mastery of the Ægean, had passed into the hands of the conqueror, so that the Persians had no direct means of acting upon Greece. Probably Amphoterus recovered Krete, but he had no land-force to attack Agis in Peloponnesus. [668] Plutarch, Camill. 19; Diodor. xvi. 88; Plutarch, Agis, 3. [669] Arrian, i. 16, 11: compare Pausan. vii. 10, 1. [670] Arrian, ii. 13, 4. [671] Arrian, iii. 6, 4; Diodor. xvii. 48; Curtius, iv. 1, 39. It is to this war in Krete, between Agis and the Macedonian party and troops, that Aristotle probably alludes (in the few words contained, Politica, ii. 7, 8), as having exposed the weakness of the Kretan institutions—see Schneider’s note on the passage. At least we do not know of any other event, suitable to the words. In October 331 B. C., Darius was beaten at Arbela and became a fugitive in Media, leaving Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, with the bulk of his immense treasures, as a prey to the conqueror during the coming winter. After such prodigious accessions to Alexander’s force, it would seem that any anti-Macedonian movement, during the spring of 330 B. C., must have been obviously hopeless and even insane. Yet it was just then that King Agis found means to enlarge his scale of operations in Peloponnesus, and prevailed on a considerable body of new allies to join him. As to himself personally, he and the Lacedæmonians had been previously in a state of proclaimed war with Macedonia,[672] and therefore incurred little additional risk; moreover, it was one of the effects of the Asiatic disasters to cast back upon Greece small hands of soldiers who had hitherto found service in the Persian armies. These men willingly came to Cape Tænarus to enlist under a warlike king of Sparta; so that Agis found himself at the head of a force which appeared considerable to Peloponnesians, familiar only with the narrow scale of Grecian war-muster, though insignificant as against Alexander or his viceroy in Macedonia.[673] An unexpected ray of hope broke out from the revolt of Memnon, the Macedonian governor of Thrace. Antipater was thus compelled to withdraw some of his forces to a considerable distance from Greece; while Alexander, victorious as he was, being in Persis or Media, east of Mount Zagros, appeared in the eyes of a Greek to have reached the utmost limits of the habitable world.[674] Of this partial encouragement Agis took advantage, to march out of Lakonia with all the troops, mercenary and native, that he could muster. He called on the Peloponnesians for a last effort against Macedonian dominion, while Darius still retained all the eastern half of his empire, and while support from him in men and money might yet be anticipated.[675]