Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/261

ALEXANDER. 253 Here he drank all the next clay, and was attacked with a fever, which seized him, not as some write, after he had drunk of the bowl of Hercules ; nor was he taken with any- sudden pain in his back, as if he had been struck with a lance, for these are the inventions of some authors who thought it their duty to make the last scene of so great an action as tragical and moving as they could. Aristobulus tells us, that in the rage of his fever and a violent thirst, he took a draught of wine, upon which he fell into delir- ium, and died on the thirtieth day of the month Dtesius. But the journals give the following record. On the eigh- teenth of the month, he slept in the bathing-room on ac- count of his fever. The next day he bathed and removed into his chamber, and spent his time in playing at dice with Medius. In the evening he bathed and sacrificed, and ate freely, and had the fever on him through the night. On the twentieth, after the usual sacrifices and bathing, he lay in the bathing-rooin and heard Nearchus's narrative of his voyage, and the observations he had made in the great sea. The twenty-first he passed in the same manner, his fever still increasing, and suffered much during the night. The next day the fever was very vio- lent, and he had himself removed and his bed set by the great bath, and discoursed with his principal officers about finding fit men to fill up the vacant places in the army. On the twenty-fourth he was much worse, and was carried out of his bed to assist at the sacrifices, and gave order that the general officers should wait within the court, whilst the inferior officers kept watch without doors. On the twenty-fifth he was removed to his palace on the other side the river, where he slept a little, but his fever did not abate, and when the generals came into his cham- ber, he was speechless, and continued so the following day. The Macedonians, therefore, sujiposing he was dead, came with great clamors to the gales, and menaced his friends