of the "Gordian knot," which it was said could only be untied by the person who was destined to conquer Asia. After striving in vain to loosen this famous knot, it is said Alexander impatiently drew his sword and cut it—thus prefiguring what that sword was to do.
Alexander led the Greeks into Asia, and in ten years had conquered Egypt and all the Persian dominions, and decreed that Babylon should be the capital of this vast empire of his own creating. He founded Alexandria and other cities, which are still great centres of commerce. Not satisfied with this, he was pressing down into Arabia, when after a night's debauch he suddenly died (aged thirty-two years), and his vast scheme of empire perished with him.
The world is still feeling the results of those ten years of conquest. Every Greek province in the Sultan's dominions to-day is such because of Alexander of Macedon.
Four of Alexander's generals divided his empire among themselves—the kingdom of Macedonia, the kingdom of Egypt, and two Asiatic kingdoms. Egypt fell to the share of Ptolemy, who was the first of a line of kings which ended with the last Ptolemy, who married the famous and fated Cleopatra (30 b.c.).
The Greeks poured into the two Asiatic kingdoms, and Greek culture and civilization spread over the Orient (or East). But while Asia was thus Hellenized, Hellas, the source of this splendid civilizing power, was moving surely toward annihilation.
Another world-conquering power was coming into existence. Before the Christian era arrived, the Roman Republic had absorbed the four kingdoms left
by Alexander, and when the Roman Empire came into being (31 b.c.) there were Greeks, but no longer any Greece, except as a geographical name.
The Roman Empire, after centuries of splendor, also expired. And in about the year 600 a.d. another great empire was being created by the Mahometan Saracens, who absorbed all the Greek provinces in the East. This empire also was to be superseded by another Asiatic race.
I have told you how the Ottoman Empire, starting from a grain of mustard-seed in the year 1250 a.d., spread with marvellous energy and rapidity. The Saracen dominions now became Turkish dominions, and the unhappy Greeks had changed masters for the last time. That proud and gifted race was doomed to spend years of servitude to the cruel Turk.
You have seen that the Turkish Empire went the way of other great empires. It reached a climax of power in 1500 a.d., and then swiftly and surely declined. But, although perishing, its fingers never relaxed their hold upon the Greek colonies, now no longer pagan, but Christian.