Breasted, James Henry: Survey of the ancient world (Boston [u.a.], 1919)

230

Survey of the Ancient World

438. The

situation
after Issus,
and Alexan-
der's friends

439. The

decision after
Issus, and
Alexander's
friction with
his friends

440. Con-
quest of
Phoenicia
and Egypt;
dispersion
of the Per-
sian fleet

offering to accept the Euphrates as a boundary between the"1'
all Asia west of that river to be handed over to the Macedonia"5,

It was a dramatic picture, the figure of the young kin&
standing with this letter in his hand.' As he pondered it he ^aS
surrounded by a group of the ablest Macedonian youth,
had grown up around him as his closest friends; but likeWse
by old and trusted counselors upon whom his father befQl
him had leaned. As he considered the letter of Darius J- '
therefore, his father's old general Parmenio proffered him serl
ous counsel, and, pointing out across the Mediterranean,
bade Alexander remember the Persian fleet operating the1
in his rear and likely to stir up revolt against him in Greece
There was nothing to do, said Parmenio, but to accept
terms offered by the Great King.

In this critical decision lay the parting of the ways. Bef°re
the kindling eyes of the young Alexander there rose a visi°n
of world empire controlled by Greek civilization — a vision ^
which the duller eyes about him were entirely closed,
waved aside his father's old counselors and decided to advance
to the conquest of the whole Persian Empire. In this
reaching decision he showed himself at once as the strong
who represented "a new age. Thus arose the conflict Wn

never ends — the conflict between the new age and the

old,

just as we have seen it at Athens (§§ 355, 411, 418). We sha
now follow it again in the daily growing friction between Ale!i
ander and that group of devoted, if less gifted, MacedonianS
who were now drawn by him into the labors of Hercules — ^
conquest of the world. ^
The danger from the Persian fleet was now carefully aI1^
deliberately met by a march southward along the eastern en,
of the Mediterranean. All the Phoenician seaports on the
were captured. Feeble Egypt, so long a Persian province, theI1
fell an easy prey to the Macedonian arms. The Persian fleet'
thus deprived of all its home harbors and cut off from its ho^
government, soon scattered and disappeared.