Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

PERSEPOLIS SACKED. 409presented a sum eqiialto six hundred dollars' weight in gold,ten complete changes of raiment, two yoke of oxen and fiftysheep.Alexander was now in the home of Persia. Here in thevalley of Passargadae, Cyrus had overthrown the Medianpower, and in memory of his victory had established hiscourt, erected his palaces, built his mausoleum. This wasthe place to which all vassals and dependents of the GreatKing looked as the home of the monarchy, as the Meccaof the kingdom. Cyrus and his successors had made thisvalley a wonder of beauty as it was by nature healthful.Palaces, temples, the king's gate of the " Forty Pillars," therocky hillsides cut into terraces, huge sculptured oxen andhorses at the entrances of the temples ; the noblest and mostcolossal architecture on the grandest plan and most enormousscale adorned the entire valley of the Araxes and the Medus.Alexander had penetrated to the very heart of the empireof the arch-enemy of Greece. The Persian king had burnedand desecrated Athens. The hegemon of Hellas could nowinflict the same hardship on Persepolis. The two nationswould be quits. Against his usual habit, which was to preserveand not to destroy what he conquered with so much toiland danger, and it may be alleged equally against policy,Alexander — perhaps unable to resist the demands of hisMacedonians — not only gave the city up to plunder, butcaused to be burned the magnificent palace of the Persiankings.This act is stated by Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch tohave been the result of a drunken orgy, and done at the instigationof the Athenian courtesan Lais, the mistress ofPtolemy. But the account of Arrian, coupled with what issaid about the massacre by Plutarch, establishes the act asone of deliberate purpose committed in retaliation for the