When Alexander issued his letters, orders, and decrees, styling himself "King Alexander, the son of Jupiter Ammon," they came to the inhabitants of Egypt and Syria with an authority that now can hardly be realized.

The free-thinking Greeks, however, put on such a supernatural pedigree its proper value.

Olympias, who, of course, better than all others knew the facts of the case, used jestingly to say, that "she wished Alexander would cease from incessantly embroiling her with Jupiter's wife." Arrian, the historian of the Macedonian expedition, observes, "I cannot condemn him for endeavoring to draw his subjects into the belief of his divine origin, nor can I be induced to think it any great crime, for it is very reasonable to imagine that he intended no more by it than merely to procure the greater authority among his soldiers." GREEK CONQUEST OF PERSIA.

All things being thus secured in his rear, Alexander, having returned into Syria, directed the march of his army, now consisting of fifty thousand veterans, eastward.

After crossing the Euphrates, he kept close to the Masian hills, to avoid the intense heat of the more southerly Mesopotamian plains; more abundant forage could also thus be procured for the cavalry.