HKB
258: "Athlothetæ." The judges or umpires in the Greek games, whose seats were opposite to the goal at the side of the stadium. Vide Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities, s.v. "stadium."]
Then Cyrus, King of the Persians, made the same attempt; but after the destruction of Babylon, and the transference of its Empire to Persia, he did not even reach the regions of the West, but lost his life and his object in one day at the hands of Tamiris, Queen of the Scythians.[259]
[Footnote 259: Oros. ii. 7.--(W.)]
But after that these had failed, Xerxes, the son of Darius and king among the Persians, assailed the world with so great a multitude of nations, with so great a power, that he bridged the channel of the sea which separates Asia from Europe, between Sestos and Abydos. And of this wonderful work Lucan makes mention in the second book of his Pharsalia:[260] "Such paths across the seas, made by Xerxes in his pride, fame tells of." But finally he was miserably repulsed from his enterprise, and could not attain the goal.
[Footnote 260: Phars. ii. 692.--(W.)]
Besides these kings, and after their times, Alexander, King of Macedon, came nearest of all to the prize of monarchy; he sent ambassadors to the Romans to demand their submission, but before the Roman answer came, he fell in Egypt, as Livy[261] tells us, as it were in the middle of the course. Of his burial there, Lucan speaks in the eighth book of his Pharsalia,[262] where he is inveighing against Ptolemy, King of Egypt: "Thou last of the Lagæan race, soon to perish in thy degeneracy, and to yield thy kingdom to an incestuous sister; while for thee the Macedonian is kept in the sacred cave...."
[Footnote 261: Not Livy. Cf. ix. 18, 3, where, speaking of Alexander and the Romans, he says: "Quem ne famâ quidem illis notum arbitror fuisse." The story is Greek in origin, coming from Cleitarchus (according to Pliny, Hist. Nat. iii. 9), who accompanied Alexander on his Asiatic expedition. Cf. Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome*, lect. 52, Grote, *History of Greece, vol. xii. p. 70, note, who argue for its truth, and Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. i. p. 394, who argues against it. Dante, says Witte, used legends about Alexander now lost. Cf. Inf. xiv. 31.]
[Footnote 262: VIII. 692.]
"Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" Who will not marvel at thee here? For when Alexander was trying to hinder his Roman competitor in the race, thou didst suddenly snatch him away from the contest that his rashness might proceed no further.
But that Rome has won the crown of so great a victory is proved on the testimony of many. Our poet in his first Æneid says:[263] "Hence, surely, shall one day the Romans come, as the years roll on, to be the leaders of the world, from the blood of Teucer renewed; over the sea and over the land they shall hold full sway."[264] And Lucan, in his first book, writes: "The sword assigns the kingdom; and the fortune of that mighty people that rules o'er sea and land and the whole earth, admitted not two to rule." And Boethius, in his second book,[265] speaking of the Roman prince says: "With his sceptre he ruled the nations, those whom Phoebus beholds, from his rising afar to where he sinks his beams beneath the waves; those who are benumbed by the frosty Seven Stars of the north, those whom the fierce south wind scorches with his heat, parching the burning sands." And Luke, the Scribe of Christ, bears the same testimony, whose every word is true, where he says: "There went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed;" from which words we must plainly understand that the Romans had jurisdiction over the whole world.
[Footnote 263: I. 234.--(W.)]
[Footnote 264: I. 109.--(W.)]