Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/263

Rh bank to Memphis, where he sacrificed to Apis and held a festival of gymnastics and music. He even went several days' journey in the desert to visit the shrine and oracle of Ammon. He then went to the Canobic mouth and sailed round the Maeotic Lake. While there he was struck by the advantages of the strip of land opposite the island of Pharus, as a site for a town, and marked out a circuit of ten miles for the walls of what was called Alexandria after him, and very quickly rose to be one of the most important cities of the ancient world. Here, too, he was careful to respect the feelings of the natives, and to provide for a joint occupation of it ; while his plan embraced a temple to Isis as well as to the gods of Greece.

With the immense prestige gained by his triumphant march through Asia Minor to Egypt, and enriched by enormous treasures which he seized in Damascus and wherever the Persian Government had been centred, Alexander in the following year began his wonderful march into the interior of Asia, the heart of the Persian Empire. Darius had gathered a great host to meet him, and was encamped on the Upper Tigris at Gaugamela, more than twenty miles from Arbela, which has given its name to the battle, and in which Darius had left his baggage and treasure. The victory of Alexander (September, B.C. 331), was again complete, and Darius fled into Media. All resistance at once collapsed; there was no holding out of strong towns as at Tyre or Gaza. The Persian Empire passed to Alexander at one blow, with all its immense accumu-