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throughout Greece to the partizans and personal friends of the king. A vast concourse assembled. Not only came princes and statesmen, but many cities, among them Athens, were present by their representatives, and sent crowns of gold and series of resolutions to express their loyalty, and to do the king appropriate honor. It became a truly imperial fête, the festal ratification of the newly founded empire, the hailing of the emperor; but in the midst of it all Philip was foully murdered.

The perpetrator of the deed was one Pausanias, a Macedonian, member of the king's body-guard; the motive, private revenge. Pausanias had suffered a most degrading insult at the hands of Attalus, Cleopatra's uncle. He besought the king to give him revenge. This the king persistently declined to do, being influenced by Cleopatra, and by the consideration of Attalus's importance to him as a general. Pausanias's hatred turned itself now against the king. Vanity and envy were his consuming passions. In the murder of the king he found satisfaction for both. "How may one become most famous?" he asked, one day, in the course of a discussion with the sophist Hermocrates, whose lectures he was attending. "By making way with one who has done greatest deeds," answered the professor. Attalus, Cleopatra, Philip, had now become one in the eye of his wrath. To kill Philip was to overthrow Attalus, and put his niece at the mercy of Olympias.

The second day of the festival was to be signalized by gala performances in the theater. Clad in a white robe, and attended by a stately procession, Philip advanced toward the gate. The place was already full. Long before daylight people had been crowding in to claim their seats. As an indication of the security felt in the good will of the

people, the king walked in the procession entirely unattended, and with a considerable space intervening between him and his bodyguard. Right at the entrance to the theater the assassin lay in wait for him. A single thrust of the sword laid the king dead at his feet. He sprang to his horse, and was off. The king's guards rushed in pursuit. But for an accident, he would have escaped. As he galloped away, a tangling vine caught his foot; he was thrown from his horse, and, before he could rise, Perdiccas and the guards. who were in pursuit had made way with him. But Philip the Great was dead-in the fortyseventh year of his age, the twenty-fourth of his reign.

The murder was purely an act of private and personal revenge, but the most various rumors and subtle surmises were current, connecting with the deed now the rival Lyncestian line, now Olympias and even Alexander, now the poor Shah of Persia himself. That Olympias should have been suspected was perfectly natural. Philip's death was undoubtedly quite acceptable to her. She was entirely capable of having abetted it. Her hatred of Cleopatra and Attalus seemed, furthermore, to form a band of common interest between the assassin and herself. All these things serve, however, rather to explain how the suspicion arose than to prove its correctness. The strained political situation undoubtedly stimulated the murderous instinct of the doer of the deed, as was the case with the assassin of President Garfield; but more than this we have no right to infer from the evidence. The suspicions affecting Alexander were most certainly baseless, as all his actions then and thereafter would amply prove, if there were need of proof.

Be it as it may, Philip was gone, and, to all appearances, his empire with him. His heir was a stripling of twenty years.

(To be continued.)

·BRADLEY

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