CHAPTER XI

MACEDON

The country of Macedon, as you will see on the Greek map, lies northward of Greece. It was inhabited by tribes of the Slavs, or Slavonic people, who lived the agricultural and pastoral life, tilling the soil and having flocks and herds. About 100 years after the battle of Salamis, a baby was born of the royal house of Macedonia. He was given the name of Philip. His childhood was spent at Thebes, in Greece, where he had been sent, or had been taken, as a hostage. When he came to the throne of Macedon he seems at once to have begun to strengthen the army, and to improve its organisation. He had acquired his ideas of what an army should be, as we may suppose, while he was being educated at Thebes. The Macedonian army was formed much on the model of the Greek army, but there were certain differences, and every one of the differences seems to have been an improvement.

There was a phalanx, after the model of the Greek phalanx, and therein was the great strength of the infantry. But the phalanx of the Macedonians was not quite so closely packed (there was more space between one soldier and the next) as the Greek phalanx, and it was able to adopt this more open formation by means of giving to each soldier a longer spear or pike than the Greek soldier had. Thus the Macedonian phalanx was able to move more quickly than the Greek, {154} and also could cover more ground with the same number of men.

Now as to the cavalry. The Greeks, as we saw, were not nearly so well off as the Persians for horses. They had not the unlimited extent of horse-raising country that the Persians had in the lands towards the east. But the Macedonians, on the contrary, were almost as well off in this way as the Persians themselves. Away back in Thrace and Scythia they had these unlimited extents, so their cavalry became a very strong force.

And the same lands which provided them with horses provided them with soldiers also. Philip began to use his great strength of arms by making himself master of the countries on all sides of the kingdom of Macedon, to which he had succeeded. There were many Greek colonies or small cities along the coast of Macedonia itself. These he took possession of with little trouble. Certain of the Greeks at home began to be alarmed by the growth of this power in the north. You may have heard of some famous orations called "Philippics," delivered by the great orator Demosthenes, at Athens. Their name comes from this very Philip of Macedon, because it was in the hope of rousing the Athenians to take strong measures, and to unite with other states to oppose his power, that they were made.

But, as usual, there were jealousies. Athens did at length combine with Thebes to oppose Philip, but by that time he had found allies in Greece itself. He marched south, met the Thebans and Athenians at Chæronea, in 338 B.C., and won a battle which makes a very great difference in our story, for it was so decisive that it practically put an end, once for all, to the independence of Greece. Greece for many years had to {155} do what Macedonia ordered. Philip was given, or assumed, command of all the Greek armies, with a title which has been translated "Captain-General." Commander-in-Chief might describe it nearly as well, and is a title better known to us.

And now, for the first time, we have a really united Greece. But though a united Greece, it was not a free Greece. It was united because it was under the masterful rule of the Macedonians.

But, being united, and joined moreover with the forces of the Macedonians and their allies it probably was the greatest fighting force the world had yet known. There was one direction in particular in which it was likely that it would make its force felt--against Persia.

[Sidenote: Alexander the Great]

In the midst of the preparation for the invasion of the Persian empire, Philip was assassinated, after reigning for twenty-three years, and was succeeded by his son Alexander--Alexander the Great--then only twenty years old. And Alexander the Great died only twelve years later. He was therefore only thirty-two years old at his death. Yet he had time to win the name of Great; and when you hear his story you will think that it was well deserved, for the story is extraordinary.

It is extraordinary by reason of the immense extent of territory over which Alexander went victoriously and with marvellous rapidity. But the explanation is not very far to seek--it lies in that very powerful army and fighting machine which had been delivered to him by his father; in that, and in the lack of resisting power in the enemies whom it overcame, is the explanation of his success.

The fighting power of the Persian empire had spent itself; and partly it had spent itself in the destruction {156} of the fighting power of the nations with which it had come into touch. In that, as it seems, taken together with the very real strength of Alexander's army, lies the explanation. The Persian power, moreover, apart from its loss in actual fighting, had probably lost much by life in conditions more easy and pleasant than those in the more rugged and barren country from which Cyrus had led the Persians. We have noticed the same change in the character of conquering nations already, and may see it yet again in course of the great story.

As for this particular story which we are telling at the moment, about Alexander and the march of his ever-victorious army, it will be a short story although such a marvellous one. It is short, just because the march had scarcely a stopping-place, scarcely a check, all through.

This Alexander, succeeding to the throne of Macedonia and to all that his father Philip had made of that throne, and to the command-in-chief of the great army which Philip had created, had been educated by perhaps the most wonderful man of that wonderful Greek nation--the philosopher Aristotle. We call him philosopher, but there was no branch of the learning of that time, and it was a time of great learning, which he does not seem to have known perfectly. The additions that he made to every branch of that learning are most astonishing.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER THE GREAT. (From the British Museum.)]

We have to look on this young Alexander, then, as being as perfectly trained and taught as it was possible for a young man to be, and as having come into his kingdom with this great army ready to start, with all its plans laid, for the Persian invasion. Let us see what use he made of it. We know its composition--a certain number of Macedonian native soldiers, Greek and other allies; and we know its general way of {157} fighting, with the quickly moving Macedonian phalanx, armed with the long pikes, and the hosts of cavalry on good horses. But he was a very young king. The Greeks seem to have thought they had a chance, on his accession, of freeing themselves from the Macedonian yoke. Even in his own kingdom there was trouble, and some of the tribes in the north rose in revolt. Alexander crushed all these various attempts against his power. Twice he had to march south, to Thebes, that city where he had been as a boy. Once it admitted him at the head of his army without a fight, but on the second occasion, when it had taken arms again against Macedon on hearing a false rumour that Alexander had been killed in some fighting in the north, he came down and razed the city walls and punished the inhabitants with fearful severity.

These home troubles occupied two years of his reign, and in the third year he crossed the Hellespont with his great army and had his first big meeting with the Persian forces on the river Granicus. He was completely victorious.

[Sidenote: Battle of Issus]

But Darius, the Persian monarch, still claiming the title of King of Kings, was not likely to be content with the result of a single battle. He gathered his strength anew, and again met Alexander in the following year, at Issus, in Syria. This time his defeat was even more decisive than before.

Alexander advanced southward conquering. He took all the Phœnician cities of the coast, though Tyre made an obstinate defence, and swept down into Egypt. Egypt appears to have made no attempt--perhaps it had little wish--to resist him. By this time there were many Greeks in Egypt, and it is likely that they would receive the forces of the Macedonians, {158} among which were many of their kinsmen, almost more as friends than foes. The city of Alexandria, founded by him, or in his honour, takes its name from him.

The Persians, however, were not yet done with. By 321 B.C., two years after his defeat at Issus, Darius had collected an army greater than ever before, and Alexander, coming eastward out of Egypt, met this vast host, said to have been a million strong, at Gaugemela, or Arbela, and in this third and last conflict his victory was decisive. Darius fled eastward, with Alexander constantly in pursuit of him. Alexander took the great cities of Babylon and Susa on his way. The fugitive Darius was assassinated in Parthia, and Alexander's lordship over the ancient empire was complete.

Yet that was not enough for him. He pushed forward into India, across high mountain ranges and wide rivers. What he accomplished there, in the way of conquest, was marvellous, yet it had no big effect on the great story, because his conquests beyond the mountains were not lasting. His wonderful troops, though they must have looked on him as almost supernatural in his ability to lead them on to victory, began to long for their homes, probably to wonder if they would ever see them again after coming so far. He reached the shores of the Indian Ocean, and thence set his face to return homeward.

In Babylonia he stayed awhile, arranging for the government of the immense empire of which he was the undisputed master, and there he died, of a fever which is said to have been brought on, or greatly increased, by intemperate drinking--a death unworthy of his extraordinary achievements and of a pupil of such a master as Aristotle.

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And death at thirty-two! The exploits of Alexander and his army are unequalled in the whole course of the story of the world. Yet we must ever remember how much of that immense achievement was due to the genius of his father Philip, who created all the fighting force which the son led so triumphantly. The fame of the son is so glorious that the father's work is rather hidden by it. What Philip might have done, if he had lived, with the great machine of war which he devised we cannot tell, but it is sure that Alexander could not have achieved his conquests as he did but for the machinery which his father had made ready for him.

[Sidenote: Death of Alexander]

No doubt death came for the great conqueror quite unexpectedly in his thirty-third year, and he had made no arrangements as to who was to be his successor on the throne of the vast empire that he had won. There was no lack of claimants for it. Many of his victorious generals were willing enough, and there was much confused fighting among the victors and the forces under the command of each. One of the principal generals, Ptolemæus, or Ptolemy, was the commander of the armies that held Egypt. In Babylonia and Syria it appears that there was a period of rivalry and struggle between several of the leading generals, until at length one of them, Seleucus, prevailed over the rest, and he claimed to be, and in large measure really was, ruler of Syria and of the East as Ptolemy was ruler of Egypt. The proud title of King of Kings, which the Persian monarchs had assumed, now came to nothing, seeing that there were at least two kings now in this eastern part of the world. Seleucus and his successors, called the Seleucidæ, became established as Kings of Syria, in its new {160} capital city of Antioch; and Ptolemy and his successors, called the Ptolemies, became no less firmly seated on the throne of the ancient Pharaohs in Egypt.

Others of Alexander's generals who became rulers of one or other part of his empire after his death were Antigonus, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Cassander was son of Antipater, whom Alexander had left as his regent in Macedonia to govern the country for him when he went on his wars against the Persians. All these generals and their followers continued fighting, with various results, until the great and decisive battle at Ipsus (not Issus), of which the practical result was that Cassander was established as king of Macedonia and Greece. The battle of Ipsus was fought in 301 B.C., twenty-two years later than the battle of Issus. Seleucus and Lysimachus were the victorious leaders over Antigonus, who was killed during the fight in this battle of Ipsus; and to Lysimachus had already been assigned the kingdom of Thrace.

So now, in 300 B.C., we have Cassander over Macedonia and Greece, Lysimachus over Thrace, Seleucus over Syria and Babylonia, and Ptolemy over Egypt. That is the condition of affairs at that date on this eastern side of the picture. But it had not been brought about without some sharp fighting between Seleucus and Ptolemy, and here, as before, Palestine was like the horseshoe between the blacksmith's hammer and his anvil. It lay right in the path between the two great combatants.

[Sidenote: The Jews in Egypt]

Alexander, when he went conquering, with little or no opposition, into Egypt, had shown much favour to the Jews. We have seen that many of them had returned, under favour of Cyrus the Persian, from their Babylonian exile, to Jerusalem. The temple had been {161} rebuilt, not without a good deal of interference from their Syrian neighbours; the religious rites had been re-instituted and were strictly observed.

Alexander, it appears, showed consideration to the Jews in Jerusalem. He was, we may presume, a Greek in his religious views--that is to say, that religion made very little difference and had very little part in his life. He would not care what god a subject people liked to worship, so long as they did not oppose him. He took some of the Jews down with him, or had them brought, into Egypt, where there were already some of their nation, and they were given quarters of their own and a synagogue, or place of assembly and worship, in the new city of Alexandria. So here we have yet another step in that dispersion of the Jews which was to bring their religion, on which Christianity is founded, into all parts of the world.

I mentioned too that, rather as the Jewish religion became known throughout the world by the dispersion of those who followed it, so also did the thought and culture of the Greeks become known by the way in which that wonderful people was spread abroad. I have been writing of Macedonians hitherto as though they were a people altogether different from the Greeks, and so in truth, and in origin, they were. But I want you to realise that though they conquered Greece by their force of arms, it was (as always happened whenever Greeks met people of other nationality) the Greek thought that conquered their thought. They began more and more to think in the Greek way. Moreover, their very armies were largely Greek.

Thus it came to pass, in course of time, that the distinction between Macedonian and Greek began to be lost. After all, Macedon was a very near neighbour {162} of Greece herself. There must have been much coming and going between the two. Therefore the "Hellenising" of the world, as you may read it described--which means making the thought of the world like the thought of Hellas, which is another name for Greece--went on very fast and was spread abroad very widely. There is no part of that world which is the scene of our great story which it had not reached and in which it had not made a considerable difference in the lives of the inhabitants. Over a large part of it Greek had become the language in use among the better-educated classes. Seleucus was particularly active in introducing Greeks and Greek customs into the kingdom under his rule.

The possession of Palestine, inevitably, because of its position, had been very much disputed between Seleucus and Ptolemy after Alexander's death, but the dispute was decided by the battle of Ipsus, which seems to have cleared the air all round. Palestine then became subject to Egypt and so remained under successive Ptolemies for more than a hundred years.

[Sidenote: Alexandria]

The Jews in Judæa, with that love of their own customs which has always been remarkably strong in their nation, held out against the introduction of Greek thought and language, and so on, longer than any of their neighbours, but many Jews, as we have seen, had settled in Alexandria. The first three, at least, of the Ptolemies, who successively reigned in Egypt, showed favour to them; they had synagogues in other cities of Egypt besides Alexandria, and those Jews of Egypt, besides those who were in Babylonia and other parts of Asia, had the habit of coming up to Jerusalem, where was the Temple, to attend their great religious ceremonies. And these Jews brought to Jerusalem the {163} Greek language and thought, so that the Greek influence penetrated there too at last.

Alexandria became a great city for men of letters, learned men and writers, as well a great city of trade and a great seaport. The largest library of the ancient world was collected--and later was destroyed by fire--in that city. And there, probably before 250 B.C., the books of the Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew, were translated into Greek. Possibly not all were translated at that time, but it seems at least certain that the first five books, called the Pentateuch, were done into Greek about that date. Wherever they went the Jews never lost sight of their sacred books. The records of their history and their religious institutions were always with them.

Under the later kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty the government of Egypt was less strongly maintained, the power of Egypt waned, and in 198 B.C. the Egyptians were thoroughly defeated by the Syrians on the banks of the Jordan, and Judæa and Jerusalem came under the rule of the Syrian king. He did not interfere with their religion or their customs, and for a while the change of rulers appears to have made very little difference to them.

Such, then, is the outline which I would have you carry in your minds of the position of those peoples of the story on the eastern side of the Mediterranean, in Egypt southward, and in Thrace, Macedon, and Greece. And now I would ask you to come back again to look at the western side of the picture, for the time has fully come when we should bring more prominently into it a figure which will grow larger and larger until it grows to such a size as to fill in the whole frame, and more than the frame--the figure of world-conquering Rome.

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