Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/519

Rh L E X A N D E R THE GREAT 481 counteract their ill effects by a marriage between his daughter and her uncle, the Epirot king Alexander, the brother of Olympias. The marriage feast was celebrated at JEgse. Clothed in a white robe, and walking purposely apart from his guards, Philip was approaching the theatre when he was struck down by the dagger of Pausanias. It is certain that Alexander, if he mourned his father s death at all, deplored it only as involving himself in political difficulties ; but he took care to act as if he were grieved by it, and he revenged it, we are told, by putting out of the way some whose claims or designs might clash with his own. The Greeks of Thebes and Athens knew little what sort of man had taken the place of Philip. Demosthenes, who, although he was mourning for the death of his own daughter, appeared in festal attire to announce the death of the Macedonian king, held up Alexander to ridicule as a bragging and senseless Margites. But they had to reckon with one who could swoop on his prey with the swiftness of the eagle. Barely two months had passed from the death of his father before the youth of twenty years stood with his army on the plains of Thessaly. The argument of the Macedonian phalanx was not to be resisted. The Thessalians recognised him as the Ilegemon or leader of the Greeks ; and the young king passed on to Thebes, the citadel of which had been held by a Macedonian garrison since the fight at Chseronea. Thence he took himself across the isthmus to Corinth. Here he was met by Athenian envoys, who brought him apologies more abject and honours more extravagant than any which had been paid to his father. He received them in an assembly, from which he demanded and obtained the title of supreme leader of the Hellenic armies, and to which he guaranteed, at the utmost with a feigned reluc tance, the autonomy or independence of every Hellenic city. No one knew better than Alexander that from the wholo armoury of weapons which might be employed to reduce Greeks to slavery, none could more effectually do his work than a theory of freedom which meant dissension, and of self-government which meant endless feud, faction, and war. Alexander was now eager to carry out his great design against Persia ; but he could not do so with safety until he had struck a wholesome terror of his power into the mountain tribes which hemmed in his dominions. His blows descended swiftly and surely on the Thracians of Mount Hsemus (the Balkan), on the Triballians, and on some clans of Getse, whom he crossed the Danube to attack. But these expeditions led him away from the world of the Greeks. Silence led to rumours of his defeat, and the rumours of defeat were followed by more confident assertions of his death. At Thebes and at Athens the tidings were received by some with eager belief. The covenant made with Alexander was made only with him personally. The Theban exiles at Athens were anxious to repeat the attempt which half a century earlier had been made against the Spartan garrison of the Cadmea by Pelopidas. With help in arms and money from Demos thenes and other Athenians, they entered Thebes, and summoned the Macedonian garrison to surrender. The answer was a blunt refusal, and a double line of circum- vallation was drawn around the citadel, while envoys were sent to call forth aid from every quarter ; but these efforts could not affect the issue. The belief in Alexander s death was to be dispelled, by no gradual reports of his escape from the barbarians, but by his own sudden appearance at the Boeotian Onchestus. He had just de feated the Illyrians when he heard of the revolt, and he determined to smite the rebels without turning aside to take even a day s rest at Pella. In little more than a fortnight his army was encamped on the southern side of Thebes, thus cutting off all chances of aid from Athens. It was his wish to avoid an assault, and be contented himself with demanding the surrender of two only of the anti- Macedonian leaders. The citizens generally were anxious to submit, but the exiles felt or feared themselves to be too deeply committed ; and the answer took the form of a defiance, accompanied by a demand for the surrender of Antipater and Philotas. They had sealed their own doom. Personal bravery was of no use against the discipline, the numbers, and the engines of the enemy. The defenders were driven back into the city ; the invaders burst in with them ; and the slaughter which followed was by no means inflicted by the Macedonians alone. The Platseans, Thespians, and Orchomenians felt that they had old scores to settle. To these and to the rest of his Greek allies Alexander submitted the fate of the city. The sentence was promptly pronounced. The measure which the Thebans had dealt to Platoea?, and would have dealt to Athens, should now be dealt out to themselves. The whole town was razed to the ground, the house of the poet Pindar being alone spared from demolition, and his descendants alone allowed to retain their freedom. Alex ander had gained his end. The spirit of the Greeks was crushed; a great city was blotted out, and the worship of its gods was ended with its ruin. These gods, it was believed, would in due time take vengeance on the con queror; but for the present the only hindrance to his enterprise was removed from his path. Without turning aside to Athens, he went on to Corinth to receive the adulations of the independent Greeks, and to find, it is said, a less courtly speaker in the cynic Diogenes. From Corinth he returned to Macedonia, having left Greece for the last time. Six months later he set off from Pella, crossed the Helles- 334 B o. pont at Sestus, to appease at Ilium by a costly sacrifice the wrath of the luckless Priam ; and then marched on, with not more perhaps than 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry, and with a treasure- chest almost empty, to destroy the monarchy of Cyras. With him went men who were to be linked with the memory of his worst crimes and of his most astonishing triumphs Clitus, Hephcestion, Eumenes, Seleucus, Pto lemy the son of Lagos, and Parmenion, with his sons Philotas and Nicanor. The effects of Macedonian discipline were to be seen at once on the banks of the Granicus, a little stream flowing to the Propontis from the slopes of Ida. Losing, it is said, only GO of his cavalry and 30 of his infantry, he annihilated the Persian force, 2000 out of 20,000 foot soldiers being taken prisoners, and nearly all the rest slain. The terror of his name did his work as he marched south wards. The citadel of Sardis might with ease have been held against him : before he came within eight miles of the city, the governor hastened to surrender it with all its treasure. At Ephesus he found the city abandoned by its garrison. Miletus he carried by storm. Before Hali- carnassus he encountered a more obstinate resistance from the Athenian Ephialtes ; but the generalship of the latter was of no avail. Alexander entered Halicamassus, and the Rhodian Memnon remained shut up in the citadel. Leaving Ptolemy with 1000 men to blockade it, he spent the winter in conquering Lycia, Parnphylia, and Pisidia, 333 B.C. ending his campaign at Gordium, on the river Sangarius. Here was preserved the ancient waggon of Gordius, the mythical Phrygian king. Whoever could untie the knot, curiously twisted with fibres of the cornel tree, which fastened its pole to the yoke, was, so the story ran, to be lord of Asia. Alexander, as much at a loss as others to unloose it, cut it with his sword ; but the prophecy was none the less held to be fulfilled. If he was thus favoured by sentiment, he was still more favoured by the infatuation which led Darius to abandon the policy of defence by sea I. 61