THE DESTRUCTION OF
THEBES
In 335 B. C. he made a successful expedition against the Thracians, Getæ, and Illyrians, and on his return found Thebes in revolt. He took Thebes by storm; the inhabitants were all slain or sold as slaves; and all the buildings, except the temples and the house which had been that of Pindar the poet, were razed. This capital had defied Alexander, and ceased to exist.
ALEXANDER’S INVASION
OF PERSIA
In 334 B. C. Alexander crossed the Hellespont with an army of thirty thousand foot-soldiers and five thousand cavalry, and first met the foe at the river Granicus, in Mysia. The result was a Persian defeat, which cleared the way through Asia Minor, and brought the Macedonians to the borders of Syria. The second, a great battle (333 B. C.), was fought at Issus, in the southeast of Cilicia. There Alexander met the King of Persia himself, Darius III., and gained a complete victory over a vastly superior force. Darius fled, leaving his wife and mother prisoners in the conqueror’s hands, by whom they were treated with the greatest courtesy and kindness.
SYRIAN AND EGYPTIAN
CAMPAIGNS
The Persian resistance thus disposed of for a time, Alexander turned southward, left behind him nothing unsubdued before his advance into the interior of Asia, and made an easy conquest of the cities of Phœnicia, except Tyre, which resisted obstinately for seven months, and was taken in the summer of 332 B. C. After taking Gaza, Alexander marched into Egypt, which received him gladly, from hatred of her Persian rulers. Early in 331 B. C. the Macedonian king handed down his name to future ages by founding, at the mouth of the western branch of the Nile, the city of Alexandria, [381] which was destined to become so famous for commerce, wealth, literature, and learning.
ALEXANDER’S SECOND INVASION
OF PERSIA
In the spring of 331 B. C. Alexander set out again for Persia, where Darius had been gathering an immense force with which to make a last struggle for the empire of the world. After traversing Phœnicia and Northern Syria, Alexander crossed the Euphrates and Tigris, and came out on the plain near the little village of Gaugamela, to the southeast of the ruins of Nineveh. Then took place the great and decisive battle of Arbela, with the Persians, October, 331 B. C.
After receiving the surrender of the other two capitals, Susa and Persepolis, Alexander spent the year 330 B. C. in conquering the northern provinces of the Persian Empire, between the Caspian Sea and the Indus. In 329 B. C. he marched into Bactria, over the mountains now called the Hindu Kush, caught and slew the traitor Bessus, who murdered Darius, and advanced even beyond the river Jaxartes. In 328 he was engaged in the conquest of Sogdiana, between the Oxus and Jaxartes, the country of which the capital was Maracanda, the modern Samarcand.
HIS INVASION OF
NORTHERN INDIA