=Departure of Alexander.=—­Alexander started in the spring of 334 with 30,000 infantry (the greater part of these Macedonians) and 4,500 knights; he carried only seventy talents (less than eighty thousand dollars) and supplies for forty days.  He had to combat not only the crowd of ill-armed peoples such as Xerxes had brought together, but an army of 50,000 Greeks enrolled in the service of the Great King under a competent general, Memnon of Rhodes.  These Greeks might have withstood the invasion of Alexander, but Memnon died and his army dispersed.  Alexander, delivered from his only dangerous opponent, conquered the Persian empire in two years.

=Victories of Granicus, Issus, and Arbela.=—­Three victories gave the empire to Alexander.  In Asia Minor he overthrew the Persian troops stationed behind the river Granicus (May, 333).  At Issus, in the ravines of Cilicia, he routed King Darius and his army of 600,000 men (November, 333).  At Arbela, near the Tigris, he scattered and massacred a still more numerous army (331).

This was a repetition of the Median wars.  The Persian army was ill equipped and knew nothing of manoeuvring; it was embarrassed with its mass of soldiers, valets, and baggage.  The picked troops alone gave battle, the rest were scattered and massacred.  Between the battles the conquest was only a triumphal progress.  Nobody resisted (except the city of Tyre, commercial rival of the Greeks); what cared the peoples of the empire whether they were subject to Darius or Alexander?  Each victory gave Alexander the whole of the country:  the Granicus opened Asia Minor, Issus Syria and Egypt, Arbela the rest of the empire.

=Death of Alexander.=—­Master now of the Persian empire Alexander regarded himself as the heir of the Great King.  He assumed Persian dress, adopted the ceremonies of the Persian court and compelled his Greek generals to prostrate themselves before him according to Persian usage.  He married a woman of the land and united eighty of his officers to daughters of the Persian nobles.  He aimed to extend his empire to the farthest limits of the ancient kings and advanced even to India, warring with the combative natives.  After his return with his army to Babylon (324), he died at the age of thirty-three, succumbing to a fever of brief duration (323).

=Projects of Alexander.=—­It is very difficult to know exactly what Alexander’s purposes were.  Did he conquer for the mere pleasure of it?  Or did he have a plan?  Did he wish to fuse into one all the peoples of his empire?  Was he following the example already set him by Persia?  Or did he, perhaps, imitate the Great King simply for vain-glory?  And so of his intentions we know nothing.  But his acts had great results.  He founded seventy cities—­many Alexandrias in Egypt, in Tartary, and even in India.  He distributed to his subjects the treasures that had been uselessly hoarded in the chests of the Great King.  He stimulated Greek scholars to study the plants, the animals, and the geography of Asia.  But what is of special importance, he prepared the peoples of the Orient to receive the language and customs of the Greeks.  This is why the title “Great” has been assigned to Alexander.