NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 317 vii. 1), Ninus -was killed by Semiramis. The hero lover and the divine son were united in the person of the shortlived husband and king. In conclusion, let us seek to flpfino precisely the result attained. Semiramis is a nama and form of Astarte, and the story of her conquests in upper Aria is a translation into the language of political history of the diffusion and victories of her worship in that region. The centre of diffusion-at least the main centre-was Bambyce or

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... erapolis, the greatest sanctuary of the Syrian goddess, to which, at the annual feast of Semiramis's birth from the Euphrates, pilgrims gathered in the time of Lncian ' from all Syria and Arabia and from the parts beyond the river.' Hierapolis was never the seat of a great monarchy, but it was a great meeting-place of trade, where the waterway of the Euphrates was intersected by the road from Ccele-Syria to upper Mesopotamia and the farther east. And just as the worship of Astarte (Aphrodite) was carried to the west by Phoenician traders, the same worship was spread by Aramaean traders in the lands of the east. The empire of Assyria had, so far as we know, no share in the thing at alL It was by a mere blunder of the Greeks or of some ignorant Syrian consulted by the Greeks that the Ninus or Ninyas of Hierapolitan myth was brought into connexion with Nineveh; crude euhemerism, a free handling of the local myths of Semiramis sanctuaries, and a large importation of elements borrowed from the story of Alwrandflr, did the rest, and produced the fabulous Greek history of the foundation of the Assyrian empire. It would be easy to show that the same circle of myth was pressed into service for the Greek story of Sardanapalus, in which the warlike Assurbanip&l is disguised in the vestments of an effeminate Semitic god. W. BOBSBTSON SlOTH. THE DEIFICATION OF AIiKXASDKB THE GBEAT. OLTM magna res erat deum fieri, jam famam mimum fsdstis, said Father Janus to the assembled gods; and where so respectable a divinity leads the way, we men ought surely to assist the tory party in Olympus in the laudable endeavour to maintain the exolusiveness of their ancient company; but in this instance if we protest against the gratuitous ascription of divinity to Alexander, son of Philip, we do it rather to his glory than his humiliation. Historians have been strangely persistent in repeating this charge against the great Macedonian, that he would have been a god: the strictures of Niebuhr and Grote are not more damning than the apologies of Droysen; nor does Thirlwall or Professor Freeman discredit the legend. And yet it is so utterly groundless, and withal so injurious, that it may be worth while to examine in some detail this imputation of insolence and folly laid to the account of one with whose name romance has been so busy as to leave small space for history. It need hardly be premised that in such inquiry we must depend chiefly on Arrian, the most critical and best informed of the Alexander historians, and removed by little more than are the other extant chroniclers from the period of which he treats; but still four honored years is at Carleton University on June 25, 2015 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from NOTES AND DOCUMENTS April 1 Diod. xvii. 49. ' Justin, xi.lL • Arrian, iii-3, 4.