supremacy, that led to a long and bloody war.

It was during this war that little King Alexander's grandmother, the
Princess Olympias, set out to punish Cassander. While he was fighting in
southern Greece, she gathered an army in northern Greece and attempted
to invade Macedon and get possession of its capital city, Pella. But
Cassander was a shrewd young general; he seized all the ships he could
get together and sailed up the AEgean Sea so quickly that before Olympias
knew it he had landed his army and got between her and the road that led
to Pella. Thereupon the old Princess, being afraid to risk a battle,
shut herself up with her slender army and the little Alexander and his
mother in the city of Pydna, an old town of Macedon lying at the head of
what is now called, on your map of Turkey in Europe, the Gulf of
Salonica. It is in the walled town of Pydna that, in the year 316 B.C.,
we get our second brief glimpse of the son of Alexander, now a little
boy of seven.

It was a beautiful spot in which that old town of Pydna was built; it
stood three miles from the sea, in a fair and fertile region, and almost
in the shadow of that grand old hill Mount Olympus, the home of the gods
of Greece.

It was anything but a beautiful home for little King Alexander, however,
when he found himself locked behind its thick walls. For Cassander, the
Macedonian, marched his soldiers against it, and dug a great trench all
around it, and set up all the dreadful old-time war-engines about it,
and determined either to batter down its walls or starve out its
inhabitants.

It was a terrible siege. Provisions gave out, and poor little Alexander
went to bed hungry many a night. The horses, the mules, and the dogs
were killed for food. The great war-elephants, having nothing to eat but
sawdust, grew too weak to be of any use, and, with their useless
drivers, were killed and eaten by the soldiers.

One dark night, through a secret doorway in the city wall, a little
party crept softly out of Pydna and went down toward the port. It was
the Princess Olympias, with the little King and his mother, accompanied
by a few followers. Grown desperate by failure and famine, they had
planned to escape on a swift galley which was waiting for them in the
harbor. Silently they moved forward, but before they had gone a mile a
breathless messenger met them. "Back, back to the city," he cried; "back
ere you are all made prisoners! Cassander has discovered your