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soul. This message, it is fair to conclude, was undertaken by com- 

 pulsion ; but he shortly after assumed a conduct more consonant 

 to his name and the true interests of his kingdom, in which we find 

 a second proof of the radical antipathy of the Macedonians to their 

 Asiatic masters. In the dead of the night, immediately previous to 

 the battle of Plataea, so fatal to Mardonius and his army, Alexander, 

 at that time following the Persians as a compelled ally, mounted 

 his horse, and, riding to that part of the Grecian camp which the 

 Athenians occupied, unfolded to Aristides, their general, the plan of 

 attack intended to be made the next day by Mardonius on the 

 Grecian lines ; he mentioned this attack as the result of necessity 

 from the exhausted state of the magazines, no longer adequate to 

 the supply of so vast an army ; if that attack should be prevented 

 by any unforeseen circumstance, he encouraged them not to retire 

 from their present advantageous position : he added, that his affinity 

 and friendship to the Greek nation led him thus to hazard his lite 

 and kingdom in their cause ; and he confided in their gratitude, 

 should they prove victorious, to attempt the emancipation of Mace- 

 donia from the tyranny which they themselves had so magnani- 

 mously disdained, and hitherto so successfully resisted*. These 

 instances, and many others that might be adduced, of the impa- 

 tience with which the Macedonians bore the yoke of Persia, seemed 

 to me no improper introduction to the particular detail of events in 

 the subsequent pages, which display their struggles for the dominion 

 of Asia ; and indeed of the world itself, which then acknowledged 

 Asia for its master. 



Before we enter on the Greek accounts of Alexander's Persian and 

 Indian conquests, it is necessary, since our historic march is pro- 

 perly on Oriental ground, that we cursorily notice from Mirkhond, 



* Herodotus, lib. ix. cap. 45, and Plu^irch in Vita Aristid. 



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