Athens had fallen, but her real kingdom was indestructible. She was to be forever Queen in the empire of ideas, of literature, and of art!
The coarse, harsh rule of Sparta lasted less than a century. Then Thebes, another powerful Greek state, arose to the leadership of discontented Greece. And so Hellas, the land in which they all gloried, had become
a mass of quarrelling, struggling states, until it was seized by the rough hand of a master.
In the north of Greece was the State of Macedonia. It was not composed of a multitude of free cities like the rest of Greece, but its people were diffused throughout the state, and all governed by one king.
Compared with the Athenians, these unpolished, rude Macedonians were almost barbarians.
But in the year 359 b.c. a man came to the throne of this state, who was not going to be satisfied with being merely a Greek among Greeks. He was resolved to be the head of the Greeks. This was Philip of Macedon. He bent all the energies of his strong, crafty mind toward making himself master of Greece.
Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, in a desperate effort to save his people from this man, delivered a set of orations denouncing Philip. These are the famous "Philippics," of which you will often hear.
The Philippics were in vain. Greece yielded to this dominating King Philip, and was led into a war of conquest against the Persians. But the fates intended that a stronger hand than Philip's should lead the expedition into Asia. Philip was assassinated on the eve of his departure, and his son Alexander, just twenty years old, succeeded to his father's throne and projects.
There have been three men who have been called "Masters of the World." Alexander of Macedon was the first of these (323 b.c.), Julius Cæsar the second (30 b.c.), and Charlemagne the third (800 a.d.). Napoleon Bonaparte came very near making the fourth in this brief list, but failed.
Among the stories of Alexander's boyhood is that