nd the arrows
of the natives who did not wish to let them pass, they came to the
Black Sea and returned to Greece after traversing the whole Persian
empire. At their return (399) their number amounted still to 8,000.

=Agesilaus.=--Three years after, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, with a
small army invaded the rich country of Asia Minor, Lydia, and Phrygia.
He fought the satraps and was about to invade Asia when the Spartans
ordered his return to fight the armies of Thebes and Athens. Agesilaus
was the first of the Greeks to dream of conquering Persia. He was
distressed to see the Greeks fighting among themselves. When they
announced to him the victory at Corinth where but eight Spartans had
perished and 10,000 of the enemy, instead of rejoicing he sighed and
said, "Alas, unhappy Greece, to have lost enough men to have
subjugated all the barbarians!" He refused one day to destroy a Greek
city. "If we exterminate all the Greeks who fail of their duty," said
he, "where shall we find the men to vanquish the barbarians?" This
feeling was rare at that time. In relating these words of Agesilaus
Xenophon, his biographer, exclaims, "Who else regarded it as a
misfortune to conquer when he was making war on peoples of his own
race?"

CONQUEST OF ASIA BY ALEXANDER

=Macedon.=--Sparta and Athens, exhausted by a century of wars, had
abandoned the contest against the king of Persia. A new people resumed
it and brought it to an end; these were the Macedonians. They were a
very rude people, crude, similar to the ancient Dorians, a people of
shepherds and soldiers. They lived far to the north of Greece in two
great valleys that opened to the sea. The Greeks had little regard for
them, rating them as half barbarians; but since the kings of Macedon
called themselves sons of Herakles they had been permitted to run
their horses in the races of the Olympian games. This gave them
standing as Greeks.

=Philip of Macedon.=--These kings ruling in the interior, remote from
the sea, had had but little part in the wars of the Greeks. But in 359
B.C. Philip ascended the throne of Macedon, a man young, active, bold,
and ambitious. Philip had three aims:

1. To develop a strong army;

2. To conquer all the ports on the coast of Macedon;

3. To force all the other Greeks to unite under his command
against the Persians.

He consumed twenty-four years in fulfilling these purposes and
succeeded in all. The Greeks let him alone, often even