240. The Persian Campaigns. In the spring of 334 B.C. Alexander crossed the Hellespont with thirty-five thousand disciplined troops. The number was quite enough to scatter any Oriental army, and as large as any general could handle in long and rapid marches in a hostile country; but it contrasts strangely with the huge hordes Xerxes had led against Greece a century and a half before.

The path of march and the immense distances traversed can be best traced by the map. The conquest of the empire occupied five years, and the story falls into three distinct chapters, each marked by a world-famous battle.

a. Asia Minor: Battle of the Granicus.-The Persian satraps of Asia Minor met the invaders at the Granicus, a small stream in the Troad. With the personal rashness that was the one blot upon his supreme military skill, Alexander led the Macedonian charge through the river and up the steep bank into the midst of the Persian cavalry, where he barely escaped death. The Persian nobles fought, as always, with gallant self-devotion, but were utterly routed. Then the Greek mercenaries in Persian pay were surrounded and cut down to a man. No quarter was to be given Hellenes fighting as traitors to the cause of Hellas. The victory cost Alexander only one hundred and twenty men, and it made him master of all Asia Minor. He then set up democracies in the Greek cities, requiring them, however, to grant amnesties to other factions, and he spent some months in receiving the submission and organizing the government of the various provinces.

b. The Mediterranean Coast: Battle of Issus.—To strike at the heart of the empire at once would have been to leave in the rear a large Persian fleet which might encourage revolt in Greece. Alexander wisely determined to secure the entire coast before marching into the interior. Turning south, just after crossing the mountains that separate Asia Minor from Syria, at Issus he defeated a Persian host of six hundred thousand men, led by King Darius in person. The cramped space between the mountains and the sea made the very numbers of the Persians

an embarrassment to themselves, and they soon became a huddled mob of fugitives. Alexander now assumed the title of King of Persia. The sieges of Tyre (§ 59) and Gaza detained him a year, but Egypt welcomed him as a deliverer, and by the close of 332 B.C. all the sea power of the world was his. While in Egypt he showed his constructive genius by founding Alexandria at one of the mouths of the Nile a city destined to be the commercial and intellectual capital of the world for centuries, where before there had been a mere haunt of pirates.

c. The Tigris-Euphrates District: Battle of Arbela. - Rejecting contemptuously a proposed division of the empire with Darius, Alexander resumed his march. Following the ancient routes from Egypt to Assyria (§ 12), he met Darius at Arbela, near ancient Nineveh. The Persians are said to have numbered

a million men. Alexander purposely allowed them choice of time and place, and by a third decisive victory proved the hopelessness of resistance in the field. Darius never gathered another army. The capitals of the empire Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis surrendered, with enormous treasure in gold and silver, and the Persian Empire had fallen (331 B.C.)

241. Campaigns in the Far East. The next six years went, however, to much more desperate warfare in the eastern mountain regions, and in the Punjab. Alexander carried his arms almost twice as far east from Babylon as Babylon was from Macedonia. He traversed great deserts, subdued the warlike and princely barons of Bactria and Sogdiana up to the steppes of the wild Tartar tribes beyond the Oxus, twice forced the passes of the Hindukush (a feat almost unparalleled), subdued the valiant mountaineers of what is now Afghanistan, and led his army into the fertile and populous plains of northern India. He crossed the Indus, won realms beyond the ancient Persian province of the Punjab, and planned still more distant empires; but on the banks of the Hyphasis his faithful Macedonians refused to be led farther to waste away in inhuman perils,

and the chagrined conqueror was compelled to return to Babylon - to die there of a fever two years later (323 B.C.) in the midst of preparations to extend his conquests both east and west. The last years, however, were given mainly to organizing the empire; and to the results of this constructive work we will now turn.

II. THE RESULTS OF ALEXANDER'S WORK.

242. Alexander's Expanding Views: "Merging of East and West.' Alexander began his conquest to avenge the West upon the East; but as he came to see the excellent and noble qualities in Oriental life also, he rose rapidly with the years to a broader vision. He aimed no longer to hold a world-empire in subjection by the force of a small conquering tribe, but to amalgamate Persian and Greek into one people on terms of equality and coöperation; he wished to marry the East and the West" to bring them together into a composite civilization, to which each should contribute its better elements."

Persian youth were trained by thousands in Macedonian fashion to replace the veterans of Alexander's army; Persian nobles were welcomed at court and given high preferment; and in general the government of Asia was entrusted largely to Asiatics, on a system similar to that of Darius the Great (§§ 75-77). Alexander himself adopted Persian manners and customs, and married Persian wives, and bribed and coaxed his officers and soldiers to do the like. This was design to encourage the fusion of the two peo as. jealously protested, and even rebelled, but were aickly reduced to obedience; and there is no question as to the statesmanlike wisdom of Alexander's plan.

1 part of a deliberate The Macedonians

"The dream of his youth melted away, but a new vision in larger perspective arose with ever-strengthening outlines in its place. The champion of the West against the East faded in mist, and the form of a worldmonarch, standing above the various worlds of men and belonging to

1 Topic: anecdotes of Alexander's later years; the change in his character. See Wheeler's Alexander for an ardent defense, and note pp. 227-229 for an excellent description.

none, but molding them all into one, emerged in its stead." - WHEELER, Alexander the Great, 376.1

243. Hellenism the Active Element: the Many Alexandrias. At the same time Alexander saw that to fulfill this mission he must throw open the East to Greek ideas. The races might

mingle their blood; the Greek might learn from the Orient, and in the end be absorbed by it; but the thought and art of little Hellas must leaven with its active energy the vast passive mass of the East.

A vital measure, adopted consciously to this end, was the foundation of chains of cities to bind together these conquests. and to become the homes of Hellenic influence. Alexander himself built seventy of these towns (usually called from his name, like the first Alexandria in Egypt). Their walls sprang up under the

pick and spade of the soldiery along the lines of marchsometimes mere garrison towns on distant frontiers, but oftener mighty emporiums at the intersection of great lines of trade. There was an Alexandria on the Jaxartes, on the Indus, on the Euphrates, as well as on the Nile. One great city, we are told, walls and houses, was completed in twenty

1 Benjamin Ide Wheeler, throughout his brilliant volume, gives special emphasis to this view of Alexander's mission: