Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/201

ALEXANDER. 193 commanded the workmen to proceed, while he went to visit the temple of Ammon. This was a long and painful, and, in two respects, a dangerous journey ; first, if they should lose their provis- ion of water, as for several days none could be obtained ; and, secondly, if a violent south wind should rise upon them, while they were travelling through the wide extent of deep sands, as it is said to have done when Cambyses led his army that way, blowing the sand together in heaps, and raising, as it were, the whole desert like a sea upon them, till fifty thousand were swallowed up and destroyed by it. All these difficulties were weighed and represented to him ; but Alexander was not easily to be diverted from any thing he w T as bent upon. For fortune having hitherto seconded him in his de- signs, made him resolute and firm in his opinions, and the boldness of his temper raised a sort of passion in him for surmounting difficulties; as if it were not enough to be always victorious in the field, unless places and seasons and nature herself submitted to him. In this journey, the relief and assistance the gods afforded him in his distresses, were more remarkable, and obtained greater belief than the oracles he received afterwards, which, however, were valued and credited the more on account of those occurrences. For first, plentiful rains that fell, preserved them from any fear of perishing by drought, and, allaying the extreme dryness of the sand, which now became moist and firm to travel on, cleared and purified the air. Besides this, when they were out of their way, and were wandering up and down, because the marks which were wont to direct the guides were disordered and lost, they were set right again by some ravens, which flew before them when on their march, and waited for them when they lingered and fell behind ; and the greatest miracle, as Callisthenes tells us, was that if VOL. iv. 13