Alexander next went to Egypt, and the people there who were tired of being ruled by Persia gladly welcomed him. He spent the winter there and started a city at the place where the Nile empties into the blue Mediterranean. He named this Alexandria, after himself, just as we named our capital after Washington, our first president. He divided the city into three main parts, one for the Greeks, one for the Hebrews, and one for the Egyptians, but he wanted all nations of people to come there to live. I will tell you more of Alexandria by and by, but now I must finish about Alexander's great conquests.

When spring came, Alexander again set out, for he had not yet come to the Persian capital. Eastward he went over rivers and hills, through green valleys, and then over hot burning deserts. King Darius, after running away in the last battle, had by this time collected another large army,—larger than the one before. This time, besides the enormous army of soldiers, he had more than two hundred war chariots with sharp swords and scythe blades fastened to the end of the tongue, and to the ends of the axle. He expected to mow down Alexander's army as a farmer would cut his grass and wheat.

Alexander came up with him near the town of Arbela, in the rich valley of the Tigris, and fought here his third and last great battle with him; but like the others, Alexander won it. King Darius again escaped, but Alexander now entered the capitals of Babylon, Susa and Persepolis. Here he found the hoarded wealth of the king, and great it surely was, for it took five thousand camels and a whole host of mules to carry away the treasure. Some of it he sent back to Greece, and the rest he kept for his own use and to divide among his soldiers.

He had now really gone as far as he at first intended, but, you see, he had not yet taken Darius. So allowing all his soldiers who cared to do so to go back home, where they would tell of the riches they had found and thus induce others to come to help him, and leaving men to take care of the captured cities, he again started after Darius. Many days he followed him. Sometimes he was almost up with him, but still Darius kept ahead. At last Darius' own men saw it was of no use to try longer to escape, so they tried to kill the king to keep him from being captured; and when Alexander at last overtook him, he was dying. Sorry to see him treated so cruelly, Alexander ordered the body to be taken back to the capital, and there buried in the beautiful tomb of the Persian kings.

Now that Darius was dead, Alexander called himself king of Persia and began to dress and act something like the Persian kings. His plain Macedonian soldiers did not like this, but Alexander thought by doing so, it would be the best way to unite the Persians with the Greeks, so that he might truly rule over both.

Still Alexander went on. He fought many fierce, brave battles with tribes in Central Asia, and overcame them all. That he might easily hold all the country, wherever he went he built cities something like Alexandria, and left in them some of his soldiers who no longer cared to fight, or were worn out by the long marches. Many traders also who followed the army to sell their goods to the soldiers, saw that they could profitably remain to supply the people with what they needed. Some of the natives, too, were brought from the country and from little villages and placed in the cities.

In this way more than seventy cities were built, and you may be sure these Greek cities grew to be very much like those at home. The people spoke the Greek language and had their gymnasia, Greek sports, theaters and temples. They remembered their Homer and taught others to know it, and in their theaters they gave the plays of Æschylus, which had so often delighted the Athenians when Pericles lived. Do you begin to see how Alexander made Persia like Greece? And also how he was spreading over the old worn-out East a layer of rich soil of Greek beauty as farmers sometimes spread a fertilizer over their worn-out fields?

Do you think Alexander had forgotten his old teacher, Aristotle? No, indeed, he had not, for wherever he went he had many men to find out all they could about the people they met and the countries through which they passed, so they might send back this knowledge to Aristotle. He set many men to work also to gather all the different kinds of plants from mountain sides and woods and fields and deserts, and these he sent back to Aristotle, that he might study them. Alexander, too, furnished the great teacher of his boyhood all the money he needed in his work, and so made it possible for him to study and teach in Athens. Aristotle was one of the greatest men who ever lived, and by his study and writing people now know many things about Greece and the olden times which they never would have known had it not been for him.

But Alexander was not always so good as you might think, for he loved to have his men gather at his royal tent to drink wine with him, and sometimes he would even get drunk. Once, when he had drunk too much wine, he became very angry at his best friend, Clitus, who, you remember, had saved his life at the battle of the Granicus River. Before Alexander thought what he was doing, he threw his spear at Clitus and killed him. He was very sorry for his act and shut himself in his tent and would not see any one for many days. You surely think this should have taught him to let wine alone, but I am sorry to say it did not.

Alexander, still traveled eastward, coming at last to the Indus River, where a branch of the early Aryan people lived. His soldiers did not wish to go farther, so they begged him to return to Babylon, for it was now ten years since they had left Macedonia.

Alexander still wished to make Persia and Greece more like each other in customs and life, so he married the beautiful daughter of Darius and urged his Greek soldiers to marry Persian women also. Many did so, and they made a great wedding feast, which lasted five whole days. Thousands of Greeks and Persians were present to enjoy this feast—made rich with the wealth and luxury of Persia and beautiful with the art and culture of Greece. It was held in a great hall decorated in most expensive style. Elegant couches for those who dined to recline upon, costly Persian rugs, hangings of fine linen, tapestries of many colors with threads of gold, pillars overlaid with silver and gold, and precious jewels, tell us that this Alexander is quite different from the plain, simple, manly Macedonian king and soldier who had crossed the Hellespont only ten years before.

But in spite of his many successes, Alexander was not nearly so happy as he used to be when he was king of only little Macedon. He no longer had the fine health which had so often helped him to brave hardships, for he had become weakened by eating and drinking too much, and returning to Babylon, where he feasted much, it was not long until he became very sick.

The doctors crowded around his bed and did their best to save his life, but they soon saw that he must die. When the soldiers found this out, they were wild with grief and all wanted to see their loved leader once again. Silently and sadly they passed by his bedside and looked on his dying face, which they had so often seen bright and full of joy. It was sad that Alexander should die so young, for he was only thirty-three, and had just begun his great work of spreading Greek culture over the then known world and of uniting the many different people whom he had conquered.

Alexander had many faults, but the people loved him, for he really tried to do very much to help them. Both by war and by sowing broadcast the seeds of Greek life, he had well earned the title of Alexander the Great. 

When Alexander died, his body was embalmed, laid in a golden coffin and taken, as is generally believed, to the city of Alexandria, where a fine tomb was built for it. And this brings us back to the wonderful city founded but a few years before at the mouth of the Nile. Alexandria grew very rapidly, and soon became the most important city in the world. Since Tyre was destroyed, the traders of the Mediterranean Sea must find a new city as a center, and it was to take the place of Tyre that Alexandria was built. It had such a fine harbor that ships from all countries came there to trade. Athens sent ships to get the grain from the Nile valley; camels brought ivory and lions' skins from southern Egypt; from Arabia and far-away India the caravans brought costly gems and spices; ships came with loads of furs and fish from the Baltic Sea; Spain sent its large amount of precious silver. As a spider sits at the center of its web catching food in its meshes from every direction, so Alexandria sat as the mistress of the Mediterranean, drawing trade from every quarter east and west.

Thus it was not long until Alexandria was doing the trading for most of the world and was even a greater city than Tyre had ever been. She was the halfway point between the rich and luxurious peoples living in the Indus and Tigro-Euphrates valleys in the Old East and the youthful peoples growing up on the western shores of the Mediterranean and on the western coast of Europe. I must briefly tell you something more about this greatest of all the cities founded by Alexander.

The governor of Egypt, who was one of Alexander's own Greek generals, built for himself a fine marble palace in the center of the city. Most of the people spoke the Greek language and learned the Greek ways. Soon they had a theater for the Greek plays and a gymnasium for the games. Near his palace the governor built a large library. He sent men to Athens and the other Greek cities to get copies of all their books. Others were sent to copy the clay bricks of Babylon. The Jews brought the Hebrew Bible which they loved so much, and it, too, was changed to Greek.

As we found in studying Egypt and bookmaking last year, the books were written on a kind of paper which they called papyrus. This was made from the thin coats of a reed-like plant which grew in Egypt. After the paper was made, strips of it were cut just as wide as a book was to be, and then a number of wide strips were glued end to end, thus making a strip of paper from eight to fourteen inches wide and just as long as was desired, fifty or a hundred feet, or even sometimes much longer. The pages were written down the sheets. On each end of the paper a stick, usually with fine knobs, was fastened, and on one of these sticks the whole was rolled, somewhat as we roll a map. When one wanted to read the book, he unrolled it from one stick to the other as he read. Each of these rolls came to be called a volume, for that was the ancient word for a roll; and you see we have kept the idea of books being rolls to this day, for we still call them volumes. So the work went on, and so eager was the governor to get a copy of every book for the library, it is said he even ordered persons to steal books in the various countries if they could not get them any other way. The library grew to be very large, and we are told that at one time it had more than seven hundred thousand volumes. How strange this library of papyrus rolls would have seemed to us; but we should be glad all this was done, for, by gathering so much of the learning together in one place, and by changing much of the old writing into the Greek, it made it much easier for many scholars to learn it, and hand it down, to all after ages, even to our own time.

The governor, too, built a large building, in which he gathered all the kinds of plants which could be found, and in another he placed a large collection of wild animals. Then he sent for the wisest men to study the books, the plants and the animals. From everywhere they came,—from Athens, from Babylon, from Jerusalem and from far-away Sicily and India. In order that they need not stay away if they were poor, he built large buildings in which they might live, and furnished them with board. It is said that at one time more than fourteen thousand people were there to study. What a fine school that must have been, in those olden days!

Thus you see that while many people in that far-away time were interested mostly in war and such things, yet some people were beginning to be great scholars, and gathered together the best that had been thought and said all over the world, and wrote it out in their own language. By this means they preserved learning and made it so that they and their people could better understand it, and not only teach it to their children, but add a few new thoughts to it, and their children in turn to their children, in this way making knowledge like a river which grows continually wider and deeper by the streams which flow into it. It is by work like this that knowledge has grown "from more to more," as Tennyson says.

Thus I hope you see that Alexander was not chiefly a rude warrior, selfishly overturning cities and countries, but he was more like a missionary who carries new thought to a people and thus lifts them to a higher life. Athens was not to have all of its art, its Homer, its Æschylus and its many other great things longer to itself, but they flowed out from Greece over Asia and Egypt, and some were left wherever Alexander's work extended. This out-pouring of Greece was much like the Nile River overflowing its banks and spreading out over the country, bringing moisture and fertile soil to every part of the valley. So Alexander's going out over the borders of little Greece caused the streams of beauty and truth, as sculpture and architecture and poetry and philosophy, which had become stagnant, to flow over and enrich the people of the old East. Thus Greece was able to pay back those old countries for the help they had given her, by giving her ideas and useful things, when she was a mere infant—just getting a start. the study of Rome we shall see Greek life and art carried west and spread over the western Mediterranean; and as we study we shall see how it goes on to Western Europe, and its influence will be seen reaching out to every American home which has in it artistic mantle-pieces, or wall-paper, or linoleum, or beautiful patterns for chair or piano, or plate or picture. Thus the beautiful and true things which Greece worked out were not permitted to remain in that little country, but have been spread over much of the world to give it a taste for simple grace and artistic life.