Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading. George Park Fisher
hands. He set fire to Persepolis, and sold its male inhabitants into slavery. He pursued Darius into Media, Hyrcania, and Parthia, where the flying king was murdered by Bessus, one of his own nobles, that he might not give himself up to Alexander. He then marched east and south through Persia and the modern Afghanistan. He tarried at Prophthasia (Furrah) for two months. Here it was that he charged Philotas, one of his best officers, with a conspiracy against his life, and put him to death; and after this he ordered the murder of Parmenio, his best general, who had been a companion in arms of King Philip. Founding cities in different places as he advanced, he crossed the Oxus, marched through Sogdiana, and crossed the Jaxartes (Sir-Daria). While at Samarcand, in a drunken revel, he slew Clitus, the friend who had saved his life in the battle of the Granicus. In a fit of remorse he went without food or drink for three days. In Bactra, the capital of Bactria, he married Roxana, a princess of the country. By this time his head was turned by his unexampled victories, conquests and power. He began to demand of his followers the cringing adulation that was paid to Oriental monarchs, and when it was denied was ready to inflict summary vengeance.
TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER.—Crossing the eastern Caucasus (the Hindu-Kush), Alexander moved down the right bank of the Indus, subduing the tribes whom he met in his path. On the further side of the Hydaspes, he met the Indian prince Porus, whom he defeated and captured, and converted into an ally. He continued his marches and his line of victories as far as the river Hyphasis. Here the Macedonian troops would go no farther. Alexander turned back (327 B.C.), and with his army and fleet moved down the Hydaspes to the Indus, and down the Indus to the sea. Nearchus, his admiral, sailed along the shore to the west, while Alexander conducted the rest of the army amid infinite hardships through the desert, and finally met him on the coast. In the beginning of the year 325, he reached Susa. Here he plainly manifested his purpose of combining Macedonia and Greece with the East in one great empire. He adopted the Persian costume and ceremonial, and married both the daughter of Darius III. and the sister of Artaxerxes III. He prevailed on eighty of his Macedonian officers and ten thousand Macedonian soldiers to take Persian wives. For himself he exacted the homage paid to a divinity. These measures, looking to the amalgamation of Macedon and Greece with the East on terms of equality, were most offensive to the old comrades and subjects of Alexander. He was obliged to quell a mutiny, which he accomplished with consummate address and courage (July, 324 B.C.). In the marshes about Babylon, a place which he intended to make his capital, he contracted a fever, which was aggravated by daily revels, and which terminated his life (323 B.C.), after a reign of twelve years and eight months.
INFLUENCE OF ALEXANDER.—The Persian Empire, when it was attacked by Alexander, was a gigantic body without much vitality. Yet to overcome it, there was requisite not only the wonderful military talents of the conqueror, but the vigilance and painstaking which equally characterized him. He has been called "an adventurer." To fight and to conquer, and to spread his dominion wherever there were countries to subdue, seems to have been his absorbing purpose. The most substantial result of his exploits, which read more like fable than authentic history, was to spread Hellenism—to diffuse at least a tincture of Greek civilization, together with some acquaintance with the Greek language, over the lands of the East. This was a most important work in its bearing on the subsequent history of antiquity, and more remotely on the history of all subsequent times.
CHAPTER II. THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER.
DIVISIONS OF THE EMPIRE.—Alexander left no legitimate children. The child of Roxana, Alexander the Younger, was born after his father's death. The empire naturally fell to his principal generals, of whom Perdiccas, having command of the great army of Asia, had the chief power. He was obliged to content his military colleagues, which he did by giving to them provinces. The principal regents, or guardians, were soon reduced to three—Antipater and Craterus in Europe, and Perdiccas. The government was carried on in the name of Roxana's son, and of Arrhidaeus, the half-brother of Alexander. But Perdiccas soon found that each general was disposed to be in fact a king in his own dominion. He formed the plan of seizing the empire for himself. This combined the satraps against him. Perdiccas was supported by his friend Eumenes, but had against him Antipater and Craterus, the other regents, and the powerful governors, Ptolemy Lagi in Egypt, and Antigonus in Phrygia, Lycia, and Pamphilia (322 B.C.). There followed a series of wars lasting for twenty-two years, involving numerous changes of sovereignty, and fresh partitions of territory. The rebellious satraps triumphed over the royalists, whose aim was to keep the empire intact for the family of Alexander. The ambition of Antigonus to make himself the sole ruler, led to a league against him (315 B.C.). In a treaty of peace, Cassander, the son of Antipater, was to retain the government of Macedonia. By him Roxana and the young Alexander were put to death. In a second war against Antigonus, in which, as before, he was supported by his son, Demetrius Poliorcetes, they were completely defeated in the battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia (301 B.C.). Antigonus was slain: Demetrius fled to Greece. The result of this protracted contest was, that the Macedonian empire was broken into three principal states—Macedonia under the Antigonidae, the descendants of Antigonus; Egypt under the Ptolemies; Syria under the Seleucidae. Besides these, there were the smaller kingdoms of Pergamon and of Bithynia. Other states broke off from the Syrian realm of the Seleucidae.
I. THE KINGDOM OF THE PTOLEMIES.
PTOLEMY LAGI (323–285 B.C.).—When Alexander transferred the seat of power in Egypt from Memphis to Alexandria, he accomplished results which he could not at all foresee. The Greek element became predominant in Egyptian affairs. A great stimulus was given to commerce and to foreign intercourse. The Egyptians themselves entered zealously into industrial pursuits. Ptolemy Lagi (Soter), the first of the new sovereigns, was wise enough to guard his own territory, and even to establish his rule in Palestine, Phoenicia, and Coele-Syria, but to avoid extensive schemes of conquest. Cyrenaica, on the west of Egypt, and the intermediate Lybian tribes, he subdued. Ptolemy was an absolute monarch, but he retained prominent features in the old Egyptian administrative system, gave offices to Egyptians, and protected their religion. The most important civil stations and all military offices were reserved for Graeco-Macedonians: Alexandria was a Greek city. From the beginning he fostered learning and science. He set to work to collect a great library in a building connected with his palace. He founded the Museum, which was a college of professors. It attracted a great body of students, and became the university of the eastern world. Under the patronage of Ptolemy, mathematicians, poets, and critics of high repute flourished. Among the structures raised by him were the lighthouse of vast height on the island of Pharos, which was connected with the shore by a mole, or causeway, a mile in length; the Soma, or mausoleum, containing the body of Alexander; the Temple of Serapis, completed by his son; and the Hippodrome.
PTOLEMY PHILADELPHIA.—Ptolemy II., surnamed Philadelphus (285–247 B.C.), with less talent for war than his father, did much to encourage commerce, and was especially active in his patronage of learning. In this last province he did a greater work than his father. He greatly enlarged the library. He drew learned men to his court from all directions. In his time the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, in the version called the Septuagint. Under his auspices Manetho composed his History of Egypt.
PTOLEMY EUERGETES.—Ptolemy III. (247–222 B.C.), surnamed Euergetes (the benefactor), was the most enterprising and aggressive of this line of monarchs. Most of his conquests were not permanent, but some of them were. He was a patron of art and of literature. He raised Egypt to the highest pitch of prosperity that she ever enjoyed. The first three Ptolemies whose reigns had covered a century, were followed by a series of incompetent and depraved kings, nine in number.
Ptolemy IV. (Philopator) (222–205 B.C.) was a weak and dissolute prince. In war with Antiochus