Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

62 THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
"and would ye know by experience our spears and
"our strength? But we know our superiority over
"you by your excellent custom of paying service and
"tribute [to us]. I write to you for your own good,
"and because I would spare your country."'
All
The Persian Then' DaHus sent
-^^.
this letter to Alexander,
ambassadors
come the
-
Iwo-homed, by his messengers. And when
c°er. ''"''"'his letter reached Alexander he gave orders for
them to strip off the clothes of the envoys of
Darius and to slay them, but they made suppli-
cation unto him saying, "May God make thee to
"delay, for kings are not wont to act thus with
" According to Pseudo-Callisthenes (Bk. I. chap. 36) the
letter which Darius sent to Alexander at this time was quite
different from what we have here, and it was brought to
him as he was marching through Syria together with a whip,
a ball, and a small box of gold. In it Darius calls himself
the kinsman of the gods (Geoiv ffuxYtviis), who riseth with
the sun, and who is himself a god. He orders Alexander
to go back to his parents, who are vassals of Persia, and
to go to sleep in his mother's lap. As he is still a child
Darius sends him a whip, and a ball, and a casket of gold;
the whip is to shew him that he is still in need of training,
the ball is for him to play with instead of going about like
the captain of a band of thieves, and the gold he can give
to his robber friends to pay their way back into Macedonia
when Alexander has no more to give them. Darius has more
soldiers than there are grains of sand in the sea, and he has
sufficient gold and silver to cover the earth; if Alexander
does not at once return to his country Darius will send men
after him and he will be crucified.
^ See Pseudo-Callisthenes, Bk. I. chap. 37
Meusel, p. 732).
(Miiller, p. 40,