This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ...and took a general review of his troops by torchlight. Meantime Alexander suffered his Macedonians to repose themselves, and with his soothsayer Aristander, performed some private ceremonies before his tent, and offered sacrifices to Fear. The oldest of his friends, and Parmenio in particular, when they beheld the plain between Niphates and the Gordaean Mountains, all illumined with the torches of the barbarians, and heard the tumultuary and appalling noise from their camp, like the bellowings of an immense sea, were astonished at their numbers, and observed among themselves how arduous an enterprise it would be to meet such a torrent of war in open day. They waited upon the king, therefore, when he had finished the sacrifice, and advised him to attack the enemy in the night, when darkness would hide what was most dreadful in the combat. Upon which he gave them that celebrated answer, I will not steal a victory. It is true, this answer has been thought by some to savor of the vanity of a young man who derided the most obvious danger: yet others have thought it not only well calculated to encourage his troops at that time, but politic enough in respect to the future; because, if Darius had happened to be beaten, it left him no handle to proceed to another trial, under pretence that night and darkness had been his adversaries, as he had before laid the blame upon the mountains, the narrow passes, and the sea. For in such a vast empire, it could never be the want of arms or men that would bring Darius to give up the dispute; but the ruin of his hopes and spirits, in consequence of the loss of a battle, where he had the advantage of numbers and of daylight. When his friends were gone, Alexander retired to rest in his tent, and he is said to...