The Asiatic conquests of Alexander do not belong directly and literally to the province of an historian of Greece. They were achieved by armies of which the general, the principal officers, and most part of the soldiers, were Macedonian. The Greeks who served with him were only auxiliaries, along with the Thracians and Pæonians. Though more numerous than all the other auxiliaries, they did not constitute, like the Ten Thousand Greeks in the army of the younger Cyrus, the force on which he mainly relied for victory. His chief-secretary, Eumenes of Kardia, was a Greek, and probably most of the civil and intellectual functions connected with the service were also performed by Greeks. Many Greeks also served in the army of Persia against him, and composed indeed a larger proportion of the real force (disregarding mere numbers) in the army of Darius than in that of Alexander. Hence the expedition becomes indirectly incorporated with the stream of Grecian history by the powerful auxiliary agency of Greeks on both sides—and still more, by its connection with previous projects, dreams, and legends, long antecedent to the aggrandizement of Macedon—as well as by the character which Alexander thought fit to assume. To take revenge on Persia for the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and to liberate the Asiatic Greeks, had been the scheme of the Spartan Agesilaus, and of the Pheræan Jason; with hopes grounded on the memorable expedition and safe return of the Ten Thousand. It had been recommended by the rhetor Isokrates, first to the combined force of Greece, while yet Grecian cities were free, under the joint headship of Athens and Sparta—next, to Philip of Macedon as the chief of united Greece, when his victorious arms had extorted a recognition of headship, setting aside both Athens and Sparta. The enterprising ambition of Philip was well pleased to be nominated chief of Greece for the execution of this project. From him it passed to his yet more ambitious son. Though really a scheme of Macedonian appetite and for Macedonian aggrandizement, the expedition against Asia thus becomes thrust into the series of Grecian events, under the Pan-hellenic pretence of retaliation for the long past insults of Xerxes. I call it a _pretence_, because it had ceased to be a real Hellenic feeling, and served now two different purposes; first, to ennoble the undertaking in the eyes of Alexander himself, whose mind was very accessible to religious and legendary sentiment, and who willingly identified himself with Agamemnon or Achilles, immortalized as executors of the collective vengeance of Greece for Asiatic insult—next, to assist in keeping the Greeks quiet during his absence. He was himself aware that the real sympathies of the Greeks were rather adverse than favorable to his success.