t, reducing the cities
in his way. In his speech before the council of war after Issus, he told
his generals that they must not pursue Darius with Tyre unsubdued, and
Persia in possession of Egypt and Cyprus, for, if Persia should regain
her seaports, she would transfer the war into Greece, and that it was
absolutely necessary for him to be sovereign at sea. With Cyprus and
Egypt in his possession he felt no solicitude about Greece. The siege
of Tyre cost him more than half a year. In revenge for this delay,
he crucified, it is said, two thousand of his prisoners. Jerusalem
voluntarily surrendered, and therefore was treated leniently: but the
passage of the Macedonian army into Egypt being obstructed at Gaza, the
Persian governor of which, Betis, made a most obstinate defense, that
place, after a siege of two months, was carried by assault, ten thousand
of its men were massacred, and the rest, with their wives and children,
sold into slavery. Betis himself was dragged alive round the city at the
chariot-wheels of the conqueror. There was now no further obstacle. The
Egyptians, who detested the Persian rule, received their invader with
open arms. He organized the country in his own interest, intrusting
all its military commands to Macedonian officers, and leaving the civil
government in the hands of native Egyptians.

CONQUEST OF EGYPT. While preparations for the final campaign were being
made, he undertook a journey to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, which was
situated in an oasis of the Libyan Desert, at a distance of two hundred
miles. The oracle declared him to be a son of that god who, under
the form of a serpent, had beguiled Olympias, his mother. Immaculate
conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received in those
days, that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of
men was thought to be of supernatural lineage. Even in Rome, centuries
later, no one could with safety have denied that the city owed its
founder, Romulus, to an accidental meeting of the god Mars with the
virgin Rhea Sylvia, as she went with her pitcher for water to the
spring. The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked with anger on
those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother of that
great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate conception
through the influences of Apollo, and that the god had declared to
Ariston, to whom she was betrothed, the parentage of the child. When
Alexander issu