"To the European, on the other hand, such demeanor involves the destruction of his own personality. Never will a free man call himself the slave of another. Rather, he will always speak of himself in confident tones, with a strong feeling of; his own worth.... Prostration and kissing the dust are due, in European thinking, only to a god who is thereby acknowledged to be the lord of the worshiper, in whose presence the worshiper can have no will of his own. "It was among the Greeks, in their free republics, that this feeling developed to its full strength. It finds typical expression in the story of the Spartan heralds, Sperthies and Bulis, who, although they had surrendered themselves to the Persian king to be executed, refused to prostrate themselves before him; 'for in their country,' Herodotus makes them say, 'it was not customary to kiss the dust before a man, nor had they come for that purpose.' The stories of Themistocles who rendered the required homage, and of Conon who on its account avoided an audience with the King altogether, despite the high value it would have had for him, are similarly significant. In demanding proskynesis, accordingly, Alexander offended Greek sentiment violently. Rather, what he thereby demanded was the acknowledgment that officially, in his capacity of king,--his private position is a different matter altogether,--he was no longer a man, but a god." In other words, when Alexander demanded that Greeks and Macedonians fall at his feet and kiss the dust before him, he demanded that they recognize him as a god, as in fact the son of Zeus. This ceremony had no such implications for the Persians; but, as we shall see in a moment, in Alexander's thinking, the Persians were to cease to exist; they were to be made Hellenes by education. Alexander set out for Asia with a firm belief in the absolute superiority of Hellenic culture; and in this belief he remained fixed to the end. To establish Hellenic life throughout Asia, he regarded as the main object of his conquests. His Hellenic ideals he revealed to the astonished natives at almost every halting-place on his march; for on such occasions he again and again held gymnastic and musical contests after the Greek pattern. As we have seen, he had learned from Aristotle that city-life and Hellenic life were synonymous, and that without political activity city-life was animal rather than human in character. Accordingly, he displayed a feverish energy in founding Greek city-states everywhere in the conquered territory, but particularly in the regions of the Far East where urban life had been hitherto lacking. Like mushrooms overnight, towns by the scores sprang up behind him on his line of march; so vast was the immigration into Asia from Greece and Macedon even during the thirteen brief years of his reign.