Arbela

The battle of Arbela, 331 B.C., the third decisive battle of the world, ended the long struggle between the Persians and the Greeks for universal empire. Alexander the Great succeeded his father Philip, 336 B.C., at the age of twenty years. Besides inheriting the throne of Greece, he was immediately proclaimed Generalissimo of Greece against the Persians, as his father had been. In 334 he started upon his career of conquest. After taking possession of all the maritime provinces of Persia, he advanced rapidly into the heart of the empire. The final conflict is wrongly called the "battle of Arbela," for it was really fought at Gaugamela ("the camel's house"), twenty miles distant from Arbela. Darius, King of Persia, chose his ground for meeting the invaders, and arrayed against Alexander the full force of his empire, 1,000,000 Persians against 50,000 Greeks. But a most decisive victory resulted for the Greeks, Darius fleeing from the field before the battle ended, and leaving three hundred thousand dead. He was hotly pursued and overtaken by Alexander, but the assassin Bessus had robbed Alexander of his prey. With Darius died the Empire of the Persians, October 1st, 331 B.C. Other conquests marked the brief brilliant career of Alexander the Great, but in his victory over Darius the crisis was reached and his mission accomplished. "The ancient Persian Empire that had so long threatened all the nations of the earth with subjection, was irreparably crushed when Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela." Alexander made Babylon his capital and died there (B.C. 323). After his death his vast dominion was divided, but all succeeding centuries have felt the influence of his career.

He introduced European civilization, with the Greek language and literature, into all the conquered lands, and thus, at the very moment when Greece was losing her political freedom, she was making, through Alexander, an intellectual conquest of the world. Alexander's conquest of Egypt led to the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament into Greek. His conquest of Palestine was the occasion of the New Testament being written in Greek; it was owing to the same fact that, as the best critics hold, the language spoken by our Saviour was Greek, though His last words upon the Cross being in Aramaic, it is thought by some that His native tongue was Aramaic and that He taught in Greek.