vast territories of heathen monarchs before whose military power and worldly splendour Jerusalem was altogether less than nothing and vanity. In 332 B.C. a thunderbolt smote all the countries of the near East. In that year a European army, led by the young king of Macedonia, Alexander the Great, invaded Asia Minor--with such astonishing effects that the event marks the commencement of a distinct epoch in history, the Greek or Hellenic age. Military conquests prove sometimes to be of small consequence in the great movement of human affairs, and famous battles often have decided no more than that so many thousand men should die untimely deaths and that this royal house instead of that should hold the throne: an almost meaningless result. Only those wars are decisive which, like the present one, involve the dominance of one or other of two divergent conceptions or ideals of human life. Now the conquests of Alexander were of this latter character; and, that being so, their significance has to be measured not only from the standpoint of events but also from the history of ideas. At this point then--the coming of the Greeks to the East--let our narrative be checked for a moment that we may reach the same event by following up a different line of thought, namely the history of the development of human society. What is the significance of Alexander from that point of view? Our aim in examining the question will have to be threefold; to present (of course, in simplest outline) _first_, the ruling principles of the Eastern or Oriental manner of life; _secondly_, the Western--that is, the Greek or Hellenic--ideals; and _thirdly_, the attempt of Alexander and his successors to impose this Hellenic culture upon the Easterns and, in particular, upon the Jews in Palestine.