[Picture: Alexander] Alexander was going on with his preparations for conquering the East.  He had 12,000 foot soldiers from Macedon, trained to fight in the terrible phalanx, and 5000 horsemen; also his own bodyguard of young nobles, bred up with him at Pella; 7000 men from the Greek states, and 5000 who had been used, like the 10,000 of Xenophon, to hire themselves out to the Persians, and thus knew the languages, manners, roads, and ways of fighting in the East; but altogether he had only 34,500 men with which to attack the empire which stretched from the Ægean to Scythia, from the Euxine to the African deserts.  Such was his liberality in gifts before he went away, that when he was asked what he had left for himself, he answered, “My hopes;” and his hope was not merely to conquer that great world, but to tame it, bring it into order, and teach the men there the wisdom and free spirit of the Greek world; for he had learnt from Aristotle that to make men true, brave, virtuous, and free was the way to be godlike.  It was in his favour that the direct line of Persian kings had failed, and that there had been wars and factions all through the last reign.  The present king was Codomanus, a grand-nephew of that Artaxerxes against whom Cyrus had led the ten thousand.  He had come to the throne in 336, the same year as Alexander, and was known as Darius, the royal name he had taken.  Alexander made his father’s counsellor, Antipater, governor of Macedon in his absence, and took leave of his mother and his home in the spring of 334.