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Excerpt from Ridpath's Universal History, Vol. 10 of 16: An Account of the Origin, Primitive Condition and Ethnic Development of the Great Races of Mankind, and of the Principal Events in the Evolution and Progress of the Civilized Life Among Men and Nations, From Recent and Authentic Sources, With a Preliminar By the events recorded in the preceding Book the reader has been made fully aware, not only of the existence, but of the prowess and enterprise of the Hellenic race out of the West. The conflict which he has been considering, terminating in utter disaster to the Persian Empire at Arbela, was a crisis in the affairs of two great peoples having the same ethnic derivation. The Macedonians were one of the European developments of that same family whose fecundity on the plateau of Iran gave us the Persians. Having seen the result of the struggle between the two races, we might here at once transfer our station to the West, to follow the evolution of the Hellenic tribes into nationality, from nationality to conquest, and from conquest to decadence. Thus far in the present volume we have pursued this suggestive method, tracing the course of one people until its conflict with another people has led us naturally to consider the history of the latter. Thus the conquest of Egypt by the Persians carried the reader's attention, first of all, from the valley of the Nile to the valley of the Euphrates. The conquest of ancient Chaldæa by the Assyrians next drew his interest from the south to the north, from Babylon to Nineveh. Then came the conquest of Assyria by the Medes, which carried the inquirer beyond the Zagros, and made him acquainted, for the first time, with the warlike representatives of the Aryan race. His attention was next recalled by the revival of the Babylonian Power until what time Persia forced her way across Mesopotamia, and subdued the larger part of Western Asia. The history of this Persian Empire we have just considered, and the suggestio