When the young Alexander, succeeding his father Philip on the throne
of Macedonia, got himself appointed general by the chief of the Greek
states, and marched against Darius Codomanus, King of Persia, at the
head of the allied armies, it was not difficult to foresee the result.
The Greeks had learned the weakness of the Persians by having been so
often hired to fight for them. For a century past, every Persian army
had had a body of ten or twenty thousand Greeks in the van, and
without this guard the Persians were like a flock of sheep without the
shepherd's dog. Those countries which had trusted to Greek mercenaries
to defend them could hardly help falling when the Greek states united
for their conquest.

Alexander defeated the Persians under Darius in a great and memorable
battle near the town of Issus at the foot of the Taurus, at the pass
which divides Syria from Asia Minor, and then, instead of marching upon
Persia, he turned aside to the easier conquest of Egypt. On his way
there he spent seven months in the siege of the wealthy city of Tyre,
and he there punished with death every man capable of carrying arms, and
made slaves of the rest. He was then stopped for some time before the
little town of Gaza, where Batis, the brave governor, had the courage to
close the gates against the Greek army. His angry fretfulness at being
checked by so small a force was only equalled by his cruelty when he had
overcome it; he tied Batis by the heels to his chariot, and dragged him
round the walls of the city, as Achilles had dragged the body of Hector.

On the seventh day after leaving Gaza he reached Pelusium, the most
easterly town in Egypt, after a march of one hundred and seventy miles
along the coast of the Mediterranean, through a parched, glaring desert
which forms the natural boundary of the country; while the fleet kept
close to the shore to carry the stores for the army, as no fresh water