Sykes' History of Persia - Heritage Institute

I
Lion-Gryphon.
(Gold Medallion from British Museum.)
CHAPTER XXIII
THE LIMIT OF CONQUEST
Comparisoun myght never yit be maked
Betwixe him and another conquerour;
For al this world for drede of him hath quaked,
He was of knyghthode and of fredom flour.
Chaucer, The Monkes Tale.
The Conquest of Hyrcania^ Parthia, and Areia.—The ,
heritage of the empire of Persia was now Alexander's,
and he might well have deputed others to subdue the
outlying eastern provinces. But lust of conquest and
ambition were his ruling passions, and the death of
Darius produced no abatement of his thirst for universal
dominion, which his wonderful successes had merely ^
whetted. From the neighbourhood of Damghan the/-
Macedonian army turned north into the Elburz range
to attack the Tapuritae, whose name is preserved in
Tabaristan, the medieval nomenclature of the province
of Mazanderan. Alexander's objective being Hyrcania, '^
he divided his army into three divisions in order to subdue
as wide an area as possible, and also to prevent the
hill-men from uniting to attack any one column. He v
himself took the shortest and most difficult route, and
crossing to the Caspian watershed, was met by the most
distinguished of the Persian nobles who had been in
attendance on Darius, including the Viceroy of Hyrcania
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