Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

84 THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
and of his kinsfolk, and of how the men of Persia'
had perished," and he said to himself, "There is
"nothing at all left for me, and it will be better
"for me to die than to become a vassal." And
while he was thus meditating in his heart he wrote
a letter to Alexander, which was as follows:
Hewritesto "From Daous the king to^ the lord and prince
Alexander.
"of kings, the conqueror of all the peoples of the
"earth, who is over all kings, and to whom victory
"hath been given. Put not your confidence in the
"world, and let not that which hath been given
"unto thee thereof lead thee astray. [My ancestors]
"loved the things of Greece and the goods of this
"world which profited them not in any way, and
"their days have passed and gone: some of them
"turned aside [from the battle, some of them] fled,
"and were conquered and their soldiers were slain,
"and their empire perished as soon as they* had
' The preceding paragraph describes what took place
after the battle which Plutarch (Alexander, xx) says was fought
between the Greeks and Persians upon a piece of ground
which had the sea on one side, and the mountains on the
other, and was intersected by the river Pinarus. But that
the defeat after the battle of the Strangas is referred to is
clear from this sentence which is a free equivalent of the
Greek Kai piifjag eauTov ei? to ebacpog dvoijaLuEaq ffuv bd-
KpucTiv €9privei eauTOV dfToXeaai; toctoOtov rrXfiQcc; crtpa-
TiLUTUJv, Kai Ti^v TTepffiba oXriv eprmuiffag (Miiller, p. 73,
Meusel, p. 752).
- Read -f':5'T-A"-f-0»- :
3 See Pseudo-Callisthenes, Bk. ii. chap. 17 (Miiller, p. 73,
Meusel, p. 752). * Read i.^^ •