History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science | Page 7

great
was the slaughter that Alexander, and Ptolemy, one of his generals,
crossed over a ravine choked with dead bodies. It was estimated that
the Persian loss was not less than ninety thousand foot and ten thousand
horse. The royal pavilion fell into the conqueror's hands, and with it the
wife and several of the children of Darius. Syria was thus added to the
Greek conquests. In Damascus were found many of the concubines of
Darius and his chief officers, together with a vast treasure.

Before venturing into the plains of Mesopotamia for the final struggle,
Alexander, to secure his rear and preserve his communications with the
sea, marched southward down the Mediterranean coast, reducing the
cities in his way. In his speech before the council of war after Issus, he
told his generals that they must not pursue Darius with Tyre unsubdued,
and Persia in possession of Egypt and Cyprus, for, if Persia should
regain her seaports, she would transfer the war into Greece, and that it
was absolutely necessary for him to be sovereign at sea. With Cyprus
and Egypt in his possession he felt no solicitude about Greece. The
siege of Tyre cost him more than half a year. In revenge for this delay,
he crucified, it is said, two thousand of his prisoners. Jerusalem
voluntarily surrendered, and therefore was treated leniently: but the
passage of the Macedonian army into Egypt being obstructed at Gaza,
the Persian governor of which, Betis, made a most obstinate defense,
that place, after a siege of two months, was carried by assault, ten
thousand of its men were massacred, and the rest, with their wives and
children, sold into slavery. Betis himself was dragged alive round the
city at the chariot-wheels of the conqueror. There was now no further
obstacle. The Egyptians, who detested the Persian rule, received their
invader with open arms. He organized the country in his own interest,
intrusting all its military commands to Macedonian officers, and
leaving the civil government in the hands of native Egyptians.
CONQUEST OF EGYPT. While preparations for the final campaign
were being made, he undertook a journey to the temple of Jupiter
Ammon, which was situated in an oasis of the Libyan Desert, at a
distance of two hundred miles. The oracle declared him to be a son of
that god who, under the form of a serpent, had beguiled Olympias, his
mother. Immaculate conceptions and celestial descents were so
currently received in those days, that whoever had greatly distinguished
himself in the affairs of men was thought to be of supernatural lineage.
Even in Rome, centuries later, no one could with safety have denied
that the city owed its founder, Romulus, to an accidental meeting of the
god Mars with the virgin Rhea Sylvia, as she went with her pitcher for
water to the spring. The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked
with anger on those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother
of that great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate

conception through the influences of Apollo, and that the god had
declared to Ariston, to whom she was betrothed, the parentage of the
child. When Alexander issued his letters, orders, and decrees, styling
himself "King Alexander, the son of Jupiter Ammon," they came to the
inhabitants of Egypt and Syria with an authority that now can hardly be
realized. The free- thinking Greeks, however, put on such a
supernatural pedigree its proper value. Olympias, who, of course, better
than all others knew the facts of the case, used jestingly to say, that
"she wished Alexander would cease from incessantly embroiling her
with Jupiter's wife." Arrian, the historian of the Macedonian expedition,
observes, "I cannot condemn him for endeavoring to draw his subjects
into the belief of his divine origin, nor can I be induced to think it any
great crime, for it is very reasonable to imagine that he intended no
more by it than merely to procure the greater authority among his
soldiers."
GREEK CONQUEST OF PERSIA. All things being thus secured in his
rear, Alexander, having returned into Syria, directed the march of his
army, now consisting of fifty thousand veterans, eastward. After
crossing the Euphrates, he kept close to the Masian hills, to avoid the
intense heat of the more southerly Mesopotamian plains; more
abundant forage could also thus be procured for the cavalry. On the left
bank of the Tigris, near Arbela, he encountered the great army of
eleven hundred thousand men brought up by Darius from Babylon. The
death of the Persian monarch, which soon followed the defeat he
suffered, left the Macedonian general master of all the countries from
the Danube to the Indus. Eventually he extended his conquest to the
Ganges. The treasures he seized are almost beyond belief. At