to the deceased. The messengers brought him an answer, that he might
declare Hephæstion a demigod, and order that he should be worshipped.
Accordingly, Alexander then sent an express command to Cleomenes that
he should build a temple to his lost favourite in his new city of
Alexandria, and that the lighthouse which was to be built on the island
of Pharos should be named after him; and as modern insurances against
risks by sea usually begin with the words "In the name of God; Amen;"
so all contracts between merchants in the port of Alexandria were to
be written solemnly "In the name of Hephæstion." Feeling diffident
of enforcing obedience at the mouth of the Nile, while he was himself
writing from the sources of the Indus, he added that if, when he came to
Egypt he found his wish carried into effect, he would pardon Cleomenes
for those acts of misgovernment of which he had been accused, and for
any others which might then come to his ears.

A somatophylax in the Macedonian army was no doubt at first, as the
word means, one of the officers who had to answer for the king's safety;
perhaps in modern language a colonel in the body-guards or household
troops; but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful officer who was
nearest the king's person, to whose watchfulness he trusted in the hour
of danger, often found himself the adviser in matters of state, so,
in the time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given to those
generals on whose wisdom the king chiefly leaned, and by whose advice
he was usually guided. Among these, and foremost in Alexander's love and
esteem, was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. Philip, the father of Alexander,
had given Arsinoë, one of his relations, in marriage to Lagus; and her
eldest son Ptolemy, born soon after the marriage, was always thought to
be the king's son, though never so acknowledged. As he grew up, he was
put into the highest offices by Philip, without raising in the young
Alexander's mind the distrust which might have been felt if Ptolemy