A glance at the map of Asia at the coming of Alexander will convince us that all but a corner of the world known to the ancients was then ruled by a single power. The Persian Empire, sprawling like a huge octopus over the centre of the continent, dominated it from its four capitals at the head of the Persian Gulf, and stretched without a break from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. In its eastern provinces were comprised what is now Russian Turkestan from Krasnovodsk to Kashgar, with the Khanates and the Pamirs, all Afghanistan, Seistan, Baluchistan, the North-West Province, and part of the Punjab. On the western side of the Great Central Desert came the countries which we now call Persia and Turkey in Asia containing in themselves a territory half the size of the Continent of Europe, together with the rich province to the south of the Caucasus which has lately passed into the grip of Russia. From here one long tentacle had stretched across the Sinaitic Peninsula and had seized Egypt; and, although another had shrunk back hurt from its attack on Greece, it yet held positions on the Bosphorus and the Hellespont which formed a standing menace that the raid might be repeated. Apart from the Greek States which, as has been well said, the Great King found easier to control through their own venal orators than to conquer by his soldiers, there remained outside his sway only the trading republic of Carthage and the Italian cities just rising into prominence. Travellers’ tales, more than usually improbable and untrustworthy, were, indeed, told of great countries swarming with men and fabulous monsters lying beyond the African and Indian deserts on the southern, and the great ranges of mountains on the eastern, frontier of the Empire[30]; but these gave as little concern to its rulers as did the fringe of barbarian tribes, Cimmerians, Hyperboreans, Gauls, and Scyths, who filled up the space between the civilized world and the imaginary ring of waters which was called the Outer Ocean.