Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

412 MARDIAN CAMPAIGN.exhausting ; but with his usual sharp and skillful measuresAlexander in thirty days subdued them. No man ever hadsuch a record for fighting mountaineers.Curtius states that the land of the Mardians was snowcoveredand full of difficult and precipitous localities. Theweather was misty, rainy and chilling.There were no roads,and the men felt that they had reached the end of the world,and that daylight would soon cease altogether. On one occasion,when the ti'oojDS murmured at the toils of the wa}'-, theking dismounted and marched on foot, and hisexample wasfollowed by all the horsemen. This act at once quelled thedissatisfaction. Difficidties of all kinds had to be overcome.A frozen slope which lay athwart the path was surmountedby cutting steps in the ice. Roads had to be hewn throughthe woods. But finally the Mardians were reached, and bymingled severity and generosity subdued ; or, if not subdued,thoroughly quieted.The king had advanced to a point nearCarmania, and its satrap, Aspastes, made haste to offer hissubmission. Alexander confirmed him in authority underhimself, and then returned to Persis. Phrasaortes, son ofRheomithres, who nobly fell at Issus, was made satrap ofPersis, and it is said that a force of three thousand men wasleft in garrison in the capital.Alexander had now in four years (March, 334, to March,330) conquered his way to the heart of the Persian empire,and reduced to possession all the territory between himselfand Greece. He had accomplished the converse of the taskwhich Xerxes had sethimself a century and a half beforein lieu of incorporating Greece as a mere province into thegreat Persian empire, Alexander had stamped the intelligenceof Greece upon the Eastern world.That more of this Westerncivilization did not last is largely due to Alexander'sshort life, which ended with his conquests, leaving him no