Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/261

Rh sion Sardis—important as the place from which the great roads branched off—Ephesus, Magnesia, Miletus, and, in fact, all the Greek towns in Asia Minor. He hardly met with any resistance except at Ephesus and Halicarnassus where he was assisted by his fleet. The immediate effect upon the Greek towns was the establishment of a democratic form of government, of course in subordination to the Macedonian monarch. They were free from the Persian satraps, and from the tyrants which the satraps constantly set up. Those cities which submitted quietly received specially favourable treatment; inscriptions are extant recording remissions of contribution {syntaxis), restoration of temples, and the law against tyrants, in virtue of which they are deposed and declared outlaws. The settlement of Alexander was in some places, as in Lesbos, upset for a time by the Persian fleet under Memnon, and those who succeeded him after his death in B.C. 333; but in the next year Hegelochus, the commander of the Macedonian fleet, drove away the governors replaced by the Persians, and from that time the will of Alexander was supreme in Asia Minor and the islands. In these transactions he acted as the head of Hellas and encouraged Hellenic restorations. Thus he is said to have contributed largely to the expense of rebuilding the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, burnt the year of his birth. He rebuilt a temple to Athena at Pirene, and an inscription remains recording the dedication by one of his officers of a statue at Olympia. When sufficient time had elapsed to heal the feuds occasioned by the changes of dynasty one of the last acts of Alexander's