Darius plainly what were his motives for persevering in hostility. At least Arrian (who follows the accounts of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, and Aristobulus, one of Alexander's commanders) professes to have before him the actual despatch.[1] After the battle of Issus, in which Darius's queen and young son and mother and other ladies had been captured, Darius wrote to ask Alexander that he would restore them, and accept from him friendship and alliance; for which he offered full pledges, and begged for the same in turn. Alexander had treated the captive ladies with ostentatious honour; therefore a mild reply might have been hoped. Instead of this, from beginning to end the letter breathes reproach and defiance. In conclusion it says: "Since I have defeated, first thy generals and satraps, and next thee and the forces with thee; since I hold the country, and have now in my army numbers of those who fought on thy side, come to me as to him who is lord of all Asia; then thou shalt receive back thy mother, thy wife and children, and much beside, whatever thou canst persuade me by asking for it. But in future do not send to me as thine equal, but as the lord of all that is thine; else I shall regard thee as injurious." Such a repulse of friendly overtures, when Alexander had attained far more than any Greek hoped or wished, must surely be censured by every modern. Yet, before any new defeat was encountered, Darius made yet another attempt at peace. As Arrian tells it, while Alexander was engaged in the siege of Tyre, ambassadors came, offering to him ten thousand talents (say, two millions sterling) as ransom for the king's family; Darius was willing to yield to him the country as far as the Euphrates; he proposed that Alexander should accept his daughter in marriage, and that they should be friends and allies. The only reply of Alexander was "that he wanted no money of Darius, for he counted all Darius's money to be his own; he would not accept a part of the country instead of the whole; and if he wished to marry a daughter of Darius, he would take her by force without her father's leave." The historian who tells this does not seem to be aware how very inhuman was such a reply; no censure escapes him. As far as we can learn, to make Alexander great and glorious, is Alexander's motive according to his own account. Mr. de Vere would persuade us that his aims were philanthropic. The notion is in itself wholly anachronistic.
Ambition, not philanthropy, down to the present time is the motive for conquest. Philanthropy does sometimes lead to annexation; we see an instance in the archipelago of Fiji, which has been accepted reluctantly, not conquered, by the rulers of England. So, we make no doubt, the incas of Peru benevolently accepted the responsibility of rule over various barbarian and scattered tribes, whom they presently attached to them-selves by benefits. Instances of this kind exist in history, enough barely to show what is possible to human nature; but, alas! they are very rare. Where the philanthropic object is sincere, the sense of duty and responsibility is keen, and there is no coveting of territory and power, no claim that might makes right, no violence is used to establish the claim. To make armed invasion and attack on another country is an avowal that you are not seeking the welfare of the invaded, but some interests or imagined rights of your own or of your ally. Now, it is obvious in Greek literature that up to the time of Aristotle and Alexander no idea of international right existed. In the discourses reported by Xenophon we have no hint that Socrates thought a war of Greeks even against Greeks to need justification; and Aristotle lays down that, by the natural superiority of the Greek mind, barbarians are made for subjection to Greeks; and if they do not submit, they may rightly be forced to submission — in fact, as brute animals. When Aristotle so reasoned and so believed, we cannot expect any Greek prince, or any Greek republic, to have moral scruples against invading any foreigner. If, from a modern point of view, any one now call Alexander a "bandit," as Mr.de Vere complains, it is not on the bare ground that he was an invader; it must mean that he was a peculiarly reckless invader, who with no motive then generally esteemed adequate, marked his course with blood and devastation. That is a question of detail. But up to that time the world had seen no right of territory or of empire asserted on any other argument than that of simple force. The great Darius, son of Hystaspes, piously records on his monuments the names of the successive nations which God gave to his sceptre. Hebrew princes spoke in the same tone
- ↑ "The despatch of Alexander," says he, "stands thus: ώδε έχει."
