m for a god on earth, as Grecian
spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld
the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.

Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his
death little more than thirty-two years old--the age at which a
citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less
than the age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at
which Timour first acquired the crown, and began his foreign
conquests. His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had
acquired a large stock of military experience; and, what was still
more important, his appetite for further conquest was as voracious,
and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger
as complete, as it had been when he first crossed the Hellespont.
Great as his past career had been, his future achievements, with such
increased means and experience, were likely to be yet greater. His
ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest
of the whole habitable world as then known; and if his life had been
prolonged, he would probably have accomplished it. Nowhere (so far as
our knowledge reaches) did there reside any military power capable of
making head against him; nor were his soldiers, when he commanded
them, daunted or baffled by any extremity of cold, heat, or fatigue.
The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander,
had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans or Samnites, would have
failed and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this
conclusion can not be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline
of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of
Alexander's army, the same can not be said of the Roman cavalry as
compared with the Macedonian companions. Still less is it likely that
a Roman Consul, annually changed, would have been found a match for
Alexander in military genius and combinations; nor, even if personally
equal, would he have possest the same variety of troops and arms, each
effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common
purpose--nor the same unbounded influence over their minds in
stimulating them to full effort. I do not think that even the Romans
could have successfully resisted Alexander the Great; tho it is
certain that he never throughout all his long marches encountered such
enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and Lucanians--combinin