=79.= REIGN OF DARIUS III. B. C. 336-331. As has often happened in the world’s history, one of the best of the Persian kings had to bear the results of the tyrannies of his predecessors. Darius was not more distinguished for his personal beauty than for the uprightness and benevolence of his character; and as satrap of Armenia, before his accession to the throne, he had won great applause both for his bravery as a soldier and his skill as a general. But the Greeks, whose reasons for hostility against the Persians had been two hundred years accumulating, had now, at last, a leader more ambitious than Xerxes, and more able than Cyrus. Already, before Darius had mounted the throne, Alexander the Great had succeeded his father in Macedon, had been appointed general-in-chief of all the Greek forces, and had commenced his movement against Asia. =80.= The Persian monarch despised the presumption of an inexperienced boy, and made no effort, by aiding the European enemies of Alexander, to crush the new foe in his cradle. The satraps and generals shared the confidence of their master, and though a large force was collected in Mysia, no serious opposition was made to his passage of the Hellespont. In B. C. 334, Alexander with his 35,000 Greeks crossed the strait which had been passed by Xerxes, with his five millions, less than 150 years before. The Greek army was scarcely more inferior to the Persian in number than superior in efficiency. It was composed of veteran troops in the highest possible state of equipment and discipline, and every man was filled with enthusiastic devotion to his leader and confidence of success. Memnon, a brother of Mentor the Rhodian, with the satraps Spithrida´tes and Arsi´tes, commanded the Persians in Asia Minor. Their first collision with Alexander was in the attempt to prevent his passage of the Grani´cus, a little Mysian river which flows into the Propon´tis. They were totally defeated, and Alexander, advancing southward, subdued, or rather liberated all the cities of the western coast without long delay. Halicarnas´sus, under the command of Memnon, made an obstinate resistance, and it was only at the end of autumn that it surrendered. Memnon then resolved to carry the war into Greece. He gathered a large fleet and captured many islands in the Ægean; but his death at Mytile´ne relieved Alexander of the most able of his opponents.