Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

A CHRISTIAN ROMANCE. 449
nations were blotted out, and those who escaped
the water he destroyed with the edge of the
sword until he arrived at the borders of the
Ishmaelites.
And Alexander took counsel and founded the
mighty city of Alexandria, which he called after
his own name, [p. 268] and he put away every
one who used divination and idols, for he was a Alexandria
foe unto the priests of false gods and unto augurs
and soothsayers. And he stablished in righteousness
the kingdom of God Almighty in everything which
he saw and which he heard, and God Almighty
stablished his kingdom in righteousness, and wrought
for him his wish in everything which he desired
and imagined. Now without purity of body, and
prayer, and alms, and oblations a man is not able
to please God Almighty, for the beauty of therhesinsof
person of Amnon, the son of David, availed nothing, p^J]^"
^°
and he committed folly with his sister Tamar,' and
David his father also repented sorely by reason
of the wife of Aryuk' (Uriah); but Alexander
kept his body pure from the pleasures of lust.
And again Alexander heard concerning the seed
ofjaphetwho polluted their bodies, and who were
to be reckoned with the beasts, and who ate the
unclean beasts which were forbidden in the Law, Destruction
besides [other] unclean animals. And he prayed pies of Gog
to God Almighty, and then set out and came to""^**^^"^-
the country of those devourers of men, and he
' See 2 Samuel xiii. 14. ' See 2 Samuel xii. 16.
LLL