OF THE UNIVERSE. CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER. 151 



servitude, while the Greeks, vigorous and susceptible, living 

 in freedom and therefore well governed, might, if they were 

 united in one state, subdue and rule over all barbarians" 

 Thus the Stagirite wrote during his second stay at Athens 

 ( 217 ), before Alexander had yet passed the Granicus. These 

 maxims, however the Stagirite might elsewhere have 

 spoken of an unlimited dominion (Kavt3a<n\eia) as unnatural, 

 doubtless made a more powerful impression on the mind ol 

 the conqueror, than the imaginative accounts of India 

 given by Ctesias, to which August Wilhelm von Schlegel, 

 and before him Ste. Croix, attributed so much impor- 

 tance ( 218 ). 



The preceding section was devoted to a brief description 

 of the influence of the sea as the combining and uniting 

 element ; we have shewn how this influence was extended 

 by the navigation of the Phosnicians, Carthaginians, 

 Tyrrhenians, and Tuscans; and how the Greeks, having 

 their naval power strengthened by numerous colonies, 

 advanced from the Basin of the Mediterranean towards the 

 east and the west, by the Argonauts from lolchos and by the 

 Samian Colseus ; and how towards the south the expedi- 

 tions of Solomon and Hiram passing through the Red Sea, 

 visited the distant Gold lands in voyages to Ophir. The 

 present section will conduct us principally into the interior 

 of a great continent, on paths opened by land traffic and by 

 river navigation. In the short interval of twelve years 

 there followed successively, the expeditions into Western 

 Asia and Syria, with the battles of the Granicus and of the 

 passes of the Issus ; the siege and taking of Tyre ; the easy 

 possession of Egypt ; the Babylonian and Persian campaign, 

 in which at Arbela (in the plain of Gaugamela) the 



