Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

460 THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
with their feet, and to blow the horns, and to beat
the drums, and sound the trumpets, and [to play] all
the instruments of music which they had made. Then
God Almighty opened the eyes of Alexander's
understanding, and he knew that the cunning con-
trivances which they had made were of brass, and
Brass musi- that they had no breath of life in them, and that
ta.
" "" they were only vain things which were moved
from beneath by levers and wheels. And, moreover,
Alexander saw on the other side of the battlements
a descent [into the city] from the walls, to the
right of the place where he himself had gone up,
at a distance of twenty-four cubits, and he measured
[the distance] with his eyes and went there back-
wards. Now the other men had not been able to
return, when once they had seen that mechanical
contrivance, without falling down from the descent
headlong into the city; but Alexander went back
from it to the place in the battlements where was
the ladder by which he had gone up.
Alexander Then Alexander set up two other ladders at
men how '^that to spot, and spake unto three chosen and discreet
enter the
men, saying, "Come, get ye down into the city,
city.
"but blindfold yourselves that ye may not see the
"instruments of music until ye have reached the
"ground, and have opened the gates of the castle;
"take good heed unto my words that ye may not
"destroy [p. 277] yourselves altogether." And the
men mounted the ladders, and when they had
reached the batdements Alexander shewed them the
place of descent, where they were to go down, and