Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/272

 222 Oiitlines of Ejiropean History Conquest of Phoenicia and Egypt ; dispersion of the Persian fleet ; march to the Tisrris Battle of Arbela (331 B.C.) Death of Darius III (330 B.C.) : Alexander lord of the ancient East conflict between the new age and the old. Never has it been more dramatically staged than as we find it here in the daily growing friction between Alexander and that group of devoted, if less gifted, Macedonians who were now drawn by him into the labors of Heracles — the conquest of the world. The danger from the Persian fleet was now^ carefully and deliberately met by a march southward along the eastern end of the Mediterranean. All the Phoenician seaports on the way were captured, and disorganized Egypt fell an easy prey to the Macedonian arms. The Persian fleet, thus deprived of all its home harbors and cut off from its home government, soon scattered and disappeared. Having freed himself in this way from the danger of an enemy in his rear, Alexander then re- turned from Egypt to Asia, crossed the Euphrates, and marched to the Tigris, where, near Arbela, the Great King had gathered his forces for a last stand. Parmenio advised a surprise by night attack, but Alexander characteristically disregarded the old general's suggestions, and in a battle planned by himself crushed -the Persian army and forced the Great King into disgraceful flight. In a few days Alexander was established in the winter palace of Persia, in Babylon. As Darius fled into the eastern mountains he was stabbed by his own treacherous attendants (330 B.C.). Alex- ander rode up with a few of his officers in time to look upon the body of the last of the Persian emperors, the lord of Asia, whose vast realm had now passed into his hands. He punished the murderers and sent the body with all respect to the fallen ruler's mother and sister, to whom he had extended protec- tion and hospitality. Thus at last both the valley of the Nile and the "fertile crescent'' (see p. 56), the two earliest homes of those ancient oriental civilizations, whose long careers we have already sketched (see Chapters H-HI), vvcre now in the hands of a European power and under the control of a newer and higher civilization. Only five years had passed since the young Macedonian had entered Asia.