lieutenant, Parmenio, and proposed to follow it in the autumn of the
year 336 with a Grand Army which he had been recruiting, training and
equipping for a twelvemonth. The day of festival which should inaugurate
his great venture arrived; but the venture was not to be his. As he
issued from his tent to attend the games he fell by the hand of a
private enemy; and his young son, Alexander, had at first enough to do
to re-establish a throne which proved to have more foes than friends.


SECTION 5. ALEXANDER'S CONQUEST OF THE EAST

A year and a half later Alexander's friends and foes knew that a greater
soldier and empire-maker than Philip ruled in his stead, and that the
father's plan of Asiatic conquest would suffer nothing at the hands of
the son. The neighbours of Macedonia as far as the Danube and all the
states of the Greek peninsula had been cowed to submission again in one
swift and decisive campaign. The States-General of Greece, re-convoked
at Corinth, confirmed Philip's son in the Captain-Generalship of Hellas,
and Parmenio, once more despatched to Asia, secured the farther shore of
the Hellespont. With about forty thousand seasoned horse and foot, and
with auxiliary services unusually efficient for the age, Alexander
crossed to Persian soil in the spring of 334.

There was no other army in Asia Minor to offer him battle in form than a
force about equal in numbers to his own, which had been collected
locally by the western satraps. Except for its contingent of Greek
mercenaries, this was much inferior to the Macedonian force in fighting
value. Fended by Parmenio from the Hellespontine shore, it did the best
it could by waiting on the farther bank of the Granicus, the nearest
considerable stream which enters the Marmora, in order either to draw