Moreover, there were the trials of the campaign itself: storms, droughts, deep rivers, the heights of the Birdless Rock, Cf . Moralia , 181 c; Arrian, Anabasis , iv. 28; Diodorus, xvii. 85. Sir Aurel Stein has identified Aornos with the plateau of Pir-s’ar ( On Alexander’s Track to the Indus , Macmillan, 1929). the monstrous shapes of savage beasts, an uncivilized manner of life, the constant succession of petty kings and their repeated treachery. Then there were also the difficulties before his expedition: Cf. Life of Alexander , chap. xi. (670 b). Greece was still gasping over Philip’s wars; Thebes, staggering to her feet after her fall, was shaking the dust of Chaeroneia from her arms, and Athens was stretching forth a helping hand to join with Thebes. All Macedonia was festering with revolt and looking toward Amyntas and the children of Aëropus Very little is known of this faction. Cf. Diodorus, xiv. 37 and 89. Amyntas later joined Darius and met his death soon after the battle of Issus. ; the Illyrians were again rebelling, and trouble with the Scythians was impending for their Macedonian neighbours, who were in the throes of political change; Persian gold flowed freely through the hands of the popular leaders everywhere, and helped to rouse the Peloponnesus; Philip’s treasuries were bare of money, and in addition there was owing a loan of two hundred talents £40,000 or $200,000. (as Onesicritus records). In such poverty For the varying accounts of the wealth and forces of Alexander Cf. 342 d, infra ; Life of Alexander , chap. xv. (672 a); Arrian, Anabasis , i. 11. 3; and Alexander’s own account, according to Arrian, Anabasis , vii. 9. 6 ff. and in circumstances fraught with such uncertainty, a stripling, scarcely older than a boy, had the daring to hope for Babylon and Susa; nay more, to conceive the project of dominion over all the world, relying only on the thirty thousand foot and four thousand cavalry which were his; for, according to Aristobulus, that was the full extent of their number. But King Ptolemy puts them at thirty thousand foot and five thousand horse, Anaximenes at forty-three thousand foot, fifty-five hundred horse. And the great and glorious war-chest which Fortune had ready for him was only seventy talents, £14,000 or $70,000. as Aristobulus Cf. 342 d, supra . says, though Duris Cf. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. ii. p. 472. says it was provision for only thirty days.