18. On the other conquests of the Macedonians little need be said. The occupation of Bisaltia and Crestonica was subsequent to the expedition of Xerxes. The Thracian king of these districts fled away,(1997) and left his kingdom a prey to the ambition of Alexander, who thus extended his empire to the mouth of the Strymon, which was the boundary of Macedonia in the days of Thucydides and of Scylax, and remained so until the time of Philip. At what time the Macedonian kings reduced that part of Pæonia which stretched along the Axius, Eordæa, Almopia, and a large part of the Macedonians themselves, we are nowhere informed; and to infer from Thucydides that these conquests succeeded that of Mygdonia and preceded that of Anthemus, would be laying too much weight upon the order in which he arranges the events; in which, although he doubtless paid some regard to chronology, the context required that the conquests on the coast should be mentioned before those of the interior. Eordæa was probably subjugated at a very early period, since it lay, as it were, in a bay of the Macedonian territory; and a very credible tradition has been preserved by Dexippus,(1998) that Caranus had in early times made an alliance with the Orestæ against the Eordians, and founded his kingdom by the subjugation of that nation. In fact, the first nation with whom the king of Edessa had to contend was these Eordians. They were, according to Thucydides, nearly annihilated by a war of extermination; a small number of them escaped to Physca in Mygdonia;(1999) which district therefore was not as yet under the power of the Macedonians.