The first hostile army he encountered was on the Granicus River (an affluent of the Sea of Marmora). He crossed the Granicus, just as he afterward crossed the Pinatas at Issus, in full view of the enemy, hurled himself with all his force on their centre and completely broke it up. It was not his way to refrain from the pass in quart till he had first hit in tierce. His victories sometimes remind us of the C'est magnifique, mais ce West pas la guerre. He won by an impetuous dash a victory which a subtler strategy might have failed to achieve, just as his sword-cut at Gor dium made away with the knot which his fin gers could not undo. The victory at Granicus was attended with unprecedented results; Sar dis, Miletus, Ephesus, Halicarnassus submitted one after another, and he established in them democracies of the Greek type. In November 333, Darius, eager to meet the invader, hastened to the sea-coast near Issus (at the head of the Gulf of Iskanderoon). The tactics pursued at the Granicus had here again a successful issue. Darius fled, leaving his family and his treasures in the hands of the conqueror. The mother, wife, two daughters, and son of Darius were treated with a clemency which foreshadowed the ages of chivalry. An Asiatic conqueror would have put the males to death, probably with torture, and would have sent the females to his harem. Captive Greek generals he also spared and liberated. kle took possession of Damascus, a city which even then could boast of a hoary antiquity, and secured all the towns along the Mediterranean Sca. His plan now was to occupy Egypt, and this was made easy by the capture of Tyre on 20 Aug. 332, after a siege of seven months. During the siege a message came from Darius offering Alexander 10,000 talents, the hand of his daughter in mar riage, and Asia as far as the Euphrates, if he would make peace. °I would accept it if I were Alexander,° said his general, Parmenio. °So would I,)) replied Alexander, °if I were Parmenio.° Gaza fell in November 332, and Alexander, taking possession of Egypt, sacri ficed to Apis and the Egyptian gods in Memphis and held musical and athletic competitions after the Greek fashion in Tyre. Thus he concili ated the affections of his subjects. Politically he organized Egypt as a province in a way which, as Arrian remarks, foreshadowed the Roman system, giving the civil administration first to two, and then to a single governor, while the troops were placed under several separate commanders. It was now that Alex ander founded the celebrated Alexandria destined in two generations to be the first city in the Levant — and marched through the Libyan desert to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, whose son he claimed to be.
Meantime Darius was collecting an army in Assyria; but before the decisive battle of Ar bela he made overtures of peace to Alexander, whose answer was, °I, Alexander, hold all thy treasure and all thy land to be mine,"— a verbal cutting of the Gordian knot. The Per sian force encountered by the Greeks at Gau gamela, near the ancient Nineveh, and about 50 miles from Arbela (which strangely has giv en its name to the battle ever since), is said to have numbered 1,000,000 infantry, 40,000 caval ry, 200 scythed chariots and 15 elephants. Alexander had only 40,000 foot and 7,000 horse, but he won a decisive victory on 1 Oct. 331. The Macedonians aimed at the faces of their adversaries, as the Cmsarians afterward did at Pharsalus. Babylon and Susa opened their gates to the conqueror, who then entered Per sepolis, the capital of the province of Persis, seized its immense treasures and burned its palace and citadel to the ground.
In the spring of 330, Alexander proceeded to Media in pursuit of Darius. That weak monarch was being carried about by Bessus, satrap of Bactria, who, on hearing of the ap proach of Alexander, inflicted a mortal wound on Darius and fled, leaving him to die. Darius died before Alexander came up with him (July 330). The conqueror sent his body to Per sepolis to be interred with royal honors. Af ter taking possession of Hyrcania and Bactriana he was meditating still more gigantic plans, when he learned in the autumn of 330 that Philotas, the son of Parmenio, though cog nizant of a conspiracy against his life, had not reported it. He put both Philotas and Par menio to death. The execution of the former has been condemned, but is on the whole de fensible; the murder of the latter is an inex cusable act of brutal tyranny. About the end of 330 or the beginning of 329 he crossed the great range of the Caucasus (not the modern Caucasus, but the Hindu Kush), by a pass at an altitude of 13,200 feet — a march com parable with that of Hannibal over the Alps. He reached the city of Bactra (Balkh), and made his way north as far as the Jaxartes or Tanais, where he founded a city, probably the modern Khojend.
He remained in these regions till the summer of 327, spending the winter in Nautaca, on the right bank of the Oxus. Here occurred the murder of Clitus, and Alexander's marriage with Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes, a satrap of Sogdiana. She had a son named after his father in 323. After the death of Alexander she compassed the destruction of his other wife, the daughter of Darius, and was killed with her son in 311 by Cassander. The murder of Clitus has been regarded as a great blot on the career of Alexander. But the circumstances in which he was placed greatly extenuate the act. The East believed in the divinity of Alex ander, and such a belief was almost an essen tial condition of the permanence of his empire. When one of his own officers openly denied and ridiculed the Emperor's pretensions at a state banquet he seriously imperiled the Hellenic raj. The empire of Alexander was never subject to a second single emperor. The destinies of the West awaited the struggle between Rome and Carthage. But his vast empire nowhere save in India reverted to the pre-Alexandrine type.
Alexander now formed the idea of conquering India. He passed the Indus in 327, and formed an alliance with Taxiles, under whoseguidance he reached the Hydaspes (modern jhelum). This river he crossed after a severe struggle with Porus, in whom he met an opponent very superior to the Persian satraps who had hitherto confronted him or rather retreated before him. He then moved farther east and crossed the Acesines (Chenab) and the Hyraotes (Ravi), and reached the Hyphasis (Beas), which now joins the last river of the Punjab, the Sutlej, hut which then flowed in a different channel. He never reached the Sutlej itself. The mur murs of his army compelled him to return. The fine instrument which he had fashioned so dexterously broke in his hand. He re crossed the Acesines to the Hydaspes, where he completed the cities of Nicaea and Bucephala (named after his famous horse Bucephalus). which he had already begun. He had only seen the fringe of India — the Punjab. The won drous country of Brahma and Buddha never felt the sway of Alexander. He was obliged to content himself with writing his name large across the histories of Hellenic, Semitic, Egyp tian and Iranian civilization. Alexander's name does not appear in Sanskrit literature.