XXV.  The siege of Tyre came to an end in the following manner.  The greater part of Alexander’s troops were resting from their labours, but in order to occupy the attention of the enemy, he led a few men up to the city walls, while Aristander, the soothsayer, offered sacrifice.  When he saw the victims, he boldly informed all who were present that during the current month, Tyre would be taken.  All who heard him laughed him to scorn, as that day was the last of the month, but Alexander seeing him at his wits’ end, being always eager to support the credit of prophecies, gave orders that that day should not be reckoned as the thirtieth of the month, but as the twenty-third.  After this he bade the trumpets sound, and assaulted the walls much more vigorously than he had originally intended.  The attack succeeded, and as the rest of the army would no longer stay behind in the camp, but rushed to take their share in the assault, the Tyrians were overpowered, and their city taken on that very day.

Afterwards, while Alexander was besieging Gaza, the largest city in Syria, a clod of earth was dropped upon his shoulder by a bird, which afterwards alighted upon one of the military engines, and became entangled in the network of ropes by which it was worked.  This portent also was truly explained by Aristander; for the place was taken, and Alexander was wounded in the shoulder.

He sent many of the spoils to Olympias, Kleopatra, and others of his friends, and sent his tutor Leonidas five hundred talents weight of frankincense, and a hundred talents of myrrh, to remind him of what he had said when a child.  Leonidas once, when sacrificing, reproved Alexander for taking incense by handfuls to throw upon the victim when it was burning on the altar.  “When,” he said, “you have conquered the country from which incense comes, Alexander, then you may make such rich offerings as these; but at present you must use what we have sparingly.”  Alexander now wrote to him, “We have sent you abundance of frankincense and myrrh, that you may no longer treat the gods so stingily.”

XXVI.  When a certain casket was brought to him, which appeared to be the most valuable of all the treasures taken from Darius, he asked his friends what they thought he ought to keep in it as his own most precious possession.  After they had suggested various different things, he said that he intended to keep his copy of the Iliad in it.  This fact is mentioned by many historians; and if the legend which is current among the people of Alexandria; on the authority of Herakleides, be true, the poems of Homer were far from idle or useless companions to him, even when on a campaign.  The story goes that after conquering Egypt, he desired to found a great and populous Grecian city, to be called after his own name, and that after he had fixed upon an excellent site, where in the opinion of the best architects, a city surpassing anything previously existing could be built, he dreamed that a man with long hair and venerable aspect appeared to him, and recited the following verses: