Note 278 — Chapter III · —Speech of Coenus on behalf of the army—Alexander’s displeasure at the refusal of the soldiers to advance—He resolves to return—Raises altars as memorials of his presence—Reaches the Acesines, where Coenus dies—Reconciles Taxiles and Porus, and then sails down stream

“This speech, put into the mouth of Coenus, has a peculiar literary interest beyond the ordinary run of orations written for their leading characters by the rhetorical historians of antiquity. In the remaining works of the elder Seneca we have a suasoria or hortatory oration (see Mayor on Juvenal, i. 16) on this very subject, in which are arranged all the telling sentences that some of the most famous Roman rhetoricians could compose to suit the situation. The remarkable parallels found in this collection to the present speech of Curtius illustrates in a very striking way the artificial nature of these harangues, and show what a vast amount of labour this spirited and polished specimen probably took to produce. The corresponding speech in Arrian, v. 27, though less pointed than that in Curtius, is more natural and easy, and certainly far superior to that put into the mouth of Alexander” (Alexander in India, p. 140, n. 5).