ed his letters, orders, and decrees, styling himself "King
Alexander, the son of Jupiter Ammon," they came to the inhabitants of
Egypt and Syria with an authority that now can hardly be realized. The
free-thinking Greeks, however, put on such a supernatural pedigree its
proper value. Olympias, who, of course, better than all others knew the
facts of the case, used jestingly to say, that "she wished Alexander
would cease from incessantly embroiling her with Jupiter's wife."
Arrian, the historian of the Macedonian expedition, observes, "I cannot
condemn him for endeavoring to draw his subjects into the belief of his
divine origin, nor can I be induced to think it any great crime, for it
is very reasonable to imagine that he intended no more by it than merely
to procure the greater authority among his soldiers."

GREEK CONQUEST OF PERSIA. All things being thus secured in his rear,
Alexander, having returned into Syria, directed the march of his army,
now consisting of fifty thousand veterans, eastward. After crossing the
Euphrates, he kept close to the Masian hills, to avoid the intense heat
of the more southerly Mesopotamian plains; more abundant forage could
also thus be procured for the cavalry. On the left bank of the Tigris,
near Arbela, he encountered the great army of eleven hundred thousand
men brought up by Darius from Babylon. The death of the Persian monarch,
which soon followed the defeat he suffered, left the Macedonian general
master of all the countries from the Danube to the Indus. Eventually he
extended his conquest to the Ganges. The treasures he seized are almost
beyond belief. At Susa alone he found--so Arrian says--fifty thousand
talents in money.

EVENTS OF THE CAMPAIGNS. The modern military student cannot look
upon these wonderful campaigns without admiration. The passage of the
Hellespont; the forcing of the Granicus; the winter spent in a political
organization of conquered Asia Minor; the march of the right wing and
centre of the army along the Syrian Mediterranean coast; the engineering
difficulties overcome at the siege of Tyre; the storming of Gaza; the
isolation of Persia from Greece; the absolute exclusion of her navy from
the Mediterranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with
or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often resorted to with
success; the submission of Egypt; another winter spent in the political
organization of that venerable country; the convergence of the