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ALE for a space of four years, the philosopher's instructions ranged over the wide fields of poetry, rhetoric, and science. He revised, for the use of his pupil, a copy of the Iliad, and wrote for him a treatise on Government. To his incitement we may trace in part that varied knowledge and enthusiasm for discovery which so distinguished the Conqueror. It is pleasant to hear of the warm personal attachment which existed between those two illustrious men. Philip himself had trained his son in the art of war and state-craft, and on the occasion of his march against Byzantium, 340 ., he committed Macedonia to his charge. Some letters to Aristotle are the only records we have of this administration. Two years afterwards, before Chæronea, we hear of Alexander urging his father to a decisive engagement; and his own impetuous charge on that eventful day decided the fortune of the field. Philip's marriage with Cleopatra introduced dissension into the royal house; and strife came between the father and son. The prince violently resented an insult offered to him at the nuptial banquet, and retired with his mother from the court. Shortly afterwards, on Philip's negotiating a union between his half-brother Aridæus and a daughter of Pixodarus of Caria, he imagined the scheme a step to supplant his succession, and himself sent proposals for the hand of the lady. On discovering this, Philip imprisoned the ambassador, and banished other five of Alexander's friends. Such was the state of things when Philip—on the eve of his projected invasion of Asia—was cut off by the dagger of Pausanias (336 .) The suspicions attached to Olympias of being an accomplice in the murder do not seriously affect Alexander. Suddenly called upon to assume the vacant throne, he found himself—in his twentieth year—surrounded by difficulties. The architect was removed, and the fabric he had scarcely consolidated was in danger of falling to pieces. Beset by rival claimants for the kingdom, threatened by a new Hellenic alliance, and the hostility of the northern barbarians, Alexander, nevertheless, proved himself equal to the crisis. He vigorously suppressed the first ebulitions of domestic treason, and a few of the leaders suspected of conspiracy were put to death. Demosthenes, organizing a revolt in the south, had opened a correspondence with Attalus, who had raised the standard of revolt in Asia: this general was arrested and killed, and the movements of the Greeks were disconcerted by the young king suddenly appearing with his army at Thermopylæ. He rapidly won favour by inspiring fear. He had been appointed head of the Thessalian confederacy; the Amphictyonic council at the straits chose him as their chief; and he was elected by the Greeks assembled at Corinth to the leadership of the war against Persia;—the Lacedaemonians alone withheld themselves. Thebes and Athens, which had begun to show signs of disaffection, were awed into acquiescence; and in the spring of 335. Alexander found himself at liberty to march into Thrace, and prosecute a campaign against the Triballi. Passing the Hæmus, he vanquished that tribe, and carried his arms among the Getæ, on the further shore of the Danube. The Taulantii and Illyrians had leagued against him, and he was engaged in subjugating them, when news of the revolt of Thebes induced him to hasten towards Greece. A report of his death had revived the anti-Macedonian party in that city. They had initiated an insurrection by the massacre of two officers of the garrison, before they heard of Alexander's return; and, f eeling themselves compromised, shut the gates against him. He offered lenient terms, but, when they were rejected, prepared for an assault: the town was taken by storm, and a terrible retribution awaited it. The populace were exposed to an indiscriminate slaughter; six thousand fell; the prisoners numbered thirty thousand. The troops who had been drafted into Alexander's army from the surrounding Bœotian states, the Thespians, Platæans, and Orchomenians, were foremost in the massacre, and when the fate of the city itself was submitted to their arbitration, the memory of old feuds sealed its doom. Thebes was razed to the ground; the temples alone and the Cadmea were left standing. One house was honourably exempted—the house of the poet Pindar. Thebes had more than once betrayed the interests of Hellenic freedom, and her fall was the less pitied; but the example was none the less striking, and her name remained as a terror and a warning in the mouths of all Greeks.

II. Hostilities, open or covert, between Persia and Macedon had been in progress during the former reign; and in his assumed character of champion of the Greeks, Alexander became the minister of the Nemesis which had been hanging over Asia ever since the invasion of Xerxes. The power of the "Great King" was not to be estimated by the numbers who paid homage to his name. His vast dominion was made up of various races held together by the loose bond of a weak despotism, and disjointed tribes whose satraps exercised all the freedom of independent princes. The cumbrous mass was already tottering, and so little reliance could be placed even upon those chiefs who were nominally faithful, that the chief support of the throne lay in the Greek mercenaries of Darius. Alexander was at the head of an army which it had been one of the great triumphs of Philip to organize—the phalanx which had proved invincible against the finest armies of Greece, and the unrivalled cavalry of Thessaly and Thrace. Early in 334 ., having committed the government to the hands of Antipater, he sailed from Sestus with an army of 30,000 infantry and 5000 horse. Before going, he distributed his lands and houses among his friends, leaving for himself with magnanimous confidence "his hopes." One of his first acts on landing in Asia, after sacrificing to the gods, was to visit the legendary tombs on the plain of Troy. There he realized the scenes on which he had long feasted his imagination, and won a new stimulus from the theatre of great deeds. He proceeded with his army to the Granicus, which flows into the Propontis near Cyzicus. On the opposite bank of this stream, an army of 20,000 Greek mercenaries and as many native cavalry, was posted under two of the Persian satraps. Memnon of Rhodes, one of the ablest advisers of Darius, counselled the leaders to retreat and lay waste the country; but, relying on the advantages of the ground, they resolved to oppose the passage. Alexander at once led his forces to the attack, and an obstinate conflict followed, during which he conspicuously displayed his valour, and was only saved from a Persian cimeter by the prompt intervention of his friend Cleitus. The invaders were victorious; the cavalry were put to flight, and the mercenaries surrounded. Only 2000 fell alive into the hands of their enemies; these Alexander sent in chains to Macedon. He treated his Asiatic prisoners on this and all occasions with marked clemency; but, with Greeks taken in arms against him, he dealt more severely. The result of this battle secured the submission of the colonies on the Ægean; Sardis and Ephesus threw open their gates on his approach: Magnesia and Tralles gave in their allegiance. The partizans of the opposite party were expelled, and Alexander restored the democracy—acting on the rule which he observed throughout, that each state and city under his control should be governed according to its own laws. The first opposition he encountered in his march along the coast was at Miletus. The Persian fleet of 400 sail anchored outside the harbour, and, with only 160 galleys, he did not think fit to risk an engagement; but he effected a breach in the wall, and the city was taken by storm. A more serious detention awaited him before Halicarnassus. Memnon had concentrated there the whole of his available force, and made preparations for a resolute defence. The city was guarded towards the sea by the fleet; a deep ditch, high walls, and two citadels protected it on the land side. Alexander filled up the ditch, and battered the walls. After futile attempts to destroy his engines, the Persian governors, giving up the defence in despair, made their escape, and the Macedonians entered the city. Memnon, acting as admiral, proceeded to reduce several of the islands in the Ægean; but in the following year Alexander profited by the death of his formidable opponent. From Halicarnassus the army advanced through Caria and Lycia, investing, by the way, the most important towns. Leaving Phaselis, two roads lay before them. A strong south wind dashing the waves against the shore made the near path by the beach almost impracticable. Alexander, however, sending his main force by a circuitous route, resolved with a few followers to attempt the passage. The wind changed to the north, and the event by which he was enabled to skirt the cliffs in safety was exaggerated into a miracle like that of the Red Sea. He met his troops at Perge, and proceeded through Pisidia and Phrygia. His arrival at Gordium is marked by the famous cutting of the knot which tied the waggon of Midas. It was received as a warrant for his sovereignty over Asia, and is perpetuated in a modern phrase. Thence, 333 ., he marched through Cappadocia, across the range of Taurus, to Tarsus in Cilicia. The satrap Arsames had deserted that city, and he entered it without a contest. He was detained here by a severe