Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/82

 50 HISTORY OF GREECE. for freedom among Greeks on the south, as well as among Thra- cians on the north, of Macedonia. The ensuing winter was em- ployed in completing his preparations ; so that early in the spring of 334 B. c, his army destined for the conquest of Asia was mus- tered between Pella and Amphipolis, while his fleet was at hand to lend support. The whole of Alexander's remaining life — from his crossing the Hellespont in March or April 334 B. c, to his death at Bab- ylon in June 323 b. c, eleven years and two or three months — was passed in Asia, amidst unceasing military operations, and ever-multiplied conquests. He never lived to revisit Macedo- nia ; but his achievements were on so transcendent a scale, his acquisitions of territory so unmeasured, and his thirst for farther aggrandizement still so insatiate, that Macedonia sinks into insig- nificance in the list of his possessions. Much more do the Gre- cian cities dwindle into outlying appendages of a newly-grov»'n Oriental empire. During aU these eleven years, the histo»y of Greece is almost a blank, except here and there a few scattered events. It is only at the death of Alexander that the Grecian cities again awaken into active movement. The Asiatic conquests of Alexander do not belong directly and literally to the province of an historian of Greece. They were achieved by armies of which the general, the principal ofii- cers, and most part of the soldiers, were Macedonian. The Greeks who served with him were only auxiliaries, along with the Thracians and Pieonians. Though more numerous than all the other auxiliaries, they did not constitute, like the Ten Thou- sand Greeks in the army of the }'Ounger Cyrus, the force on which he mainly relied for victory. His chief-secretary, Eume- nes of Kardia, was a Greek, and probably most of the civil and intellectual functions connected with the service were also per- formed by Greeks. Many Greeks also served in the army of Persia against him, and composed indeed a larger proportion of the real force (disregarding mere numbers) in the army of Da- rius than in that of Alexander. Hence the expedition become? indirectly incorporated with the stream of Grecian history by the powerful auxiliary agency of Greeks on both sides — and still more, by its connection with previous projects, dreams, and legeude, long antecedent to the aggrandizement of Macedon — as