could never rest while there were still conquests to be made. Long marches and much hard fighting were necessary to subdue the tribes about the Caspian and the inhabitants of the countries now known as Afghanistan and Turkestan. Crossing the lofty barrier of the Hindu-Kush, Alexander led his weary soldiers into northwestern India, where a single battle added the Persian province of the Punjab1 Conquest to the Macedonian possessions. Alexander then of India pressed forward to the conquest of the Ganges valley, but in the full tide of victory his troops refused to go any farther. They had had their fill of war and martial glory; they would conquer no more lands for their ambitious king. Alexander Alexander's return to Babylon gave with reluctance the order for the homeward march. Alexander was of too adventurous a disposition to return by the way he had come. He resolved to reach Babylon by a new route. He built a navy on the Indus and had it accompany the army down the river. At the mouth of the Indus Alexander dispatched the fleet under his admiral, Nearchus, to explore the Indian Ocean and to discover, if possible, a sea route between India and the West. He himself led the army, by a long and toilsome march through the deserts of southern Iran, to Babylon. That city now became the capital of the Macedonian Empire. Scarcely two years after his return, while he was planning yet more extensive conquests in Arabia, Africa, and western Europe, he was smitten by the deadly Babylonian Death of fever. In 323 B.C., after several days of illness, Alexander, the conqueror of the world passed away, being not quite thirty-three years of age. 43. The Work of Alexander 323 B.C. Alexander the Great was one of the foremost, perhaps the first, of the great captains of antiquity. But he Alexander as statesman was more than a world-conqueror; he was a states- warrior and man of the highest order. Had he been spared for an ordinary lifetime, there is no telling how much he might 1 See pages 20 and 39. have accomplished. In eleven years he had been able to subdue the East and to leave an impress upon it which was to endure for centuries. And yet his work had only begun. There were still lands to conquer, cities to build, untrodden regions to explore. Above all, it was still his task to shape his possessions into a well-knit, unified empire, which would not fall to pieces in the hands of his successors. His early death was a calamity, for it prevented the complete realization of his splendid ambitions. The immediate result of Alexander's conquests was the disappearance of the barriers which had so long shut in the Orient. Hellenizing The East, until his day, was an almost unknown of the Orient land. Now it lay open to the spread of Greek civilization. In the wake of the Macedonian armies followed Greek philosophers and scientists, Greek architects and artists, Greek colonists, merchants, and artisans. Everywhere into that huge, inert, unprogressive Oriental world came the active and enterprising men of Hellas. They brought their arts and culture and became the teachers of those whom they had called "barbarians." The ultimate result of Alexander's conquest was the fusion of East and West. He realized that his new empire must con Fusion of tain a place for Oriental, as well as for Greek and Macedonian, subjects. It was Alexander's aim, therefore, to build up a new state in which the distinction between the European and the Asiatic should gradually pass away. He welcomed Persian nobles to his court and placed them in positions of trust. He organized the government of his provinces on a system resembling that of Darius the Great. He trained thousands of Persian soldiers to replace the worn-out veterans in his armies. He encouraged by liberal dowries mixed marriages between Macedonians and Orientals, and himself wedded the daughter of the last Persian king. To hold his dominions together and provide a meeting place for both classes of his subjects, he founded no less than seventy cities in different parts of the empire. Such measures as these 1 See pages 39-40. |