 Chapter 18 Part 1 of A History of Grease to the Death of Alexander the Great. Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A History of Grease to the Death of Alexander the Great. Volume 2 by John Bagnale Burry. Chapter 18 Part 1. The Conquest of the Far East. Section 1. Hercania, Aria, Bactria, Sagdiana. The murderers of Darius fled, Bessis to Bactria, Narbizanes to Hercania, and the direction of their flight determined the course of Alexander's advance. He could not pursue Bessis while there was an enemy behind him in the Caspian region, and therefore his first movement was to cross the Ober's chain of mountains which separate the south Caspian shores from Parthia and subdue the lands of the Tapuri and Mardi. The Persian officers who had retreated into these regions submitted and were received with favor. The life of Nabarzanis was spared. The Greek mercenaries who had found refuge in the Tapurian mountains capitulated. All who had entered the Persian service, before the Cenedrian of Corinth had pledged Greece to the cause of Macedon, were released. The rust were compelled to serve in the Macedonian army for the same pay which they had received from Darius. The importance of the well-witted southern coast of the Caspian was understood by Alexander, and he sent orders to Parmenio to go forth from Ektabana and take possession of the Caduzian territory on the southwestern side of the sea. He himself could not tarry. Having rested a fortnight at Zadrakarta and held athletic games, he marched eastward to Susia, a town in the north of Arya, and was met there by Stada Barzanis, governor of Arya, who had made his submission and was confirmed in his satrapy. Here the news arrived that Bessis had assumed the style of great king with the name of Artexerxes and was wearing his turban erect. Alexander started at once, on the road to Bactria. His way would have lain by Merv, in the wilds of Central Asia, the beaten ways of traffic remained the same for thousands of years. But he had not gone far when he was overtaken by the news that Stada Barzanis had revolted behind him. There was nothing to be done but to return and to secure the province of Arya, but this province did not stand alone. It would certainly be upheld in its hostility by the neighboring countries of Aracosia and Drangiana, which formed the satrapy of Barzanis, one of the murderers of Darius. Hurring back and forced marches with the part of his army, Alexander appeared before Ardo-Koana, the capital of Arya. In two days Stada Barzanis galloped away to seek Bessis in Bactria, and his troops who fled to the mountains were pursued and overcome. There was no further resistance, and the conqueror marched southward to Drangiana. His road could hardly be doubtful, the road which leads by Harat into Seistan. And it is probable that Harat is the site of the city which Alexander founded to be capital and stronghold of the new province, Alexandria of the Aryans. The submission of Drangiana was made without a blow. The satrap who had fled to the Indians was given up by them and put to death. At Prophthasia, the capital of the Drangian land, there befell a tragedy, whereof we know too little to judge the right and the wrongs of the case. It came to Alexander's ears that Philotus, the son of Parmenio, was conspiring against his life. The king called an assembly of the Macedonians and stated the charges against the general. Philotus admitted that he had known of a plot to murder Alexander and had said nothing about it, but this was only one of the charges against him. The Macedonians, although many of them were ill-content with the developments of their king's policy in the east, found Philotus guilty and he was pierced by their javelins. The son dead seemed dangerous to let the father live, whether he was involved or not in the treasonable designs of Philotus. A messenger was dispatched with all speed to media, bearing commands to some of the captains of Parmenio's army to put the old general to death. If the guilt of Philotus was assured, and we have no reason to doubt it, we can hardly, so far as Philotus is concerned, blame Alexander for his rigorous measures, which it might have been painful for him to adopt. A crime which might be pardoned in Macedonia could not be dealt gently with in a camp in distant lands where not only success but safety depended on loyalty and discipline. But the death of Parmenio was an arbitrary act of precaution against merely suspected disloyalty. There seemed to have been no proofs against him and there was certainly no trial. In the meantime Alexander had changed his plans. Instead of retracing his steps and following the route to Bactria, which he had originally intended to take, he resolved to fetch a circle and marching through Afghanistan, subduing it as he went, he would cross the Hindu Kush mountains and descend on the plain of the axis from the east. Next he advanced southwards to secure Saistan, and the northwestern regions of Baluchistan, then known as Ghedrosia. The Ariaspai, a peaceful and friendly people whom the Greeks called benefactors, dwelt in the south of Saistan. Alexander passed part of the winter among them and gratified them by a small increase of territory and made them free, subject to no satrap. The neighboring Ghedrosians volunteered their submission and a Ghedrosian satrapy was constituted with its capital, Ipura. When spring came, Alexander pushed north-eastward up the valley of the Haumond to Kandahar. And in pronouncing the name of Kandahar we are perhaps pronouncing the name of the great conqueror, for the chief city which he founded in Arikosia was probably on the site of Kandahar, which seems to be a corruption of its name, Alexandria. The way led over the mountains passed Ghazni into the valley of the upper waters of the Kabul River, and Alexander came to the foot of the high range of the Hindu Kush, the whole massive complex of mountains which diverge from the roof of the world. Dividing southern from central, eastern from western Asia, the Pamirs, the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas were grouped by the Greeks under the general name of Caucasus. But the Hindu Kush was distinguished by the special name of Peropanisus, while Himalayas were called the Emaus. At the foot of the Hindu Kush he spent the winter and founded another Alexandria to secure the region, somewhere to the north of Kabul. It was distinguished as Alexandria of the Caucasus. While he was in these parts he learned that Sadi Barzani's was still abroad in Aria, inflaming a rebellion, some forces were sent to crush him, a battle was fought, and Sadi Barzani's was killed. The crossing of the Caucasus, undertaken in the early spring, was an achievement which, for the difficulties overcome, and the hardship of the cold and want endured seemed to have fallen little short of Hannibal's passage of the Alps. The soldiers had to content themselves with raw meat and the herb of Silphian as a substitute for bread. At length they reached Drapsaka, high up on the northern slope, the frontier fortress of Bactria. Having rested his way-worn army, Alexander went down by the stronghold of Aornus into the plain and marched through a poor country to Bactra, the chief city of the land which has preserved its old site but has changed its name to Baalke. The pretender, Bessis Ardeserxes, had stripped and wasted eastern Bactria up to the foot of the mountains for the purpose of checking the progress of the invading army, but he fled across the Axis when Alexander drew near and his native cavalry deserted him. No man withstood the conqueror and another province was added without a blow to the Macedonian Empire. Alexander lost no time in pursuing the fugitive into Sagdiana. This is a country which lies between the streams of the Axis and the Jaxartes. It was called Sagdiana from the river Sagd, which flows through the land and passing near the cities of Samarakand and Bukhara loses itself in the sands of the desert before it approaches the waters of the Axis. Bessis had burnt his boats, and when Alexander, after a weary march of two or three days through the hot desert, arrived at the banks of the Axis, he was forced to transport his army by the primitive vehicle of skins which the natives of Central Asia then used and still use today. Alexander's soldiers, however, instead of inflating the sheep skins with air, stuffed them with rushes. They crossed the river Ekylif, where its banks contract to the width of about two-thirds of a mile, and advanced on the road to Maraconda, the chief city of the country, easily recognized as Samarakand. Bessis had no support north of the Axis. He had some Sagdian allies, at the head of whom were Spitaminis and Datofernis, but these men had no attention of sacrificing their country to the cause of the pretender. Thinking that Alexander's only object was to capture Bessis, and that he would then withdraw from Sagdiana and fix the Axis as the northern boundary of his dominion, they sent a message to him offering the surrender of the usurper. The king sent Ptolemy, son of Lagus, with six thousand men to secure Bessis, who was then found in a walled village, deserted by his Sagdian friends. By Alexander's orders he was placed naked and fettered on the right side of the road by which the army was marching. Alexander halted as he passed the captive, and asked him why he had seized and murdered Darius, his king and benefactor. Bessis replied that he had acted in concert with other Persian nobles in the hope of winning the conqueror's favor. He was scourged and sent to Bactra to await his doom. But Alexander did not arrest his march. He had made up his mind to annex Sagdiana. Not the Axis, but the Jacksartes was to be the northern limit of his empire. The children of the waste called this river the Taneus. It was said that the Greeks were deceived into imagining that it was the same river as the familiar Taneus which discharges its waters into the Maotic lake, and hence regarded it as the boundary between Asia and Europe, and thought that the herdsmen of the north who dwelt beyond it were the Skidians of Europe. But they can hardly have fallen into this air, for they imagined that the Caspian was a gulf of the ocean, and the two heirs are inconsistent. Having seized and garrisoned Samaritand, the army pushed on northeastward by the unalterable road which nature has marked out, and occupied seven strongholds which the Sogdians had built as defenses against invaders from the north. The road reached the Jacksartes where that river issues from the chilly veil of Fergana and deflects its course to flow through the steppes. It was a point of the highest importance, for Fergana forms the vestibule of the great gate of communication between southwestern Asia and China. The pass over the Tian Shan mountains which descends on the other side into the land of Kashgar. Later Alexander with strategic insight resolved to fix the limit of his empire, and on the banks of the river he founded a new city which is known as Alexandria, the ultimate. There is no doubt about the situation. It is the later called Gend. The conqueror, judging from the ease with which he had come and conquered Aracosia and Bactria, seems not to have conceived that it might be otherwise beyond the Axis. But the chiefs of Sogdiana were not, as the Persian grandees, they were ready to dare greatly for their freedom against the European invader. As he was designing his new city, Alexander received the news that the land was up in arms behind him. Spittaminis was the leader of the movement, and it was supported by Axiates and other leading Sogdians. The few Macedonian soldiers left in the seven strongholds had been overpowered, and the garrison of Samarakon was besieged in the Citadel. A message had gone forth into the western wastes, and the Masagete and other Scythian tribes were flocking to drive out the intruder. It was a dangerous moment for Alexander. He first returned to recover the fortresses, and in two days he had taken and burned five of them. Chyropolis, the largest and strongest, caused more trouble, but Alexander with a few companions contrived to creep under the wall by the bed of a dry stream and threw open a gate to the troops. The resistance of the inhabitants was furious, and the king was wounded in the melee. The fall of Chyropolis was followed by the capitulation of the seventh town, and the remnant of the indwellers of all these places were led in chains to take part in peopling the new Alexandria. The next task should have been the relief of Samarakon, but Alexander found himself confronted by a new danger, and could send only a few thousand troops to succor the besieged garrison. The herdsmen of the north were pouring down to the banks of the Jaxartes, ready to cross the stream and harass the Macedonians in the rear. It was impossible to move until they had been repelled and the passage of the river secured. The walls of Alexandria were hastily constructed of unburned clay, and the place made fit for habitation in the short space of twenty days. Meanwhile the northern bank was lined by the noisy, enduring hordes of the barbarians, and Alexander determined to cross the river. The offerings were not favorable. They'd be token, said the seer. Personal danger to the king, but Alexander would be mocked no longer. Bringing up his missile engines to the shore, he dismayed the shepherds, who, when stones and darts began to fall among them from such a distance, ununhorst one of their champions, retreated some distance from the bank. The army seized the moment to cross. The Scythians were routed, and Alexander, at the head of his cavalry, pursued them far into the steppes. Parched by the intense summer heat, the king was tempted to drink of the foul water of the desert, and he fell dangerously ill. Thus was the presage of his offerings fulfilled. Luckily Alexander soon recovered, for ill tidings came from the south. When the relieving force approached Maraconda, Spitaminis had fled westward to the town of Sogdiana, which probably answers to Bukhara. The Macedonians marched after him, hoping to drive him utterly out of the land, but they were indiscreet and the whole detachment was cut off. Learning of this disaster, Alexander hurried to Samaricond with cavalry and light troops. Covering the distance, it is said, in three days, a forced march of between fifty and sixty miles a day, which seems almost impossible for foot soldiers, however lightly equipped, in the heat of a Sogdian summer. At his coming, Spitaminis, who had returned to the siege of Samaricond, again darted westward, and Alexander followed in pursuit. Visiting the spot where the unlucky corp had been cut down on the banks of the Sogd, the king buried the dead. Then, crossing the river, he pursued the fugitive chieftain and his Scythian allies to the limits of the waste. He swept on to Sogdiana, ravaging the land, and marching southwestward to the Axis. He crossed into western Bactria and spent the winter at Zaryaspa. The Bactrian cities of Zaryaspa and Bactra bore somewhat the same relation to one another as the Sogdian cities of Maraconda and Sogdiana. At Zaryaspa, Bessis was formally tried for the murder of Darius, and was condemned to have his nose and ears cut off and to be taken to Ektibana to die on the cross. The Greeks, like ourselves, regarded mutilation as a barbarous punishment, and it is not pleasant to find Alexander violating this sentiment. But the adoption of oriental punishments in dealing with orientals must be judged along with the adoption of other oriental customs. Every conqueror of an alien race finds himself in a grave embarrassment. Is he to offend his ideals and fall away from his convictions by acquiescing in outlandish usages antagonistic to his own? Or is he stiff-necked and inflexibly true to his principles of his own civilization to remain out of touch with his new subjects? Is he to adopt the policy which will be most effective in administering the conquered land? Or is he to impose a policy which works and is approved of in his home country, but may be useless or fatal elsewhere? Alexander did not adopt the second method. It was the task of his life to spread Greek civilization in the east. But he saw that this could not be done by an outsider, a general of Hellas, or a Basilias of Macedonia. He must meet the orientals on their own ground. He must become their king in their own way. The surest means of planting Hellenism in their mist was to begin by taking account sympathetically of their prejudices. Alexander therefore assumed the state of great king, surrounded himself with eastern forms of pomp, exacted self-abasement in his presence from oriental subjects, and adopted the maxim that the king's person was divine. He was the successor of Darius, and he regarded the murder of that monarch as a crime touching himself in so much as it was a crime against royalty. It was therefore an act of deliberate policy that he punished the king's slayer in eastern fashion as an impressive example to his eastern subjects. The misfortune was that Alexander's assumption of oriental state and the favor which he showed to the Persians was highly unpopular with the Macedonians. It was hard always to preserve a double face, one for his companions, the other for his Persian ministers. Nor was it Alexander's policy to maintain this difference forever. He hoped ultimately to secure uniformity in the relations of Macedonians and Persians to their common king. Meanwhile in the intervals of rest between military operations discontent smoldered among the Macedonians, though they were attached to their king and proud of the Granicus, which they had helped him to achieve, they felt that he was no longer the same to them as when he had led them to victory at the Granicus. His exaltation over obiscent orientals had changed him, and the execution of his trusted general Parmenio was felt to be significant of the change. These feelings of discontent accidentally found a mouthpiece about this time. Rebellious movements in Sagdiana brought Alexander over the Axis again before the winter was over, and he spent some time at Samaricand. One of the most unfortunate consequences of the long protracted sojourn in the regions of the Axis was the increase of drunkenness in the army. The excessively dry atmosphere in summer produces an intolerable and frequent thirst, and it was inevitable that the Macedonians should slack it by wine, the strong wine of the country, if they would not sicken themselves by the brackish springs of the desert or the noisome water of the towns. Alexander's potations became deep and habitual from this time forth. One night in the fortress of Samaricand the corrals lasted far into the night. Greek men of letters who accompanied the army sang the praises of Alexander exalting him above the Dioscuri whose feast he was celebrating on this day. Klytus, his foster brother, flushed with wine, suddenly sprang up to denounce the blasphemy, and once he had begun, the current of his feeling swept him on into a denunciation and disparagement of Alexander. It was to the Macedonians, he said, to men like Permanio and Philotus that Alexander owed his victories. He himself had saved Alexander's life at the Granicus. These were the two sharpest stings, and they stirred Alexander's blood to fury. He started to his feet and called in Macedonian for his hypastas. None obeyed his drunken orders. Ptolemy and the other banqueters forced Klytus out of the hall while others tried to restrain the king. But presently Klytus made his way back, and shouted from the doorway some insulting verses of Euripides, signifying that the army does the work and the general reaps the glory. The king leapt up, snatched a spear from the hand of a guardsman, and rushed upon his foster brother. Monk though he was, the aim was sure. Klytus sunk dead to the ground. An agony of remorse followed. For three days the murderer lay in his tent without sleep or food, cursing himself as the assassin of his friends. The army sympathized with his grief. They tried the dead man and resolved that he had been justly slain. The tragedy was attributed to the anger of Dionysus, because the day was his festival, and the dio scurry had been celebrated instead. The tragic issue of this miserable drunken brawl is a lurid spot in Alexander's life. But it was a slight matter compared to the act which is said to have marked his invasion of Sogdianna. When we saw him first cross the oxus and pursued Abesus, we did not pause to witness his treatment of a remarkable town which lay on his way. The Brachidae, who had charge of the temple and oracle of Apollo, twenty miles from Meletus, are charged with having betrayed the treasures of the sanctuary. Their lives were not safe from the anger of the Melesians, and Xerxes transported them into Central Asia, where no Greek vengeance could pursue them. They were established in Sogdianna, not far from the place where Alexander crossed, a solitary little settlement, which, though severed so long from Hellas, preserved its Greek religion and Greek customs, and had not forgotten the Greek speech. It is easy to imagine what excitement was stirred there by the coming of a Greek army. The folk came forth joyously to bid Alexander welcome and to offer him their fealty. But Alexander remembered only one thing. The ancestors of this people had committed a heinous crime against Apollo, and had sided with Persia against Greece. That crime had never been forgotten by the men of Meletus, when the king called upon the Melesians in his army to pronounce sentence upon the Brachendai. The Melesians could not agree, and Alexander himself decided the fate of the town. Having surrounded it with the cordon of soldiers, he caused all the inhabitants to be massacred and the place to be utterly demolished. Few of the children of the children's children of the original transgressors could still have been alive. Many of the victims belonged to the fifth degree of dissent. We cannot imagine a fowler enforcement of the savage principle that the crimes of the fathers should be visited to distant generations. It is small wonder that Ptolemy and Aristobulus, if the story is true, omitted it from their records of the campaigns of their king. There are other deeds of Alexander which cannot be excused. But there is none so black, none so cruel as the murder of the Brachendai, none for which some extenuating circumstances cannot be urged. There were more hostilities in Western Bactria and Western Sagdiana until at last, overhauled by Alexander's success, the Scythians, in order to win his favor, slew Spitaminis. With this chieftain, the resistance expired. It only remained to reduce the rugged southeastern regions of Sagdiana, which were called Peritikini. The Sagdian Rock, which commands the pass into these regions, was occupied by oxioctes, and a band of Macedonian soldiers captured it by an audacious nightclimb. Among the captives was Roxanne, the daughter of oxioctes, and the love of Alexander, who had always been indifferent to women, was attracted by the beauty and the manners of the Sagdian maiden. It was characteristic of him that, notwithstanding the adverse comment which such a condescension would excite among the proud Macedonians, he resolved to make her his wife, and on his return to Bactria, after subjugating other fortresses in Peritikini, he divided a loaf of bread with his bride, according to the fashion of the country, and celebrated the nuptials. There was policy in his marriage as well as inclination. It was symbolic of the union of Asia and Europe, of the breaking down of the barrier between barbarian and Helene, and of Alexander's position as an oriental king. About this time an attempt seems to have been made to render uniform the court ceremonial. The Persian nobles were not well pleased that, whereas they were compelled to abase themselves to the ground, before the divinity of the king. The Macedonians and Greeks were excused from the obeisance. Most of the Greeks would have been pliant enough, but there was one prominent man of letters who stood against the usage, and drew upon himself displeasure by the utterance of bold truths. This was Kalisthenes, a nephew of Aristotle. He was composing a history of the campaigns of Alexander, whose exploits he ungrudgingly lauded. He had joined the army, he used to say, to make him famous, not to win fame himself. It is related that Hephaestian and a number of others arranged a plan for surprising the king's guests at a banquet into making the obeisance. Alexander raising his golden cup, drank to each guest in order. First to some of those who were privy to the plan, each arose and prostrated himself, and was then kissed by the king. Kalisthenes, when his turn came, drained the cup, and went to receive the kiss without doing the obeisance. Alexander would not kiss him, and he turned away, saying, I go the poorer by a kiss. Incidents of this kind created a coolness between the king and his historian. One of the duties of Kalisthenes and the other philosophers and literary men who accompanied Alexander's progress was to educate the pages, the noble Macedonian youths who attended on the king's person, and over some of these Kalisthenes had great influence. One day at a borhant a page named Hermoleus committed the indiscretion of forestalling the king in slaying the beast, and for this breach of etiquette he was flogged and deprived of his horse. Smarting under the dishonor, Hermoleus plotted with some of his comrades to slay Alexander in his sleep. On the appointed night Alexander sat up, carousing till dawn, and on the next day the plot was betrayed. The conspirators were arrested and put to death by the sentence of the whole army. Kalisthenes was also hand-fasted, on the charge of being an accomplice, and was afterwards hanged. Hermoleus was indeed one of his warmest admirers, but it is not clear what the evidence against the historian was. On the one hand Ptolemy and Aristobuelus asserted independently that the pages declared under torture that the Kalisthenes had incited them. On the other hand Alexander is said to have stated in a letter that the torture had failed to elicit the name of any accomplice. The deeper cause may be that Alexander suspected Kalisthenes as an agent of the anti-Macedonian party in Greece. Before the end of summer Alexander bade farewell to Bactria and set forth to the conquest of India. Several years had passed since the death of Darius, three unique years in the annals of the world. In that time the Western conqueror, disarranging the cycles of Asiatic history, had subdued Afghanistan, and cast his yoke over the herdsmen of the north as far as the river Jaxartes. He was the first and last Western conqueror of Afghanistan. He was the first but not the last invader. He was the first European invader and conqueror of the regions beyond the Oxis, anticipating by more than 2,000 years the conquest which had been achieved by a European power within the memory of the present generation. His next enterprise forestalled our own conquest of north-western India, but England made her conquest from the south, Russia hers from the north. Alexander was the only European conqueror who marched straight from the west to the Indus and the Oxis. The Macedonian monarch's work in Bactria and Sagdiana was an unavoidable sequel of a secession to the Persian Empire. He had to set up a barrier against the unsettled races of the waste, who were perpetual menace to the civilizations of the south. He founded a number of settlements in these regions, not only for the purpose of military garrisons, but also probably with the hope of gradually training the herdsmen to more settled ways of life. If so, it was a vain hope. History has shown that there was only one means of forcing the shepherd races to become reluctant tillers of the soil, not until they had been encompassed on all sides by civilization and driven within a narrow geographical area while they had adopted, under the stress of necessity, the regular and laborious life of agriculture. The iron pressure of Russia's embrace is gradually narrowing the grounds of the nomads in Central Asia. In the days of Alexander they had endless space behind them, and an indefinite future before them. End of Chapter 18, Part 1 Chapter 18, Part 2 of A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2 by John Bagnalbury. Chapter 18, Part 2 The Conquest of India In returning to Afghanistan, Alexander seems to have followed the main road from Balkh to Kabul, crossing the Hindu Kush by a pass more westerly than that by which he had come. Reaching Alexandria in ten days he went on to another town, which if he had not refounded he had at all events renamed Nicaea, and which is possibly to be salt in Kabul itself. Here he stayed till the middle of November, finding much to do both in organizing the province and in preparing for further advance. He had left a large detachment of his army in Bactria, but he had enrolled a still larger force, thirty thousand of the Asiatics of those regions, Bactrians, Sagdians, Dahai, and Sakai. The host with which he was now to ascend upon India must have been at least twice as numerous as the army with which he had crossed the Hellespont seven years before. It had increased as it ruled on, and the augmentations far more than counterbalanced the reductions caused by leaving detachments in each new province and the losses due to warfare or disease. During these years Alexander's camp was his court and capital, the political center of his empire, a vast city rolling along over a mountain and river through Central Asia. Men of all trades and callings were there, some indispensable for the needs of the king and his army, others drawn by the prospect of making profits by the spoiled laden soldiers, craftsmen of every kind, engineers, physicians and seers, cheap men and money-changers, literary men, poets, musicians, athletes, gestures, secretary, clerks, court attendants, a host of women and slaves. In many of the halting places, athletic and musical contests were held, serving both to cheer the Greeks by reminding them of their home country and to impress the imagination of the barbarians. A court diary was regularly kept, an imitation of the court journal of Persia by Aumanis of Cardia, who conducted all the political correspondence of Alexander. Alexander had no notion of the shape or extent of the Indian peninsula, and his notion of the Indian conquest was probably confined to the basins of the Kofen and the Indus. He was not the first invaders speaking in Aryan language who went down through the northwestern hills into the plains of India. Centuries and centuries before, Aryan herdsmen had flown down in successive waves and found an abiding home there. From Central Asia, from the regions of the Hindu Kush, bringing with them their old hymns, some of which we still possess, they came down into the lands of the Indus. The glorious giver of wealth, and turned to a settled agricultural life. Strangely different was the civilization which grew up in northern India among the men who called upon Dayus Pitar, from that of their speech-brethren who worshiped Zeus Pater on the shores of the Aegean. The costs of the Brahmins and the warriors, the inhuman asceticism of the Brahmins' life, the political influence of these religious men, must have seemed repulsive and outlandish to the free and cheerful temper of the Greeks. The great Darius had partially annexed the lands of the Indus, and they constantly supplied troops to his successors. Skylaks of Karyanda had sailed down the Indus by his orders and probably published an account of the voyage. The stories that were told about the wonders of India excited the curiosity of the Greek invaders. It was the land of righteous folks, of strange beasts and plants, of surpassing wealth and gold and gems. It was supposed to be the ultimate country on the eastern side of the world, bounded by ocean stream. At this time northwestern India was occupied by a number of small, heterogeneous principalities and village communities. The northern districts of the land between the Indus and the Hydaspes, a stream which we now call the Jellum, was ruled by Amphis, a prince whose capital was at Tekzilla, near the Indus. His brother Abhisares was the ruler of Hazara and the adjacent parts of Kashmir. Beyond the Hydaspes was the powerful kingdom of Porus, who held sway as far as the Asanis, or dark-hued, which we know is the shinab, in the next of the five rivers. East of the shinab, in the lands of the Ravi, in the Baiz, were other small principalities, and also free, kingless peoples who own no master. These principalities and free communities differed much in manners and religion. They had no tendency to unity or combination. The free tribes feared and hated the princes. The princes strove with one another, and these states were not all of the same race. Most perhaps were Aryan, but some, like the Mali, belonged to the old Dravidian stock, whom, even in the Punjab, the Aryans had not entirely dispossessed or subdued. An invader, therefore, had no common resistance to fear. He had the deal with the states one by one, and he could be assured that many would welcome him out of hatred for their neighbors. The Prince of Tekzilla hoped great things from the Macedonian conqueror, especially the downfall of his rival Porus. He visited Alexander at Nicaea, laid himself and his kingdom at the Great Emperor's feet, and promised his aid in subduing India. Other chiefs on the hither side of the Indus also made submission. Alexander's direct road from the high plain of Kabul, into the Punjab, lay along the right bank of the Kofin, or Kabul River, through the Great Gate of the Khyber Pass. But it was impossible to advance to the Indus without securing his communications, and for this purpose it was needful to subjugate the river valleys to the left of the Kabul, among the huge western spurs of the Himalaya Mountains. It was, perhaps, not far from Jalalabad that the army came to a city, which was called Nicaea. The name immediately awakened in the minds of all the Greeks the memory of their god Dionysus. For Mount Nicaea was the mythical place which he had been nursed by nymphs when he was born from the thigh of Zeus. The mountain was commonly supposed to be in Thrace, but an old hymn placed it near the streams of the Nile. It had no place on the traveler's chart. Over here was an actual Nisa, and close to the town was a hill whose name resembled Maros, the Greek word for thigh, and whose slopes were covered with the god's own ivy. Therefore Nisa, they said, was founded by Dionysus. The god had fared eastward to subdued India, and now Alexander was marching on his tracks. Everywhere on their further march the Greeks and Macedonians were alert to discover traces of the progress of the Baikic god. For the purposes of this campaign Alexander divided his army. Hephaestian, taking three regiments of the phalanx, half the Macedonian cavalry, all the mercenary cavalry, advanced by the Kyber Pass, with orders to construct a bridge across the Indus. The king, with the rest of his army, including the light troops, plunged into the difficult country north of the river, and the winter was spent in warfare with the hardy hill-folks, especially the Esposians, and Asakines, and in capturing their impregnable fortresses in the district of the Kunar, in remote Shetral, and in the Pankjar and Swat valleys. Would be interesting to follow the exploits of the Macedonian army in these wilds, but we cannot identify the places with certainty. Masaga, of the Asakinean people, in the Swat valley, was one of the most important strongholds that Alexander captured. We cannot point it out on the map, but Dirtra, another fortress of the same people, may be fairly sought in Deir. The most wonderful exploit of all was the scaling and taking of the rock of Aornus, which has been recognized in the hill of Mahaban, on the right bank of the Indus, about sixty miles from the confluence of that river with the Kabul. When, by a miracle of boldness and patience, he captured this fortress, Alexander had to return on his steps, as far as Deir, to suppress a revolt of the Asakines. After this severe winter campaign, the army rested on the hither bank of the Indus, until spring had begun, and then, with the solemnity of games and sacrifices, crossed the river, and marched a three-days journey eastward to Taksila. The rich country of these Aryan husbandmen was a striking and pleasant contrast to the barren abodes of the shepherds of Bactria and Sagdiana. The Prince of Taksila met Alexander with obsequious pomp, and other lesser princes assembled at the city to do him homage. The administration of the recent conquest was now arranged. A new satrapy, embracing the lands west of the Indus, was established and entrusted to Philip, son of Makitas. Macedonian garrisons were placed in Taksila, and some other places east of the Indus, and Philip was charged with the general command of these troops. This shows the drift of Alexander's policy. The Indus was to be the eastern boundary of his direct sway. Beyond the Indus, he proposed to create no new provinces, but only to form a system of protected states, over which the governor of the frontier province would have a general supervision. Alexander then marched by a southward road to the Hydaspes, where he was to meet the only power in the land which could hope to resist his progress. This Poros had sent a defiance, and having gathered an army from thirty to forty thousand strong, was encamped on the left bank of the river to contest the crossing. Moreover Abbasares of Kashmir promised him aid, although he had set marks of homage to Alexander. The boats which had been constructed on the Indus for transporting the troops were, by Alexander's orders, sawn in two or three pieces according to their size, and conveyed on carts to the Hydaspes. After a march which was made slow and toilsome by the heavy tropical rain, the invaders encamped on the right bank of the river, near Jalalapur, and saw the lines of Poros on the opposite shore, protected by a multitude of elephants, his most formidable weapon of war. It was useless to think of crossing in the face of this host, for the horses who could not endure the smell and noise of the elephants, would certainly have been drowned, and the men would have found it almost impossible to land amid showers of darts on the slimy, treacherous edge of the stream. All the forts in the neighborhood were watched. Alexander adopted various measures to deceive and puzzle the enemy. He collected large stores of corn, as if he had made up his mind to remain for many days where he was. He spread the rumor that he intended to wait till the season of rains was over, and he kept his troops in constant motion, sending detachments hither and thither. Even one night his trumpets blew, his cavalry rowed down to the edge of the water, and to the eyes of the enemy it seemed that the whole army was about to cross. Poros moved his elephants up to the bank, and set his host in array. But it proved to be a false alarm. The same faint was repeated again and again. Each night the Macedonian camp was in motion, as if for crossing. Each night the Indians stood long hours in the wind and rain. But when he saw that the noise was never followed by action, Poros became weary of these useless nightly watches, and disregarded the alarms of a faint-hearted foe. Alexander meanwhile was maturing a plan which he was able to carry out when he had put Poros off his guard. About sixteen miles upwards from the camp, Hydaspes makes a bend, changing its course from south to westward, and opposite, the jutting angle a thickly wooded island rose amid the stream, while a dense wood covered its right shore. Here Alexander determined to cross. He caused the boats to be conveyed thither, and remade in the shelter of the wood close to a deep ravine. He had prepared skins stuffed with straw, such as he had used in passing the oxus. When the time came he led a portion of his troops to the wooded promontory, marching at a considerable distance from the river, in order to avoid the observation of the enemy. A sufficient force was left in the camp under the command of Kratuis, with orders not to cross, unless Poros either moved his entire army from its present position or was defeated and routed. Other forces were posted at points between the camp and the island to cross and to help at the right moment. The king arrived at the appointed spot later in the evening, and throughout the wet, stormy night he directed the preparations for passing the swollen stream. Here on the right bank he posted the regiments of heavy infantry which he had brought with him, a precaution probably against the possible arrival of Abbasares. The wind and rain which had effectually concealed all the noise from the ears of hostile outposts on the bank, abated before dawn, and the passage began. Alexander led the way in a bark of thirty oars, and the island was safely passed, but land was hardly reached before they were described by Indian scouts, who galloped off at full speed to warn their chieftain. The king, who was the first to leap ashore, waited until the cavalry had been disembarked and marshaled, but on advancing he discovered that he had landed not on the bank, but on an island which was parted from the bank by a small channel now swollen with rain. It was some time before passage for waiting could be found, and the water was breast high. At last the whole force was safely landed on the bank, and Alexander ordered his men for the coming battle, the third of the three great battles of his life. It was to be won without any heavy infantry. He had with him only six thousand hypastas, about four thousand light-foot, five thousand cavalry, including one thousand Scythian archers. Taking all the cavalry with him, he rode rapidly forward towards the camp of Porus, leaving the infantry to follow. If the whole host of Porus should come out to meet him, he would wait for the infantry, but if the enemy showed symptoms of retreating he would dash in among them with his superior cavalry. Presently he saw a troop coming. It was the son of Porus, at the head of one thousand horsemen, in sixty war chariots, too late to impede the landing of the Macedonians. As soon as he perceived the small number of the foe, Alexander charged and easily drove them back, slaying the prince and four hundred of his men. But Porus himself was advancing, with his main army, having left a small force to guard the river bank against Craterus. When he reached Sandy Ground, suitable for the movements of his cavalry and war chariots, he drew up his line in battle. In front of all he arranged two hundred elephants at intervals of one hundred feet, and at some distance behind them his infantry, who numbered twenty thousand if not more. On the wings he placed his cavalry, perhaps four thousand. Alexander waited for the Hypastas, and drew them up opposite to the elephants. It was impossible to attack in front, for neither horse nor foot could venture in between these beasts, which stood like towers of defense, the true strength of the Indian army. The only method was to begin by a cavalry attack on the flank, and Seleucus and the other captains of the infantry were bitten not to advance until they saw that both the horse and the foot of the foe were tumbled into confusion by the flank assault. Alexander determined to concentrate his attack on the left wing. Perhaps because it was on the river side, and he would be within easier reach of his troops on the other bank. Accordingly he kept all his cavalry on his right wing. One body was entrusted to Coynus, who bore well to the right, and was ready to strike in the rear, and to deal with the body of horse stationed upon the enemy's right wing, in case they should come round to assist their comrades on the left. The mounted Scythian archers rode straight against the front of the enemy's cavalry, which was still in column formation, not having had time to open out, and harassed it with showers of arrows, while Alexander himself, with the rest of the heavy cavalry, led the charge upon the flank. Porus, who had committed the fatal mistake of allowing the enemy to take the offensive, brought up his remaining squadrons from the right wing as fast as he could. Then Coynus, who had ridden round close to the riverbank, fell upon them in the rear. The Indians had now to form a double front against the double foe. Alexander seized the moment to press hard against the adverse squadrons. They swayed backwards, and sulted shelter behind the elephants. Then those elephant riders, who were on this side of the army, drove the beasts against the Macedonian horses. And at the same time the Macedonian footmen rushed forward and attacked the animals, which were now turned sideways towards them. But the other elephants of the line were driven into the ranks of the Hippastus, and dealt destruction, trampling down and striking furiously. Heartened by the success of the elephants, the Indian cavalry rallied and charged, but beaten back by the Macedonian horse, who were now formed in a serried mass, they again sulted shelter behind the Elephantine Wall. But many of the beasts were now furious with wounds and beyond control. Some had lost their riders, and in the melee they trampled on friends and foes alike. The Indians suffered most, for they were surrounded and confined to the space in which the animals raged, while the Macedonians could attack the animals on side or rear, and then retreat into the open when they turned to charge. At length, when the elephants grew weary and their charges were feebler, Alexander closed in. He gave the order for the Hippastus to advance in close array, shield to shield, while he, reforming his squadrons, dashed in from the side. The enemy's cavalry, already weakened and dislocated, could not withstand the double shock and was cut to pieces. The Hippastus rolled on upon the enemy's infantry, who, though they had hitherto taken no serious part in the fight, soon broken-fled. Meanwhile, the generals on the other side of the river, Craterus and the rest, discovering that fortune was declaring for Alexander, crossed the river without resistance, and arrived in time to consummate the victory by pursuing the fugitives. Porus, who had shown himself a mediocre general, but a most valiant soldier, when he saw most of his forces scattered, his elephants lying dead, or straying riderless, did not flee, as Darius had twice fled, but remained fighting, seated on an elephant of commanding height, until he was wounded in the right shoulder, the only part of his body unprotected by mail. Then he turned around and rode away. Alexander, struck with admiration at his prowess, sent messengers who overtook him and induced him to return. The victor, riding out to meet the old prince, was impressed by his stature and beauty, and asked him if he would feign be treated. Treat me like a king, said Porus. For my own sake, said Alexander, I will do that. Ask a boon for thy sake. That, replied Porus, containeth all. And Alexander treated his captive royally. He not only gave him back his kingdom, henceforward to be a protected state under Macedonian Suserenti, but largely increased its borders. This royal treatment, however, though it pleased the generous impulses of Alexander, was inspired by deep policy. He could rest the security of his rule beyond the Indus on no better base than the mutual jealousy of two moderately powerful princes. He had made the lord of Taxilla as powerful as he was safe. The reinstatement of his rival Porus would be the best guarantee of his loyalty. But on the other side of the Hydaspes, close to the scene of the battle, two cities were founded, which would serve as garrisons in the subject land. On the right hand, the city of Busephala, named after Alexander's steed, which had died here, probably shortly before the battle, of old age and weariness. On the left, Nicaea, the city of victory. Having craterous to build the cities, Alexander marched northward to subdue the Glauci, a hill-folk on the border of Kashmir, and at the same time to intimidate Abbasares. Then keeping near the skirts of the hills, he crossed the Achesonis, more than a mile and a half broad, with great peril and some loss, into the territory of a namesake and nephew of Porus. This Porus was at enmity with his uncle, who probably claimed over lordship over him. He had sent messages of submission to Alexander before the battle, but disappointed and frightened at the favor which the conqueror had shown his uncle, he fled eastward. Alexander himself hastened in pursuit, crossed the Hydraeotus, which, unlike the Achesonis, was easily past, but he left Hephaestian to march southward and subdue the land of the younger Porus, as well as the free communities between the two rivers. All this northern portion of the Doab, or interfluvial tract, may be added to the realm of the elder Porus. The news that the Cathayans, a free and warlike people whom Porus and Abbasares had, some time before failed to conquer, were determined to give him battle, diverted Alexander from the pursuit. He advanced against their chief town, Sangala, strongly walled and protected on one side by a hill and on the other by a lake. It was probably near Amristar, to the northeast of Lahore. The Cathayans, supported by some neighboring tribes, had made a stockade with a triple line of wagons round the hill. After a severe struggle the entrenchment was carried and the defenders retreated into the city. They tried to escape through the lake, under the cover of night, but Alexander discovered the plan and lined the shores with soldiers. Then the place was stormed and slighted. The neighboring people submitted, and all this land was likewise placed under the lordship of Porus. Thus of the four river-bounded tracks which composed the Punjab, the largest between Indus and Jellum belonged to Amphis of Taxila, while the three others between Jellum and Baas were assigned to Porus. Alexander now advanced to the Hyphesis, or Baas, and reached it higher up than the point where it joins the Sutlej to form the Khatadru, or 100 streams. It was destined to be the landmark of his utmost march. He wished to go farther and explore the lands of the Ganges, but an unlooked-for obstacle occurred. The Macedonians were worn out with years of hard campaigning and weary of this endless rolling on into the unknown. Their numbers had dwindled, the remnant of them were battered and grown old before their time. The terrible rains which had beaten incessantly upon them since the crossing of the Indus, and had made their labors doubly laborious were the last weight in the scale. Their gear was worn out, the hooves of their horses, as one of the campaigners described, were rubbed away by the long, rough journeys. Their arms were blunted and broken in hard combats. The bodies of the veterans were enveloped in Indian rags, for their Greek clothes were worn out. All yearned back for their homeland in the west. They had won glory enough. Why heap toil upon toil, and peril upon peril? On the banks of the Hyphasis the crisis came. The men resolved to go no farther, and their resolution was strengthened by the information that they would have to cross the Indian Desert a journey of eleven days before they reached the fertile regions of the Ganges. At a meeting of the officers which Alexander summoned, Coyness was the spokesman of the general feeling. The king, not a little vexed, dismissed them, and summoning them on the morrow declared that he had proposed to advance himself, but would constrain no man to follow him. Let the Macedonians go back to Macedonia, and tell how they abandoned their king in a hostile land. He retired to his tent, and for two days refused to see any of his companions, hoping that their hearts would be softened. But though his resentment made them unhappy, the Macedonians did not relent, or go back from their purpose. On the third day Alexander offered sacrifices, preliminary to crossing the river. But the victims, and this was assuredly no freak of chance, gave unfavorable signs. Then the king yielded, and signified to the obdurate army that he had decided to return. When his will was made known, the way-worn veterans burst into wild joy. The more part of them shed tears. They crowded round the royal tent, blessing the unconquered king, that he had permitted himself to be conquered for once by his Macedonians. On the banks of the High Fascists Alexander erected twelve towering altars to the twelve great gods of Olympus, as a thank-offering for having strewn his wonderful path with victories, and led him safely within reach of the world's end. Within reach of the world's end, and not to reach it, this was the disappointment which befell Alexander at the High Fascists. To understand fully the measure of this disappointment we must realize his geographical conceptions. Of the southern extension of Asia, in the great Indian promontory, and further India, with its huge islands, he knew nothing. Of the vastness of China, of the existence of Siberia, he had not the least suspicion. He supposed that the Ganges discharged its waters into the ocean which bounded the earth in the east, as the Atlantic bounded it on the west, and he imagined that this eastern sea, washing the base of the further slopes of the Hindu Kush and Pamir mountains, and rounding the northern slopes of Scythia, was continuous with the Caspian. And just as he planned to navigate the southern ocean, from the mouth of the Indus to the Arabian Gulf, or perhaps even round Libya, to the Pillars of Hercules, plans of which we shall presently speak, so he probably dreamed of navigating the eastern ocean, from the mouth of the Ganges, and winning round to the shores of Scythia and Hercania. One annexation or effective conquest beyond the Haifassis, the mine of Alexander, does not seem to have been bent. He had only a small army with him, for he had dropped large detachments on his way from the Jallum to the Ba'is, and he expected no hostilities from the tranquil dwellers of the Ganges. His expedition would have been in the first instance a journey of exploration. Circumstances might have made it into a march of conquest. Alexander is often represented as a madman, dazzled by wild and whirling visions of dominion and glory, impelled by an insatiable lust of conquest for conquest's sake. But in judging his schemes, which in themselves seem wild to us, who know the configuration of the earth, we must contract our imagination to the compass of his false notions and imperfect knowledge. If the form and feature of the earth were what he pictured it to be, twenty years would have suffice to make his empire contraminous with its limits. He might have ruled from the eastern to the western ocean, from the ultimate bounds of Scythia to the shores of Libya. He might have wrought to pass in three continents and universal peace, and dotted the habitable globe with his Greek cities. Alexander was ambitious, but ambition did not blind him. He was perfectly capable of discerning shine from substance. The advance to the Indus was no mere wanton aggression, but was necessary to establish secure routes for Indian trade, which was at the mercy of the wild hill-tribes, and the subjugation of the Punjab, was a necessity for securing the Indus frontier. The solid interests of commerce underlay the ambitions of the Macedonian conqueror. It is not without significance that Phoenician merchants accompanied his army. Alexander retraced his steps to the Hedaspis, on his way picking up Hephaestian, who had founded a new city on the banks of the Achesonis. On the Hedaspis, Craterus had not only built the two cities at the scene of the great battle, but had also prepared a large fleet of transports which was to carry part of the army down the river to reach the Indus and the ocean. The fleet was placed under the command of Nyarkis, and the king's own ship was piloted by Onus Scritus, who afterwards wrote a book on Alexander's expedition. The rest of the army, divided into four parts, marched along either bank, under Hephaestian and Craterus. As they advanced, they swept the southern portions of the Doabs, reducing the tribes which did not submit. The only formidable resistance that they encountered was from the free and warlike tribe of the Mali, whose territories stretched on both sides of the Ravi. Having routed a large host of these Indians on the southern bank of the river, Alexander pursued them to their chief city, which is probably to be sought at the site of the modern Multan. Since then the Ravi has changed its bed, and the days of Alexander used to flow into the Shinab below Multan. Here he met with a grave adventure. The city had been easily taken, and the Indians had retreated into the citadel. Two ladders were brought to scale the earthen wall, but it was found hard to place them beneath the shadow of missiles from above. Inpatient at the delay, Alexander seized a ladder and climbed up under the cover of his shield. Peochestis, who bore the sacred buckler from the temple of Illian, and Leonatis followed, and Obreus ascended the other ladder. When the king reached the battle-met, he hurled down or slew the Indians who were posted at that spot. The Hypassis, when they saw their king standing upon the wall, a mark for the whole garrison of the fortress, made a rush for the ladders, and both ladders broke under the weight of the crowd. Only these three, Peochestis, Leonatis, and Obreus, reached the wall before the ladders broke. His friends implored Alexander to leap down. He answered their cries by leaping down, among the enemy. He alighted on his feet. With his back to the wall he stood there alone, against the throng of foes who recognized the great king. With his sword he cut down their leader, and some others who ventured to rush at him. He felled two more with stones, and the rest, not daring to approach, pelted him with missiles. Meanwhile, his three companions had cleared the wall of its defenders, and leapt down to help their king. Obreus fell slain by a dart. Then Alexander himself received a wound in the breast. For a space he stood and fought. But at last sank on his shield, fainting through loss of blood. Peochestis stood over him with the holy shield of Troy. Leonatis guarded him on the other side until rescue came. Being no ladders, the Macedonians had driven pegs into the wall, and a few had clambered up as best they could and flung themselves down into the fray. Some of these succeeded in opening one of the gates, and then the fort was taken. No man, woman or child in the place was spared by the infuriated soldiers who thought that their king was dead. But though the wound was grave, Alexander recovered. The rumor of his death reached the camp where the main army was waiting at the junction of the Ravi with the Shannab. Then it produced deep consternation and despair. Reassuring letters were not believed, so Alexander caused himself to be carried to the banks of the Ravi and conveyed by water down to the camp. When he drew near the canopy which sheltered his bed in the stern of the vessel was removed. The soldiers still doubting. Thought it was his corpse they saw, until the bark drew close to the bank and he waved his hand. Then the host shouted for joy. When he was carried ashore he was lifted for a moment on horseback, that he might be better seen by all. And then he walked a few steps for their greater reassurance. This adventure is an extreme case of Alexander's besetting weakness which has been illustrated in many others of his actions. In the excitement of battle, amid the ring of arms, he was apt to forget his duties as a leader. Though one of the most consummate generals that the world has seen, he took a far keener delight in fighting in the thickest of the fray, or heading a charge of cavalry, then in maneuvering an army or contriving strategic operations. His eyes and ears were ever filled. With the brilliance of battle, the bloom in the beauty, at the splendor of spears. He could not resist the temptations of danger, and he hardly conducted a single campaign in which he had not been wounded. Of the last and most flagrant occasion, when some of his intimate friends upgraded him for acting as a soldier instead of acting as a general, he was deeply hurt, for his conscience pricked him to have endangered his own safety was a crime against the whole army. The Mali made a complete submission, and their example was followed by the Aksidrakes, their southern neighbors who were also renowned for their warlike character. These lower parts of the Punjab were not added to the Dominion of Porus, but were placed in direct dependence on the satrapy which had been committed to Philip. When Alexander had recovered from his wound, the fleet sailed downward past the junction of the Hyphasis, and the Indian tribe submitted, presenting to the conqueror the characteristic products of India, gems, fine draperies, tame lions, and tigers. At the place where the united stream of the Four Lesser Rivers joins the mighty flow of the Indus, the foundations were laid of a new Alexandria, to be the great trade center between the Punjab and the territory of the Lower Indus, and to be the bulwark of the southern frontier of the province of Philip. The next stage of the southward advance was the capital town of the Sagdi, which lay upon the river. Alexander refounded it as a Greek colony, and built wharfs. It was known as the Sagdian Alexandria, and was destined to be the residence of a southern satrapy, which was to extend to the seacoast. This province was committed to Payathan, the son of Aginor. The principalities of the rich and populous land of the Sindh were distinguished from the states of the north by the great political power enjoyed by the Brahmins. Under the influence of this caste, which was venomously opposed to the intrusion of the outlanders, the princes either defied Alexander or if they submitted it first, speedily rebelled. The spring was spent in reducing these regions, and it was nearly mid-summer when the king reached Patala at the vertex of the Indus Delta. On the tidings of an insurrection in Arakosia he had dispatched Krataris with a considerable portion of the army to march through the Bolan Pass into southern Afghanistan and to put down the revolt. Alexander himself, designed to march through Balukistan, and Krataris was ordered to meet him in Kirman, near the entrance of the Persian Gulf. Another division of the host was to go by sea to the mouth of the Tigris. The king fixed upon Patala. To be for the Indian Empire what the most famous of his Alexandrias was for Egypt. He charged Hephaestian with the task of fortifying the citadel and building an ample harbor. Then he sailed southward himself to visit the southern ocean. It was the season at which the monsoons blow from the southwest, and the Macedonians accustomed to the tideless, midland sea were at first sorely perplexed by the ebb and flow of the oceanic tide, at this time especially high and violent in the main arm of the river. Several ships were lost, but the sailors soon mastered the secret of the times and tides, and Alexander fared out into the open sea. He sacrificed to Poseidon. He poured drink offerings from a golden cup to the Nairids and Dioscori, and to Thetis, the mother of his ancestor Achilles, and then hurled the cup into the waves. This ceremony inaugurated his plan of opening a seaway for commerce between the West and the Far East. The enterprise of discovering this seaway was entrusted to Niarcus, an officer who was an intimate companion of his own, and possessed the confidence of the troops. Alexander started on his land march in the early autumn, but Niarcus and the fleet were to wait until October, in order to be helped forward by the eastern monsoons. End of Chapter 18, Part 2 Chapter 18, Parts 3, 4 and 5 of A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2 This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org, Recording by Morgan Scorpion. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 18, Parts 3, 4 and 5 Part 3 Alexander's Return to Babylon No enterprise of Alexander was so useless, and none so fatal, as the journey through the desert of Gadrosia, the land which is now known as the Mechren. Of the inhospitable character of the country, he must have had general information, but he had no idea of the hardships and terrors of the march which awaited him. His guiding motive in choosing this route was to make provisions for the safety of the fleet, to dig wells and store food at certain places along the coast. He also had in view the subjugation of the Oratai, a hardy warlike people who dwelled in the mountains on the eastern limit of the wilderness. But if it had been only a matter of subduing the Oratais, this could easily have been accomplished by an expedition from Patala. The march through the Mechren and the voyage of Nearchas were interdependent parts of the same adventure, and so timid were the mariners of those days that the voyage into unknown waters seemed far more formidable than the journey through the waste. With perhaps thirty thousand men, Alexander passed a mountain wall which protects the Indus Delta, and crossing the river Arbus, he reduced the Oratai to subjugation. He chose their chief village Rambachia for the foundation of a colony, the Oratai Alexandria. It was important to have stations on his projected ocean route. Then he descended into the waste of Gedrosia. No resistance met him here, for there was no folk to resent his intrusion, only a few miserable villages in the hills, or more miserable fishing-helmets on the coast. The army moved painfully through the desert of rocks and sand, waterless and barren, and part of the scanty provisions that the forages obtained had to be stored on the shore for the coming of the fleet. It was often almost impossible to step through the deep sinking sand. The pitiless heat rendered night marches necessary, and those marches were frequently of undue length, owing to the need of reaching a spring of water. Alexander himself is said to have trudged on foot and shared all the hardships of the way. It was doubtless to don combatants and camp-followers who suffered most. At length the waste was crossed, and leaving the coast regions, the remnant of the army marched north to Pura, the residence of the Satrapi of Gedrosia. It is said that the survivors, exhausted and dishevelled, were the smaller part of the army which had set forth from India two months before, and the losses of that terrible Gedrosian journey exceeded the losses of all Alexander's campaigns. But this is probably a heightened statement of the calamities of the march. Having rested at Pura, the king proceeded to Kermin, where he was joined by Craterus, who had suppressed the revolt in Aracosia. Presently news arrived that the fleet had reached the Kermin coast, and soon Nearchus arrived at the camp and relieved Alexander's anxiety. He too had a tale to tell of hardships and perils. The hostile attitude of the Indians, when Alexander's back was turned, had forced him to start a month before the season of the East winds, and contrary, South winds kept him for twenty-four days in a haven at some distance to the west of the Delta. Then a storm wrecked three of his ships near Calcala. During the rest of their voyage, the seafarers were saw bestowed by want of sweet water and provisions. But the king was overjoyed that they had arrived at all. Nearchus was dismissed to complete the voyage by sailing up the Persian Gulf on the Pasatigras River to Susa. A physton was sent to make his way thither along the coast, while Alexander himself marched through the hills by Persepolis and Pasogadai. It was height time for Alexander to return. There was hardly a satrap Persian or Macedonian in any land who had not oppressed his province by violence and rapacity, and some, in the expectation that the king would never come back from the Far East, had formed plots for establishing independent principalities in Kermin, in Persis, and at Susa, the most pressing business of the king was to re-establish his authority by punishing without favour or mercy the governors and officers who were found guilty of treason and oppression. Many satraps were deposed or put to death. Atropartys of media was one of the few who had been faithful to his charge. But the military garrison of media had not behaved so well, and none of Alexander's dooms at this juncture was more effective than the execution of two officers and six hundred soldiers by having plundered the temples and sepulchres of that province. Of all evil deeds, that perhaps which most vexed the king was the opening and plundering of the sepulcher of Cyrus at Pasargadai. It was more than a common sacrilege. It was an outrage against the majesty of kings. He tortured the maidens who were the guardians of the tomb, but did not discover the author of the outrage. One guilty minister fled at Alexander's approach. This was the treasurer Harpalas, who had once before been untrue to his charge, but had been forgiven and entrusted with the royal traitors of Persia. He squandered his master's money in riotous living at Babylon, and as the news of these scandals reached Alexander in India, he deemed it prudent to move westward. Taking a large sum of money, he went to Caliphia and, hiring a bodyguard of 6,000 mercenaries, he lived in royal state at Tarsus with Glicola, an Athenian courtesan. On Alexander's return, Tarsus was not safe, and he fled to Greece, where we shall meet him presently. Having punished with a stern hand the misrule of his satrups, Macedonian and Persian alike, Alexander began to carry out schemes which he had formed for breaking down the barrier which divides the east from the west. He had unbarred and unveiled the orient to the knowledge and commerce of these Mediterranean peoples, but his aim was to do much more than this. It was no less than to fuse Asia and Europe into a homogeneous unity. He devised various means for accomplishing this object. He proposed to transplant Greeks and Macedonians into Asia and Asiatics into Europe as permanent settlers. This plan had indeed been partly realised by the foundation of his numerous mixed cities in the Far East. The second means was the promotion of intermarriages between Persians and Macedonians, and this policy was inaugurated in magnificent fashion at Sousa. The king himself espoused Statero, the daughter of Darius. His friend her faced on took her sister, and a large number of Macedonian officers wedded the daughters of Persian grandees. The Naptuls were celebrated on the same day and according to the Persian fashion, Alexander is said to have feasted 9,000 guests. Of the general mass of the Macedonians, 10,000 are said to have followed the example of their officers and taken Asiatic wives. All those were liberally rewarded by Alexander. He looked forward to the offspring of these unions as a potent instrument for the further fusing of the races. It is to be noticed that Alexander, already wedded to the princess of Sogdiana, adopted the polygamous custom of Persia and he even married another royal lady, Parisatis, daughter of Orcus. These marriages were purely dictated by policy. They were meant as an example, for Alexander never came under the influence of women. The bridles of Suzer were a lesson in political marriages on a vast scale. But the most effective means for bringing the two races together was the institution of military service on a perfect equality. With this purpose in view, Alexander, not long after the death of Darius, had arranged that in all the eastern provinces the native youth should be drilled and disciplined in Macedonian fashion and taught how to use the Macedonian weapons. In fact, Hellenic military schools were established in every province and at the end of five years, an army of 30,000 Hellenized barbarians was at the Great King's disposition. At his summons, this army gathered at Suzer and its arrival created a natural, though unreasonable, feeling of discontent among the Macedonians who divined that Alexander aimed at making himself independent of their services. His schemes for transforming the character of his army were also indicated by the enlistment of Persians, Bactrians, Aryans, and other orientals in the Macedonian cavalry regiments and the enrolling of nine distinguished Persians in the Royal Agamahit Self. The general dissatisfaction was not allayed by the king's liberality in defraying all the debts of the soldiers, amounting perhaps to two millions. Alexander left Suzer for Egbertana in spring. He sailed down the river Pasatigris to the Persian Gulf, surveyed part of the coast, and sailed up the Tigris, removing the weirs which the Persians had constructed to hinder navigation. The army joined him on the way and he halted at Opus. Here he held an assembly of the Macedonians and formally discharged all those, about 10,000 in number, whose old age or wounds had rendered unfit for warfare, promising to make them comfortable for life. He fondly thought that his words would be welcomed with delight, but he was disappointed. The smoldering discontent found a voice now. The cry was raised, discharge us all, and some tauntedly added, go and conquer with your father Amun. The king may well have been taken aback. The men who were on the banks of the Hephaesis had declared themselves worn out with war and toil and sick with the earning for their homes, were now indignant when he honorably discharged their veterans. Alexander leapt down from the platform into the shouting throng. He pointed out 13 of the most forward rioters and bade his herpaspists, seized them and put them to death. The rest were cowed. Amid a deep silence, the king remounted the platform, and in a bitter speech he discharged the whole army. Then he retired into his palace and on the third day summoned the Persian and Median nobles and appointed them to post of honor and trust which had hitherto been filled by Macedonians. The names of the Macedonian regiments were transferred to the new barbarian army. When they heard this, the Macedonians, who still lingered in their quarters, miserable and uncertain whether to go or stay, appeared before the gates of the palace. They laid down their arms submissively and implored admission to the king's presence. Alexander came out and there was a tearful reconciliation which was sealed by sacrifices and feasts. This dramatic incident possesses no historical importance like the action of the troops on the Hephaesis and it is only significant insofar as it marks the last futile explosion of Macedonian sentiment against the liberal policy of the king, the final protest of men who knew they would have to acquiesce in a new order of things. The veterans started for home under the leadership of Kratos and Polyc Percon. They left behind the children whom Asiatic women had born to them, the king promising to bring them up in Macedonian fashion. Kratos was to supersede Antipater as regent of Macedonia and Antipater was to come out to Asia with a fresh supply of troops. This arrangement was desirable on account of the estranged relations which existed between Antipater and the queen mother whose letters to Alexander were always teeming with mutual accusations. The summer and the early winter were spent at the median capital. Here, Asaro, the greatest that could befall him befell Alexander. 3,000 professional players or Dionysiac artists as they were called had arrived from Greece and Egbertana was festive of revels and dramatic exhibitions. In the midst of this gaiety her face done fell ill, languished for seven days and died. Alexander was plunged into despair at losing the friend of his bosom. He fasted three days and the whole empire went into mourning. It is said that he crucified the miserable physician whose skill had been found wanting. Inconsoleable the lonely monarch might well be. He could have other boon companions, other faithful counselors and devoted servants. But he knew that he would never find another to whom he would simply be my friend Alexander and not my Lord the King. The body was sent to Babylon to be burned. 10,000 talents were set apart for a funeral of unsurpassed magnificence. Alexander set out for Babylon towards the end of the year and on his way he enjoyed the excitement of hunting down the Cossians, a hill-folk of Luristan who made brigandage their trade. The slaughter of these robbers who were chased to the mountain nests was described as an offering to the spirit of Hephaeston. As Alexander advanced to Babylon, ambassadors from far lands came to his camp. The Brutians, Ukenians and Etruscans, the Carthaginians and the Phoenician colonies of Spain, Celts, Scythians of the Black Sea, Libyans and Ethiopians had all sent envoys to court the friendship of the monarch who seemed already to be Lord of half the earth. A feeling of dread was beginning to quiver faintly through the western world that the conqueror of the east would presently turn the path of his progress to the west. Carthage might feel a tremor lest he should come against her as the champion of Hellenic Sicily and do unto her what he had done to the elder Tyre. But from the city of Italy, which was destined to destroy the power of Carthage and become the partial inheritor of Alexander's empire, no ambassador came. When Alexander approached within sight of Babylon, he was met by a deputation of priestly stargazers who counseled him not to enter the city, for their god Bell had revealed to them that it would not be for his prophet. He replied to the Chaldeans with a verse of Euripides, the best seer he who guesseth well and entered at the head of his army. One of his first cares was to take measures for the rebuilding of the Temple of Bell, unduly retarded by the willful neglect of the Chaldean priests who were unwilling to appropriate their revenues for the purpose. It had been thought that their attempt to divert the king from entering Babylon may have had a motive connected with their negligence. Section four, preparations for an Arabian expedition, Alexander's death. Ever since the successful voyage of Nearchus, the brain of Alexander was filled with maritime enterprises. He was bent on the exploration of the northern and the southern oceans. He had already sent Heraclides and a company of shipwrights to the Hercanian mountains to cut wood in the forests and build a fleet to navigate the Caspian Sea and discover its supposed communication with the eastern ocean. But his more immediate and serious enterprise was the circumnavigation and conquest of Arabia. His eastern empire was not complete so long as this peninsula lay outside it. He knew of the rich spice lands of Arabia Felix, but he had no conception of the vast extent of the desert which renders a land invasion so difficult and so unremunerative. The possession of this country of sand, however, was not his main object. It was only an incident in the grand range of his plans. His visit to India and the voyage of Nearchus had given him new ideas. He had risen to the conception of making the southern ocean another great commercial sea like the Mediterranean. He proposed to make the seaboard of the Persian Gulf a second Phoenicia and he sent to the Syrian coast for seaman to colonize the shores of the mainland and the islands. He hoped to establish a regular trade route from the Indus to the Tigris and the Euphrates and thence to the canals which connected the Nile with the Red Sea. If he had lived to accomplish this, he might have renewed the project of King Neco and Hewne a walk away through the neck of the sewers. Mighty Babylon would then be in close connection with the new oceanic trade. Argoses from Alexandria or Patala could could sail into her wards. Alexander destined Babylon to be the capital of his empire and doubtless it was a wise choice. But its character was now to be transformed. It was to become a naval station and the center of maritime commerce. Alexander set about the digging of a great harbor with room for a thousand keels and designed the buildings of shipsteads. The fleet of Nearchus sailed up the Euphrates and met the king at Babylon. But this fleet was not sufficient for the approaching enterprise. Orders had been sent to Phoenicia for the building of new warships. 12 triremes, three quadriremes, four quinkraremes and 30 of the smaller 30-odd barks. These were constructed in pieces, conveyed overland to Thapsakus on Euphrates and their put together. Other ships of cypresswood were also built in Babylonia. The expedition was to set forth in the summer and the king occupied part of the intervening time in a voyage down the Euphrates to visit the Palacopas Canal. The snows of winter, melting in the late spring tide on the north slopes of the Armenian mountains, used to swell the waters of the Euphrates and force it to overflow its banks in the Babylonian plain. About 90 miles below Babylon, a canal had been dug to drain the superfluous waters into the marshes which stretched for leagues and leagues southwestward. In the autumn, the canal was closed by a sluice to prevent the water leaving its bed. But the sluice was out of working order and Alexander devised a better place, connecting the canal with the river at a different point. He sailed up the canal, lost his way for a while among the swamps and selected a new site for a new city whose building was immediately begun. We may guess that the city was meant to be the first of a string of fortresses stretching across the desert from Babylonia to the Red Sea. On his return to Babylon, he found some new western troops which had arrived from Carrier and Lydia and the body of 20,000 Persians who had been recruited by Puchestas. He proceeded to carry out a sweeping military reform out which his mind must have been working for some time past. It was nothing less than a complete transformation of his father's phalanx in fact of the Hellenic hoplity system. Alexander had done much with the well-drilled phalanx but his experience had taught him that it was far from being the ideal infantry. The advantages of its sheer weight and solid strength were more than counterbalanced by its want of mobility. Alexander invented a means of increasing the mobility with as little as possible diminution of the weight. He inserted the fresh body of 20,000 Persians into the Macedonian phalanx in the following way. The old depth of the phial, namely 16 men, was retained but of these only four were Macedonian pikemen. The men of the first three ranks and the hindmost men of all. The 12 intervening places, the fourth of the 15th ranks, were filled by Persians likely armed with their native bows and javelins. This new phalanx required a new kind of tactics which must have consisted in opening out the ranks so as to allow the archers and javelin men to deploy into their intervals and discharge their missiles and then closing up again in order to advance in a serried mass each phial bristling with three no longer with five spear points. It was a solely original idea, this combination of heavy and light troops into a tactical unity but it would need all the skill of the great master to bring it to perfection. The strange thing is to find Alexander introducing this new system which implied a complete change in the drill on the very eve of his setting forth on the Arabian expedition. We are tempted to think that he had already made experiments perhaps with that army of 30,000 orientals drilled in Macedonian fashion which had come to him at Suso. The tactical reform had also its political bearings. It was another step in the direction of fusing the Macedonian Persian together and marrying Europe with Asia. There was one thing very near to the king's heart still to be accomplished before he set out, the funeral of Hephaeston. The Oracle of Ammon had been consulted touching the honours which should be paid to the dead man and had ordained that he might be honoured as a hero. In accordance therewith, Alexander ordered that chapels should be erected to Hephaeston in Egyptian Alexandria and other cities. Never were obsequies so magnificent as those which were held at Babylon. The funeral pyre, splendidly decked with offerings, towered to the height of 200 feet. All was in readiness at length for the expedition to the south. On a day in early June, a royal banquet was given in honour of Nearchus and his seamen, shortly about to start on their oceanic voyage. As Alexander was retiring to his chamber at a late hour, a friend named Medius carried him off to spend the rest of the night in a bout of hard drinking. On the morrow he slept long. In the evening he dined with Medius and another carousel followed. After a bath and a meal in the early hours of the morning he fell into a feverish sleep. On awakening he insisted upon preparing the daily sacrifices according to his want, but the fever was still on him. He could not walk and was carriage to the altar on a couch. He spent the day in bed, actively engaged with Nearchus in discussing the expedition which he fixed for four days hence. In the cool of the evening he was conveyed to the river and rode across to a garden-biller at the other side. For six days he lay here in high fever but regularly performing the sacrifices and daily perforced deferring the departure of the expedition for another and yet another day. Then his condition grew worse and he was carried back to the palace where he won a little sleep but the fever did not abate. When his officers came to him they found him speechless. The disease became more violent and a rumour spread among the Macedonian soldiers that Alexander was dead. They rushed clamouring to the door of the palace and the bodyguards were forced to admit them. One by one they filed past the bed of their young king but he could not speak to them. He could only greet each by slightly raising his head and signing with his eyes. Puchestas and some others of the companions passed a night in the temple of Serapis and asked the god whether they should convey the sick man into the temple if happily he might be cured there by divine help. A voice warned them not to bring him but to let him remain where he lay. He died on a dune evening before the 33rd year of his age was fully told. Such is the punctilious and authentic account of the last illness of Alexander as it was recorded in the court diary but it is not sufficient to enable us to discover the precise nature of the fatal disease. The untimely deaths of sovereigns at particular junctures have often exercised an appreciable influence on the course of events but no such accident has diverted the paths of history so manifestly and utterly as the death of Alexander. Twelve years had sufficed him to conquer Western Asia and to leave an impress upon it which centuries would not obliterate and yet his work had only been begun. Many plans for the political transformation of his Asiatic empire had been initiated plans which reveal his originality of conception, his breadth of grasp, his firm hold of facts, his faculty for organisation, his wonderful brain power but all these schemes and lines of policy needed still many years of development under the masters shaping and guiding hands. The unity of the realm which was an essential part of Alexander's conception disappeared upon his death. The empire was broken up among a number of hard-headed Macedonians capable in practical rulers but without the higher qualities of the founders genius. They maintained the tolerant Hellenism which he had initiated, his lessons had not been lost upon them and thus his work was not futile. The tolls of even those twelve marvellous years moved the path for Rome and Sweden the East and prepared the ground for the spread of an universal religion. It is impossible to write the history of Alexander so as to produce a true impression of his work because in the records which we have the general and soldier fills the whole stage and the statesman is, as it were, hustled out. The details of administrative organisation are lost amidst the sounding of trumpets and the clashing of spears but it is the details of administration and political organisation which the historical enquirer craves to know and especially the constitution of the various new founded cities in the Far East those novel experiments which set the Macedonian, Greek and oriental inhabitants side by side. By their silence on these matters the companions of Alexander who wrote memoirs about him unwittingly did him a wrong and thence there has largely prevailed an unjust notion that he only knew and only cared how to conquer. It is hardly open to question that this brilliant lord of well-trained myriads would have advanced to the conquest of the West nor can we effect a doubt that succeeding where one of his successors failed he would have annexed Sicily and the great Hellas conquered Carthage and overrun the Italian peninsula. To apprehend what his death meant for Europe we need not travel farther in our speculations. To the Indies he would certainly have returned and carried out with fresh troops that project of visiting the valley of the Ganges which had been frustrated by his weary army. As it was he had left no lasting impression upon Indian civilisation and his successors soon abandoned their hold upon the Punjab. It is needless to add that if Alexander had lived another quarter of a century he would have widened the limits of geographical knowledge. The true nature of the Caspian Sea would have been determined. The southern extent of the Indian Peninsula would have been discovered and an attempt would have been made to repeat the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa. Nor could Alexander have failed in his advanced position on the Jaxates to have learned some facts about the vast extension of the Asiatic continent to the east and north and the curiosities of Chinese civilisation. His sudden death was no freak of fate or fortune it was a natural consequence of his character and deeds. Into 13 years he had compressed the energies of many lifetimes. If he had been content with the duties of a general and a statesman, laborious and wearing though those duties would have been both to body and to brain his singularly strong constitution would probably have lasted him for many a long year. But the very qualities of his brilliant temper which most endeared him to his fellows, a warrior's valor and a love of good fellowship were ruinous to his health. He was covered with scars and he had probably never recovered from that terrible wound which had been the price of his escapade at Maltern. Sparing of himself neither in battle nor at the symposium, he was doomed to die young. Section five, grease under Macedonia. The tide of the world's history swept us away from the shores of Greece and born breathlessly along from conquest to conquest in the triumphant train of the Macedonian we could not pause to see what was happening in the little states which were looking with mixed emotions at the spectacle of their own civilization making its way over the earth. Alexander's victory at the gates of Issus and his ensuing supremacy by sea had taught many of the Greeks the lesson of caution. The confederacy of the Isthmus had sent congratulations under golden crown to the conqueror and when, a 12 month later, the Spartan king Aegis, a resolute man without any military ability, renewed the war against Macedonia, he got no help or countenance outside the Peloponnesus. Some hot spirits at Athens proposed to support the movement but the people were discreetly restrained not only by Foccheon and Demades but by Demosthenes himself. Aegis induced the Arcadians except Megalopolis, the Achaeans, except Pelini and the Eleans to join him and having mercenary troops besides, he got together a considerable army. It was easy to gain a few successes before the regent of Macedonia then occupied with the rising in Thrace had time to descend upon the Peloponnesus. The chief object of the allies was to capture Megalopolis and the federal capital of Arcadia was in the strange position of being besieged by the Arcadian Federates. Antipater, as soon as the situation in Thrace set him free, marched southward to the relief of Megalopolis and easily crushed the allies in a battle fought hard by. Aegis fell fighting and there was no further resistance. Sparta sent up hostages to Alexander who accorded the conquered Greeks easy terms. So long as Darius lived many of the Greeks cherished secret hopes that that fortune might yet turn against Alexander and maintained clandestine intrigue with Persia. But on the news of his death such hopes expired and tranquility prevailed in Hellas. It was not till Alexander's return from India that anything happened to trouble the peace. And in the meantime Greece was experiencing a relief which he had needed for two generations. A field had been opened to her superfluous children who were pouring by thousands or rather tens of thousands into Asia to find careers if not permanent homes. For Athens the twelve years between the fall of Thebes and the death of Alexander were an interval of singular well-being. The conduct of public affairs was in the hands of the two most honourable statesmen of the day, Fockeon and Lycurgus. Supported by the Orator de Mardis, Fockeon was able to dissuade the people from embarking in any foolhardy enterprises and Demosthenes were sufficiently clear-sighted not to embarrass, but when needful to support the policy of peace. Fockeon probably did not gudge him the signal triumph which he won over his old rival, Aeschynes, for this triumph had only a personal and not a political significance. Shortly before Philip's death, Ctesiphon had proposed to honour Demosthenes, both for his general services to the state and especially for his liberality in contributing from his private purse towards the repair of the city walls, by crowning him publicly in the theatre with a crown of gold. The council had passed a resolution to this effect, but Aeschynes lodged an accusation against the proposer, whose motion technically exposed him to the graphy paranormal, and consequently the council's resolution was not brought before the people. The matter remained in abeyance for about six years, neither party venturing to bring it to an issue, Aeschynes by following up its indictment of Ctesiphon by forcing him to bring it into court. The collapse of the attempt of Aegis to defy Macedonia probably encouraged Aeschynes to face his rival at last. In a speech of the highest ability Aeschynes reviewed the public career of Demosthenes to prove that he was a traitor and responsible for all the disasters of Athens. The reply of Demosthenes, a masterpiece of splendid oratory, captivated the judges, and Aeschynes not winning one fifth part of their votes, left Athens and disappeared from politics. It is not unfair to say that it was Demosthenes the orator, not Demosthenes the statesman, who convinced the Athenian judges. Apart from his speech on the crown, which has been described as the funeral oration on Greek freedom, Demosthenes felt almost silent during these years. He saw that public action on his part would be useless, but perhaps he worked underground. In these two speeches in the matter of the crown, the most interesting passages were as Aeschynes reflects on the changes which had recently come to pass over the face of the earth. We want to know what the Greeks thought of these startling changes, what they felt as they saw the fashion of the world passing, and the things which had seemed of great weight and worth in Hellas, becoming of small account. Aeschynes thus uttered their surprise. All manner of strange events, utterly unforeseen, have befallen in our lifetime. Our extraordinary experiences will seem to those who come after us like a curious tale of marvels. The king of the Persians, who dug the canal through Athos, who bridged the Hellas-pont, who demanded earth and water from the Greeks, who dared in his letters to declare, I am the Lord of all the world from the rising to the setting of the sun, is at this moment struggling not for dominion over other men, but to save his own life and limb. Thebes, even Thebes our neighbour, has been snatched in the space of a single day out of the midst of Hellas, justly for her policy was false. But assuredly she was rather blinded by a heaven-sent infatuation than misled by human perversity. And the poor Lachydharmonians, who once lifted themselves up to be leaders of the Greeks, must now go up to Alexander as hostages and throw themselves upon the mercy of the potentate whom they wronged. Our own city, once the asylum of the Greek world, with all men looked for help, has now ceased to strive for the leadership of the Greeks, for the very ground of her home is in danger. The Macedonian Empire had not yet lasted long enough to turn the traffic of the Mediterranean into new channels, and Athens still enjoyed great commercial prosperity. She sent a colony to some unknown place on the Hadriatic Seaboard to be a base of protection against the Utruscan Rovers, the big menacing eyes of whose pirate crafts were a constant terror to traders in those seas. And although peace was her professed policy, she did not neglect to make provision for war in case a favorable opportunity should come round, in the revolution of circumstance, for regaining her sovereignty on sea. Money was spent on the navy, which is said to have been increased to well-knife 400 galleys and on new shipsheds. The handsome marble storehouse for the hanging ship-gear, designed by the architect Freilo, was completed at the harbour of Zea. It was expressly provided that the cases which lined the walls and pillars of the cool triple-iled arcade should be open, in order that those who passed through may be able to see all the gear that is in the gear store. The man who was mainly responsible for this naval expenditure was Lycurgus. It is significant of the spirit of Athens at this time that while Foccheon and Demades were the most influential men in the assembly, the finances were in the charge of a statesman who had been so signally hostile to Macedonia that Alexander had demanded his surrender. In recent years considerable changes had been made in the constitution of the financial offices. Eubulus had administered as the president of the Theoric Fund, but now we find the control of the expenditure in the hands of a minister of the public revenue, who was elected by the people and held office for four years from one Panathenaque festival to another. Lycurgus was entrusted with this post for twelve years. For the first period in his own name, for the two succeeding periods, his activity was cloaked on the names of his son and another nominal minister. He acted, of course, in conjunction with the council, but the influence of the more permanent and experienced minister upon that annual body was inevitably very great. The new system, it is evident, was a distinct improvement on the old. It was much better that the administration of the revenue should be managed by one competent statesman, unhampered by colleagues, and that his tenure of office should not be limited to a year. The post practically included the functions of a minister of public works, and the ministry of Lycurgus was distinguished by building enterprises. He constructed the Panathenaque stadium on the southern bank of the Elyseus. He rebuilt the Lycian gymnasium, where in these years the philosopher Aristotle used to take his morning and evening walks, teaching his peripatetic disciples. It lay somewhere to the east of the city, under Mount Lycobetus. But the most memorable work of Lycurgus was the reconstruction of the theatre of Dionysus. It was he who built the rows of marble benches, climbing up the steep side of the Acropolis as we see them today, and his original stage buildings can be redistinguished amidst the ruins from the mass of later additions and improvements. He canonized, as it were, the three great tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, by setting up their statues in the theatre, and by carrying a measure that that copies of their work should be officially prepared and preserved by the State. In connection with the prosperity of Athens and her large public outlay, it is important to observe that the silver mines of Llorium, which had been closed when the Spartans occupied Decalaya and had been neglected for want of capital and enterprise throughout the whole first half of the fourth century, had been reopened and were working vigorously. They seemed to have been managed largely on a new principle, namely by private companies. The historian Xenophon had written a pamphlet on the subject of the mines as a neglected source of revenue, and it would be interesting to know whether the revival of the industry is to be ascribed directly or indirectly to the influence of its exhortations. No sign of the times which followed the defeat of Caronea is more striking than the framing of a new system for drilling the young burgers of Athens and the duties of military life. The training began when the youth, having completed his 18th year, came of age and was enrolled in the register of his deem, and it lasted for two years. During these two years the young citizen was known as an Ephibos, and might not appear either as a prosecutor or defendant in the law courts except for a few cases expressly specified. The general supervision over all the Attic Ephibi was committed to a Marshal, Cosmitus, who was elected by the Athenian Assembly, and under him were ten masters of discipline, Sophronistai, one for each tribe. The institution had a religious consecuation. The first act in the service of the Ephibi was solemnly to go round the temples under the conduct of the masters. Then they served for a year on duty in the guardhouses at Monicchia and along the coast, receiving regular military instruction from special drill masters who trained them in the exercises of the hoplites, and taught them how to shoot with bow and javelin and to handle artillery. The Ephibi at each tribe ate together at barric messes which were managed by the masters of discipline. At the end of the first year they appeared before an assembly in the theatre, and when they had made a public display of their proficiency in the art of warfare, each received from the city a shield and a spear. The second year was spent in patrolling the frontiers of the land and guarding the prisons. The garrison and patrol duties had always devolved upon the young men of Attica, but they were now organised into a new and thorough scheme of discipline. A mild Attica approach to the stone system of Sparta, it almost strikes one as a conscious effort to arrest the decline of the citizen army in the face of the encroachments of the mercenary system. The Ephibi in their characteristic dress, the dark mantle and broad brimmed hat, are a graceful feature of Athenian life and art from this time forward. It is significant that the whole revival, stimulated by the disaster of Keronea, was marked by a religious character. Lycurgus, who belonged to the priestly family of the Aetio-Butads, was a sincerely pious man, and impressed upon his administration the stamp of his own devotion. Never for a hundred years had there been seen at Athen such a manifestation of zealous public concern for the worship of the gods. The two chief monuments of the Lycurgan Epoch, the Panathenaic stadion and the theatre of Dionysus, were it must always be remembered religious, not secular buildings. Thus Athen's discreetly attended to her material well-being and courted the favour of the gods, and the only distress which befell her was the dearth of Corn. But on the return of Alexander to Sousa, two things happened which imperiled the tranquillity of Greece. Alexander promised the Greek exiles, there were more than twenty-thousand of them, to procure their return to their native cities. He sent Nakhanor to the great congregation of Hellas at the Olympian festival, to order the states to receive back their banished citizens. A general reconciliation of parties was a just and politic measure, but it could be objected that, by the terms of the Confederation of Corinth, the Macedonian king had no power to dictate orders to the Confederates in the management of the domestic affairs. Only two states objected, Athens and Etolia, and they objected because, if the Edict were enforced, they would be robbed of ill-gotten gains. The Etolians had possessed themselves of Oenidae and driven out its Akhanian owners. By Alexander's Edict the whiteful inheritance would now return to their own city and the intruders be dislodged. The position of Athens and Samos was similar. The Samiens would now be restored to their own lands, and the Athenian settlers would have to go. Both Athens and Etolia were prepared to resist. Another desire was expressed by Alexander at the same time, which was readily acquiesced in. He demanded that the Greeks should recognise his divinity. Sparta is reported to have replied indifferently. We allow Alexander to call himself a god, if he likes. There was not a sensible mind at Athens who would have thought of objecting. Even the bitters patriots would have allowed him to be the son of Zeus or Poseidon or whomever he chose. If the Greeks of Corinth looked up to Alexander as their chieftain and protector, and this was actually their position in regard to him, there was no incongruity in the idea of officially acknowledging his divinity. Ever since the days in which an Homeric king was honoured as a god by the people, there was nothing offensive or atlantic to a Greek ear in predicating godhood of a revered sovereign or master. Divine honours had been paid to Lysander, and the Greeks, in complying with Alexander's desire, did not commit themselves more than the pupil of the Academy who erected an altar to his master Plato.