be doubted whether the strong repression of a foreign power was not a better thing than the freedom which during the whole course of their history had been little more than a fine name for feuds, factions, and internecine war.

the Great.

CHAPTER III.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

THE young Alexander, commonly called the Great, was born when his father had just entered on his career of successful war and still more successful diplomacy. He inherited the qualities of Early years both his parents, and the result was the combination of Alexander of a boundless ambition with sober and practical wisdom in dealing with the exigencies of the moment. He grew up with the consciousness that he was the heir of a king whose power was rising with vast and rapid strides; and the stories told of him attest at the least the early awakening of a mind formed in the mould of the heroes of mythical Hellas. Nay, the blood of Achilleus was flowing, as he believed, in his veins; and the flattery of his Akarnanian tutor Lysimachos, who addressed him as the Son of Peleus, may have strengthened in him his pas sionate love of the immortal poems which told the story of that fiery warrior. By another tutor, the Molossian Leonidas, his vehement impulses were checked by a wholesome discipline, while his ambition was quickened by a rebuke which, on his placing too much incense in the censer, bade him wait until he became master of the lands in which the frankincense grew. But the genius of Alexander was moulded in a far greater degree by that of Aristotle, the greatest conqueror in the world of thought. At the age of thirteen he became for three years the pupil of a man, who had examined with keen scrutiny the political growth and the constitutions of a crowd of states, and who had brought together a vast amount of facts and observations for the systematic cultivation of physical science. During these three years the boy awoke to the knowledge that a wonderful world lay before him of which he had seen little, and threw himself with insatiable eagerness into the task of gathering, it is said, at any cost a collection for the study of natural history. While his mind was thus urged in one direction, he listened to stories which told him of the great quarrel still to be fought out between the East and the West, and learnt to look upon himself as the champion of Hellas against the barbarian despot of Sousa,

340 B.C.

Fends in the house of Philip.

The future conqueror was sixteen years of age when he was left at home as regent while his father besieged Byzantion and Perinthos. Two years later the alliance of Thebes and Athens was wrecked on the fatal field of Chaironeia. But the prospects of Alexander himself became now for a time dark and uncertain. The admiration which Philip had once felt for Olympias, Alexander's mother, had long since given way to dislike and even to dread of her furious and vindictive temper. The Molossian princess was divorced, and Kleopatra the daughter of the Makedonian Attalos took her place. This act roused the wrath not only of Olympias but of her son, who, if the tale is to be believed, hurled a goblet at Attalos when at the marriage feast the latter expressed a hope that Philip might soon have a legitimate successor to his power. Blind with rage, Philip, the story goes on to say, rushed on his son with his drawn sword, but stumbled and fell partly from passion, more from drunkenness, while Alexander with lofty contempt bade the guests look at the man who wished to extend his conquests from Europe into Asia while he was unable to convey himself steadily from one couch to another. With Olympias Alexander took refuge in Epeiros. Kleopatra became the mother of a son. Her father Attalos rose higher in the king's favour, and not a few of Alexander's friends were banished. The feuds in his family formed no subject of pleasant thought to Philip himself, who sought to counteract their ill arranging a marriage between his daughter Kleopatra and her uncle, the Epeirot King, Alexander, the brother of Olympias. The marriage feast was celebrated at Aigai. Clothed in a white robe, and walking purposely apart from his guards, Philip was approaching the theatre when he was struck dead by the dagger of Pausanias, a man who, having been horribly wronged by Attalos, had in vain sought redress from the king. The murderer was at once cut down; and it became impossible to learn from him whether he had or had not any accomplices in his crime. Some were suspected and put to death, others who were at a safe distance were eager to accuse themselves: but if the Persian king boasted, as it is said, of his share in the matter, he took credit to himself for an incitement which to a man in the position of Pausanias was at the least superfluous.

effects by

Assassina. tion of Philip at Aigai.

336 B.C.

Alexander becomes

It is certain that Alexander, if he mourned his father's death at all, can have deplored it only as involving himself in political difficulties; but he took care to act as if he were grieved by it, and (if we may give credit to the extant writings of historians of which unfortunately not one is contemporaneous) he avenged it we are told by putting out of the way all whose claims or designs might clash with his own. Among these was his cousin Amyntas, the son of Perdikkas, elder

king.

brother of Philip, together with the infant son of Kleopatra, who fell a victim herself to the unforgiving Olympias.

The Greeks of Thebes and Athens knew little what sort of man had taken the place of Philip. Demosthenes, who, although he was Alexander at mourning for the death of his own daughter, appeared Thermopy- in festal attire to announce the death of the Make336 B.C. donian king, held up Alexander to ridicule as a bragging and senseless Margites; and, not in Athens merely or in Sparta, it was believed that the hour had come for shaking off the oppressor's yoke. But they were to reckon with one who could swoop on his prey with the swiftness of the eagle. Barely two months had passed from the death of his father, before the youth of twenty years stood with his army on the plains of Thessaly. The argument of the Makedonian phalanx was not to be resisted. The Thessalians recognised him as the Hegemon or leader of the Greeks and the youthful king passed on to Thebes, which had been held by a Makedonian garrison since the fatal fight at Chaironeia. Thence he betook himself across the isthmus to Corinth; and Athenian envoys headed by Demades, and accompanied by Demosthenes as far as the frontier, carried to Alexander apologies more abject and honours more extravagant than any which had been paid to his father. He received them at Corinth in an assembly from which he demanded the title of supreme leader of the Hellenic armies, and to which he guaranteed in his turn the autonomy of every Hellenic city. None knew better than Alexander that from the whole armoury of weapons which might be forged to crush the independence of Hellas none would more effectually do his work than a theory of freedom which meant disunion, and of selfgovernment which meant endless feud, faction, and war.

When, a little while after his glorification at Corinth, Alexander set out on an expedition across the mighty barrier of the Balkan range, he disappeared from the world of the Greeks. Silence

Destruction of Thebes.

335 B.C.

led to rumours of his defeat, and the rumours of defeat were followed by more confident assertions of his death. At Thebes and at Athens the tidings were received by some with eager belief. The covenant made with Alexander was made only with him personally. The Theban exiles at Athens were anxious to repeat the attempt which, half a century earlier, had been made against the Spartan garrison of the Kadmeia by Pelopidas; and with help in arms and money from Demosthenes and other Athenians they entered Thebes, obtained from the assembly a declaration of its autonomy, and summoned the garrison in the citadel to surrender. The answer was a blank refusal; and a double line of circumvallation was drawn around the Kadmeia, while envoys were sent to call forth aid from

every quarter. The belief in Alexander's death was dispelled not by any gradual reports of his escape from the barbarians, but suddenly by his own appearance at the Boiotian Onchestos. He had just defeated his enemies when he heard of the revolt of Thebes, and he determined to smite the rebels without turning aside to take even a day's rest at Pella. Within a fortnight he had occupied the pass of Thermopylai, and two days later his army was encamped on the southern side of Thebes, thus cutting off all chances of aid from Athens. It was his wish to avoid an assault: and he contented himself with demanding the surrender of two only of the anti-Makedonian leaders, offering to re-admit the rest to the convention made at Corinth during the preceding year. The citizens generally were anxious to submit: but the exiles felt or feared themselves to be too deeply committed, and the answer took the form of a defiance accompanied by a demand for the surrender of Antipatros and Philotas. They had sealed their own doom. Personal bravery was of no use against the discipline, the numbers, and the engines of the enemy. The defenders were driven back into the city: the invaders burst in with them, and the slaughter which followed was by no means inflicted by the Makedonians alone. The Plataians, Thespians, and Orchomenians felt that they had old scores to settle. To their decision and to that of the rest of his Greek allies Alexander submitted the treatment of the city. The sentence was promptly pronounced. The measure which the Thebans would have dealt out to Athens on its surrender to Lysandros should now be dealt out to themselves. The walls and every building within them were to be rased to the ground; its territory was to be shared by the allies; the whole people (priests and priestesses with the Proxenoi or friends of the Makedonians being the only exceptions) were to be sold as slaves, and such as had escaped were to be pronounced outlaws whom no Greek city should dare to harbour. As they had said, so was it done, the house of the poet Pindar alone being spared from demolition and his descendants alone being allowed to retain their freedom. It was convenient for Arrian to say that this frightful havoc was wrought not by Alexander, but by his Greek allies. jackals had done the lion's work: but there can be little doubt that they had done it precisely as he wished it to be done. His end was gained. The spirit of the Greeks was crushed. A great city was blotted out, and the worship of its gods was ended with its ruin. These gods were in due time, it was believed, to take vengeance on the conqueror. Dionysos, the lord of the wine-cup and the revel, the special guardian and patron of the Theban city and land, was not to be defied and insulted with impunity; and his hand was seen in the awful crimes committed in the far East by the

The

drunken madman whose victories had led him to believe in his own divinity.

Alexander at Corinth.

335 B.C.

But for the present the only hindrance to his eastern enterprise was removed from the path of Alexander. Without turning aside to Athens he went on to Corinth to receive again the adulations of the independent Greeks, and to find a less courtly speaker, it is said, in the Cynic Diogenes who, on being asked whether Alexander could do anything to serve him, replied from his tub that he might stand aside out of his sunshine. From Corinth he returned to Makedonia, having left Greece for the last time.

Passage of the Helles

pont.

334 B.C. April.

Six months later he set off from Pella, and crossed the Hellespont at Sestos, to appease at Ilion by a costly sacrifice the wrath of the luckless Priam, and then marched on, with not more perhaps than 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry and with a treasure chest almost empty, to destroy the monarchy of Cyrus. With him went men who were to be linked with the memory of his worst crimes and of his most astonishing triumphs,-Hephaistion, Kleitos, Eumenes, Seleukos, Ptolemy the son of Lagos, Parmenion with his sons Philotas and Nikanor. His work was more than half done when he stood with his army on Asiatic soil. The Persian fleet might have baffled him at the outset; but his Makedonian phalanx was a perfect military machine which placed every enemy at a serious disadvantage.

The effects of their discipline on the ill-trained and ill-officered forces of the Persians were to be seen at once on the banks of the Granikos, a little stream flowing to the Propontis from Losing, it is said, only 60 of his his infantry, he annihilated the

March of

Alexander to the slopes of Ida. cavalry and 30 of

Gordion.

Persian force, 2,000 out of 20,000 infantry being taken prisoners, and nearly all the rest slain. The terror of his name did his work, as he marched southwards. The citadel of Sardeis might with ease have been held against him: before he came in sight of the city, the Persian governor hastened to surrender it with the town and all its treasure. At Ephesos he found the city abandoned by its garrison: Miletos he carried by storm. Before Halikarnassos he encountered a more obstinate resistance from the Athenian Ephialtes; but the generalship and the valour of the latter were of no avail. Alexander entered Halikarnassos, and the Rhodian Memnon remained shut up in the citadel. Leaving Ptolemy with 3,000 men to blockade it, Alexander spent the winter

333 B.C. in the conquest of Lykia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia, ending his campaign at Gordion on the river Sangarios.

Here was preserved the ancient waggon of Gordios, the mythical Phrygian king. Whoever could untie the knot, curiously