genius. But we have also to consider what he did, or meant to do, as a military Statesman representing Greece. English writers, with the exception perhaps of Thirlwall, have not taken a high view of Alexander's schemes of empire; but the following facts seem to have been sufficiently proved by the one great modern historian of this and the following age.[1] First, he projected the foundation of cities throughout his conquests, to be peopled as far as possible by Greeks, and governed under Greek constitutional forms; and it is matter of history that he himself actually began this work. Not only the new foundations of Tyre and Gaza, and the still more famous Alexandria, attest his intention of carrying the Greek πόλις into his new dominions, but also many cities in the far east, even in Afghanistan and India, in which we now know that there was a Greek element, though they were largely made up of the native populations. Alexander indeed himself was cut short at the outset of his work; but it was carried on by the successors among whom his empire was divided, and especially by Seleucus, who left a great name behind him as a founder of cities. Secondly, it is beyond question that Alexander had in his mind the establishment of a great system of world-commerce, which should draw together Greece and Egypt and the East, and of which the Nile, the Tigris, and the Indus were to be the principal channels.
Combining these facts with what we have
- ↑ Droysen, Hellenismus, vol. iii. The same view is taken by Professor Gardner in his New Chapters of Greek History, ch. xiv.
