era. Owing to the disaster to Athens, her fleets were no longer to be
feared by Carthage as a protection to the Hellenic world; and for two
centuries to come, her interventions in Sicily were incessant. Now, the
presence of a foreign foe in Sicily gave intriguers for power at
Syracuse their opportunity, of which the outcome was the subversion of
the democracy and the establishment of Dionysius as despot.

His son, Dionysius II., succeeded, and was finally ejected by the
Corinthian Timoleon, who, after a brilliant career of victories as
Syracusan general against Carthage, acted as general liberator of
Sicilian cities from despotisms, laid down his powers, and was content
with the position, not of despot, but of counsellor, to the great
prosperity of Sicily as a whole.

Going back to the north of Greece, the semi-Hellenic Macedon with a
Hellenic dynasty was growing powerful. Philip--father of Alexander the
Great--was now king, and was resolved to make himself the head of the
Greek world. His great opponent is found in the person of the Athenian
orator Demosthenes, who saw that Philip was aiming at ascendancy, but
generally failed to persuade the Athenians to recognise the danger in
which they stood. Philip gradually achieved his immediate end of being
recognised as the captain-general of the Hellenes, and their leader in a
new Persian war, when his life was cut short by an assassin, and he was
succeeded by his youthful son Alexander.

The Greek states, awakening to their practical subjection, would have
thrown off the new yoke, but the young king with swift and overwhelming
energy swept down from Thrace upon Thebes, the centre of resistance, and
stamped it out. He had already conceived, in part at least, his vast
schemes of Asiatic conquest; while he lived, Greece had practically no
distinguishable history. She is merely an appendage to Macedon.
Everything is absorbed in the Macedon conqueror. With an army incredibly
small for the task before him, he entered Asia Minor, and routed the
Persian forces on the river Granicus. The Greek Memnon, the one able
leader for the Persians, would have organised against him a destructive
naval power; but death removed him.

Alexander dispersed the armies of the Persian king Darius at the Issus,
captured Tyre after a remarkable siege, and took easy possession of
Egypt, where he founded Alexandria. Having organised the administration
of the conquered territories, he marched to the Euph