The Greeks considered themselves absolved from Macedonian jurisdiction by the death of Philip. Not so thought Alexander. He marched against them, turning the passes of Tempe and Kallipeuke by hewing a path along the slopes of Mount Ossa, and made himself master of Thessaly. The Amphictyonic Council deemed it wise to submit, and elected him Autocrator in place of his father. Alexander’s one ambition had always been to head the Greeks in punishing the hereditary enemy of Hellas, the Persian king. He had imbibed the idea of his Asiatic conquests in his early youth, and had once, as a lad, astonished the Persian envoys to the Court of Pella by his searching and intelligent questions concerning the peoples and resources of the East. Before starting on such an expedition, however, he must once for all settle the danger of barbarian incursions along his borders. This he did in a campaign brilliant by its skilful audacity; but on a rumor of his defeat and death among the savages, Thebes again revolted. Alexander, by a march of three hundred miles in two weeks across a mountainous country, suddenly appeared at her gates, captured and destroyed the city, and sold the inhabitants into slavery. Athens begged off. Undisputed chief, he now set out for Asia with thirty thousand foot and five thousand horse. (B.C. 334.) There is time but for the description of a single campaign and battle of this great king’s. The rest of his all but superhuman exploits must be hurried through with barely a mention, and the tracing of his march on the map. I have preferred to select for longer treatment the battle of the Hydaspes, for Issus and Arbela are more generally familiar. Alexander’s first battle after crossing into Asia was at the Granicus, where he defeated the Persian army with the loss of a vast number of their princes and generals. Thence he advanced through Mysia and Lydia, freeing the Greek cities on the way, captured Miletus and Halicarnassus, and having made himself a necessary base on the Ægean, marched through Caria and Lycia, fighting for every step, but always victorious, not merely by hard blows, but by hard blows delivered where they would best tell. Then through Phrygia to Gordium (where he cut the Gordian knot), and through Cappadocia to Cilicia. He then passed through the Syrian Gates--a mountain gap--heading for Phœnicia. Here Darius got in his rear by passing through the Amanic Gates farther up the range, which Alexander either did not know, or singularly enough had overlooked. The Macedonians were absolutely cut off from their communications. But, nothing daunted, Alexander kept his men in heart, turned on Darius, and defeated him at Issus, with a skill only equalled by his hopeful boldness, and saved himself harmless from the results of a glaring error.