_Condition of Western Asia under the earlier Seleucidce.

Revolts of Bactria and Parthia.

Conflicting accounts of the establishment of the Parthian Kingdom.

First War with Syria._ The attempt of Alexander the Great to unite the whole civilized world in a single vast empire might perhaps have been a success if the mind which conceived the end, and which had to a considerable extent elaborated the means, had been spared to watch over its own work, and conduct it past the perilous period of infancy and adolescence.

But the premature decease of the great Macedonian in the thirty-third year of his age, when his plans of fusion and amalgamation were only just beginning to develop themselves, and the unfortunate fact that among his "Successors" there was not one who inherited either his grandeur of conception or his powers of execution, caused his scheme at once to collapse; and the effort to unite and consolidate led only to division and disintegration.
In lieu of Europe being fused with Asia, Asia itself was split up.