people began to clear the city as for a siege. In the crowded assembly, which met at the earliest dawn, Demosthenes alone dared to speak. Pointing out the groundlessness of the fear that Philip was acting in concert with Thebes, he urged an immediate alliance between the two cities as the only chance of saving either. His advice was adopted unanimously; and he was sent with other envoys to Thebes, where his eloquence hardly prevailed over the suggestions of old animosity and the new solicitations of Philip. But the alliance once made was as cordial as the danger was pressing; and the part taken by Thebes was resented by Philip with the most revengeful bitterness. He appealed to the Peloponnesian states in his character as champion of Apollo, but seemingly with little effect; while the Athenians and Thebans gained some successes in a winter campaign in Phocis, and began to restore the Phocian cities as a barrier against Philip. The enthusiasm of Athens was expressed by the vote of a golden crown to Demosthenes at the Dionysiac festival (March, B.C. 338). It seemed as if the policy of the patriot statesman were about to receive the nobler crown of complete success. He laboured hard to enlarge the alliance, and obtained contingents from the Achæans, the Corinthians, and probably the Euboeans and Megarians. But the mutual jealousies of the other Peloponnesian states kept them aloof. Meanwhile Philip marched upon Amphissa, defeated a large body of mercenaries, and executed the decree of the Amphictyons. This victory left him master of Phocis; and, advancing into Boeotia, he met the united Grecian army on the fatal plain of Chæronea. His force consisted of 30,000 infantry, and 2000 cavalry; that of the allies is not accurately known, but it was probably inferior in number, and certainly in discipline; nor could the presence of Demosthenes on the field supply the want of an able general. Phocion, whose field of action had so long been at Athens, was now absent on a maritime command, and his place was ill supplied by the united incompetency of the Athenians Lysicles and Chares, and the Theban Theagenes. On the other side, the Macedonians, a rough and hardy race, admirable as the raw material of soldiers, the Thracians, and the other warlike barbarians under Philip's rule, had been moulded by the incessant training of twenty years into a veteran army, complete in all the branches of horse and foot, heavy and light armed, archers and slingers. Its chief force lay in the renowned phalanx, the depth of which at Charonea was sixteen men; far spring his preparations were complete. Some troops had already been sent forward under Parmenio to rouse the Asiatic Greeks; and he only stayed to provide a fresh security for the safety of his kingdom, by the marriage of his daughter to Alexander of Epirus; when, at the wedding festival at Egæ, he fell by the sword of Pausanias, a young Macedonian noble. The assassin is supposed to have been instigated by Olympias, and some have charged Alexander with a share in the crime, but upon no adequate evidence. Philip had only reached the forty-seventh year of his age, and the twenty-seventh of his reign, when he left to his son Alexander the inheritance of his great conquests and his far greater schemes. nized Philip as the leader of the Hellenic world, a disgrace little short of political extinction. Her fall was not unfitly symbolized by the death of the eldest, and one of the most famous of her citizens. Isocrates, who had been born when the city was at the acmé of her glory under Pericles, and who, only two years before, had celebrated that glory in his great Panathenaic oration, died at the age of ninety-eight, of grief, at hearing of the battle of Chæronea. But Athens had still the spirit left to honour the orator who bore his grief and assuaged hers. To understand her feelings at this epoch, we must look forward a few years to the contest which has given the world its two great master-pieces of forensic oratory. Rising superior to the prejudice which makes success the only test of merit, the Athenians, after the battle of Chæronea, voted to Demosthenes a golden crown (B.c. 337-336). Several attempts to impeach him had already failed; and Æschines renewed the attack in the form of an indictment against Ctesiphon, the mover of the vote, for proposing an illegal decree; but the trial did not come on till B.C. 330. We need not recount the well-known result; the disgraceful defeat of Eschines; his retirement from Athens; and the memorable tribute which he paid to his rival's surpassing eloquence when he read his speech "On the Crown " to his class of rhetoric at Rhodes. But in that masterpiece of oratory there is one passage which sums up the whole question of the policy of Demosthenes in an apostrophe as true as it is daring: "It cannot be that you were wrong, Athenians, when you took upon you the peril of the universal freedom and salvation! No! by our forefathers who confronted the danger at Marathon, who stood in their ranks at Platæa, who fought at Salamis!" To such an appeal ill success is no reply. The lenity of Philip towards Athens was doubtless prompted in part by his ambition to lead the united forces of Greece to the conquest of Persia. At a congress held at Corinth, from which Sparta alone was absent, war was declared against the Great King, and Philip was appointed to conduct it as general of the Greeks. After a triumphant progress through Peloponnesus to enforce the submission of Sparta, and after receiving the adhesion of the western states, Philip returned to Macedonia to complete his preparations. The expedition was delayed during the whole of the next year (B.c. 337) by his domestic dissensions with Olympias and Alexander, consequent upon his marriage with Cleopatra, to which we shall have to recur in the next chapter. In the following spring his preparations were complete. Some troops had already been sent forward under Parmenio to rouse the Asiatic Greeks; and he only stayed to provide a fresh security for the safety of his kingdom, by the marriage of his daughter to Alexander of Epirus; when, at the wedding festival at Egæ, he fell by the sword of Pausanias, a young Macedonian noble. The assassin is supposed to have been instigated by Olympias, and some have charged Alexander with a share in the crime, but upon no adequate evidence. Philip had only reached the forty-seventh year of his age, and the twenty-seventh of his reign, when he left to his son Alexander the inheritance of his great conquests and his far greater schemes. CHAPTER XVI. THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, "And, as I was considering, behold an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power. And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand. Therefore the he goat waxed very great. The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.' Daniel, chap. viii. 5-8, 20, 21. "High on a throne with trophies charged, I viewed The youth, that all things but himself subdued; His feet on sceptres and tiaras trod, And his horn'd head belied the Lybian god."-POPE. " ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER-HIS CHARACTER AND EDUCATION-HIS EARLY PUBLIC LIFEQUARREL WITH HIS FATHER, AND OUTWARD RECONCILIATION-STATE OF GREECE AT HIS ACCESSION-SECOND CONGRESS OF CORINTH-ALEXANDER AND DIOGENES-CAMPAIGNS IN ILLYRIA AND THRACE-REVOLT OF THEBES AND ATHENS-DESTRUCTION OF THEBES - SUBMISSION OF ATHENS-STATE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE REBELLIONS AND DISSOLUTION-GREEK MERCENARIES-BAGOAS, MENTOR, AND MEMNON-RECONQUEST OF CYPRUS, PHOENICIA, AND EGYPT-ACCESSION OF DARIUS CODOMANNUS— EVENTS PRECEDING THE INVASION-STATE OF FEELING IN GREECE-POLICY OF DEMOSTHENES-TRUE VIEW OF ALEXANDER'S CONQUEST-CONSTITUTION OF THE MACEDONIAN ARMY-ANTIPATER LEFT AS REGENT OF MACEDONIA-SMALL FORCE OF ALEXANDERHIS DEPARTURE FROM PELLA, AND RENDEZVOUS AT SESTOS-ALEXANDER AT TROYBATTLE OF THE GRANICUS-CONQUEST OF ASIA MINOR-SIEGE OF HALICARNASSUSDEATH OF MEMNON-THE GORDIAN KNOT-BATTLE OF ISSUS-CAPTURE OF TYRE AND GAZA CONQUEST OF EGYPT-VISIT TO THE ORACLE OF AMMON FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDRIA-ALEXANDER PASSES THE EUPHRATES-BATTLE OF ARBELA-ALEXANDER PERSEPOLIS-DEATH OF DARIUS-MARCH INTO HYRCANIA, DRANGIANA, BACTRIA-DEATH OF PHILOTAS-ALEXANDER CROSSES THE PAROPAMISUS AND OXUS -REACHES THE JAXARTES CONQUERS SOGDIANA MURDER OF CLITUS-MARRIES ROXANA-DEATH OF CALLISTHENES-INVASION OF INDIA-DEFEAT OF PORUS-ALEXANDER IS COMPELLED TO TURN BACK FROM THE HYPHASIS-VOYAGE DOWN THE HYDASPES AND INDUS-VOYAGE OF NEARCHUS TO THE PERSIAN GULF MARCH THROUGH THE DESERT OF GEDROSIA RETURN TO SUSA ALEXANDER MARRIES THE DAUGHTER OF DARIUS-OTHER INTERMARRIAGES WITH PERSIANS-MUTINY OF THE ARMY-DEATH OF HEPHÆSTION-ALEXANDER AT BABYLON-HIS VAST SCHEMES -HIS DEATH. AT AND ALEXANDER III., of Macedonia, was the first of those conquerors whom men have rewarded for the sufferings they have inflicted, in the pursuit of power and fame, with the title of the GREAT. Born in B.C. 356, he was only in his twentieth year when the murder of his father called him to the throne (B.C. 336); and his dazzling career lasted less than thirteen years. Nature had endowed the young prince with that enthusiastic temper which |