Later, in 338 B. C., when the original Nordic blood had been hopelessly diluted by mixture with the ancient Mediterranean elements, Hellas fell an easy prey to Macedon. The troops of Philip and Alexander were Nordic and represented the uncultured but unmixed ancestral type of the Achæans and Hellenes. Their unimpaired fighting strength was irresistible as soon as it was organized into the Macedonian phalanx, whether directed against their degenerate brother Greeks or against the Persians, whose original Nordic elements had also by this time practically disappeared. When in its turn the pure Macedonian blood was impaired by intermixture with Asiatics, they, too, vanished and even the royal Macedonian dynasties in Asia and Egypt soon ceased to be Nordic or Greek except in language and customs. It is interesting to note that the Greek states in which the Nordic element most predominated outlived the other states. Athens fell before Sparta and Thebes outlived them both. Macedon in classic times was considered quite the most barbarous state in Hellas and was scarcely recognized as forming part of Greece, but it was through the military power of its armies and the genius of Alexander that the Levant and western Asia became Hellenized. Alexander with his Nordic features, aquiline nose, fair skin, gently curling light hair and mixed eyes, the left blue and the right very black, typifies this Nordic conquest of the Near East. It is scarcely possible to-day to find in purity the physical traits of the ancient race in the Greek-speaking lands and islands and it is chiefly among the pure Nordics of Anglo-Norman type that there occur those smooth and regular classic features, especially the brow and nose lines, that were the delight of the sculptors of Hellas. To what extent any of the blood of the ancient Hellenes flows in the veins of the Greeks of to-day is difficult to determine but it should be found, if anywhere, in Crete and in the Ægean Islands. The modern Greek is trying to purify his language back to classic Ionian and to appropriate the traditions of the mighty Past, but to do this something more is needed than the naming of children after Agamemnon and Hecuba. Even in Roman times, the ancient Greek of the classic period was little more than a tradition and the term Græculus given to the contemporary Hellenes was one of contempt. Concerning the physical type of classic in contrast to Homeric Greece, we know that the Greeks were predominantly long-headed and of relatively short stature in comparison with the northern barbarians. The modern Greeks are also relatively short in stature, but are moderately round-headed. As to color these modern Greeks are substantially all dark as to eye and hair, with a somewhat swarthy skin.