After the conquest of the Bactrian satrapy, there remained only one province of the Persian empire into which Alexander had not yet carried his arms: it was that which tempted his curiosity, as well as his ambition, perhaps more than any other. Already, indeed, before he crossed the Paropamisus, he had made himself master of a great part of the country which the Persians called India, and perhaps had very nearly reached the utmost limits within which the authority of the Great King was acknowledged in the latter years of the monarchy. But the power of the first Darius had certainly been extended much further eastward. It seems probable that a part of his Indian tribute was collected in the Pendjab, and there is some reason to believe that it was on the Hydaspes Scylax began his voyage of discovery. After the death of Darius, the attention of the Persian kings was so much turned toward the west, or distracted by wars with their revolted subjects, that they would scarcely have had leisure for fresh conquests in India, even if the spirit of Cyrus had lived in his successors: and it is very uncertain, whether their territories reached so far as the Indus. The greater part of the peninsula was, as we see from the accounts of Herodotus and Ctesias, utterly unknown to the Persians. The India of Herodotus is bounded on the east by a sandy desert, which, it seems, he believed to be terminated by the ocean which girded his earth, and was inhabited chiefly by pastoral and savage, even it was said cannibal tribes.

We must now resume the narrative which we dropped at the partition of the empire, and distribution of the provinces, that immediately followed Alexander's death, and relate the events which led to the result mentioned at the close of the preceding chapter, and were pregnant with other more momentous consequences. One of the first occurrences which marked the administration of Perdiccas after he had established himself in the regency, was a wound which he inflicted on Greece in a distant corner of Asia: a triumph of the Macedonian arms memorable rather because it prevented than because it produced an important change in the course of affairs, but which serves to illustrate his character, as well as the footing on which he stood. While the struggle which we have seen brought to such a disastrous issue was just beginning in Greece, and the states which took part in it could with difficulty raise a force sufficient to maintain it, a body of Greeks, who, if they had been present in their native land, would probably have thrown their whole weight into the same scale, and might have turned it decisively on the side of freedom, was suddenly swept from the earth. The Greek colonists, whom Alexander had planted in the new cities which he founded in the eastern satrapies, had only been detained by fear during his life in what they considered as a miserable exile.

While Antigonus was engaged, as we have seen, on the western coast of Asia, Eumenes had availed himself of the leisure thus afforded him, to take possession of the authority with which he was invested by Polysperchon. It was a task of infinite difficulty and danger. He was soon forced to quit Cappadocia, by the arrival of Menander and a body of troops, sent in pursuit of him by Antigonus. By a forced march he crossed the Taurus, and in Cilicia met Antigenes and Teutamus. They submitted to the royal mandate, and received him with respect, as commander-in-chief. The jealousy of the Macedonians was subdued by admiration of his genius, and by sympathy with the strange vicissitudes of his fortune. The guardians of the treasury at Quinda also surrendered it to his disposal. Still he saw himself surrounded by officers of high spirit and ambitious views, who looked upon themselves as personally superior to the foreigner whom accident had placed above them, and by troops, proud of their services, spoiled by license and flattery, impatient of discipline and subordination. He perceived that their fidelity could only be secured by the most studied show of moderation and humility: that he must keep his personal pretensions as much as possible in the back-ground, and put forward the legitimate authority in the name of which he claimed their obedience. He therefore declared at once, that he would not accept the 500 talents which had been assigned to him for the supply of his own wants.

However reluctantly Alexander may have abandoned the immediate prospect of further conquests and discoveries in the East, there was still enough to fill his mind, and to gratify his passion for heroic adventures, in the enterprise which he was next to begin. So vague had been, almost down to this time, his notions as to the geography of the regions which he was to traverse on his return to Persia, that when he found crocodiles in the Indus, he conceived a fancy that this river was a branch of the Nile; and this conjecture seemed to him strongly confirmed, when he met with the lotus, such as he had seen in Egypt, on the banks of the Acesines. He even mentioned, in a letter to his mother, that he believed he had discovered the land which contained the springs of the Nile; he thought that, in its course from India to Ethiopia, it might flow through some vast desert, in which it lost its original name. A little inquiry among the natives must have sufficed to correct this error—which seems to prove that he was not well read in Herodotus, and that the expedition of Scylax had excited but little attention in Greece — and that he remained so long ignorant of the truth, shows how singly his views were at first bent towards the East.

The fleet, which was probably for the most part collected from the natives, numbered, according to Ptolemy, nearly 2000 vessels of various kinds, including eighty galleys of war.

Our attention will now again he chiefly occupied with the affairs of Greece. The connection indeed between the events, which took place there, and the contests carried on by Alexander's successors in Asia, becomes henceforward so close, that it will be necessary to keep both constantly in view: the latter however, as subordinate to the proper subject of our history. Before we turn to it, we must proceed as far as the first settlement that was made of the great interests, which were left in so much confusion and uncertainty by the sudden vacancy of the Macedonian throne.

It may easily be believed, that Alexander's death was sincerely deplored by all around him, whose immediate interest was not too deeply affected by it to allow room for grief. When the royal pages, unable to contain their excitement, rushed out of the palace with loud wailings, and made the event generally known, the whole city soon resounded with the voice of lamentation. The Macedonians mourned for their hero, the Persians for their king. Many and various were the honours afterwards paid to Alexander's memory, by word and work, in monuments and spectacles, in smooth verse and well turned periods: but the most honourable tribute was offered by Sisygambis, the mother of Darius.

The treaty of 311 was almost immediately followed by a tragical event, which may be considered as the natural consequence of one of its conditions. From the beginning of the war the young king Alexander and his mother had been kept in close custody at Amphipolis, without the attendance befitting their rank. Cassander by this treatment had given sufficient evidence of his ultimate intentions with regard to them. He probably only waited until the Macedonians should have been reconciled to the spectacle of their degradation, and have forgotten them, to rid himself of them for ever. The declaration however, which Antigonus made in their favour on his return from the East, may have revived the hopes of those who were still attached to the royal house: and the treaty, which solemnly recognised Alexander's title to the crown, must have excited still more sanguine expectations. The young prince was now about sixteen, the age at which his father had been entrusted with the government of the state, and the command of armies. His partisans openly expressed their wish to see him immediately released from confinement, and placed on the throne. That they were instigated to this injudicious display of their loyalty, which without any benefit to its object could not but alarm Cassander, and put him on his guard, by any secret machinations of Antigonus, seems a very needless conjecture: Antigonus might safely anticipate that the terms of the treaty would produce this effect, and he was probably able to divine its remoter consequences.

The spoil of Damascus was not the most important advantage which Alexander reaped from the battle of Issus. It averted a danger which, notwithstanding Memnon's death, had continued to give him occasion for much uneasiness; for he was still threatened with a diversion in his rear–a general rising of the Greeks and an invasion of Macedonia–which might have interrupted, even if it did not finally defeat, his enterprise.

Memnon, on his death-bed, had appointed his nephew Pharnabazus, the son of Artabazus, to succeed him in his government until the king's pleasure should be known. Pharnabazus and Autophradates prosecuted the siege of Mitylene with such vigour, that the inhabitants were reduced to capitulate, on the conditions that the mercenaries in their pay should be allowed to depart: that they should take down the columns which contained their treaty with Alexander, and should enter into alliance with Darius on the terms of the peace of Antalcidas, and should recal their exiled citizens–the anti-Macedonian party–and restore one half of their confiscated property. But the Persian generals were no sooner masters of the town, than they introduced a garrison commanded by an officer of their own, created Diogenes, one of the exiles, tyrant, and levied arbitrary contributions, both on the city and on opulent individuals.

Early in the spring of 334, Alexander set out on his march to the Hellespont, leaving Antipater, with an army of 12,000 infantry and 1,500 horse, regent in Macedonia, and to keep a watchful eye on the affairs of Greece. Parmenio, who after Philip's death had returned from Asia, commanded the phalanx under the king: his son Philotas, the Macedonian cavalry, and another son, Nicanor, the hypaspists. The Thessalian horse were placed under the command of Calas, son of Harpalus; the Greek under Eriguius; the Thracian and Pæonian light cavalry under Cassander, son of Antipater. In twenty days the army reached Sestus, where a fleet of 160 sail, including twenty Athenian galleys, and a great number of transports, had been provided for its embarkation. Parmenio was ordered to superintend the passage of the main body of the infantry, and of the cavalry, to Abydos, while Alexander himself proceeded to Elæus, to sacrifice in the sanctuary of Protesilaus, and to pray for a happier landing than had been vouchsafed to that hero on the shore of Asia. Here he also erected an altar to commemorate his departure from Europe, and then embarking, and steering his own galley, made for the harbour on the opposite coast, which tradition had fixed upon as the landingplace of the Achæans in the Trojan war.