WHAT HE DID. 89 



of Greek ideas. He behaved towards the conquered 

 people not as a robber, but as a sovereign. The wis- 

 dom of his policy is clearly proved by the praises of 

 the oriental writers and by the blame of the Greeks, 

 who looked upon barbarians as a people destined by 

 nature to be slaves. But had Alexander governed 

 Persia as they desired, the land would have been 

 in a continual state of insurrection, and it would 

 have been impossible for him, even had he lived, to 

 have undertaken new designs. 



The story that he wept because there were no more 

 worlds for him to conquer, would seem to imply that, 

 after the conquest of the Persian empire, there was 

 nothing left for him in the way of war but to go out 

 savage-hunting in the forests of Europe, the steppes 

 of Tartary, or the deserts of Central Africa. How- 

 ever, there still remained a number of powerful and 

 attractive states- — even if we place China- entirely 

 aside as a land which could not be touched by the 

 stream of events, however widely they might overflow. 



Alexander no doubt often reflected to himself that 

 after all he had only walked in the footsteps of other 

 men. It was the genius of his father which had given 

 him possession of Greece ; it was the genius of the 

 Persians which had planted the Asia that he had 

 gathered. It is true that he had conquered the Persian 

 Empire more thoroughly than the Persians had ever 

 been able to conquer it themselves. He had not left 

 behind him a single rock fortress or forest den 

 unearned, a single tribe untamed. Yet still he had 

 not been able to pass the frontiers which they had 

 fixed. He had once attempted to do so, and had 

 failed. When he had reached the eastern river of the 

 Punjaub or Land of the Five Streams, he stood on the 



