A Complete Biography of Alexander the Great

by Jacob Abbott

all extravagant and unheard-of exertions to accomplish an end is said to be a piling of Pelion upon Ossa.

pique

in Alexander’s day, and in the Greek language, they were called prodromi, which means forerunners.

vicinity

any extrication of one’s self from a difficulty by violent means has been called cutting the Gordian knot to the present day.

asunder,

formidable

embellish

Judea.

Media

Pelusium.

Thebes,

Tyre,

Memphis.

Oasis of Siwah,

Parætonium,

Pharos is the name for light-house, in many languages, to the present day.

Thapsacus,

Gaugamela,

Arbela.

effluvia

Susa,

Ecbatana,

Alexander’s slaughter of the Persian army at Arbela, and subsequent spoliation of Susa, constitute, taken together, the most gigantic case of murder and robbery which was ever committed by man;

Persepolis,

capricious,

Attica

lurid

Ecbatana

Conspiracy

delusive

Oxus,

She inflicted upon him the most extreme tortures, and finally, when satiated with the pleasure of seeing him suffer, the story is that they chose four very elastic trees, growing at a little distance from each other, and bent down the tops of them toward the central point between them. They fastened the exhausted and dying Bessus to these trees, one limb of his body to each, and then releasing the stems from their confinement, they flew upward, tearing the body asunder, each holding its own dissevered portion, as if in triumph, far over the heads of the multitude assembled to witness the spectacle.

dissipated

inveterate

imposture,

Chæronea,

impugn

Granicus,

“He is right not to bear freeborn men at his table who can only tell him the truth. He is right. It is fitting for him to pass his life among barbarians and slaves, who will be proud to pay their adoration to his Persian girdle and his splendid robe.”

Ganges.

Aridæus was chosen by the generals to assume the command.

inveterate

Peloponnesus

Ægina,

Piræus.

vestiges

He was simply a robber, but yet a robber on so vast a scale, that mankind, in contemplating his career, have generally lost sight of the wickedness of his crimes in their admiration of the enormous magnitude of the scale on which they were perpetrated.