University of Virginia Library

Scene IX.—A Hill close to the Jaxartes.

Alexander, Hephestion, Eumenes.
Heph.
Beyond that infinite, pale, grassy plain
Rise those white peaks like pyramids o'er sands:
Is this your northern limit?

Alex.
Scythia's horse
Watch still their chance. They are no way barbarous:
I guess them at twelve thousand. Stealthily,
In ever widening gyres they near the bank,
Poor gilded swarmers in their warmthless sun:—
I have baulked their game. Resume we our dispute!
What if the race of gods began with men?
If nature, evermore through strife educing
Stronger from strong, throned on Olympus, first
The heroic-proved of men as demi-gods,
And these through strife worked out the gods that rule?
Concede me this as true, and man's ambition
May kindred claim with gods.

Heph.
Concede it! never.
Greatness, be sure, came never from below:
That thought would drag from heaven itself its greatness:
Rather the gods themselves make manifest
One higher still than they.
Sir, there are whispers, trust me, from beneath—
These should be trampled and not parleyed with:
Esteem such thoughts among them.

Alex.
This, that's great
My thought suggests; an infinite progression.

Heph.
Nay, but a finite mocking infinite
And murdering what it mocks:—the highest term
In such a series but repeats the first
Exaggerating still inherent flaws,
And in a nakeder shape, though vaster scale,
Showing man's nature shamed.

Alex.
The gods have passions,
Not minds alone: in this they are like to men.

Heph.
They act like men who have them:—that proves little:
Our ignorance doubtless misconceives their acts:
'Twas not Apollo's spite that sentenced Marsyas:
Twas no earth-instinct on Endymion smiled:
The self-same acts, in gods, in men, in beasts,
Know difference large. Acts lawful in the man
Are crimes in boys.

Alex.
A race of gods hath fallen:
Then Zeus in turn may fall. I find no thrones
Whereon the gods themselves may sit secure:
I find to man's advance no term or limit;
No certain truth amid contending rites;
No base for Faith.

Heph.
Then man must live by Hope.

Alex.
And whence our hope?

Heph.
From all things good around us,
From all things fair—the brightness of the world,
The glory of its rivers and its seas,
The music in the wandering of its winds,
The magic in the spring-flowers fresh accost,
The gladdening sweetness and pure grace of woman,
The questioning eyes of childhood. With one voice
They preach one hope—that virtue shall be crowned
One day, and Truth be known.

Alex.
The trumpet! Hark!
We Greeks must wrangle on in the battle's mouth!
Six kingdoms have I clutched within two years;
The seventh shall be the greatest.

Ant.
(entering).
Tidings, sire!
The Satrap of Aria yields submission.

[Perdiccas and Craterus enter.
Alex.
The Satrap keeps his office. Craterus, speak:
The Assembly of the Army, hath it judged?

Cra.
The court was faithful to procedure's law,
And, spite the wrathful host that stormed around,
Pronounced not judgment till Philotas, first
Heard in his own defence, but after, tortured,
Had made confession full, his proper guilt,
The crime of Dimnus and of Hermolaus,
His sire's complicity. The traitor pushed
Before its time the plot, though hatched by others,
Lest he who guards your treasure-house far off
Might drop ere all was ripe. The High Tribunal
Proceeded to the award—death to Philotas,
Death to Parmenio, and the rest. The host
Raged in its joy; so oft his pride had galled them;
So often had they gaped on frosty roads
While passed his baggage train. His sister's husband
Raised the first stone.

Alex.
How died he?

Cra.
Ill enough.

Per.
A traitor died this day.

Cra.
A traitor proved.

Alex.
A man whose death was needful died this day;
Likewise a man whose guilt was probable
Well-nigh to certainty—but yet not certain,
Since cowards, tortured, may confess things false.
Philotas or conspired or else connived,
And each of these is capital, or changed
From keen to dullard in a sort that's death
In nature's capital code. I, in his place,
Had ta'en small umbrage at my days abridged:
There lived nor scope nor purpose in his life
Which death could mar.

Cra.
For instant doom they clamoured,
Fearing your leniency—

Alex.
I am not lenient:
When prodigal I have seemed, and lax in pardons,
'Twas with a politic aim. Nor am I cruel:
For needful warning I have shed man's blood,
Full often to the bound extreme of justice,
Seldom beyond. I say not that the bound
In wrath or peril never was transgressed.
It was no will of mine to try this man:
But, judged and sentenced, never had I spared him
Certain thenceforward in my blood to seek,
Likeliest at some high crisis of my empire,
Ablution for his name. Lo, there! They launch
A flag of truce.

Ptol.
(arriving).
The Scythians send us envoys.
With proffer of firm peace. Their terms are these:
North of the river their old hunting-grounds
Remain their own: this granted, they, in turn,
Acknowledge, sire, for yours, the manifold realms
From that wide water to the mountain bound
And limitless beyond to the Indian deep,
Thenceforth your sworn allies.

Alex.
Their terms are just;
Accept them, and engross. Those Indian Heralds—

Ant.
(entering).
That murderer, Satabarzanes, is slain;
And Spitamenes, honouring his own head,
Surrenders Bessus.

Alex.
Let the self-same court
That judged Philotas judge this bloodier traitor;
When sentenced, be he sent to Sysigambis,
The dead king's mother: her award is mine.
Alas for old Parmenio!

Heph.
Bid him live!

Alex.
His guilt is mixed and tangled with that other's:
The father spared, the son had foully died.

Heph.
The time to come—

Alex.
As ignorantly on this,
And in its ignorance as confidently,
Shall pass its judgment as on things beside:
Its plaudits I shall have for things ill done:
Its censure for the needful and the just:
Too much, no doubt, of both.

Heph.
Slay not Parmenio!

Alex.
Shall I for propping of a flag-staff bent
Trouble a half-raised empire's base? Hephestion
Save that I know thee in the battle-field
Except myself the foremost, there are times
When I could deem thee weakling. To your tasks,
Friends, one and all.
[The Generals depart.
Hephestion's cause is stronger than he knows:
Parmenio's death will much offend the army;
Their panic quenched, their loves will back to him:
Yet he must die. He'll hear of his son's death
Ere my best speed could reach Ecbatana:
The troops around him there are as his children,
And, with the imperial treasury at his beck,
Nations will be his friends.
Parmenio's death will much offend the army,
Bound by old memories more to him than me:
New wars will aptliest teach it to forget—
To India then! Thus stands my doubt resolved!
To that through all this tanglement I leant,
Yet knew it not till now.
Yon priest at Hierosolyma forbade it—
'Tis strange how oft that man before me stands—
Spake much of “Term and Limit.” That's for others:
To grasp a world for me is feasible;
To keep a half-world, not.