se nations. Philip had subdued them, and
established the kind of peace which the Greeks and Romans were
accustomed to enforce upon their neighbors. But now, as they had heard
that Philip, who had been so terrible a warrior, was no more, and that
his son, scarcely out of his teens, had succeeded to the throne, they
thought a suitable occasion had arrived to try their strength.
Alexander made immediate arrangements for moving northward with his
army to settle this question.

He conducted his forces through a part of Thrace without meeting with
any serious resistance, and approached the mountains. The soldiers
looked upon the rugged precipices and lofty summits before them with
awe. These northern mountains were the seat and throne, in the
imaginations of the Greeks and Romans, of old Boreas, the hoary god of
the north wind. They conceived of him as dwelling among those cold and
stormy summits, and making excursions in winter, carrying with him his
vast stores of frost and snow, over the southern valleys and plains.
He had wings, a long beard, and white locks, all powdered with flakes
of snow. Instead of feet, his body terminated in tails of serpents,
which, as he flew along, lashed the air, writhing from under his
robes. He was violent and impetuous in temper, rejoicing in the
devastation of winter, and in all the sublime phenomena of tempests,
cold, and snow. The Greek conception of Boreas made an impression upon
the human mind that twenty centuries have not been able to efface. The
north wind of winter is personified as Boreas to the present day in
the literature of every nation of the Western world.

The Thracian forces had assembled in the defiles, with other troops
from the northern countries, to arrest Alexander's march, and he had
some difficulty in repelling them. They had got, it is said, some sort
of loaded wagons upon the summit of an ascent, in the pass of the
mountains, up which Alexander's forces would have to march. These
wagons were to be run down upon them as they ascended. Alexander
ordered his men to advance, notwithstanding this danger. He directed
them, where it was practicable, to open to one side and the other, and
allow the descending wagon to pass through. When this could not be
done, they were to fall down upon the ground when they saw this
strange military engine coming, and locking their shields together
over their heads, allow the wagon to roll on over them, bracing up
energetically against