what the age had made them, and what all similar ages make men of
action. Theirs was a time of wide conquests recently achieved by right
of might alone, and left to whomsoever should be mightiest. It was a
time when the individual had suddenly found that no accidental
defects--lack of birth, or property, or allies--need prevent him from
exploiting for himself a vast field of unmeasured possibilities, so he
had a sound brain, a stout heart and a strong arm. As it would be again
in the age of the Crusades, in that of the Grand Companies, and in that
of the Napoleonic conquests, every soldier knew that it rested only with
himself and with opportunity, whether or no he should die a prince. It
was a time for reaping harvests which others had sown, for getting
anything for nothing, for frank and unashamed lust of loot, for selling
body and soul to the highest bidder, for being a law to oneself. In such
ages the voice of the priest goes for as little as the voice of
conscience, and the higher a man climbs, the less is his faith in a
power above him.

Having won the East, however, these irreligious Macedonians found they
had under their hand a medley of peoples, diverse in many
characteristics, but almost all alike in one, and that was their
religiosity. Deities gathered and swarmed in Asia. Men showed them
fierce fanatic devotion or spent lives in contemplation of the idea of
them, careless of everything which Macedonians held worth living for,
and even of life itself. Alexander had been quick to perceive the
religiosity of the new world into which he had come. If his power in the
East was to rest on a popular basis he knew that basis must be
religious. Beginning with Egypt he set an example (not lost on the man
who would be his successor there) of not only conciliating priests but
identifying himself with the chief god in the traditional manner of
native kings since immemorial time; and there is no doubt that the cult