perhaps there was never any such thing.  Our children are still called by names that he invented above three thousand years ago; who does not know Hector and Achilles?  Not only some particular families, but most nations also seek their origin in his inventions.  Mohammed, the second of that name, emperor of the Turks, writing to our Pope Pius ii., “I am astonished,” says he, “that the Italians should appear against me, considering that we have our common descent from the Trojans, and that it concerns me as well as it does them to revenge the blood of Hector upon the Greeks, whom they countenance against me.”  Is it not a noble farce wherein kings, republics, and emperors have so many ages played their parts, and to which the vast universe serves for a theatre?  Seven Grecian cities contended for his birth, so much honour even his obscurity helped him to!

     “Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenm.”

The other is Alexander the Great.  For whoever will consider the age at which he began his enterprises, the small means by which he effected so glorious a design, the authority he obtained in such mere youth with the greatest and most experienced captains of the world, by whom he was followed, the extraordinary favour wherewith fortune embraced and favoured so many hazardous, not to say rash, exploits,

               “Impellens quicquid sibi summa petenti
               Obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruins;”

     ["Bearing down all who sought to withstand him, and pleased
     to force his way by ruin.”—­Lucan, i. 149.]

that greatness, to have at the age of three-and-thirty years, passed victorious through the whole habitable earth, and in half a life to have attained to the utmost of what human nature can do; so that you cannot imagine its just duration and the continuation of his increase in valour and fortune, up to a due maturity of age, but that you must withal imagine something more than man:  to have made so many royal branches to spring from his soldiers, leaving the world, at his death, divided amongst four successors, simple captains of his army, whose posterity so long continued and maintained that vast possession; so many excellent virtues as he was master of, justice, temperance, liberality, truth in his word, love towards his own people, and humanity towards those he overcame; for his manners, in general, seem in truth incapable of any manner of reproach, although some particular and extraordinary actions of his may fall under censure.  But it is impossible to carry on such great things as he did within the strict rules of justice; such as he are to be judged in gross by the main end of their actions.  The ruin of Thebes and Persepolis, the murder of Menander and of Ephistion’s physician, the massacre of so many Persian prisoners at one time, of a troop of Indian soldiers not without prejudice to his word, and of the Cossians, so much as to the