Nor was the time for its fulfilment far distant. The new power which now rose to the first rank, created by Philip of Macedon, had no ingrainectendency inimical to the Persian empire. Its immediate programme was rather Macedonian expansion, at the expense of Thrace and Illyria, and the subjection of the Balkan peninsula. But, in its efforts to extend its power over the Greek states, it was bound to make use of the tendencies which aimed at the unification of Greece for the struggle against Persia : and this ideal demand it dared not reject.
Thus the conflict became inevitable. In 34o, Artaxerxes III. and his satraps supported the Greek towns in Thrace—Perinthus and Byzantium—against Macedonian aggression; in 338 he con cluded an alliance with Demosthenes. When Philip, after the victory of Chaeroneia, had founded the league of Corinth (337) embracing the whole of Greece, he accepted the national pro gramme, and in 336 despatched his army to Asia Minor. That he never entertained the thought of conquering the whole Persian empire is certain. Presumably, his ambitions would have been satisfied with the liberation of the Greek cities, and, perhaps, the subjection of Asia Minor as far as the Taurus. With this his dominion would have attained much the same compass as later under Lysimachus; farther than this the boldest hopes of Isocrates never went.
But Philip's assassination in 336 fundamentally altered the situation. In the person of his son, the throne was occupied by a soldier and statesman of genius, saturated with Greek culture and Greek thought, and intolerant of every goal but the highest. To conquer the whole world for Hellenic civilization by the aid of Macedonian spears, and to reduce the whole earth to unity, was the task that this heir of Heracles and Achilles saw before him. This idea of universal conquest was with him a conception much stronger developed than that which had inspired the Achaemenid rulers, and he entered on the project with full consciousness in the strictest sense of the phrase. In fact, if we are to understand Alexander aright, it is fatal to forget that he was overtaken by death, not at the end of his career, but at the beginning, at the age of 33.
The Hellenistic Dominion.—How Alexander conquered Persia, and how he framed his world-empire,' cannot be related in detail here. The essential fact, however, is that after the victory of Gaugamela (Oct. 1, 331 B.c.) and, still more completely, after the assassination of Darius—avenged according to the Persian laws, on the perpetrators—Alexander regarded himself as the legitimate head of the Persian empire, and therefore adopted the dress and ceremonial of the Persian kings.
With the capture of the capitals, the Persian war was at an end, and the atonement for the expedition of Xerxes was com plete—a truth symbolically expressed in the burning of the palace at Persepolis. Now began the world-conquest. For an universal
empire, however, the forces of Macedonia and Greece were in sufficient; the monarch of a world-empire could not be bound by the limitations imposed on the tribal king of Macedon or the general of a league of Hellenic republics. He must stand as an autocrat, above them and above the law, realizing the theoretical doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, as the true king, who is a god among men, bound no more than Zeus by a law, because "himself he is the law." Thus the divine kingship of Alexander derives in direct lines, not from the Oriental polities—which (Egypt apart) know nothing of royal apotheosis—but from these Hellenic theories of the state. Henceforward it becomes the form of every absolute monarchy in a civilized land, being formally mitigated only in Christian states by the assumption that the king is not God, but king "by the grace of God." The expedition of 332 B.C. to the shrine of Ammon was a preliminary to this procedure, which, in 324, was sealed by his official elevation to divine rank in all 'See ALEXANDER THE GREAT ; MACEDONIAN EMPIRE ; HELLENISM (for later results).
the republics of Greece. To this corresponds the fact that, instead of acting on the doctrines of Aristotle and Callisthenes, and treat ing the Macedonians and Greeks as masters, the Asiatics as servants, Alexander had impartial recourse to the powers of all his subjects and strove to amalgamate them. In the Per sians particularly he sought a second pillar for his world empire. Therefore, as early as 33o B.C., he drafted 30,000 young Persians, educated them in Greek customs, and trained them to war on the Macedonian model. The Indian campaign showed that his Macedonian troops were in fact inadequate to the con quest of the world, and in the summer of 326 they compelled him to turn back from the banks of the Hypasis. On his return to Persia he consummated at Susa (February, 324 B.c.) the union of Persian and Macedonian by the great marriage-feast, at which all his superior officers, with some io,000 more Macedonians, were wedded to Persian wives. The Macedonian veterans were then disbanded, and the Persians taken into his army. Simultaneously, at the Olympian festival of 324, the command was issued to all the cities of Greece to recognize him as god and to receive the exiles home.' In 323 B.C. the preparations for the circumnavigation and subjection of Arabia were complete : the next enterprise being the conquest of the West, and the battle for Hellenic culture against Carthage and the Italian tribes. At that point Alexander died in Babylon, on June 13, 323 B.C.