Hellenic Sicily during these years was having a history of her own of some importance.  Syracuse, after her triumph over the Athenian forces, continued the contest with her neighbours, which had been the ostensible cause of the Athenian expedition.  But this was closed by the advent of fresh invaders, the Carthaginians, who renewed the attack repulsed at Himera.  Owing to the disaster to Athens, her fleets were no longer to be feared by Carthage as a protection to the Hellenic world; and for two centuries to come, her interventions in Sicily were incessant.  Now, the presence of a foreign foe in Sicily gave intriguers for power at Syracuse their opportunity, of which the outcome was the subversion of the democracy and the establishment of Dionysius as despot.

His son, Dionysius II., succeeded, and was finally ejected by the Corinthian Timoleon, who, after a brilliant career of victories as Syracusan general against Carthage, acted as general liberator of Sicilian cities from despotisms, laid down his powers, and was content with the position, not of despot, but of counsellor, to the great prosperity of Sicily as a whole.

Going back to the north of Greece, the semi-Hellenic Macedon with a Hellenic dynasty was growing powerful.  Philip—­father of Alexander the Great—­was now king, and was resolved to make himself the head of the Greek world.  His great opponent is found in the person of the Athenian orator Demosthenes, who saw that Philip was aiming at ascendancy, but generally failed to persuade the Athenians to recognise the danger in which they stood.  Philip gradually achieved his immediate end of being recognised as the captain-general of the Hellenes, and their leader in a new Persian war, when his life was cut short by an assassin, and he was succeeded by his youthful son Alexander.

The Greek states, awakening to their practical subjection, would have thrown off the new yoke, but the young king with swift and overwhelming energy swept down from Thrace upon Thebes, the centre of resistance, and stamped it out.  He had already conceived, in part at least, his vast schemes of Asiatic conquest; while he lived, Greece had practically no distinguishable history.  She is merely an appendage to Macedon.  Everything is absorbed in the Macedon conqueror.  With an army incredibly small for the task before him, he entered Asia Minor, and routed the Persian forces on the river Granicus.  The Greek Memnon, the one able leader for the Persians, would have organised against him a destructive naval power; but death removed him.

Alexander dispersed the armies of the Persian king Darius at the Issus, captured Tyre after a remarkable siege, and took easy possession of Egypt, where he founded Alexandria.  Having organised the administration of the conquered territories, he marched to the Euphrates, but did not engage the enormous Persian hosts till he found and shattered them at the battle of Gaugamela, also called Arbela.  Darius fled, and Alexander