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Ion, as the extreme of rashness and folly, or the result of a frantic 

 desire to surpass the feats of Semirarais and Cyrus ! 



Alexander, according to the most esteemed of his biographers, 

 was born in the summer of the year 356, and succeeded to the 

 throne of Macedon in the year 336, before Christ ; being at that Before ciu-ist, 



800* 



time little more than twenty years of age. But the intellectual ^^v^ 

 faculties of this prince by no means kept pace with the slow pro- 

 gress to maturity of the corporeal : in his earliest youth he astonished 

 the court of his father by the display of unrivalled genius in almost 

 every line of exertion; Nature seemed to have formed him for 

 some project transcendently daring and magnificent, while Art and 

 Science exhausted all their treasures to finish the prodigy. 



Whatever may be strictly called Grecian history, I mean such 

 portions of it as are not immediately connected with that of Persia, 

 and consequently with India, at this period in tributary dependence 

 on the former empire, can have no claim to insertion in these pages. 

 Yet, before we attend Alexander across the Hellespont, it will not 

 be improper to observe, that the sudden death of Philip, the inex- 

 perienced age of Alexander, and the impatience of the Greek states 

 to throw off the yoke of a Greek oppressor, had not permitted the 

 latter to take quiet possession of the wide sovereignty acquired by 

 his father. Trained up, however, in maxims of government equally 

 vigorous in the design and rapid in the execution, Alexander allowed 

 no time for opposition to ripen to maturity, or any general confe- 

 deracy to be formed by the dissatisfied cities of Greece. With 

 intrepidity and speed that evinced a mind fully adequate, even at 

 this early period, to his new and important station, he immediately 

 led the veteran troops of Philip to every district of Greece which had 

 elevated the standard of rebellion against his authority. The states 

 nearest to Macedon, which had set the first example of insurrection, 

 soon found a second Philip among them, at once to charm them by 



