Therefore it is even more just to apply Themistocles' saying to the nations conquered by Alexander. Those who were vanquished by Alexander are happier than those who escaped his hand for these had no one to put an end to the wretchedness of their existence, while the victor compelled those others to lead a happy life. Although few of us read Plato's Laws, yet hundreds of thousands have made use of Alexander's laws, and continue to use them. Plato wrote a book on the One Ideal Constitution, but because of its forbidding character he could not persuade anyone to adopt it but Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Grecian magistracies, and thus overcame its uncivilized and brutish manner of living. And although Socrates, when tried on the charge of introducing foreign deities, lost his cause to the informers who infested Athens, yet through Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the Gods of the Greeks. But when Alexander was civilizing Asia, Homer was commonly read, and the children of the Persians, of the Susianians, and of the Gedrosians learned to chant the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. ![]() We admire the character of Zeno, which persuaded Diogenes the Babylonian to be a philosopher. O wondrous power of Philosophic Instruction, that brought the Indians to worship Greek Gods, and the Scythians to bury their dead, not to devour them! We admire Carneades' power, which made Cleitomachus, formerly called Hasdrubal, and a Carthaginian by birth, adopt Greek ways. "But if you examine the results of Alexander's instruction, you will see that he educated the Hyrcanians to respect the marriage bond, and taught the Arachosians to till the soil, and persuaded the Sogdians to support their parents, not to kill them, and the Persians to revere their mothers and not to take them in wedlock. His seven sons were Ochimus, Cercaphus, Macar, Actis, Tenages, Triopas, and Candalus, and there was one daughter, ElectryonĂȘ, who quit this life while still a maiden and attained at the hands of the Rhodians to honours like those accorded to the heroes." In consequence of these events the island was considered to be sacred to Helius, and the Rhodians of later times made it their practice to honour Helius above all the other Gods, as the ancestor and founder from whom they were descended. ![]() But the true explanation is that, while in the first forming of the world the island was still like mud and soft, the sun dried up the larger part of its wetness and filled the land with living creatures, and there came into being the Heliadae, who were named after him, seven in number, and other peoples who were, like them, sprung from the land itself. Helius, the myth tells us, becoming enamoured of Rhodos, named the island Rhodes after her and caused the water which had overflowed it to disappear. "And when the flood came the rest of the inhabitants perished, - and since the waters, because of the abundant rains, overflowed the island, its level parts were turned into stagnant pools - but a few fled for refuge to the upper regions of the island and were saved, the sons of Zeus being among their number.
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