but, though none of the Greek generals who now
held Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Thrace, or Egypt dared to acknowledge
it to the soldiers, yet in reality the power of the guardians was
limited to the little kingdom of Macedonia. With the death of Perdiccas,
and the withdrawal of his army, Phoenicia and Coele-Syria were left
unguarded, and almost without a master. In order that Egypt might take
an important part in the universal policy, Ptolemy felt he must possess
Syria, which would open up the way for him to the countries along the
Euphrates and the Tigris, and