The accounts of these Phoenician and Egyptian revolts are derived from Didorus Siculus, the great ancient authority for the events of the reign of Artaxerxes Ochus. After the fall of Sidon, Ochus invaded Egypt with a Persian army of three hundred and thirty thousand men, assisted by fourteen thousand Greek mercenaries, six thousand of whom were furnished by the Greek cities of Asia Minor, four thousand under Mentor consisting of the troops which he had brought from Egypt to assist the Phoenicians, three thousand being sent from Argos, and four thousand from Thebes. He divided his expedition into three portions, over each of which he placed a Persian and also a Greek general. The Greek commanders were Lacrates of Thebes, Mentor of Rhodes, and Nicostratus of Argos; the latter a man of such enormous physical strength that he regarded himself as a second Hercules, and adopted the traditional costume of that fabulous hero-a club and a lion's skin. The Persian generals were Rhoesaces, Aristazanes and Bagôas, the chief of the eunuchs. The Egyptian king had only one hundred thousand men to oppose to the vast host of Ochus, and twenty thousand of these were Greek mercenaries. He occupied the Nile and its various branches with a powerful navy. The Greek generals in the Persian service outmaneuvered Nectanebo, who hastily retreated to Memphis, leaving the fortified towns to the defense of their garrisons. The Persian leaders excited jealousies and suspicions between the Greek and Egyptian troops composing these garrisons, and thus reduced the secondary cities of Lower Egypt, after which they advanced on Memphis, Nectanebo fleeing in despair to Ethiopia. Thereupon all Egypt submitted to Artaxerxes Ochus, who demolished the walls of the cities, plundered the temples, and after fully rewarding his mercenaries, returned triumphantly to his capital with a vast booty.

Grote has truly said that "the reconquest of Egypt by Ochus must have been one of the most impressive events of the age," and that it "exalted the Persian Empire in force

and credit to a point nearly as high as it had ever occupied before." Ochus thus raised himself to a degree of prestige and glory above that of any Persian king since the time of Darius Hystaspes. Revolts or rebellions did not again disturb the empire. Mentor and Bagôas, the two generals who had borne the most conspicuous part in the Egyptian campaign, were rewarded by Ochus with the most important posts. Mentor, as governor of the whole sea-coast of Asia Minor, reduced the many chiefs who had assumed an independent sovereignty to submission within a few years. Bagôas, as the king's minister at the capital, maintained tranquillity throughout the empire. The last six years of the reign of Ochus formed the most tranquil and prosperous period of the later Medo-Persian history; and this happy state of affairs must be ascribed to the talents of Bagôas and Mentor, and reflect credit upon the king himself who selected such able officials and retained them permanently in office.

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But while the Medo- Persian Empire seemed to have been thus reinvigorated with new life and strength, and when it seemed to have started on a new career of power and glory, its existence was menaced by a new power which had suddenly risen into prominence on its north-western frontier. xerxes Ochus and his counselors perceived the future danger. A Persian force was sent to aid the Thracian prince, Cersobleptes, to maintain his independence; and the city of Perinthus, with Persian aid, made a successful defense against the besieging army of Philip of Macedon (B. C. 340).. Thus before Philip had subdued Greece, Persian statesmen saw a formidable rival in the rapidly-rising Macedonian monarchy.

While the empire was thus threatened from without, conspiracy and revolution again distracted the court and paralyzed the action of the government. The violence and cruelty of Artaxerxes Ochus made him unpopular with his subjects. popular with his subjects. Bagôas himself grew so suspicious of his sovereign that he poisoned him in B. C. 338, and placed the king's youngest son, ARSES, upon the

throne, while he likewise assassinated all the new monarch's brothers. Bagôas was now virtual ruler, but in the course of a year Arses began to assert himself and uttered threats against Bagôas, who thereupon caused Arses and his infant children to be assassinated, and placed Codomannus, the son of Arsanes, upon the throne, B. C. 336. The new king assumed the name of Darius, and is known in history as DARIUS CODOMANNUS. The account of these events has been transmitted to us from ancient times by Diodorus, Arrian, Strabo and Quintus Curtius. According to Strabo, Darius Codomannus did not belong to the royal house; but according to Diodorus, he was the grandson of Ostanes, a brother of Artaxerxes Mnemon. In the very year that Darius became King of Persia (B. C. 336), Alexander the Great became King of Macedon upon the assassination of his father, Philip, by Pausanius, a Macedonian nobleman.

Darius Codomannus, the last of the MedoPersian kings, was morally superior to most of his predecessors, but he was destitute of sufficient intellectual ability to enable him to wrestle with the difficult circumstances of his situation. He was personally brave, tall and handsome, amiable in disposition, capable of great exertion, and possessed of some military capacity. The invasion of Asia Minor by Alexander the Great, which occurred in B. C. 334, did not alarm Darius, who seemed to have no full comprehension of the peril which thus threatened the existence of his empire. He seems to have despised the youth and inexperience of Alexander, who was then but twenty years of age; and he made no sufficient preparation to resist this formidable attack upon the Medo-Persian Empire. Since the battle of Marathon the final struggle between Greece and Persia was only a question of time, but the liberal employment of Persian gold had delayed the inevitable contest for more than a century and a half. The Greeks now had a leader more ambitious than Cyrus and more able than Xerxes.

The satraps and generals of Persia shared the confidence of their sovereign, and

though a large army was collected in Mysia and a powerful fleet was sent to the coast, no effort was made to prevent the passage of the Hellespont by Alexander's army. In the spring of B. C. 334 Alexander with his thirty-five thousand GræcoMacedonian troops crossed the strait which Xerxes had passed with his hosts of five millions less than a century and a half before. The inferiority of the Greek army in numbers was far overbalanced by its superior efficiency. It consisted of veteran troops in the highest possible condition of discipline and equipment, and every Macedonian and Grecian soldier was animated by the most enthusiastic devotion to his youthful leader and confident of victory.

Had the Persian leaders made any serious opposition Alexander's invasion of Asia Minor might have been prevented. The first earnest effort to stay the progress of the invader was made in the attempt to prevent the passage of the Granicus, a little river in Mysia flowing into the Propontis (now Sea of Marmora). In the battle which ensued the Persians were defeated, and Alexander succeeded in crossing the stream. In consequence of this defeat, the Persians were thrown on the defensive, and Alexander's conquest of Asia Minor was the immediate result. The death of Memnon, the brother of Mentor, deprived the King of Persia of his ablest general, who had already collected a large fleet, captured many islands in the Ægean, and prepared to carry the war into Greece and thus compel Alexander to withdraw from Asia Minor. After besieging and capturing Miletus and Halicarnassus, Alexander's triumphant progress through Asia Minor was unopposed, and by the spring of B. C. 333 he was at the gates of Syria.

Darius Codomannus assembled a vast army in the spring of B. C. 333, and, now obliged to act wholly on the defensive, endeavored to stop the further advance of the invader. With seven hundred thousand men, Darius encountered Alexander on the plain of Issus; but hemmed in in a narrow defile between the mountain, the river and

the sea, the immense Persian hosts were routed, and Darius himself was obliged to flee for his own life. His wife, mother and children were made prisoners by Alexander, who treated them with the utmost respect, and honored Darius's wife, who died soon afterward, with a most magnificent burial. The defeat of Darius Codomannus at Issus was followed by the conquest of Syria, Phoenicia and Egypt by Alexander, who captured Tyre and Gaza, after vigorous sieges.

In the spring of B. C. 331 Alexander retraced his triumphant march through Syria, and, directing his course toward the heart of the Medo-Persian Empire, crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, traversed Mesopotamia and encountered Darius Codomannus a second time near the Assyrian city of Arbela, on the plain of Gaugamela, east of the Tigris. The Persian king, since his defeat in the battle of Issus twenty months before, had collected the entire force of his vast dominion for the final struggle, which was to decide the fate of his empire. With only forty-seven thousand men Alexander totally defeated and routed the immense hosts of Darius, said to number over a million men, in the great battle of Arbela, which was the death-blow to the Medo-Persian Empire.

Darius Codomannus fled to the city of Arbela, about twenty miles distant from the battle-field. Here the unfortunate monarch was seized by his own officers, headed by the treacherous Bessus, satrap of Bactriana, who, seeing their master's fortunes ruined, had contrived a plan to deliver him to Alexander and thereby advance their own interests. They loaded him with chains and

forced him to accompany them in their flight toward Hyrcania, on the approach of Alexander to Arbela. The next day Alexander arrived at Arbela and took possession of the king's treasures; after which he went in hot pursuit of Darius and his fleeing officers. Hemmed in on all sides and finding escape impossible, the treacherous Bessus and his fellow-conspirators basely turned upon their king, mortally wounding him and leaving him to die by the roadside in the mountains. A Macedonian soldier discovered the former lord of Asia in his dying condition, and, in response to his appeal, brought him a cup of cold water. Darius sincerely thanked his generous enemy, expressing sorrow at his inability to reward him for this kindness to him in his dying moments. He commended the soldier to the notice of Alexander, who he said had sufficient magnanimity to grant his dying request, and then expired. Alexander arrived shortly after his death, and, deeply affected, covered the dead body of the last MedoPersian king with his own royal mantle, and directed that a magnificent funeral procession should convey it to Pasargadæ, where it was interred in the tombs of his illustrious ancestors, with royal honors. The conqueror also provided for the fitting education of the children of his fallen adversary.

Although the battle of Arbela sealed the fate of the Medo-Persian Empire, the reduction of its north-eastern and eastern provinces occupied the conqueror several years longer; but their final conquest made Alexander lord of Asia, and master of the vast empire founded by Cyrus the Great.

LREADY we have alluded to the ethnic identity of the Persians with the Medes; and we have seen that their primeval home was in Bactria, and that in prehistoric times they migrated to the south

west. The Medes and Persians were a kindred branch of the great Iranic, or Aryan family-the Indo-European division of the Caucasian race. The name Aryan has been assigned to this portion of the Caucasian race on grounds of actual tradition and his

tory. In the Zend-Avesta, "the first best of regions and countries," the original home of Ahura-Mazda's peculiar people was Aryanem vaejo-"the source of the Aryans." Herodotus states that in his time the Medes were known as Aryans by all the surrounding nations. The sculptor employed by Darius Hystaspes at Behistun explained to the Scythian aborigines of the Zagros mountain region, in a note of his own, that Ahura-Mazda, of whom so much was said in the inscription, was "the God of the Aryans." Darius Hystaspes, in another inscription, boasted that he was a "Persian, the son of a Persian, an Aryan of Aryan descent." Eudemus, the disciple of Aristotle, called the people whose priests were the Magi "the Aryan nation." Strabo introduced the term Ariana into geography, and assigned it a meaning almost identical with that of the modern Iran. The Sassanian kings divided the world into Airan and Aniran, and claimed to be sovereigns of both the Aryan and non-Aryan nations. The term Iran is the only name by which a modern Persian knows his country.

Obscure in their early annals, the Medes and Persians became the most important Aryan tribes towards the eighth or seventh century before Christ. They were close kindred, united together, each wielding the superiority by turns. They claimed and exercised supremacy over all the other Aryan tribes, and likewise over certain alien races. Their distinguishing characteristics gave them the superiority over other nations, and had developed a civilization of their own. The character, mode of living, habits, customs, manners, etc., of the Persians were the same as those of the Medes, already described in the history of Media; but we have more copious information concerning the Persians, and we can therefore add considerable in this connection to what has been already said.

The Aryan physiognomy, as revealed to us by the Persian monuments, characterized both the Medes and the Persians. There is a uniformity in the type of the face and head in all of these monuments, and this

type contrasts remarkably with the Semite type assigned to themselves by the Assyrians, from whom the Aryans seem to have derived the general idea, of bas-reliefs, and likewise their general manner of dealing with subjects upon them. The peculiarity of the physiognomy bears strong evidence to its truthfulness, which is also attested by the fact that the Persian artists endeavored to represent the varieties of mankind and were fairly successful in rendering them. Varieties of physiognomy are represented with great care, and often with wonderful success, upon the bas-reliefs.

Herodotus tells us that the skulls of the Persians were uncommonly thin and weak, which he ascribed to the national habit of always covering the head. The Persians were quick and lively, keen-witted, capable of repartee, ingenious, and especially farsighted for Orientals. They possessed fancy and imagination, were fond of poetry and art, and had a certain power of political combination. The religious ideas of the Medes and Persians were more elevated than those of other ancient nations besides the Hebrews; and these ideas, as entertained by all Iranic nations, were inherited by the Persians from a remote ancestry. Persian architecture and sculpture did not display any remarkable genius. The Persians were distinguished for their courage, energy and honesty. The valor of the Persian troops at Thermopyla and Platæa won the admiration of their foes; and Herodotus expressed the belief that, "in boldness and warlike spirit, the Persians were not a whit behind the Greeks," and that the sole reason for their defeat was the inferiority of their equipment and discipline. Having no proper shields and little defensive armor, and wielding only short swords and lances, they dashed upon the serried ranks of the Spartans, whose large spear-shafts they seized and tried to break. Grote compares their valor with the brilliant deeds of the Romans and the Swiss. Eschylus very deservedly called the Persians a "valiant-minded people." They were bold, dashing, tenacious and stubborn. No nation of Asia or Africa

could withstand them. The Greeks were superior to them because of the superiority of Grecian arms, equipment and discipline.

During the earlier years of their ascendency the Persians were as much distinguished for their energy as for their courage. Eschylus alludes to a strange fate which obliged them to engage constantly in a long series of wars, to delight in combats of horse, and in the siege and capture of cities. Herodotus represents Xerxes as bound by the examples of his ancestors to engage his people in some great enterprise, and not to allow their military spirit to decay on account of lack of employment. We have already seen that for eighty years, under the first four monarchs, wars and expeditions did not cease, that the activity and energy of the king and people carried them on, without rest or cessation, in a career of conquest almost unparalleled in Oriental history. In the later period this spirit was less marked, but at all times the Persians were characterized by a certain vigor and activity, which has distinguished them particularly from "the dreamy and listless Hindoos upon the one hand and the apathetic Turks upon the other."

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The Greeks praised the Persians especially for their love of the truth. Herodotus states that the Persian youth were taught three principal things: "To ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth." In the Zend-Avesta, particularly in the earliest and purest portions of it, truth is strongly inculcated. Ahura-Mazda himself is "true," "the father of truth," and his worshipers must conform themselves to his image. the Behistun Inscription, Darius Hystaspes protests against "lies," which he appears to consider the embodiment of evil. A love of intrigue is characteristic of Orientals; and in their later history the Persians seem to have given way to this natural inclination, and to have made a free use of cunning and deception in their wars with the Greeks; but in their earlier period they considered lying as the most shameful thing of which a person could be guilty. Truth was then admired and practiced. Persian kings strictly

observed their promises, no matter how inconvenient may have been their fulfillment, and never gave foreign nations any reason to complain that they had violated the terms of a treaty. Thus the Persians were an honorable exception to the usual Asiatic character, and compared favorably with the Greeks and Romans for general truthfulness and a faithful observance of their engagements.

Herodotus also tells us that the Persians endeavored to keep out of debt. They had a keen sense of the difficulty which a debtor found to avoid subterfuge and equivocation -forms of falsehood, slightly disguised. They disliked to buy and sell wares in the market-place, or to haggle over prices, as they thought that it involved falsity and unfairness. They were frank and open in speech, bold in act, generous, warm-hearted, hospitable. Their principal faults were an addiction to self-indulgence and luxury, a passionate yielding to the feelings of the moment, and a sycophancy and subservience toward their sovereign so great as to destroy their self-respect and manliness. They were alike immoderate in joy or sorrow, according to Herodotus; and Eschylus's tragedy of the "Persæ" correctly illustrates the real habits of the Persian people. The Persians were unreserved, and laughed and wept, shouted and shrieked, in the presence of others without the least restraint. Lively and excitable, they gave full vent to every passion, and did not care who witnessed their rejoicings or lamentations.

In Persia the king was so much the state that patriotism was absorbed in loyalty to royalty; and an unquestioned submission to the will and caprice of the monarch was by habit and education implanted in the very nature of the Persian people. Herodotus states that in war the concern of all was the personal safety of the sovereign. Such a value was attached to the royal person that it was thought the public safety depended upon his escape from danger and suffering. All the decisions of the sovereign were received with the most unquestioned acquiescence; his will, whatever it might be, was cheerfully sub