"Eternim testatur eorum
Finis amicitias regum non esse perennes."

Here comes the march upon India. Kings successively submit. Porus alone
dares to resist. With a numerous army he awaits the Macedonian on the
Hydaspes. The two armies stand face to face on opposite banks. Then
occurs the episode of two youthful Greeks, Nicanor and Symmachus, born
the same day, and intimate, like Nisus and Euryalus. Their perilous
expedition fails, under the pressure of numbers, and the two friends,
cut off and wounded, after prodigies of valor, at last embrace, and die
in each other's arms. Then comes the great battle. Porus, vanquished,
wounded, and a prisoner, is brought before Alexander. His noble spirit
touches the generous heart of the conqueror, who returns to him his
dominions, increases them, and places him in the number of friends,--

"Odium clementia vicit."

The gates of the East are now open. His movement has the terror of
thunder breaking in the middle of the night,--

"Quean sequitur fragor et fractae collisio nubis."

A single city arrests the triumphant march. Alexander besieges it, and
himself mounts the first to the assault. His men are driven back. Then
from the top of the ladder, instead of leaping back, he throws himself
into the city, and alone confronts the enemy. Surrounded, belabored,
wounded, he is about to perish, when his men, learning his peril,
redouble their efforts, burst open the gates, inundate the place, and
massacre the inhabitants. After a painful operation, Alexander is
restored to his army and to his great plans of conquest. The joy of the
soldiers, succeeding their sorrow, is likened to that of sailors, who,
after seeing the pilot overboard, and ready to be ingulfed by the raging
floods, as Boreas dances, _Borea bacchante_, at last behold him rescued
from the abyss and again at the helm. But the army is disturbed by the
preparation for distant maritime expeditions. Alexander avows that the
world is too small for him; that, when it is all conquered, he will push
on to subjugate another universe; that he will lead them to the
Antipodes and to another Nature; and that, if they refuse to accompany
him, he will go forth alone and offer himself as chief to other people.
The army is on fire with this answer, and vow again never to abandon
their king.

The tenth book is the last. Nature, indignant that a mortal should
venture to penetrate her hidden places, suspend