In administering his domains, Alexander showed great conservatism; he made few changes, he allowed each of the countries which acknowledged the Great King as its overlord to retain its particular institutions. One important modification he did introduce into the loosely organized and haphazard Persian system of rule, the division of power. The Persian satrap was generally the sole governor, having in his hands the civil, military, and financial administration. Alexander limited him to matters of internal administration, appointing a financial officer and a military commander armed with considerable powers. After the return from India, there was a further innovation made by the appointment of a Chiliarch, as the supreme director and head of the provinces, with a place immediately after the monarch himself. This official was a part of the governmental machinery of the Persian Empire, holding in it the place of a Grand Vizier. It was given to Alexander’s friend, Hephæstion, but after his death it was left vacant. The most trusted servant, the actual head of the administration, was the Chief Secretary Eumenes from Cardia, a man of first-rate military and civil capacity; he was unfailingly loyal to his master, and after Alexander’s death, suffered many vicissitudes because of his devotion to the Macedonian royal house. Alexander was not satisfied with the rôle of conqueror; he wished to give his rule in the East that trait of legitimacy which the popular Oriental mind required as a stimulus to its loyalty. It was impossible for him to be King of Persia by the grace of God, for it was the might of his own hand, not the right of succession, that constituted him the heir of Darius. This Gordian knot of politics he solved in his own direct fashion by directing that divine honors should be paid to him by the subject populations. The custom of apotheosis originated in Egypt, but it was not alien to Greek thought, according to which no deep distinction existed between man and divinity. The mythical heroes of the Greek people, whom all allowed to have once been men, were everywhere honored with altars and sacrifice. Asclepius and Herakles sat on Olympus with the greater divinities of a purely spiritual origin. It had become not unusual in the age preceding Alexander to accord divine honors to the living. Such had been the case with Clearchus of Heracleia who had been greeted as the son of Zeus, and with Dionysius the Younger who had caused himself to be honored at Syracuse as the son of Apollo. Alexander’s achievements, far greater in comparison, gave him a right to this distinction during his lifetime; his divine origin had, besides, been attested by the Erythrian Sibyl and by the oracle at Branchidæ; with this theological and official stamp all that remained to be done was to give the accepted belief a concrete form. The cult of the conqueror became a part of the state religion in the Greek communities throughout the empire. Whether