ted the Persians, and conquered the
countries of Asia Minor, Lycia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, where with a
blow of his sword he had severed the Gordian knot, a token of supremacy
over Asia? At Issus, on the rectangular bay facing Cyprus, he had
inflicted a crushing defeat on the great King of Persia, Darius
Codomannus, who with the united forces of his kingdom had come to meet
him. At Damascus he captured all the Persian war funds, and afterwards
took the famous commercial towns of the Phoenicians, Tyre and Sidon.
Palestine fell, and Jerusalem with the holy places. On the coast of
Egypt he founded Alexandria, which now, after a lapse of 2240 years, is
still a flourishing city. He marched through the Libyan desert to the
oasis of Zeus Ammon, where the priests, after the old Pharaonic custom,
consecrated him "Son of Ammon."

He passed eastwards into Asia, crossed the Euphrates, defeated Darius
again at the Tigris, and reduced proud Babylon and Shushan, where 150
years previously King Ahasuerus, who reigned "from India even unto
Ethiopia over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces," made a feast
for his lords and "shewed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the
honour of his excellent majesty." Then he advanced to Persepolis and set
on fire the palace of the Great King to show that the old empire had
passed away. Pursuing Darius through Ispahan and Hamadan, he afterwards
turned aside into Bactria, the present Russian Central Asia, and marched
northwards to the Syr-darya and the land of the Scythians. Thence, with
an army of more than a hundred thousand men, he proceeded southwards and
conquered the Punjab and subdued all the people living west of the
Indus.

Now he had come to Pattala, and he thought of the victories he had
gained and the countries he had annexed. He had appointed everywhere
Greeks and Macedonians to rule in conjunction with the native princes
and satraps.[10] The great empire must be knit together into a solid
unity, and Babylon was to be its capital. Only in the west there was
still an enormous gap to be conquered, the desert through which we have
lately wandered on the way from Teheran through Tebbes and Seistan and
Baluchistan.

In order to reduce the people living here he despatched a part of his
host by a northerly route through Seistan to north Persia. He himself
led forty thousand men along the coast. Twelve thousand men were to sail
and row the newly-built ships along the coast of the Arabi