However reluctantly Alexander may have abandoned the immediate prospect of further conquests and discoveries in the East, there was still enough to fill his mind, and to gratify his passion for heroic adventures, in the enterprise which he was next to begin. So vague had been, almost down to this time, his notions as to the geography of the regions which he was to traverse on his return to Persia, that when he found crocodiles in the Indus, he conceived a fancy that this river was a branch of the Nile; and this conjecture seemed to him strongly confirmed, when he met with the lotus, such as he had seen in Egypt, on the banks of the Acesines. He even mentioned, in a letter to his mother, that he believed he had discovered the land which contained the springs of the Nile; he thought that, in its course from India to Ethiopia, it might flow through some vast desert, in which it lost its original name. A little inquiry among the natives must have sufficed to correct this error—which seems to prove that he was not well read in Herodotus, and that the expedition of Scylax had excited but little attention in Greece — and that he remained so long ignorant of the truth, shows how singly his views were at first bent towards the East.

The fleet, which was probably for the most part collected from the natives, numbered, according to Ptolemy, nearly 2000 vessels of various kinds, including eighty galleys of war.

Our attention will now again he chiefly occupied with the affairs of Greece. The connection indeed between the events, which took place there, and the contests carried on by Alexander's successors in Asia, becomes henceforward so close, that it will be necessary to keep both constantly in view: the latter however, as subordinate to the proper subject of our history. Before we turn to it, we must proceed as far as the first settlement that was made of the great interests, which were left in so much confusion and uncertainty by the sudden vacancy of the Macedonian throne.

It may easily be believed, that Alexander's death was sincerely deplored by all around him, whose immediate interest was not too deeply affected by it to allow room for grief. When the royal pages, unable to contain their excitement, rushed out of the palace with loud wailings, and made the event generally known, the whole city soon resounded with the voice of lamentation. The Macedonians mourned for their hero, the Persians for their king. Many and various were the honours afterwards paid to Alexander's memory, by word and work, in monuments and spectacles, in smooth verse and well turned periods: but the most honourable tribute was offered by Sisygambis, the mother of Darius.

The treaty of 311 was almost immediately followed by a tragical event, which may be considered as the natural consequence of one of its conditions. From the beginning of the war the young king Alexander and his mother had been kept in close custody at Amphipolis, without the attendance befitting their rank. Cassander by this treatment had given sufficient evidence of his ultimate intentions with regard to them. He probably only waited until the Macedonians should have been reconciled to the spectacle of their degradation, and have forgotten them, to rid himself of them for ever. The declaration however, which Antigonus made in their favour on his return from the East, may have revived the hopes of those who were still attached to the royal house: and the treaty, which solemnly recognised Alexander's title to the crown, must have excited still more sanguine expectations. The young prince was now about sixteen, the age at which his father had been entrusted with the government of the state, and the command of armies. His partisans openly expressed their wish to see him immediately released from confinement, and placed on the throne. That they were instigated to this injudicious display of their loyalty, which without any benefit to its object could not but alarm Cassander, and put him on his guard, by any secret machinations of Antigonus, seems a very needless conjecture: Antigonus might safely anticipate that the terms of the treaty would produce this effect, and he was probably able to divine its remoter consequences.

The spoil of Damascus was not the most important advantage which Alexander reaped from the battle of Issus. It averted a danger which, notwithstanding Memnon's death, had continued to give him occasion for much uneasiness; for he was still threatened with a diversion in his rear–a general rising of the Greeks and an invasion of Macedonia–which might have interrupted, even if it did not finally defeat, his enterprise.

Memnon, on his death-bed, had appointed his nephew Pharnabazus, the son of Artabazus, to succeed him in his government until the king's pleasure should be known. Pharnabazus and Autophradates prosecuted the siege of Mitylene with such vigour, that the inhabitants were reduced to capitulate, on the conditions that the mercenaries in their pay should be allowed to depart: that they should take down the columns which contained their treaty with Alexander, and should enter into alliance with Darius on the terms of the peace of Antalcidas, and should recal their exiled citizens–the anti-Macedonian party–and restore one half of their confiscated property. But the Persian generals were no sooner masters of the town, than they introduced a garrison commanded by an officer of their own, created Diogenes, one of the exiles, tyrant, and levied arbitrary contributions, both on the city and on opulent individuals.

Early in the spring of 334, Alexander set out on his march to the Hellespont, leaving Antipater, with an army of 12,000 infantry and 1,500 horse, regent in Macedonia, and to keep a watchful eye on the affairs of Greece. Parmenio, who after Philip's death had returned from Asia, commanded the phalanx under the king: his son Philotas, the Macedonian cavalry, and another son, Nicanor, the hypaspists. The Thessalian horse were placed under the command of Calas, son of Harpalus; the Greek under Eriguius; the Thracian and Pæonian light cavalry under Cassander, son of Antipater. In twenty days the army reached Sestus, where a fleet of 160 sail, including twenty Athenian galleys, and a great number of transports, had been provided for its embarkation. Parmenio was ordered to superintend the passage of the main body of the infantry, and of the cavalry, to Abydos, while Alexander himself proceeded to Elæus, to sacrifice in the sanctuary of Protesilaus, and to pray for a happier landing than had been vouchsafed to that hero on the shore of Asia. Here he also erected an altar to commemorate his departure from Europe, and then embarking, and steering his own galley, made for the harbour on the opposite coast, which tradition had fixed upon as the landingplace of the Achæans in the Trojan war.

Alexander's next object, after the subjection of Hyrcania had secured a communication between the shores of the Caspian and the interior provinces on the south side of the chain of Elburz, was to crush the resistance which he had to expect from Bessus and his remaining confederates, and to take possession of the eastern satrapies as far as the borders of India, where a boundless field lay open to his ambition. The power of Bessus was the most formidable, as well on account of the extent and resources of the fertile and populous countries which he governed, as because the adjacent Bteppes of Tartary, and the high table-land to the east of his province, both afforded a ready refuge from pursuit, and might again supply him with numerous auxiliaries. It was therefore to this quarter that Alexander's attention was mainly directed. From the Hyrcanian capital he marched into the territory of the Parthyæans, or Parthians–the people who were destined to wrest so large a portion of his empire from his successors–which lay at the southern foot of the Elburz. It must not however be supposed that he retraced his steps. He no doubt advanced along the south-east corner of the Caspian, through Korkan, and then crossed the lower ridges which connect the Elburz with the Indian Caucasus.

A Greek, who had been watching the course of Philip's movements, must have been surprised to hear, that, after having raised the sieges of Byzantium and Perinthus, on which he had spent so much time and money, if not many lives; after having been driven out of the Chersonesus; and when his own territories were suffering from the enemy's inroads; instead of making any attempt to retaliate on the Athenians, as he had boasted it was always in his power to do, his next enterprise was an expedition against the Scythians. The motives assigned for this expedition seemed by no means urgent. Atheas, king of the Scythians, pressed by the tribes on the banks of the Danube, had sought aid, through the mediation of the Greeks of Apollonia, from Philip; and a body of troops had been sent to support him. That the Scythian promised, in return for his help, to adopt him as heir to his throne, sounds hardly credible. The danger however which threatened the Scythians had ceased before their allies arrived; and Atheas sent them back with an insulting message, by which he disclaimed all connection with Philip. Philip, it is said, then demanded compensation for the cost of their march, which was likewise scoffingly refused.

After the battle of Gaugamela Darius had taken the road to Ecbatana. This ancient capital of Media contained a considerable treasure, and here he thought he might wait in safety for the turn of events: not without a hope that some accident might happen to arrest Alexander's progress. He calculated perhaps on the resistance which might be made by the satrap of Persis, or by the wild tribes on its north-west border; partly too, it may be, on the movements which were beginning to threaten Macedonia in Greece. For even after his last defeat he had received an embassy from Sparta, which was accompanied by an Athenian named Dropidas; and he had learnt that the nation at large was not so blinded by names, as to share the sentiment of the Corinthian Demaratus, who, when he saw Alexander seated on the throne of the Great King, is said to have shed tears of joy, and to have observed that the Greeks who had died before they witnessed that sight, had lost a great pleasure: as if it was a happiness for Greece to have the Great King reigning at Pella, as well as at Susa. But it seems that he trusted entirely to fortune, or to the exertions of others. It is very doubtful whether he ever entertained the design of collecting a fresh army, and meeting Alexander again in the field: though Arrian's silence may not prove anything against the assertions of the other historians on this point, which are in some degree confirmed by the rumour which he himself mentions about the preparations of Darius.

From the remotest ages of Pelasgian antiquity down to the time of the Roman empire, the holy island of Samothrace, the seat of an awfully mysterious worship, accounted equal to Delphi in sanctity, and an inviolable asylum, continued to be visited by pilgrims, who went to be initiated into the rites which were believed to secure the devotee against extraordinary perils both by sea and land, and, in the later period, to fix his destiny after death in some brighter sphere. It had probably been always held in great reverence by the Macedonian kings, as it was here that the last of them sought refuge in the wreck of his fortunes. Here it is said Philip first saw Olympias, when they partook at the same time in the Cabirian mysteries, and resolved to seek her hand. For him such a scene may have had little other interest: but Olympias seems to have taken delight in such ceremonies, and to have given herself up with fervour to the impression they produced. She loved the fanatical orgies celebrated by the Thracian and Macedonian women in honour of their Dionysus; and is even said to have introduced some of the symbols of this frantic worship, the huge tame snakes, which the Bacchanals wreathed round their necks and arms, into her husband's palace. It is a stroke which agrees well with the other features of her wild impetuous character.

The state of public feeling in Athens at the close of the Phocian war, may be easily conceived. It was a struggle between fear and resentment. Fear of an enemy who had been irritated by a long conflict, had become more powerful than ever, and, while his forces had been brought nearer to the confines of Attica than they had ever before advanced, had given a fresh specimen, in the political extinction of another Grecian state, of the fearful lengths to which his animosity might be carried, or to which he might even be led by the cool calculations of his ambitious policy. Resentment, which was so much the keener, because the injury that provoked it was one which afforded but slight ground for remonstrance, or even for complaint. One of the consequences of this state of feeling was, that the peace just concluded, though almost universally admitted to be necessary, became generally odious, and its authors and promoters–the orators who proposed and recommended it, and the negotiators who brought it about–extremely unpopular. Demosthenes, as one of the ambassadors who had been engaged in this business, must have shared the odium to which his colleagues were exposed, if he had not been able to separate his case from theirs, and if the whole tenor of his past public life had not exempted him from all suspicions of a leaning toward the Macedonian interest.

Alexander's invasion of Asia might well form the subject of a separate work: but it belongs rather to universal history than to the history of Greece. The Greeks indeed were deeply interested in the event: but the effect it produced on their condition might be sufficiently understood from a very summary account of the transactions by means of which it was brought about. Still it was not without reason that writers of Grecian history thought themselves called upon to relate this great triumph of Grecian arts and arms–for such it was, though they were employed by a people whom the Greeks themselves did not account worthy of their name–which spread a Greek population over the fairest provinces of Asia, and carried the Greek language, manners, and modes of thinking, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of the Indus. It is now scarcely permitted to one who is traversing the same field to depart from their example. The reader however will not expect to see this subject treated here even with all the fulness of details into which we have entered in other portions of our narrative, which were more essential parts of a history of Greece. Our aim must be confined to a survey of the leading features of this ever memorable conquest, which may enable us to understand the spirit in which it was accomplished, and perhaps to judge of the designs as well as the achievements of the conqueror.

ON THE ORDER OF THE OLYNTHIACS.

I am not about to add another dissertation to the many which have been written on this perplexing subject, but only to direct the reader's attention to some questions connected with it, which have not been noticed in the text. It will be observed that I have not only followed the order of Dionysius, but have assumed that each oration was delivered on the occasion of a fresh embassy from Olynthus. On this point, as well as on the other, opinions differ, and those who agree on the one question may take opposite sides on the other.