This Alexander, succeeding to the throne of Macedonia and to all that his father Philip had made of that throne, and to the command-in-chief of the great army which Philip had created, had been educated by perhaps the most wonderful man of that wonderful Greek nation--the philosopher Aristotle. We call him philosopher, but there was no branch of the learning of that time, and it was a time of great learning, which he does not seem to have known perfectly. The additions that he made to every branch of that learning are most astonishing. [Illustration: ALEXANDER THE GREAT. (From the British Museum.)] We have to look on this young Alexander, then, as being as perfectly trained and taught as it was possible for a young man to be, and as having come into his kingdom with this great army ready to start, with all its plans laid, for the Persian invasion. Let us see what use he made of it. We know its composition--a certain number of Macedonian native soldiers, Greek and other allies; and we know its general way of {157} fighting, with the quickly moving Macedonian phalanx, armed with the long pikes, and the hosts of cavalry on good horses. But he was a very young king. The Greeks seem to have thought they had a chance, on his accession, of freeing themselves from the Macedonian yoke. Even in his own kingdom there was trouble, and some of the tribes in the north rose in revolt. Alexander crushed all these various attempts against his power. Twice he had to march south, to Thebes, that city where he had been as a boy. Once it admitted him at the head of his army without a fight, but on the second occasion, when it had taken arms again against Macedon on hearing a false rumour that Alexander had been killed in some fighting in the north, he came down and razed the city walls and punished the inhabitants with fearful severity. These home troubles occupied two years of his reign, and in the third year he crossed the Hellespont with his great army and had his first big meeting with the Persian forces on the river Granicus. He was completely victorious. [Sidenote: Battle of Issus] But Darius, the Persian monarch, still claiming the title of King of Kings, was not likely to be content with the result of a single battle. He gathered his strength anew, and again met Alexander in the following year, at Issus, in Syria. This time his defeat was even more decisive than before. Alexander advanced southward conquering. He took all the Phœnician cities of the coast, though Tyre made an obstinate defence, and swept down into Egypt. Egypt appears to have made no attempt--perhaps it had little wish--to resist him. By this time there were many Greeks in Egypt, and it is likely that they would receive the forces of the Macedonians, {158} among which were many of their kinsmen, almost more as friends than foes. The city of Alexandria, founded by him, or in his honour, takes its name from him.