Alexa7ider the Great and the Helleiiistic Age 219 (333-323 B.C.). Believing that his destruction of Thebes had fur- nished the Greeks such an evidence of the terrible consequences of revolt that not even a Persian fleet in the ^gean could arouse Hellas to hostility against him in his absence, Alexander pushed boldly eastward and rounded the northeast corner of the Medi- terranean. Here was spread out before him the vast Asiatic world of forty million souls where the family of the Great King had been supreme for two hundred years. At this important point, by the Gulf of Issus, Alexander met Defeat of the main army of Persia, under the personal command of the at the battle Great King, Darius HI, the last of the line. In a fierce batde the °^ ^^^^"^ . irresistible onset of Alexander and his Macedonians (Fig. 99), combined with the skillful arrangement of his troops, swept the Asiatics from the field, and the disorderly retreat of Darius never stopped until it had crossed the Euphrates. The Great King then sent a letter to Alexander desiring terms of peace and offer- ing to accept the Euphrates as a boundary between them, all Asia west of that river to be handed over to the Macedonians. It is a dramatic picture, the figure of the young king, still The situation only twenty-three years old, standing with this letter in his hand. and^AlSan- As he ponders it he is surrounded by a group of the ablest ^^^'^ fnends Macedonian youth, who have grown up around him as his closest friends ; but likewise by old and trusted counselors upon whom his father before him had leaned. The hazards of battle and of march, and the daily associations of camp and bivouac, have wrought the closest bonds of love and friend- ship and intimate influence between these loyal Macedonians and their ardent young king. As he considers the letter of Darius therefore, his father's old general Parmenio, who has commanded the Macedonian left wing in the battle just won, proffers him serious counsel. We can almost see the old man leaning familiarly over the shoulder of this imperious boy of twenty-three and pointing out across the Mediterranean, as he bids Alexander remember the Persian fleet operating there in his rear, and likely to stir up revolt against him
