Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

A CHRISTIAN ROMANCE. 47 I
cunning contrivance of brass, and they imagined
that Alexander the king was there ; and boundless
fear, and terror, and trembling entered into them,
and they fled straightway to the ends of the earth.
And they continued to come there wishing to
remove the brazen figure, and they went round The
about it wishing to find an opportunity to
pents flee at
carry. tj,e sound of
it off, but when they heard the
e music.
sound [thereof]"'
they fled [to the ends of the earth], and were
vanquished, and there they dwell until this present
and until this very day, even as Alexander prayed.
Thus God Almighty, the Good, the Merciful, heard
him that endured patiently in righteousness; and
Alexander returned to Macedonia with honour
and praise, and with gold and silver.
And Alexander came to the country of Babylon.'
And he, in [his] wisdom, looked into the mighty
sea,^ and found by the side thereof, quite close
to the bitter water of the sea, a rock having a
space of ten cubits, and he set up thereon pillars
of white marble and fixed them with bitumen, and
pitch, and lead, and metal, and he set walls round
about the pillars with [other] pillars; for the waves and
billows of the sea used to dash among the pillars
And he covered the building as it were with brass
and he made sluices or openings therein that al
the waste and refuse might be washed thither
' /. e., Babylon of Egypt.
" Compare the account of the founding of Alexandria as
given by Mas'^udl, torn. ii. p. 420 ff.