LII. ISSUS AND TYRE
Arsites had fled after the battle into Phrygia; but there, it was said, overpowered by grief and shame by the disaster, which he attributed to his own counsels, laid violent hands on himself. Alexander bestowed his satrapy on Calas; encouraged the barbarians, who had fled to the mountains, to return to their homes; and ordered the tribute to remain on its ancient footing. Parmenion was detached to take possession of the satrap’s residence Dascylium. The king himself, bending his march southward, advanced towards Sardis. The news of his victory produced such an effect in the capital of Lydia, that when he had come within eight or nine miles of it, Mithrines, the commander of the garrison, accompanied by the principal inhabitants, met him, with a peaceable surrender of the city, the citadel, and the treasure. He retained Mithrines on an honourable footing near his person, and committed the command of the citadel to Pausanias, an officer of his guard. To conciliate the Lydians, he restored their ancient laws; that is, abolished the restraints which the policy of the Persian government had imposed on them, when it crushed their rebellion after the first conquest: while, perhaps to make them more familiar with Greek usages, he ordered a temple to be built on the citadel to Olympian Zeus. A body of cavalry and light troops and the Argive contingent were left as a garrison.
Four days after, Alexander arrived at Ephesus. There too, as soon as the tidings of the battle arrived, a body of mercenaries who had been stationed there by Memnon took ship with Amyntas, son of Antiochus, a Macedonian emigrant, who had fled his country to avoid the effects of the king’s displeasure, or because he was conscious of a share in some of the plots formed against him. Ephesus was divided between an oligarchical and a democratical faction, which seem nearly to have balanced each other. The oligarchy had been sustained by the power of Persia: their adversaries therefore looked forward with hope to the impending invasion, and had probably received promises of support from Philip. Violent tumults had taken place, in which the oligarchs, aided by Memnon’s troops, had prevailed, forced many of their opponents to leave the city, threw down a statue of Philip which stood in the temple, committed other acts of sacrilege there, and broke open the tomb of Heropythes, a great popular leader, who had been buried in the market place. A complete reaction ensued on Alexander’s arrival: democracy was formally restored, the exiles returned to their homes, and the triumphant party became eager for revenge on their vanquished oppressors. Alexander interfered to prevent bloodshed, and forbade any proceedings to be instituted for the punishment of political offences. The city was permitted to expend the tribute which it had before paid to the Persian government on its new temple, which was not yet finished. At a later period he offered to defray the whole expense of the building, on condition that his own name should be inscribed on it as its founder--an offer which the Ephesians declined with ingenious flattery. Before his departure he celebrated a great sacrifice to the goddess, with a solemn procession of his whole army in battle array. By like measures, especially by the establishment of democracy, and remission of tribute, he endeavoured to gain the good-will of all the other Greek cities on the coast, which was of great importance to him at this juncture, while the naval power of Persia was still formidable.
In the meanwhile he had received offers of submission from Magnesia and Tralles, in the vale of the Mæander, and had sent Parmenion forward to take possession of them. He had also at first reason to hope that Miletus would be as quietly surrendered to him; for Hegesistratus, who commanded the garrison, had made him like offers by letter. But the approach of a Persian armament, which was on its way from Phœnicia, encouraged Hegesistratus to change his intention, and defend his post. Nicanor, however, Alexander’s admiral, got the start of the barbarians, and arrived with his fleet of 160 galleys at Lade, before they appeared: and Alexander forthwith secured the island, which commanded the entrance to the port of Miletus, with a detachment of four thousand men. The Persians, finding themselves shut out, came to anchor at Mycale. Their fleet amounted to four hundred sail. Yet, notwithstanding this great inequality, Parmenion advised the king to hazard a sea-fight. A victory, he thought, would be attended with the greatest advantages, while defeat would not make the state of his naval affairs much worse--since, as it was, the enemy were masters of the sea. An omen too, which he had observed, confirmed him in his opinion. Alexander pointed out to him that it might be otherwise interpreted, and that his arguments were not sounder than his rules of divination. The Macedonian fleet was inferior, not only in number, but in nautical skill and training to the Phœnician and Cyprian galleys. It would be mere foolhardiness to seek a battle under such disadvantages; and a defeat, far from leaving him in nearly the same condition as he now stood in, might involve consequences no less important and disastrous than a general insurrection in Greece. The eagle which had been seen to perch on the beach behind the royal galley, signified that he was destined to overcome the Persian navy by his operations on land.
Miletus was divided into two distinct cities by an inner wall, which appears to have been much stronger than the outer one; if indeed what was called the outer city was not a mere open suburb. Alexander had taken it by assault on his first arrival, and then prepared to besiege the other. The townsmen came to a compromise with the garrison, and by mutual consent they deputed one of the most eminent citizens to the king, with an offer of neutrality, which he rejected, bidding them prepare to sustain an immediate attack. His enginery soon made a breach in the wall, which his troops mounted before the eyes of the Persians, who were unable to relieve their friends; for, to cut off all chance of succour, Nicanor had moved up to the mouth of the inner harbour, and laid some galleys across it side by side, so as effectually to bar entrance or escape. The citizens and the garrison, when the besiegers began to pour in through the breach, fled toward the sea; some put off in boats, but found the harbour’s mouth closed before they reached it; about three hundred of the mercenaries swam to a rocky islet within the harbour, and prepared to defend themselves there, until Alexander, admiring their courage, permitted them to purchase their lives by entering into his service. The Persian fleet continued for some time moored at Mycale, in the hope of drawing the enemy into an action; but as it was forced to fetch its water from the mouth of the Mæander, Alexander ordered Philotas to proceed to the place, with a body of infantry and cavalry, and to hinder the crews from landing. The fleet was consequently obliged to go over to Samos for provisions: it returned shortly after, and attempted to surprise the Macedonians in the harbour; but having been foiled in this attempt, withdrew from the coast of Miletus.
Alexander now perceived that his fleet would be of little service to him, while the state of his finances was such that he could ill bear the cost of it. On the other hand, he hoped to shut out the Persians from all the ports of Asia, and thus to disable them from continuing their naval operations. He therefore resolved to dismiss his fleet, retaining only a small squadron, which included the Athenian galleys, for the transport of his besieging machines, and to confine his attention to the prosecution of the war on the southern coast.
HALICARNASSUS
His first object was the reduction of Halicarnassus, where the enemy had now collected almost all the strength which he had remaining in this quarter. Memnon, who after the battle of the Granicus sent his wife and children as pledges of his fidelity to Darius, and had been invested by him with supreme authority in the west of Asia, and with the command of all his naval forces, had been long making preparations for the defence of the place, where he himself, with the Persian Orontobates, satrap of Caria, a numerous garrison of Greeks and barbarians, awaited the invader’s approach. They were animated by the presence of two Athenians, Ephialtes and Thrasybulus, who had come to offer their services against the common enemy. The fleet too, lying at the mouth of the harbour, was capable of rendering good service during a siege. The city, built on heights which rise abruptly in the form of a theatre from the sea, was naturally strong, and had been elaborately fortified, both with walls and a ditch forty-five feet in width, and about half as many in depth. Alexander, on his march from Miletus, made himself master of all the towns that lay between that city and Halicarnassus; and on his entrance into Caria, he was met by Ada, the widow of Idrieus, who surrendered her fortress of Alinda to him, begged leave to adopt him as her son, and placed herself under his protection. He then advanced towards Halicarnassus, and encamped at about half a mile from the walls.
He began by filling up the ditch, so as to enable his engines and wooden towers to approach the walls. The besieged made many vigorous sallies for the purpose of setting fire to the machines, but were always repulsed, and sometimes with great loss. Once a mad attempt of two Macedonian soldiers, who, having challenged one another over their cups to a trial of valour, undertook to storm the citadel on the land side alone, brought on an engagement, which was near becoming general, and might have ended in the capture of the city. For two towers and the intervening wall had been battered down by the engines; but before advantage was taken of the breach, the besieged built another brick wall in the form of a crescent behind it. Twice they made a desperate attempt to destroy the engines which Alexander brought to play on this new wall--the second time, at the instigation of Ephialtes, with their whole force; but they were defeated with great slaughter, in which Ephialtes himself fell, and it was believed that Alexander might then have stormed the place, but was induced to spare it by the hope that it would soon surrender. In fact, Memnon and Orontobates now despaired of defending it much longer, and resolved to abandon it. In the dead of the night they set fire to a wooden tower, and to some of the houses and magazines near the wall, and while the conflagration spread, made their escape, and crossed over to Cos, where it seems they had previously deposited their treasures. The garrison took refuge, some in the citadels, some in Arconnesus. Alexander immediately entered the city, and checked the progress of the flames. But as soon as he had become master of it, he razed it to the ground. He did not however think it worth while to stay, until he had dislodged the enemy from their remaining strongholds; but having committed the province to Ada, he left her, with about three thousand foot and two hundred horse, under a Macedonian officer, to reduce them. He himself pursued his march along the south coast of Asia Minor, to make himself master of the ports which might harbour the Persian fleet.
But as winter was now approaching, he determined, before he left Caria, to send a part of his troops, who had lately married when he set out on his expedition, back to Macedonia, to pass the winter at home. He gave the command of them to three of his generals, who were themselves in the same case; directing them on their return to bring with them as many fresh troops as they could raise. The measure was politic, as well as gracious; for his army had been much weakened to supply so many garrisons as were required for the conquered cities; and nothing was more likely to promote the levies in Macedonia, than the presence of the victorious warriors, whose return attested at once his success and his liberality. Another officer was sent to collect all the troops he could in Peloponnesus. Parmenion was ordered to proceed with the greater part of the cavalry and the baggage to Sardis, and thence into Phrygia, where he himself, after he should have traversed the coast of Lycia and Pamphylia, designed to meet him in the spring.
In his march through Caria he met with a short resistance from the garrison of the strong fortress Hyparna; and turned aside to punish the insolence of the inhabitants of Marmora in Peræa. After he had crossed the Xanthus, he received the submission of most of the Lycian towns. Phaselis even presented him with a golden crown; and the motive which led it to pay him this honour may help to account for the ready submission of the other Lycians. The people of Phaselis had suffered much from the incursions of their neighbours, the Pisidian mountaineers, who had even taken up a fortified position in their territory, for the purpose of continual molestation. They hoped that Alexander would deliver them from this annoyance, and they were not disappointed.
He was still in the neighbourhood of Phaselis, when he was apprised of a plot which had been formed against his life, by his namesake, the son of Æropus, whom he had appointed to command the Thessalian cavalry in the place of Calas, the new satrap of the Hellespontine Phrygia. It appears that, notwithstanding this favour, the Lyncestian either could not forgive the king for the execution of his two brothers, or could not forget the ancient pretensions of his family to royal dignity. He had entered into a negotiation with the Persian court through the fugitive Amyntas, and Darius had sent down an agent named Asisines, to obtain a secret interview with him, and to offer, if he killed his sovereign, to raise him to the throne of Macedonia, or at least to aid him in the attempt to secure it, with a thousand talents. The Persian emissary had fallen into the hands of Parmenion, and revealed his business; and Parmenion had sent him to the king. Alexander held a council on the subject, and by its advice despatched orders to Parmenion to arrest the Lyncestian and keep him in custody.
Between Phaselis and the maritime plains of Pamphylia, the mountains which form the southern branch of Taurus descend abruptly on the coast, leaving only a narrow passage along the beach, and this never open but in calm weather, or during the prevalence of a northerly wind. The promontory was called Mount Climax. At the time when Alexander was about to resume his march eastward, the wind was blowing from the south, and the waves washed the foot of the cliffs. He therefore sent the main body of his army over the mountains to Perga, by a circuitous and difficult road, which however he had ordered to be previously cleared by his Thracian pioneers. But for himself he determined with a few followers to try the passage along the shore; danger and difficulty had a charm for him which he could scarcely resist. Perhaps the wind had already subsided; soon after it shifted to the north--a change in which he recognised a special interposition of the gods. Yet, according to Strabo’s authors, he found the water still nearly breast high, and had to wade through it for a whole day. As he advanced from Perga, he was met by an embassy from the neighbouring town of Aspendus, which lay a little further eastward near the mouth of the Eurymedon, offering to acknowledge his authority, but praying that they might not be compelled to receive a Macedonian garrison. This request he granted, requiring one hundred talents and yearly tribute, and exacting hostages for their performance. Then he began his march towards Phrygia.
His road led through the heart of Pisidia, where he was the more desirous of striking terror, as its fierce and lawless inhabitants, secure in their mountain barriers and almost impregnable fortresses, had constantly defied the power of the Persian government. Yet he could not spare the time which would have been necessary to reduce all its strongholds. Termessus, situated on a steep rock, commanding a narrow pass which led from Pisidia into Phrygia, appeared to him too strong to be attempted, though he had dislodged the barbarians from the position which they had taken up without the walls, and made himself master of the pass. But the resistance of Termessus procured for him offers of alliance from its enemy Selge, another of the principal cities, which proved very useful to him. He stormed Sagalassus, though besides its natural strength its inhabitants were accounted the most warlike of the Pisidians; and this success was followed by the submission of most of the smaller towns. He then advanced by the lake Ascania to Celænæ, where the citadel, on an almost inaccessible rock, was guarded by a garrison of one thousand Carians, and one hundred Greeks, placed there by the satrap of Phrygia. It however offered to surrender unless it should be relieved within sixty days; and Alexander thought it best to accept these conditions; and having left a body of fifteen hundred men to observe it, and appointed Antigonus, son of Philip, to the important satrapy of central Phrygia, he prosecuted his march to Gordium, where he had ordered Parmenion to meet him.
GORDIUM
Arrian does not expressly state the object of this movement, which, as Alexander designed next to make for the coast of Syria, involved an enormous circuit. It is hardly credible that he was deterred from advancing directly into Cilicia by the difficulty of passing through the mountain region (the Rugged Cilicia), which immediately follows Pamphylia. He probably thought it necessary to establish his authority in the central provinces, so far at least as to break off their relations with the Persian government, and thus to secure the Greek cities on the western coast from the attacks which might have been made on them from this quarter, if the peninsula, east of Lydia, had remained subject to Darius. The central situation of Gordium also afforded means of easier communication with Macedonia, which the movements of the Persian fleet in the Ægean rendered very desirable, while it enabled him to negotiate on a more advantageous footing with the satraps of the provinces on the Euxine, who, when they saw him so near, might apprehend an immediate invasion. Accordingly, it seems to have been from Gordium that he sent Hegelochus to the coast, with orders to equip another fleet to protect the islands which were threatened by the Persians.
Here he was rejoined by the troops he had sent to winter by their own hearths, accompanied by the new levies, 3000 Macedonian infantry and 650 horse, 300 from Macedonia, 200 from Thessaly, the rest from Elis. Here also he received an embassy from Athens, which came to request that he would release the Athenian prisoners who had been taken among the mercenaries in the battle of the Granicus, and had been sent to Macedonia. Alexander did not think it prudent, while he was on the eve of a decisive contest with Darius, to relax his severity towards the Greeks who took part with the barbarians, but he gave the Athenians leave to renew their application at a more seasonable juncture.
Gordium had been in very early times the seat of the Phrygian kings, and was supposed to have derived its name from Gordius, the father of the more celebrated Midas. In the citadel was preserved with religious veneration a wagon, in which, according to the tradition of the country, Midas with his father and mother entered the town, at a time when the people, who were distracted by civil discord, were holding an assembly. They had been informed by an oracle that a wagon should bring them a king who should compose their strife. The sudden appearance of Midas convinced them that he was the king destined for them; and when he had mounted the throne, he dedicated the wagon in the citadel, as a thank-offering to the king of the gods, who, before his birth, had sent an eagle to alight upon its yoke, while Gordius was ploughing, as a sign of the honour reserved for his race.
[Sidenote: [333 B.C.]]
This legend had given rise to a prophecy that whoever untied the knot of bark by which the yoke was fastened to the pole, must become lord of Asia. Alexander did not leave Gordium before he had proved that this prophecy related to himself. He went up to the citadel, and separated the yoke from the pole. Whether he loosened the knot by drawing out a peg,[20] or cut it with his sword, his own followers were not agreed. But all the spectators were convinced that he had legitimately fulfilled the prophecy, and a storm of thunder and lightning which took place the same night, removed every shadow of doubt on the subject (333).
He now resumed his march eastward, and at Ancyra received an embassy from Paphlagonia, promising obedience on the somewhat ambiguous condition that he should abstain from entering their country. The subjugation of this extensive and very mountainous region would have detained him much too long from the more important objects which he had in view, and he therefore contented himself with this show of submission, which at least heightened, while it proved, the terror inspired by his name, and annexed Paphlagonia to the satrapy of Calas. As he advanced through Cappadocia towards the passes of Taurus, he met with no resistance; and his authority was at least nominally acknowledged to a great distance beyond the Halys, so that he could appoint a satrap of Cappadocia. On his way he received tidings from Tarsus, that the satrap Arsames, having heard that he had passed the Gates, was about to quit the city, which at first he meant to defend, and, it was feared, would plunder it before his departure. Hereupon Alexander pushed forward with his cavalry and the lightest part of the infantry at full speed for Tarsus, and Arsames, whatever his intention may have been, fled, leaving the city unhurt, to join the army of Darius.
Alexander, on his arrival at Tarsus, while his blood was still violently heated by these extraordinary exertions, had been tempted to plunge into the clear and limpid waters of the Cydnus, which flowed through the city. This imprudence was generally supposed to have been the cause of a fever which seized him immediately after, and which soon became so threatening in its symptoms that most of his physicians despaired of his life. One however, an Acarnanian named Philippus, who stood high in his confidence, undertook to prepare a medicine which would relieve him. In the meanwhile, a letter was brought to the king from Parmenion, informing him of a report that Philippus had been bribed by Darius to poison him. Alexander, it is said, had the letter in his hand, when the physician came in with the draught, and, giving it to him, drank while he read--a theatrical scene, as Plutarch unsuspectingly observes, but one which would not have been invented but for such a character, and which Arrian was therefore induced, though doubtingly, to record. The remedy, or Alexander’s excellent constitution, prevailed over the disease; but it was long before he had regained sufficient strength to resume his march.
In the meanwhile, he sent Parmenion forward with about a third of the army, to occupy the nearest of the maritime passes leading out of Cilicia into Syria. He himself, when sufficiently recovered, proceeded westward with the rest of his forces to Anchialus, where he beheld the statue of its reputed founder Sardanapalus, the voluptuous king, who judged so differently from himself--as the Assyrian inscription on his monument and the figure itself attested--of the value and use of life. At Soli, where he arrived next, he found a strong leaning to the Persian interest, which induced him to place a garrison there, and afforded him a fair ground for demanding a contribution of two hundred talents. Yet it seems to have been only an oligarchical party that had favoured the Persians, and perhaps the penalty was levied on them alone; for he established a democratical government, and the garrison may have been needed for its security. Before he returned to Tarsus, he made an inroad with a division of his forces into the mountains of the rugged Cilicia, and in the course of seven days reduced their wild inhabitants by force or terror to submission. On his return to Soli, he received the agreeable intelligence that Orontobates had been defeated in a hard-fought battle by Ptolemy and Asander, and that the citadel of Halicarnassus, and the other places which he had retained on the coast of Caria, had fallen.
Darius had previously suffered a much greater loss in the death of Memnon, who was carried off by a sudden illness while engaged in the siege of Mytilene, which, after having made himself master of Chios through treachery, and of the rest of Lesbos, he had invested closely by sea and land. Alexander, before he left Soli, celebrated the victory of his generals and at the same time testified his gratitude for his own convalescence by a solemn sacrifice to Æsculapius, with a military procession, a torch race, and musical and gymnastic contests.
He then marched back to Tarsus, and, sending Philotas forward with the bulk of cavalry across the Aleian plain, himself took a more circuitous route along the coast through Magarsus to Mallus, a town which claimed the Argive hero Amphilochus, as its founder. On this ground, as himself descended from the Heraclids of Argos, he both healed its intestine disorders, and exempted it from the tribute which it had paid to the Persian government. At Mallus for the first time he heard of the approach of the great Persian army commanded by Darius in person.[b]
DARIUS MUSTERS A NEW HOST
If Alexander was a gainer in respect to his own operations by the death of the eminent Rhodian [Memnon], he was yet more a gainer by the change of policy which that event induced Darius to adopt. The Persian king resolved to renounce the defensive schemes of Memnon, and to take the offensive against the Macedonians on land. His troops, already summoned from the various parts of the empire, had partially arrived, and were still coming in. Their numbers became greater and greater, amounting at length to a vast and multitudinous host, the total of which is given by some as six hundred thousand men; by others as four hundred thousand infantry and one hundred thousand cavalry.
The spectacle of this showy and imposing mass, in every variety of arms, costume, and language, filled the mind of Darius with confidence; especially as there were among them between twenty thousand and thirty thousand Grecian mercenaries. The Persian courtiers, themselves elate and sanguine, stimulated and exaggerated the same feeling in the king himself, who became confirmed in his persuasion that his enemies could never resist him.
From Sogdiana, Bactria, and India, the contingents had not yet had time to arrive; but most of those between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea had come in--Persians, Medes, Armenians, Derbices, Barcanians, Hyrcanians, Cardaces, etc.; all of whom, mustered in the plains of Mesopotamia, are said to have been counted, like the troops of Xerxes in the plain of Doriscus, by paling off a space capable of containing exactly ten thousand men, and passing all the soldiers through it in succession. Neither Darius himself, nor any of those around him, had ever before seen so overwhelming a manifestation of the Persian imperial force. To an oriental eye, incapable of appreciating the real conditions of military preponderance--accustomed only to the gross and visible computation of numbers and physical strength--the king who marched forth at the head of such an army appeared like a god on earth, certain to trample down all before him just as most Greeks had conceived respecting Xerxes, and by stronger reason Xerxes respecting himself, a century and a half before. Because all this turned out a ruinous mistake the description of the feeling, given in Curtius and Diodorus, is often mistrusted as baseless rhetoric. Yet it is in reality the self-suggested illusion of untaught men, as opposed to trained and scientific judgment.
But though such was the persuasion of orientals, it found no response in the bosom of an intelligent Athenian. Among the Greeks now near Darius, was the Athenian exile Charidemus; who having incurred the implacable enmity of Alexander, had been forced to quit Athens after the Macedonian capture of Thebes, and had fled together with Ephialtes to the Persians. Darius, elate with the apparent omnipotence of his army under review, and hearing but one voice of devoted concurrence from the courtiers around him, asked the opinion of Charidemus, in full expectation of receiving an affirmative reply. So completely were the hopes of Charidemus bound up with the success of Darius, that he would not suppress his convictions, however unpalatable, at a moment when there was yet a possibility that they might prove useful. He replied (with the same frankness as Demaratus had once employed towards Xerxes), that the vast multitude now before him were unfit to cope with the comparatively small number of the invaders. He advised Darius to place no reliance on Asiatics, but to employ his immense treasures in subsidising an increased army of Grecian mercenaries. He tendered his own hearty services either to assist or to command. To Darius, what he said was alike surprising and offensive; in the Persian courtiers, it provoked intolerant wrath. Intoxicated as they all were with the spectacle of their immense muster, it seemed to them a combination of insult with absurdity, to pronounce Asiatics worthless as compared with Macedonians, and to teach the king that his empire could be defended by none but Greeks. They denounced Charidemus as a traitor who wished to acquire the king’s confidence in order to betray him to Alexander. Darius himself, stung with the reply, and still further exasperated by the clamours of his courtiers, seized with his own hands the girdle of Charidemus, and consigned him to the guards for execution. “You will discover too late,” exclaimed the Athenian, “the truth of what I have said. My avenger will soon be upon you.”
Filled as he now was with certain anticipations of success and glory, Darius resolved to assume in person the command of his army, and march down to overwhelm Alexander. From this moment, his land-army became the really important and aggressive force, with which he himself was to act. Herein we note his distinct abandonment of the plans of Memnon--the turning-point of his future fortune. He abandoned them, too, at the precise moment when they might have been most safely and completely executed. In the first place, there was the line of Mount Taurus, barring the entrance of Alexander into Cilicia; a line of defence nearly inexpugnable. Next, even if Alexander had succeeded in forcing this line and mastering Cilicia, there would yet remain the narrow road between Mount Amanus and the sea, called the Amanian Gates, and the Gates of Cilicia and Assyria--and after that, the passes over Mount Amanus itself--all indispensable for Alexander to pass through, and capable of being held, with proper precautions, against the strongest force of attack. A better opportunity, for executing the defensive part of Memnon’s scheme, could not present itself; and he himself must doubtless have reckoned that such advantages would not be thrown away.
The momentous change of policy, on the part of the Persian king, was manifested by the order which he sent to the fleet after receiving intelligence of the death of Memnon. Confirming the appointment of Pharnabazus (made provisionally by the dying Memnon) as admiral, he at the same time despatched Thymodes (son of Mentor and nephew of Memnon) to bring away from the fleet the Grecian mercenaries who served aboard, to be incorporated with the main Persian army. Here was a clear proof that the main stress of offensive operations was henceforward to be transferred from the sea to the land.
It is the more important to note such desertion of policy, on the part of Darius, as the critical turning-point in the Greco-Persian drama--because Arrian and the other historians leave it out of sight, and set before us little except secondary points in the case. Thus, for example, they condemn the imprudence of Darius, for coming to fight Alexander within the narrow space near Issus, instead of waiting for him on the spacious plains beyond Mount Amanus. Now, unquestionably, granting that a general battle was inevitable, this step augmented the chances in favour of the Macedonians. But it was a step upon which no material consequences turned; for the Persian army under Darius was hardly less unfit for a pitched battle in the open plain; as was afterwards proved at Arbela. The real imprudence--the neglect of the Memnonian warning--consisted in fighting the battle at all. Mountains and defiles were the real strength of the Persians, to be held as posts of defence against the invader.
DARIUS AT ISSUS
Darius had marched out of the interior his vast and miscellaneous host, stated at six hundred thousand men. His mother, his wife, his harem, his children, his personal attendants of every description, accompanied him, to witness what was anticipated as a certain triumph. All the apparatus of ostentation and luxury was provided in abundance, for the king and for his Persian grandees. The baggage was enormous: of gold and silver alone, we are told that there was enough to furnish load for six hundred mules and three hundred camels. A temporary bridge being thrown over the Euphrates, five days were required to enable the whole army to cross. Much of the treasure and baggage, however, was not allowed to follow the army to the vicinity of Mount Amanus, but was sent under a guard to Damascus in Syria.
At the head of such an overwhelming host, Darius was eager to bring on at once a general battle. It was not sufficient for him simply to keep back an enemy, whom, when once in presence, he calculated on crushing altogether. Accordingly, he had given no orders (as we have just seen) to defend the line of the Taurus; he had admitted Alexander unopposed into Cilicia, and he intended to let him enter in like manner through the remaining strong passes--first, the Gates of Cilicia and Syria, between Mount Amanus and the sea--next, the pass, now called Beylan, across Amanus itself. He both expected and wished that his enemy should come into the plain to fight, there to be trodden down by the countless horsemen of Persia.
But such anticipation was not at once realised. The movements of Alexander, hitherto so rapid and unremitting, seemed suspended. We have already noticed the dangerous fever which threatened his life, occasioning not only a long halt, but much uneasiness among the Macedonian army. All was doubtless reported to the Persians, with abundant exaggerations; and when Alexander, immediately after recovery, instead of marching forward towards them, turned away from them to subdue the western portion of Cilicia, this again was construed by Darius as an evidence of hesitation and fear. It is even asserted that Parmenion wished to await the attack of the Persians in Cilicia, and that Alexander at first consented to do so. At any rate, Darius, after a certain interval, contracted the persuasion, and was assured by his Asiatic councillors and courtiers, that the Macedonians, though audacious and triumphant against frontier satraps, now hung back intimidated by the approaching majesty and full muster of the empire, and that they would not stand to resist his attack. Under this impression Darius resolved upon an advance into Cilicia with all his army.
Thymodes indeed, and other Grecian advisers--together with the Macedonian exile Amyntas--deprecated his new resolution, entreating him to persevere in his original purpose. They pledged themselves that Alexander would come forth to attack him wherever he was, and that, too, speedily. They dwelt on the imprudence of fighting in the narrow defiles of Cilicia, where his numbers, and especially his vast cavalry, would be useless. Their advice, however, was not only disregarded by Darius, but denounced by the Persian councillors as traitorous. Even some of the Greeks in the camp shared, and transmitted in their letters to Athens, the blind confidence of the monarch. The order was forthwith given for the whole army to quit the plains of Syria and march across Mount Amanus into Cilicia. To cross, by any pass, over such a range as that of Mount Amanus, with a numerous army, heavy baggage, and ostentatious train (including all the suite necessary for the regal family), must have been a work of no inconsiderable time; and the only two passes over this mountain were, both of them, narrow and easily defensible. Darius followed the northernmost of the two, which brought him into the rear of the enemy.
Thus at the same time that the Macedonians were marching southward to cross Mount Amanus by the southern pass, and attack Darius in the plain, Darius was coming over into Cilicia by the northern pass to drive them before him back into Macedonia. Reaching Issus, seemingly about two days after they had left it, he became master of their sick and wounded left in the town. With odious brutality, his grandees impelled him to inflict upon these poor men either death or amputation of hands and arms. He then marched forward, along the same road by the shore of the gulf which had already been followed by Alexander, and encamped on the banks of the river Pinarus.
The fugitives from Issus hastened to inform Alexander, whom they overtook at Myriandrus. So astonished was he, that he refused to believe the news, until it had been confirmed by some officers whom he sent northward along the coast of the gulf in a small galley, and to whom the vast Persian multitude on the shore was distinctly visible. Then, assembling the chief officers, he communicated to them the near approach of the enemy, expatiating on the favourable auspices under which a battle would now take place. His address was hailed with acclamation by his hearers, who demanded only to be led against the enemy.
PREPARING FOR BATTLE
His distance from the Persian position may have been about eighteen miles. By an evening march, after supper, he reached at midnight the narrow defile (between Mount Amanus and the sea) called the Gates of Cilicia and Syria, through which he had marched two days before. Again master of that important position, he rested there the last portion of the night, and advanced forward at daybreak northward towards Darius. On approaching near to the river Pinarus (which flowed across the pass), he adopted his order of battle. On the extreme right he placed the hypaspists, or light division of hoplites; next (reckoning from right to left), five taxeis or divisions of the phalanx, under Cœnus, Perdiccas, Meleager, Ptolemy, and Amyntas. The breadth of plain between the mountains on the right, and the sea on the left, is said to have been not more than fourteen stadia, or somewhat more than one English mile and a half. From fear of being outflanked by the superior numbers of the Persians, he gave strict orders to Parmenion to keep close to the sea. His Macedonian cavalry, the companions, together with the Thessalians, were placed on his right flank; as were also the Agrianians, and the principal portion of the light infantry. The Peloponnesian and allied cavalry, with the Thracian and Cretan light infantry, were sent on the left flank to Parmenion.
Darius, informed that Alexander was approaching, resolved to fight where he was encamped, behind the river Pinarus. He, however, threw across the river a force of thirty thousand cavalry, and twenty thousand infantry, to insure the undisturbed formation of his main force behind the river. He composed his phalanx, or main line of battle, of ninety thousand hoplites; thirty thousand Greek hoplites in the centre, and thirty thousand Asiatics armed as hoplites (called Cardaces), on each side of these Greeks. These men--not distributed into separate divisions, but grouped in one body or multitude--filled the breadth between the mountains and the sea. On the mountains to his left, he placed a body of twenty thousand men, intended to act against the right flank and rear of Alexander. But for the great numerical mass of his vast host, he could find no room to act; accordingly they remained useless in the rear of his Greek and Asiatic hoplites; yet not formed into any body of reserve, or kept disposable for assisting in case of need. When his line was thoroughly formed, he recalled to the right bank of the Pinarus the thirty thousand cavalry and twenty thousand infantry, which he had sent across as a protecting force. A part of this cavalry were sent to his extreme left wing, but the mountain ground was found unsuitable for action, so that they were forced to cross to the right wing, where accordingly the great mass of the Persian cavalry became assembled. Darius himself in his chariot was in the centre of the line, behind the Grecian hoplites. In the front of his whole line ran the river or rivulet Pinarus; the banks of which, in many parts naturally steep, he obstructed in some places by embankments.
THE BATTLE OF ISSUS
As soon as Alexander, by the retirement of the Persian covering detachment, was enabled to perceive the final dispositions of Darius, he made some alteration in his own, transferring his Thessalian cavalry by a rear movement from his right to his left wing, and bringing forward the lancer-cavalry or sarrissophori, as well as the light infantry, Pæonians and archers, to the front of his right. The Agrianians, together with some cavalry and another body of archers, were detached from the general line to form an oblique front against the twenty thousand Persians posted on the hill to outflank him. As these twenty thousand men came near enough to threaten his flank, Alexander directed the Agrianians to attack them, and to drive them farther away on the hills.
Having thus formed his array, after giving the troops a certain halt after their march, he advanced at a very slow pace, anxious to maintain his own front even, and anticipating that the enemy might cross the Pinarus to meet him. But as they did not move, he continued his advance, preserving the uniformity of the front, until he arrived within bowshot, when he himself, at the head of his cavalry, hypaspists, and divisions of the phalanx on the right, accelerated his pace, crossed the river at a quick step, and fell upon the Cardaces or Asiatic hoplites on the Persian left. Unprepared for the suddenness and vehemence of this attack, these Cardaces scarcely resisted a moment, but gave way as soon as they came to close quarters, and fled, vigorously pressed by the Macedonian right. Darius, who was in his chariot in the centre, perceived that this untoward desertion exposed his person from the left flank. Seized with panic, he caused his chariot to be turned round, and fled with all speed among the foremost fugitives. He kept to his chariot as long as the ground permitted, but quitted it on reaching some rugged ravines, and mounted on horseback to make sure of escape; in such terror that he cast away his bow, his shield, and his regal mantle. He does not seem to have given a single order, nor to have made the smallest effort to repair a first misfortune. The flight of the king was the signal for all who observed it to flee also; so that the vast host in the rear were quickly to be seen trampling one another down, in their efforts to get through the difficult ground out of the reach of the enemy. Darius was himself not merely the centre of union for all the miscellaneous contingents composing the army, but also the sole commander; so that after his flight there was no one left to give any general order.
This great battle--we might rather say, that which ought to have been a great battle--was thus lost, through the giving way of the Asiatic hoplites on the Persian left, and the immediate flight of Darius within a few minutes after its commencement. But the centre and right of the Persians, not yet apprised of these misfortunes, behaved with gallantry. When Alexander made his rapid dash forward with the right, under his own immediate command, the phalanx in his left centre (which was under Craterus and Parmenon) either did not receive the same accelerating order, or found itself both retarded and disordered by greater steepness in the banks of the Pinarus. Here it was charged by the Grecian mercenaries, the best troops in the Persian service. The combat which took place was obstinate, and the Macedonian loss not inconsiderable; the general of division, Ptolemy, son of Seleucus, with 120 of the front-rank men or choice phalangites, being slain. But presently Alexander, having completed the rout on the enemy’s left, brought back his victorious troops from the pursuit, attacked the Grecian mercenaries in flank, and gave decisive superiority to their enemies. These Grecian mercenaries were beaten and forced to retire. On finding that Darius himself had fled, they got away from the field as well as they could, yet seemingly in good order. There is even reason to suppose that a part of them forced their way up the mountains or through the Macedonian line, and made their escape southward.
Meanwhile on the Persian right, towards the sea, the heavy-armed Persian cavalry had shown much bravery. They were bold enough to cross the Pinarus and vigorously to charge the Thessalians; with whom they maintained a close contest, until the news spread that Darius had disappeared, and that the left of the army was routed. They then turned their backs and fled, sustaining terrible damage from their enemies in the retreat.
The rout of the Persians being completed, Alexander began a vigorous pursuit. The destruction and slaughter of the fugitives were prodigious. Amidst so small a breadth of practicable ground, narrowed sometimes into a defile and broken by frequent watercourses, their vast numbers found no room, and trod one another down. As many perished in this way as by the sword of the conquerors; insomuch that Ptolemy (afterwards king of Egypt, the companion and historian of Alexander) recounts that he himself in the pursuit came to a ravine choked up with dead bodies, of which he made a bridge to pass over it. The pursuit was continued as long as the light of a November day allowed; but the battle had not begun till a late hour. The camp of Darius was taken, together with his mother, his wife, his sister, his infant son, and two daughters. His chariot, his shield, and his bow also fell into the power of the conquerors; and a sum of three thousand talents [£600,000 or $3,000,000] in money was found, though much of the treasure had been sent to Damascus. The total loss of the Persians is said to have amounted to ten thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot; among the slain moreover were several eminent Persian grandees: Arsames, Rheomithres, and Atizyes, who had commanded at the Granicus, and Sabaces, satrap of Egypt. Of the Macedonians we are told that 300 foot and 150 horse were killed. Alexander himself was slightly wounded in the thigh by a sword.
Flight of Darius
When Alexander returned at night from the pursuit, he found the Persian regal tent reserved for him. In an inner compartment of it he heard the tears and wailings of women. He was informed that the mourners were the mother and wife of Darius, who had learned that the bow and shield of Darius had been taken, and were giving loose to their grief under the belief that Darius himself was killed. Alexander immediately sent Leonnatus to assure them that Darius was still living, and to promise further that they should be allowed to preserve the regal title and state--his war against Darius being undertaken not from any feelings of hatred, but as a fair contest for the empire of Asia. Besides this anecdote, which depends on good authority, many others, uncertified or untrue, were recounted about his kind behaviour to these princesses; and Alexander himself, shortly after the battle, seems to have heard fictions about it, which he thought himself obliged to contradict in a letter. It is certain (from the extract now remaining of this letter) that he never saw, nor ever entertained the idea of seeing, the captive wife of Darius, said to be the most beautiful woman in Asia; moreover he even declined to hear encomiums upon her beauty.
How the vast host of fugitives got out of the narrow limits of Cilicia, or how many of them quitted that country by the same pass over Mount Amanus as that by which they had entered it--we cannot make out. It is probable that many, and Darius himself among the number, made their escape across the mountain by various subordinate roads and bypaths; which, though unfit for a regular army with baggage, would be found a welcome resource by scattered companies. Darius managed to get together four thousand of the fugitives, with whom he hastened to Thapsacus, and there recrossed the Euphrates. The only remnant of force, still in a position of defence after the battle, consisted of eight thousand of the Grecian mercenaries under Amyntas and Thymodes. These men, fighting their way out of Cilicia (seemingly towards the south, by or near Myriandrus), marched to Tripolis on the coast of Phœnicia, where they still found the same vessels in which they had themselves been brought from the armament of Lesbos. Seizing sufficient means of transport, and destroying the rest to prevent pursuit, they immediately crossed over to Cyprus, and from thence to Egypt.
With this exception, the enormous Persian host disappears with the battle of Issus. We hear of no attempt to rally or re-form, nor of any fresh Persian force afoot until two years afterwards. The booty acquired by the victors was immense, not merely in gold and silver, but also in captives for the slave-merchant. On the morrow of the battle, Alexander offered a solemn sacrifice of thanksgiving, with three altars erected on the banks of the Pinarus; while he at the same time buried the dead, consoled the wounded, and rewarded or complimented all who had distinguished themselves.
No victory recorded in history was ever more complete in itself, or more far-stretching in its consequences, than that of Issus. Not only was the Persian force destroyed or dispersed, but the efforts of Darius for recovery were paralysed by the capture of his family. Portions of the dissipated army of Issus may be traced, reappearing in different places for operations of detail, but we shall find no further resistance to Alexander, during almost two years, except from the brave freemen of two fortified cities. Everywhere an overwhelming sentiment of admiration and terror was spread abroad, towards the force, skill, or good fortune of Alexander, by whichever name it might be called--together with contempt for the real value of a Persian army, in spite of so much imposing pomp and numerical show; a contempt not new to intelligent Greeks, but now communicated even to vulgar minds by the recent unparalleled catastrophe.
Both as general and as soldier, indeed, the consummate excellence of Alexander stood conspicuous, not less than the signal deficiency of Darius. The fault in the latter was that of fighting the battle, not in an open plain, but in a narrow valley, whereby his superiority of number was rendered unprofitable. But this (as we have already observed) was only one among many mistakes, and by no means the most serious. The result would have been the same, had the battle been fought in the plains to the eastward of Mount Amanus. Superior numbers are of little avail on any ground, unless there be a general who knows how to make use of them; unless they be distributed into separate divisions ready to combine for offensive action on many points at once, or at any rate to lend support to each other in defence, so that a defeat of one fraction is not a defeat of the whole. The faith of Darius in simple multitude was altogether blind and childish; nay, that faith, though overweening beforehand, disappeared at once when he found his enemies did not run away, but faced him boldly--as was seen by his attitude on the banks of the Pinarus, where he stood to be attacked instead of executing his threat of treading down the handful opposed to him. But it was not merely as a general that Darius acted in such a manner as to render the loss of the battle certain. Had his dispositions been ever so skilful, his personal cowardice in quitting the field and thinking only of his own safety, would have sufficed to nullify their effect. Though the Persian grandees are generally conspicuous for personal courage, yet we shall find Darius hereafter again exhibiting the like melancholy timidity, and the like incompetence for using numbers with effect, at the battle of Arbela, though fought in a spacious plain chosen by himself.
FROM ISSUS TO TYRE
Happy was it for Memnon that he did not live to see the renunciation of his schemes, and the ruin consequent upon it! The fleet in the Ægean, which had been transferred at his death to Pharnabazus, though weakened by the loss of those mercenaries whom Darius had recalled to Issus, and disheartened by a serious defeat which the Persian Orontobates had received from the Macedonians in Caria, was nevertheless not inactive in trying to organise an anti-Macedonian manifestation in Greece. While Pharnabazus was at the island of Siphnos with his one hundred triremes, he was visited by the Lacedæmonian king Agis, who pressed him to embark for Peloponnesus as large a force as he could spare, to second a movement projected by the Spartans. But such aggressive plans were at once crushed by the terror-striking news of the battle of Issus. Apprehending a revolt in the island of Chios, as a result of this news, Pharnabazus immediately sailed thither with a large detachment. Agis, obtaining nothing more than a subsidy of thirty talents and a squadron of ten triremes, was obliged to renounce his projects in Peloponnesus, and to content himself with directing some operations in Crete, to be conducted by his brother Agesilaus; while he himself remained among the islands, and ultimately accompanied the Persian Autophradates to Halicarnassus. It appears, however, that he afterwards went to conduct the operations in Crete, and that he had considerable success in that island, bringing several Cretan towns to join the Persians.[c]
The spoil of Damascus was not the most important advantage which Alexander reaped from the battle of Issus. It averted a danger which, notwithstanding Memnon’s death, had continued to give him occasion for much uneasiness; for he was still threatened with a diversion in his rear--a general rising of the Greeks and an invasion of Macedonia--which might have interrupted, even if it did not finally defeat, his enterprise.
Thus then Alexander had nothing more to fear on this side for the present. But it was not the less his foremost object to guard against the recurrence of this danger, and to deprive the Persian government of all means of aiding the Greeks in their attempts for the recovery of their independence. He saw that if he once made himself master of Phœnicia and Egypt, the Persians would be deserted by the best part of their galleys, which were furnished by the Phœnician cities, and would be unable to repair the loss. His authority would then be undisputed in all the provinces of the empire west of the Euphrates.
Darius had continued his flight without intermission until he had crossed the river at Thapsacus, where he arrived with about four thousand fugitives, who had successively joined his train; and then first felt himself out of immediate peril. Amyntas [the Greek mercenary general who had escaped from Issus], it seems, conceived the bold project of making himself master of Egypt. Sabaces, the satrap of Egypt, had fallen in the battle; and Amyntas, pretending that he had a commission from Darius, gained admittance at Pelusium. He then dropped the mask, and calling on the Egyptians to shake off the hated yoke of Persia, marched against Memphis. Mazaces, the Persian commander of Memphis, was defeated, and forced to take shelter behind the walls. But the victors suffered themselves to be surprised by Mazaces, and Amyntas was slain, with almost all his men.
Darius indeed had the force of the greater part of his empire still entire, and at his command. The troops of the eastern satrapies, including some of the most warlike in his dominions, had already been summoned to the royal standard; and he might expect, in the course of a few months, to see himself at the head of a still more numerous host than he had commanded at Issus. It was perhaps partly with the view of gaining time, that he no sooner reached a place of safety, than he began to sound Alexander’s temper by overtures of negotiation. He sent two envoys to Alexander. He assumed the tone of remonstrance, as one who had suffered an unprovoked aggression. He was now reduced, by the chance of war, to make a request: such however as one king might becomingly address to another--that Alexander would restore his mother, wife, and children. He himself was willing to become Alexander’s friend and ally, and desired that he would send ministers with the two Persian envoys, to treat with him.
The Persian envoys had been instructed to urge the request contained in their master’s letter by word of mouth. Alexander sent Thersippus along with them, charged with a letter to Darius, but with orders to abstain from oral communications on the subject. The letter was a kind of manifesto, in which he vindicated the justice of his proceedings by various reasons, as good, at least, as the strong are usually able to find for attacking the weak. He began like the wolf in the fable. The ancestors of Darius had invaded Macedonia and Greece, and he had been appointed by the Greeks their general, and had come over to Asia, to avenge their wrongs and his own. Ochus had furnished succours to Perinthus and the Thracians against Philip. It was through the machinations of the Persian court that Philip had been murdered; and his death had been made a subject of boastful exultation in its public letters. Darius himself had been the accomplice of Bagoas in the murder of Arses, and had usurped the throne of Persia: he had endeavoured to excite the Greeks to war against Macedonia, and had offered subsidies to Sparta, and to other states, which indeed had been accepted only by Sparta; but his agents had succeeded in corrupting many private persons, and had been incessantly labouring to disturb the tranquillity of Greece. His invasion therefore had been undertaken on just grounds. But since the gods had crowned his arms with victory, none of those who had trusted themselves to his clemency had found reason to regret their choice. He therefore invited Darius himself to come to him, as to the lord of Asia. He might beforehand receive pledges of his personal safety, and might then ask with confidence for his mother, wife, and children, and for whatever else he could desire. In future, he must address Alexander as the King of Asia, in the style, not of an equal, but of a subject, or must expect to be treated as an enemy. If, however, he disputed his claim to sovereignty, let him wait for his coming, and try the event of another contest. He might rest assured that Alexander would seek him, wherever he might be found.
On his road to Phœnicia, Alexander had been met by Straton, son of the king of Aradus, Gerostratus, whose territory included Marathus and several other towns on the main. Gerostratus himself, with all the other Phœnician and Cypriote princes, was serving in the Persian fleet, under Autophradates. Yet Straton brought a golden crown to the conqueror, and surrendered all the cities in his father’s dominions into his hands. As he advanced from Marathus, Byblus capitulated to him, and Sidon, where every heart burned with hatred of Persia, hailed him as her deliverer. Thus he proceeded without resistance towards Tyre. And even from this great city he received a deputation on his way, composed of the most illustrious citizens, among whom was the king’s son, bringing a golden crown, and a present of provisions for the army, and announcing that the Tyrians had resolved to obey all his commands.
THE SIEGE OF TYRE
[Sidenote: [332 B.C.]]
It seems that the language in which this message was conveyed intimated something as to the limits of that obedience which the Tyrians were willing to pay. It was not meant that it should extend so far as totally to resign their independence. This Alexander probably understood, and nothing could satisfy him short of absolute submission, and full possession of so important a place. But he met the offers of the Tyrians, as if they had been made in the sense which he required; and bade the envoys apprise their fellow-citizens that it was his intention to cross over to their island, and offer a sacrifice to Melkarth, the Phœnician Hercules, whom he chose to consider as one with the hero of Argos and Thebes. This was perhaps the least offensive way of bringing the matter to an issue; and it obliged the Tyrians to speak their mind more plainly. They now informed him that in all other points he should find them ready to submit to his pleasure, but that they would not admit either a Persian or a Macedonian within their walls; and they begged that he would celebrate the sacrifice which he wished to offer in Old Tyre, which lay on the coast opposite to their island city, where their god had another, and probably a much more ancient, sanctuary.
Alexander indignantly dismissed their ambassadors, and called a council of his officers, in which he declared his intention of besieging Tyre, and explained the reasons which rendered this undertaking necessary, arduous as it was. He observed that it would be unsafe to invade Egypt, so long as the Persians commanded the sea, and that to advance into the interior against Darius, while Tyre remained neutral or vacillating, and while Cyprus and Egypt were in the enemy’s hands, would be to let the war be transferred to Greece, where Sparta was openly hostile, and Athens only withheld from the avowal of her enmity by fear. On the other hand the reduction of Tyre would be attended with the submission of all Phœnicia; and the Phœnician fleet, the strength of the Persian navy, would soon pass over to the power which possessed the cities by which it had been equipped, and to which the crews belonged. Cyprus would then speedily fall, and there would be no further obstacle to the conquest of Egypt. They might then set out for Babylon, leaving all secure on the side of Greece, and with the proud consciousness that they had already severed all the provinces west of the Euphrates from the Persian empire.
The motives which induced Alexander to undertake the siege of Tyre are more evident than those which led the Tyrians to defy his power, after so many of the other Phœnician cities had submitted to him. The main ground of their conduct seems to have been more in the nature of a commercial calculation of expediency. The issue of the contest between Alexander and Darius was still doubtful; notwithstanding his past success the Macedonian conqueror might meet the fate of the younger Cyrus in some future field of battle. In any case the Tyrians believed their city to be impregnable so long as they were superior at sea. It was thought necessary, either for the purpose of detaining the god, or of quieting the popular uneasiness, to adopt an expedient similar to that which many years before had been employed by the Ephesians in a like emergency--to fasten the statue of Apollo, who was denounced as a friend of Alexander, by a golden chain to the altar of Melkarth. On the other hand Alexander seems to have thought it prudent to raise the spirits of his troops by assurances of divine assistance, in an enterprise which appeared to surpass human ability. He too related that he had seen Hercules in a dream taking him by the hand, and leading him within the walls of his city--a sign, as Aristander interpreted it, of success, though in a Herculean labour.
An ordinary conqueror might indeed himself have needed such assurances to encourage him, when he was about to attack a place so prepared for defence as Tyre at this time was, both by nature and art. The island on which the city stood was separated from the main by a channel half a mile broad, through which, in rough weather, the sea rushed with great violence. This strait was indeed shallow on the side of the Phœnician coast, but near the island became three fathoms deep. The walls, which rose from the edge of the cliffs, were 150 feet high on the land side, and composed of huge blocks of stone, cemented with mortar. The city was abundantly stocked with provisions and military stores, contained a number of copious springs; was filled with an industrious and intelligent population, expert in all the arts of naval warfare, and possessed mechanics and engineers, not inferior, it seems, to any that were to be found in the Macedonian camp. Though the greater part of the Tyrian fleet was absent in the Persian service, there still remained a sufficient number of galleys of war, and of smaller craft, both for the defence of the harbours--for there were two, one on the north, the other on the south side of the island--and for the annoyance of the enemy.
Alexander had no naval force which he could immediately oppose to this. His plan was soon formed: he resolved to carry a causeway through the channel, and when it had reached the foot of the walls, to batter them from it with his engines. The real difficulty of the undertaking was not perceived until the dam had been carried halfway across the water. But as the depth increased, while the work itself became more and more laborious and difficult, it now came within reach of the missiles discharged from the top of the walls; and the Tyrian galleys, taking their station at a short distance, incessantly annoyed the workmen, who were not armed to sustain these attacks. Alexander however ordered two wooden towers erected both to shelter the workmen and repel the assailants.
The Tyrians now prepared a more formidable mode of attack. A horse transport was filled with dry twigs and other combustibles, over which they poured pitch and brimstone. In the forepart an additional space was enclosed, so as to form a huge basket for the reception of these materials, in the midst of which were fixed two masts, which at the ends of their yard-arms supported two cauldrons filled with an inflammable liquid. The stem was raised high above the water by means of ballast heaped near the stern. The besieged, having waited for a favourable breeze, towed the ship behind two galleys towards the mole, and when it came near set it on fire, and, seconded by the wind, ran it on the end of the mole between the towers. The flames soon caught them; but the conflagration did not reach its full height, until the masts gave way and discharged the contents of the cauldrons on the blazing pile. To render it the more effectual, the men on board the galleys from a convenient distance plied the towers with their arrows, so as to defeat every attempt that was made to extinguish the fire.
A shoal of boats now came off from the harbours filled with people, who soon tore up the piles, and set fire to all the machines which had not been overtaken by the flames of the burning ship. The ruin of the work which had cost so much time and labour was completed in a few hours. Alexander, however, was not disheartened; he gave orders that a new mole should be begun, of greater breadth, so as to be capable of receiving more towers, and that new engines should be constructed. But as he now became aware that, without some naval force to oppose to the Tyrians, he should find the difficulties of the siege insurmountable, he repaired at once in person to Sidon, with a detachment of light troops, to collect as many galleys as he could.
Gerostratus, king of Aradus, and Enylus of Byblus, as soon as they heard that he had become master of their cities, quitted the Persian fleet, with their squadrons, and with a part of the Sidonian galleys; so that Alexander was joined at Sidon by eighty sail of Phœnician ships. About the same time came in ten from Rhodes, as many from Lycia, three from Soli and Mallus, and his own victorious captain, Proteas, from Macedonia. And these were followed not long after by the Cypriote princes with 120 galleys. He had now an armament of nearly 250 sail at his orders. While it went through a course of training for a sea-fight, and while the machines were in preparation, he made an excursion, with some squadrons of horse and a body of light troops, into the range of Anti-Libanus, and having reduced the mountaineers to submission, within eleven days returned to Sidon, where he found a reinforcement of four thousand Greek soldiers, who had been brought by Cleander from Peloponnesus. He then set sail for Tyre in line of battle, himself, as on shore, commanding the right wing, and Craterus the left. The Tyrians, it seems, expected his approach and were prepared to meet him; when they saw the numbers which he brought with him, they gave up all thoughts of resistance, and only used their galleys to block up the mouths of their harbours. Alexander, when he came up, found the northern harbour too well secured to be attacked, though he sank three of the enemy’s galleys which were moored on the outside, and captured one which was consecrated to the tutelary god. The next day he stationed the Cypriotes under the command of Andromachus near the entrance of this harbour, and the Phœnicians near the other, in the same quarter where his own tent was pitched.
In the meanwhile the mole had been restored, and was actively carried forward; mechanics had been collected in great numbers from Phœnicia and Cyprus, and had constructed abundance of engines, which were planted, some on the mole, others on transports and on the heavier galleys. These vessels at first found the approach very much impeded by a bed of stones which the besieged had carried out into the sea from the foot of the cliffs; and the attempts which the Macedonians made to remove this obstacle were for some time thwarted by the dexterity and boldness of the Tyrian divers, who cut the cables of the ships which were anchored for the purpose of drawing up the stones. Chain cables were at length substituted, and the passage was then rapidly cleared by machines, which raised the stones out of their bed, and hurled them into the deep water. The walls were now assailed by the engines on every side, and the contest grew closer and hotter than it had ever been. Every contrivance that ingenuity quickened by fear could suggest was tried by the besieged to ward off these attacks.
Very famous in particular was one, which is not the less credible because Arrian’s authors seem to have passed it over in silence: the invention of shields filled with heated sand, which they were made to discharge on the assailants, and which, penetrating between their armour and their skin, inflicted indescribable tortures. Still the means of attack kept growing on the resources of defence. Dejection began to spread within the walls; and there were some who proposed to renew a horrid rite, which had long fallen into disuse--the sacrifice of a boy of good family to Moloch. It does honour to the Tyrian government, that it did not either humour this bloody superstition, or give way to despair; it was policy perhaps to check all thoughts of capitulation rather than ferocity that induced it to execute its Macedonian prisoners on the top of the walls, and to cast their bodies, in the sight of the besiegers, into the sea; but it directed the energy of the people to better expedients. It made a vigorous attempt to surprise the Cypriote squadron stationed near the northern harbour, and would have gained a complete victory over it; but Alexander, having received timely notice of the sally, sailed round unobserved, turned the fortune of the day, and sunk or took most of the enemy’s ships. All hopes from offensive measures were crushed by this blow; the safety of the city now rested chiefly in the strength of its walls.
Even these, after several fruitless attempts had been made in other quarters, began to give way on the south side; and a breach was opened, which Alexander tried, but did not find immediately practicable. Three days after, however, when a calm favoured the approach of the vessels, he gave orders for a general attack. It was to be made on all sides at once, to distract the attention of the besieged; and the fleet was at the same time to sail up to both the harbours, in the hope that in the midst of the tumult it might force an entrance into one of them. But the main assault was to be directed against the breach that had been already formed. The vessels which bore the engines were first brought up to play upon it; and when it had been sufficiently widened, were followed by two galleys, with landing boards and the men who were to mount it. One was commanded by Admetus, and was filled with troops of the guard, and in this Alexander himself embarked. Admetus and his men were the first to effect a landing, animated by the immediate presence of their king, who, after he had paused awhile to observe and animate the exertions of his warriors, himself mounted the breach.
When the Macedonian had once gained a firm footing, the issue of the conflict did not long remain doubtful. Admetus indeed, who led the way, was slain; but Alexander soon made himself master of two towers and the intervening curtain, through which the troops from the other vessel poured in after him, and he then advanced along the walls to the royal palace, which stood on the highest ground, that he might descend from it with the greater ease into the heart of the city. The Tyrians, seeing the wall taken, abandoned their fortifications, and collected their forces in one of the public places, where they gallantly made head against their assailants. But in the meanwhile both the harbours had been forced, their ships sunk or driven ashore, and the besiegers landed to join their comrades in the city. It soon became a scene of unresisted carnage and plunder. The Macedonians, exasperated by the length and labours of the siege, which had lasted seven months, and by the execution of their comrades, spared none that fell into their hands. The king--whom the Greeks call Azemilcus--with the principal inhabitants, and some Carthaginian envoys who had been sent with the usual offerings to Melkarth, took refuge in his sanctuary: and these alone, according to Arrian, were exempted from the common lot of death or slavery. It was an act of clemency, by which the conqueror at the same time displayed his piety to the god. Of the rest, eight thousand perished in the first slaughter, and thirty thousand, including a number of foreign residents, were sold as slaves. But if we may believe Curtius, fifteen thousand were rescued by the Sidonians, who first hid them in their galleys, and afterwards transported them to Sidon--not, it must be presumed, without Alexander’s connivance or consent. It seems incredible, that he should have ordered two thousand of the prisoners to be crucified; though he might have inflicted such a punishment on those who had taken the leading part in the butchery of the Macedonians. But, after the king and the principal citizens had been spared, it is not easy to understand why any others should have suffered on this account.
So fell Tyre, the rich, and beautiful, and proud, in arts and arms the queen of merchant cities. The conqueror celebrated his victory with a solemn military and naval procession, sacrifice, and games, in honour of the tutelary god who had thus fulfilled his promise and, though after the labour of so many months, had at length brought him into his city. He dedicated the engine which had first shattered the wall, and the sacred galley, in the sanctuary of Melkarth.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[20] As Aristobulus related, according to Arrian. Droysen observes that the other version is much more appropriate to the character and destiny of the conqueror, and would have been more readily believed by the army. But, critically considered, this is a reason for preferring the account of Aristobulus, whom Droysen elsewhere, as if in dispraise, styles “the sober.”
LIII. FROM GAZA TO ARBELA
While Alexander was yet besieging Tyre, ambassadors arrived from Darius, telling him that Darius would bestow upon him ten thousand talents of silver, if he would set his mother, his wife, and children at liberty; as also all the country between the Euphrates and the Hellespont; and if he would take his daughter in marriage, he should be styled his friend and confederate. Which embassy being debated in council, Parmenion is said to have told him that if he were Alexander, he would accept the terms, and, when the end of war was gained, no longer tempt the hazard thereof. To which the other is said to have replied, “So would I if I were Parmenion; but as I am Alexander, I must act worthily of Alexander.” He therefore answered the ambassador that he neither wanted Darius’ money, nor would accept of part of his empire, instead of the whole--since all the treasure, and the country, were his; that he would marry his daughter, if he pleased, without his consent: but if Darius had a mind to try his humanity, let him come to him.
This answer being carried to Darius, he, despairing of peace, made fresh preparations for war. Alexander then resolved upon an expedition into Egypt, all the cities of that part of Syria called Palestine being surrendered peaceably into his hands, except Gaza, which was kept by a certain eunuch, named Batis, who, foreseeing this, had already hired many troops of Arabians, and laid up vast stores of provisions, to serve for a long siege. He also entirely trusted to the strength of the place, which he looked upon as impregnable; for which reason, he was resolved that, whenever Alexander approached, he should be denied entrance.
THE SIEGE OF GAZA ACCORDING TO ARRIAN
Gaza is only twenty furlongs distant from the seashore, and exceeding difficult of access, because of the depth of the sand, and the neighbouring sea, which is, everywhere, shallow. The city itself is large and populous, seated on a high hill, and surrounded with a strong wall. It is also the last inhabited place which travellers meet with in their way from Phœnicia to Egypt, and borders upon a vast desert. Alexander, immediately after his arrival there, encamped over against that part of the wall which seemed most subject to an assault, and ordered his engines to be brought thither; and notwithstanding the opinion of some of his engineers, that the wall was not possible to be taken by force, by reason of the height of the bulwarks, he thought fit to declare his sentiments to the contrary; and that the more difficult the attempt was, the more necessary it was to be undertaken; for that the very suddenness and briskness of their assault would strike their enemies with no small terror. He added that, if he were unable to reduce the city, it would abundantly redound to his dishonour, when the news should be carried to Greece, as well as to Darius.
He therefore ordered a rampart to be run round it, of such a height that the engines placed thereupon might be upon a level with the top of the wall, which rampart he then built over against the south part of the wall, because it seemed, there, the least difficult to be assaulted. And when the work was now brought to its full height, the Macedonian engines were immediately placed thereon. About this time, as Alexander was sacrificing, with a crown of gold upon his head, according to the custom of Greece, and just entering upon the office, a certain bird of prey hovered over the altar and let fall a stone from his claws upon his head. Alexander immediately sent to consult Aristander, the soothsayer, what this prodigy could portend. He returned answer: “Thou shalt indeed take the city, O King; but beware of danger from thence, on the day it is taken.” He, hearing this, retired out of the reach of their darts to the engines on the rampart.
But when Alexander saw the Arabians make a furious sally out of the city, and set fire to the engines, and, having the advantage of the higher station, gall the Macedonians below and beat them from the rampart which they had built--then, either forgetful of the divine warning, or moved with the danger of his soldiers, he called his targeteers together and hasted to succour the Macedonians where they were most exposed, and by his presence kept them from betaking themselves to flight and abandoning the rampart: but while he was thus pushing forward, an arrow from an engine pierced his shield and breastplate and wounded him in the shoulder; which, when he perceived, and thereby knew that Aristander’s prediction was true, he rejoiced, because, by the same prediction, he was to take the city.
In the meantime other engines, which had been used at the siege of Tyre, arriving by sea, he ordered the rampart to be run quite round the city, two stadia in breadth, and 250 feet in height. The engines then being prepared, and planted thereupon, the wall was vehemently shaken, and the miners in many places, working privately underneath the foundations thereof and conveying the rubbish away, it fell down. The besiegers then plying the citizens with their darts, beat them out of their towers; yet thrice they sustained the Macedonian shocks, with the loss of abundance, slain and wounded. But at the fourth attack, when Alexander had called his men thither, he so levelled the wall, which had been undermined in some places, and widened the breaches made by the engines in others, that it seemed then a matter of no difficulty to the Macedonians to fix their ladders to the ruins thereof and storm the city. As soon as the ladders were fixed there arose a great emulation among the besiegers who should first mount the breach. This honour was gained by Neoptolemus of the race of the Æcidæ, one of his friends; and after him, other captains and others still entered with their forces; and when many of the Macedonians were now within the walls, they forced open the gates, one after another, and gave entrance to the whole army. The citizens, notwithstanding they saw the place thus taken by storm, were resolved to fight to the last; and gathering together in a body, every one lost his life where he stood, after a brave resistance. Alexander sold the wives and children for slaves; and a colony being drawn thither from the neighbourhood, the city was afterwards made use of as a garrison.[b]
The following incidents, not mentioned by Arrian, are characteristic enough to be quoted from Quintus Curtius, IV. 6. The treatment of Batis, who was in command at Gaza, if correctly reported,--which, however, is by no means certain,--is one of those spasms of barbarity which now and then marred a career otherwise full of dignity.[a]
INCIDENTS FROM QUINTUS CURTIUS
“A certain Arabian, one of Darius’ soldiers, ventured upon an action above his fortune, and covering his sword with his buckler, fell upon his knees before the king, as if he had deserted to him; whereupon the king bid him rise, and ordered him to be received into his service; but the barbarian, taking his sword courageously into his right hand, made at the king’s head; who having declined the blow, at the same time cut off the disappointed hand of the barbarian, and flattered himself that he was now cleared of the danger of the day. However, fate, as I take it, is unavoidable, for as he was fighting gallantly among the foremost he was wounded with an arrow, which passed through his armour, and struck in his shoulder, from whence Philip, his physician, drew it. Now the blood began to run in a great quantity, and all that stood by were frightened, never having known an arrow penetrate so deep through armour before.
“As for Alexander, he did not so much as change his countenance, but bid them stop the bleeding, and tie up the wound. Thus he remained some time at the head of the army, either dissembling or overcoming the pain; but when the blood that had been stopped by an application began to run afresh in a larger quantity, and the wound (which by reason of its newness did not at first pain him) upon the cooling of the blood began to swell, then he fainted and fell on his knees. They that were next to him took him up, and carried him into his tent, and Batis concluding him dead, returned into the town in a triumphing manner; but the king, impatient of delay (before his wound was cured), gave orders for a terrace to be raised as high as the city walls, which he commanded to be undermined.
“The besieged, on their part, were not idle, for they had erected a new fortification of equal height with the old wall, but that, however, did not come upon the level with the towers which were planted on the terrace, so that the inward parts of the town were exposed to the enemies’ darts; and to complete their hard fate, the walls were now overthrown by the mines, and gave the Macedonians an opportunity of entering the city at the breaches. The king was at the head of the foremost, and while he carelessly entered the place, his leg was hurt with a stone; notwithstanding which, leaning on his weapon, he fought among the first, though his old wound was not yet healed; his resentment was the greater on account of his having received two wounds in the siege.
“Batis, having behaved himself gallantly, and received several wounds, was at last forsaken by his men, yet this did not hinder him from fighting on, though his arms were grown slippery with his own and his enemies’ blood: but being attacked on all sides, he was taken alive, and being brought before the king, who was overjoyed that he had him in his power, insomuch that he used to admire virtue, even in an enemy, giving way this time to revenge, told him:
“‘Thou shalt not, Batis, die as thou wouldst, but expect to undergo whatever torments ingenuity can invent.’
“At which threats Batis, without making any reply, gave the king not only an undaunted, but an insolent look; whereupon Alexander said, ‘Do you take notice of this obstinate silence? Has he either offered to kneel down, or made the least submission? However, I’ll overcome his taciturnity, if by no other means, at least by groans.’ This said, his anger turned to rage, his fortune having already corrupted his manners, so that he ordered cords to be run through Batis’ heels and tied to the hinder part of a cart, and in that manner had him dragged alive round the city, valuing himself for having imitated Achilles (from whom he descended) in punishing his enemy.”[c]
ALEXANDER IN EGYPT
The sieges of Tyre and Gaza, occupying together nine months, were, says Grote, the hardest fighting that Alexander ever encountered.[21]
The siege of Gaza had occupied, it seems, three or four months; and it was perhaps not before December 332, that Alexander began his expedition to Egypt. Here he might safely reckon not merely on an easy conquest, but on an ardent reception, from a people who burned to shake off the Persian tyranny, and had even welcomed and supported the adventurer Amyntas. Mazaces himself, as soon as he heard of the battle of Issus, became aware that all resistance to Alexander would be useless, and met him with a voluntary submission. At Pelusium he found the fleet, and having left a garrison in the fortress, ordered it to proceed up the Nile as far as Memphis, while he marched across the desert. Near Heliopolis he crossed the river, and joined the fleet at Memphis. Here he conciliated the Egyptians by the honours which he paid to all their gods, especially to Apis, who had been so cruelly insulted by the Persian invaders; but at the same time he exhibited a new spectacle to the natives--a musical and gymnastic contest, for which he had collected the most celebrated artists from all parts of Greece. He then embarked, and dropt down the western or Canopic arm of the river to Canopus, to survey the extremity of the Delta on that side; and having sailed round the lake Mareotis, landed on the narrow belt of low ground which parts it from the sea, and is sheltered from the violence of the northern gales, which would otherwise desolate and overwhelm it, by a long ridge of rock, then separated from the main land by a channel, nearly a mile (seven stadia) broad, and forming the isle of Pharos. On this site stood the village of Racotis, where the ancient kings of Egypt had stationed a permanent guard to protect this entrance of their dominions from adventurers, especially Greeks, who might visit it for the sake either of plunder or commerce; while for greater security they granted the adjacent district to a pastoral tribe, which regarded all strangers as enemies.
Alexander’s keen eye was immediately struck by the advantages of this position for a city, which should become a great emporium of commerce, and a link between the East and the West--one of the great objects which already occupied his mind--while it secured the possession of Egypt to his empire, and transmitted the name of its founder to distant ages. He immediately gave orders for the beginning of the work, himself traced the outline, which was suggested by the natural features of the ground itself,[22] and marked the sites of some of the principal buildings, squares, palaces, and temples. The two main streets, which intersected each other at right angles in a great public place, one traversing the whole length of the city, and forming a series of magnificent edifices, provided for health and enjoyment by a free current of air; and the inundations of the Nile secured it from the pernicious effects which would otherwise have arisen from the vicinity of the lake. A causeway connected the island--on which it is said Alexander at first thought of building the city--with the main, and divided the intervening basin into two harbours, which were only joined together by a canal near either end. By the continual accumulation of sand, this isthmus has been so enlarged that it now forms the site of the modern Alexandria. Still there were two defects to counterbalance so many advantages of situation. The harbour was on both sides difficult of entrance, and there was no other within a great distance either on the east or the west. This inconvenience could never be wholly remedied, though the danger of the approach from the sea was afterwards much lessened by the erection of a magnificent beacon-tower, on a rock, near the eastern point of Pharos, which threw out its light to the distance, it is said, of nearly forty miles. The other defect was the want of water; and for this ample provision was made by a new canal, branching from the Nile, which brought a constant supply into the cisterns over which the houses were built. Yet Alexandria was thus placed at the mercy of every enemy who could make himself master of the canal and deprive it of a main necessary of life. It was a part of Alexander’s plan to people the city with a mixed colony of Greeks and Egyptians, in which the prejudices of the two races might be effaced by habitual intercourse, though Grecian arts and manners were to give their character to the whole; and therefore, among the temples of the Grecian gods, he ordered one to be founded for the worship of Isis.
[Sidenote: [331 B.C.]]
A favourable omen is said to have afforded a presage of the prosperity which awaited the new city. When he was about to trace the course of the walls, no chalk was at hand for the purpose, and it was found necessary instead to make use of flour, which soon attracted a large flock of birds from all sides to devour it. Aristander--who was never at a loss--construed this incident as a sign of the abundance which the city should enjoy and diffuse. That indeed probably far exceeded its founder’s most sanguine hopes; but still less could he have foreseen or calculated all the elements of a new intellectual life, which were to be there combined, and the influence which it was to exert over the opinions and condition of a great part of the world.
He was still thus engaged when Hegelochus arrived with the news that the Persians had been dislodged from the last holds of their power in the Ægean. Tenedos had revolted from them, as soon as it became sure of Macedonian protection. At Chios the democratical party had risen against the government established by the Persian satraps, and had taken Pharnabazus himself prisoner: and soon after Aristonicus, the tyrant of Methymna, having sailed into the harbour, before he had heard of the recent revolution, with some pirate ships, fell into their hands. The crews were all put to death; he himself, together with the oligarchical leaders, who had betrayed the city to the Persians, was sent to Alexander to receive his sentence. Mytilene, too, where Chares, the Athenian general, commanded the garrison, had been forced to capitulate, and the whole of Lesbos had been recovered. Hegelochus had likewise left his colleague Amphoterus in possession of Cos, which the islanders had freely surrendered. There Pharnabazus had made his escape; but he had brought the other prisoners with him, among whom, beside Aristonicus, were several tyrants who had ruled under Persian patronage. These Alexander abandoned to the mercy of the cities which they had governed, and they all suffered a cruel death; the Chians, as both enemies and traitors, he sent under a strong guard to a wretched exile in the stifling island prison of Elephantine.
He was now on the confines of Egypt and Libya. In the region which lay not many days’ march to the west, as some Greek legends told, Hercules and Perseus had pursued their marvellous adventures: both, it was believed, had consulted the oracle of Ammon in the heart of the Libyan wilderness. Alexander may have been desirous of emulating the achievements of his two heroic ancestors; or, if he had not heard of them, might still have been attracted by the celebrity of the oracle, and by the difficulty of reaching it. That he was impelled by curiosity about its answers, is very doubtful; but it is highly probable that he did not overlook the advantage which he might derive from them, however they might run, and the mysterious dignity with which the expedition itself might invest him in the eyes of his subjects. If however to these motives for the enterprise it should be thought necessary to add any others of a more intelligible policy, it might be conjectured that he also wished to impress Cyrene with respect for his power, and to show that even her secluded situation did not place her beyond the reach of his arms. On his march to Parætonium he was met at about midway by envoys from Cyrene, who brought a crown and other magnificent presents. After a march of about two hundred miles along the coast--perhaps nearly as far as the eastern frontier of the territory of Tripoli--he appears to have taken the direction toward the southeast, which leads, in five or six days for a private caravan, to the oasis.
THE VISIT TO AMMON
It was now for the first time that the Macedonians became acquainted with the face of the Libyan desert--its pathless sands, naked rocks, burning sky, and delusive images. That the journey should have furnished numberless stories for the entertainment of the camp, may easily be supposed. It is more difficult to understand how Alexander could have been at a loss for guides well acquainted with the way, as both Ptolemy and Aristobulus represented--though the one related that the perplexity of the wanderers was relieved by two great serpents, which pointed out the track, and were heard even when they could not be seen; the others described two ravens as performing the same office. Whether these are mere fictions of an idle fancy, or cover some fact which we are not able to ascertain, it is hardly worth while to inquire.[23] That the army was refreshed with the extraordinary occurrence of a shower of rain, in which it saw a manifest interposition of the gods, cannot reasonably be doubted. At length it descended safely into the green, well-watered, and richly cultivated valley, where, embosomed in thick woods, stood, within the same enclosure, the palace of the ancient priestly kings, and close by the temple of Ammon.
It was a visit such as Ammon had probably never before received, and the priests no doubt did their utmost, both to welcome the royal pilgrim with due honours, and to impress him with the highest veneration for their oracle. It was not, it seems, always in the temple itself that answers were given. The god chose the place of his revelations for himself. His visible symbol, a round disc formed of precious stones, was placed in a golden ship, from which, on each side, hung sacred vessels of silver; and borne on the shoulders of eighty priests, attended by a train of virgins and matrons, who accompanied the procession with sacred chants, in which they implored a propitious and certain answer, according to the secret impulse of the deity which directed their steps. By such a procession Alexander seems to have been met, as he approached at the head of his army, and to have been conducted into the temple, where his questions were answered by the chief priest. What these questions and answers were, was perhaps never known to any but the interlocutors. It is indeed in itself by no means improbable that the priest saluted him as a hero of divine origin, and promised him the empire of the world: the address would not have been more flattering, nor the prophecy bolder, than those which the Greek oracles, less safe from exposure, had sometimes ventured on. But it is well attested that Alexander did not, at least at the time, disclose what he had heard; but merely declared to his followers that he had received such answers as he had desired, and showed his satisfaction by his offerings and donations.
ALEXANDER LEAVES EGYPT
Aristobulus perhaps only expressed himself carelessly when he said that the army returned by the same route: we cannot hesitate to prefer Ptolemy’s statement, that it took the direct road to Memphis; unless indeed we should adopt a supposition which might render the two accounts more consistent--that Alexander struck across the desert in a third direction, which leads directly to the lake Mareotis. At Memphis he received reinforcements which had been sent to him by Antipater, and embassies to present congratulations or petitions from several states of Greece: among them, it seems, one which brought a golden crown, that had been decreed by a congress assembled at the isthmus on the occasion of the Isthmian games. It now only remained for him to settle the mode of administration by which Egypt was to be governed in his absence. It was his object at once to gain the good-will of the Egyptians, and to secure a province so important, and so easily defended, from the ambition of his own officers. The system which he established served in some points as a model for the policy of Rome under the emperors. He retained the ancient distribution of the country into the districts called nomes, and not only permitted them to be still governed by the native magistrates, the nomarchs, but placed them all under the authority of two Egyptians. Garrisons were stationed at Memphis and Pelusium. The country on the western side of the Delta was committed to the care of Apollonius; that on the east, towards Arabia, to Cleomenes, an Egyptian Greek of Naucratis, who afterwards became unhappily celebrated for his rapacity and financial stratagems. An army was left under the command of Peucestas and Balacrus, and a fleet under that of Polemon. The mutual jealousy of these officers was a sufficient pledge for their loyalty.
In the spring of 331 he set out from Memphis on his return to Phœnicia. At Tyre he found his fleet arrived, and celebrated another sacrifice to Melkarth, and received an embassy which had been brought over from Athens in the Paralus. Its chief object was to obtain the release of the Athenian prisoners taken at the battle of the Granicus; and this Alexander now granted, with several other requests which were urged by the crew of the Paralus, who accompanied the envoys in a body. The accounts which came from Peloponnesus indicated that it was threatened with a commotion through the restlessness of Sparta; and Amphoterus was ordered to lead a squadron to the aid of the Peloponnesians, who were well affected towards the Macedonian interest and the war with Persia, and to recover Crete from the Spartans. A new fleet of one hundred sail was ordered to be fitted out in the ports of Phœnicia and Cyprus to follow and reinforce Amphoterus. Whether on this occasion Alexander visited Jerusalem is doubtful; but it seems that he made an expedition into Samaria, to punish the Samaritans, who--goaded perhaps by ill-treatment--had revolted against Andromachus, had taken him prisoner, and burnt him alive. On Alexander’s approach, the authors of this atrocity were delivered up to him, and tranquillity was restored. He then began his march towards the Euphrates, and before the end of August arrived at Thapsacus.
A body of troops had been sent forward to throw a bridge across the river. When he had crossed, Alexander did not follow the route which Cyrus had taken through the Mesopotamian desert, but directed his march towards the northeast, through a country which afforded a more abundant supply of food, and where the army had less to suffer from the heat. On the road some Persian scouts fell into his hands, from whom he learnt that Darius, with an army far greater than he had before brought into the field, lay on the left bank of the Tigris, prepared to guard the passage against him. He now advanced at full speed towards the Tigris: but when he reached it found neither Darius himself nor any hostile force, and met with no other obstacle than the rapidity of the stream. On the left bank he gave his troops a few days’ rest after their forced march, during which there occurred an eclipse of the moon. Aristander expounded it as a sign that, during that month, the Persian monarchy was destined to lose its power and glory; and when Alexander sacrificed to the moon, the sun, and the earth, as the powers which concurred to produce the portent, the victims were found to announce a victory. He then marched southward along the river, and four days after his reconnoitring parties brought word that a body of cavalry was in sight. They fled at his approach, but some were overtaken, and slain or made prisoners. From these he learned that Darius with his whole army was encamped at no great distance.
The Persian king had employed the long interval allowed him by Alexander’s operations after the battle of Issus, to collect the remaining strength of his empire; and he had assembled a host with which, if superiority of numbers could have ensured success, he might reasonably have hoped to crush his adversary. It was also composed for the most part of more warlike troops. The division which was most formidable, both for numbers and martial qualities, consisted of the hardy tribes which inhabited the plains on the eastern side of the Caspian, and the valleys above Cabul on the borders of India. They were led by Bessus, the powerful satrap of Bactria; and he was also followed by a body of horse-bowmen, furnished by the Sacæ, who wandered in the valleys east of Transoxiana, and though they did not acknowledge his authority, willingly joined him as allies for the sake of pay and plunder. All the provinces between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, and from Syria and Cappadocia to the mountains west of the Indus, had poured forth their choicest warriors.
The whole amount was stated by some authors at a million of foot and forty thousand horse; this may be a great exaggeration, but it was probably reduced as much too low by those who reckoned no more than two hundred thousand infantry. There were beside two hundred scythed chariots, and fifteen elephants brought from the west of India. With this host Darius had encamped in one of the wide plains between the Tigris and the mountains of Kurdistan, near the Bumadus, a tributary of the Lycus, and a village named Gaugamela (the camel’s house), which should have given its name to the battle fought near it, but was forced, through a caprice of which we have many examples, to surrender this distinction to the town of Arbela, which lay more than twenty miles off, where Darius had left his baggage and his treasure. He had been persuaded by his courtiers that his defeat at Issus was entirely owing to the disadvantage of the ground, and he had therefore chosen a field on which he might fully display his forces, and where the enemy would have neither sea nor mountains to cover his flanks; and he had ordered a large tract of the plain to be cleared and levelled for the evolutions of his cavalry and chariots.[d]
THE BATTLE OF ARBELA
The position of the Persian king near Mesopotamia was chosen with great military skill. It was certain that Alexander on his return from Egypt must march northward along the Syrian coast, before he attacked the central provinces of the Persian empire. A direct eastward march from the lower part of Palestine across the great Syrian desert was then, as now, utterly impracticable. Marching eastward from Syria, Alexander would, on crossing the Euphrates, arrive at the vast Mesopotamian plains. The wealthy capitals of the empire, Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, would then lie to his south; and if he marched down through Mesopotamia to attack them, Darius might reasonably hope to follow the Macedonians with his immense force of cavalry, and, without even risking a pitched battle, to harass and finally overwhelm them. We may remember that three centuries afterwards a Roman army under Crassus was thus actually destroyed by the oriental archers and horsemen in these very plains; and that the ancestors of the Parthians who thus vanquished the Roman legions, served by thousands under King Darius. If, on the contrary, Alexander should defer his march against Babylon, and first seek an encounter with the Persian army, the country on each side of the Tigris in this latitude was highly advantageous for such an army as Darius commanded; and he had close in his rear the mountainous districts of northern Media, where he himself had in early life been satrap, where he had acquired reputation as a soldier and a general, and where he justly expected to find loyalty to his person, and a safe refuge in case of defeat.
His great antagonist came on across the Euphrates against him, at the head of an army which Arrian, copying from the journals of Macedonian officers, states to have consisted of forty thousand foot, and seven thousand horse. In studying the campaigns of Alexander, we possess the peculiar advantage of deriving our information from two of Alexander’s generals of division, who bore an important part in all his enterprises. In fact, in reading Arrian, we read General Aristobulus and General Ptolemy on the campaigns of the Macedonians; and it is like reading General Jomini or General Foy on the campaigns of the French.
The estimate which we find in Arrian of the strength of Alexander’s army, seems reasonable when we take into account both the losses which he had sustained, and the reinforcements which he had received since he left Europe. Indeed, to Englishmen, who know with what mere handfuls of men their own generals have, at Plassy, at Assaye, at Meeanee, and other Indian battles, routed large hosts of Asiatics, the disparity of numbers that we read of in the victories won by the Macedonians over the Persians presents nothing incredible. The army which Alexander now led, was wholly composed of veteran troops in the highest possible state of equipment and discipline, enthusiastically devoted to their leader, and full of confidence in his military genius and his victorious destiny.
The celebrated Macedonian phalanx formed the main strength of his infantry. His men were veterans; and he could obtain from them an accuracy of movement and steadiness of evolution, such as probably the recruits of his father would only have floundered in attempting, and such as certainly were impracticable in the phalanx when handled by his successors: especially as under them it ceased to be a standing force, and became only a militia. The main strength of his cavalry consisted in two chosen corps of cuirassiers, one Macedonian, and one Thessalian, each of which was about fifteen hundred strong. They were provided with long lances and heavy swords, and horse as well as man was fully equipped with defensive armour. Other regiments of regular cavalry were less heavily armed, and there were several bodies of light horsemen, whom Alexander’s conquests in Egypt and Syria had enabled him to mount superbly.
The Persian king availed himself to the utmost of every advantage in his power. He caused a large space of ground to be carefully levelled for the operation of his scythe-armed chariots; and he deposited his military stores in the strong town of Arbela, about twenty miles in his rear. The rhetoricians of after ages have loved to describe Darius Codomannus as a second Xerxes in ostentation and imbecility; but a fair examination of his generalship in this his last campaign, shows that he was worthy of bearing the same name as his great predecessor, the royal son of Hystaspes.
On learning that Darius was with a large army on the left of the Tigris, Alexander hurried forward and crossed that river without opposition. He was at first unable to procure any certain intelligence of the precise position of the enemy, and after giving his army a short interval of rest, he marched for four days down the left bank of the river. A moralist may pause upon the fact, that Alexander must in this march have passed within a few miles of the remains of Nineveh, the great city of the primeval conquerors of the human race. Neither the Macedonian king nor any of his followers knew what those vast mounds had once been. They had already become nameless masses of grass-grown ruins; and it is only within the last century that the intellectual energy of Layard has rescued Nineveh from its long centuries of oblivion.
On the fourth day of Alexander’s southward march, his advanced guard reported that a body of the enemy’s cavalry was in sight. He instantly formed his army in order for battle, and directing them to advance steadily, he rode forward at the head of some squadrons of cavalry, and charged the Persian horse whom he found before him. This was a mere reconnoitring party, and they broke and fled immediately; but the Macedonians made some prisoners, and from them Alexander found that Darius was posted only a few miles off, and learned the strength of the army that he had with him. On receiving this news, Alexander halted, and gave his men repose for four days, so that they should go into action fresh and vigorous. He also fortified his camp, and deposited in it all his military stores, and all his sick and disabled soldiers; intending to advance upon the enemy with the serviceable part of his army perfectly unencumbered. After this halt, he moved forward, while it was yet dark, with the intention of reaching the enemy, and attacking them at break of day. About halfway between the camps there were some undulations of the ground, which concealed the two armies from each other’s view. But, on Alexander arriving at their summit, he saw by the early light the Persian host arrayed before him; and he probably also observed traces of some engineering operation having been carried on along part of the ground in front of them. Not knowing that these marks had been caused by the Persians having levelled the ground for the free use of their war-chariots, Alexander suspected that hidden pitfalls had been prepared with a view of disordering the approach of his cavalry. He summoned a council of war forthwith. Some of the officers were for attacking instantly at all hazards, but the more prudent opinion of Parmenion prevailed, and it was determined not to advance farther till the battle-ground had been carefully surveyed.
Alexander halted his army on the heights; and taking with him some light-armed infantry and some cavalry, he passed part of the day in reconnoitring the enemy, and observing the nature of the ground which he had to fight on. Darius wisely refrained from moving from his position to attack the Macedonians on the eminences which they occupied, and the two armies remained until night without molesting each other. On Alexander’s return to his headquarters, he summoned his generals and superior officers together, and telling them that he well knew that their zeal wanted no exhortation, he besought them to do their utmost in encouraging and instructing those whom each commanded, to do their best in the next day’s battle. They were to remind them that they were now not going to fight for a province, as they had hitherto fought, but they were about to decide by their swords the dominion of all Asia. Each officer ought to impress this upon his subalterns, and they should urge it on their men. Their natural courage required no long words to excite its ardour; but they should be reminded of the paramount importance of steadiness in action. The silence in the ranks must be unbroken as long as silence was proper; but when the time came for the charge, the shout and the cheer must be full of terror for the foe. The officers were to be alert in receiving and communicating orders; and every one was to act as if he felt that the whole result of the battle depended on his own single good conduct.
Having thus briefly instructed his generals, Alexander ordered that the army should sup, and take their rest for the night. Darkness had closed over the tents of the Macedonians, when Alexander’s veteran general, Parmenion, came to him, and proposed that they should make a night attack on the Persians. The king is said to have answered, that he scorned to filch a victory, and that Alexander must conquer openly and fairly. Arrian justly remarks that Alexander’s resolution was as wise as it was spirited. Besides the confusion and uncertainty which are inseparable from night engagements, the value of Alexander’s victory would have been impaired, if gained under circumstances which might supply the enemy with any excuse for his defeat, and encourage him to renew the contest. It was necessary for Alexander not only to beat Darius, but to gain such a victory as should leave his rival without apology for defeat, and without hope of recovery.
The Persians, in fact, expected, and were prepared to meet, a night attack. Such was the apprehension that Darius entertained of it, that he formed his troops at evening in order of battle, and kept them under arms all night. The effect of this was, that the morning found them jaded and dispirited, while it brought their adversaries all fresh and vigorous against them.
The written order of battle, which Darius himself caused to be drawn up, fell into the hands of the Macedonians after the engagement, and Aristobulus copied it into his journal. We thus possess, through Arrian, unusually authentic information as to the composition and arrangement of the Persian army. On the extreme left were the Bactrian, Dahean, and Arachosian cavalry. Next to these Darius placed the troops from Persia proper, both horse and foot. Then came the Susians, and next to these the Cadusians. These forces made up the left wing. Darius’ own station was in the centre. This was composed of the Indians, the Carians, the Mardian archers, and the division of Persians who were distinguished by the golden apples that formed knobs of their spears. Here also were stationed the bodyguard of the Persian nobility. Besides these, there were in the centre, formed in deep order, the Uxian and Babylonian troops, and the soldiers from the Red Sea. The brigade of Greek mercenaries, whom Darius had in his service, and who were alone considered fit to stand in the charge of the Macedonian phalanx, was drawn up on either side of the royal chariot. The right wing was composed of the Cœlo-Syrians and Mesopotamians, the Medes, the Parthians, the Sacians, the Tapurians, Hyrcanians, Albanians, and Sacesinæ. In advance of the line on the left wing were placed the Scythian cavalry, with a thousand of the Bactrian horse, and a hundred scythe-armed chariots. The elephants and the fifty scythe-armed chariots were ranged in front of the centre; and fifty more chariots, with the Armenian and Cappadocian cavalry, were drawn up in advance of the right wing.
Thus arrayed, the great host of King Darius passed the night, that to many thousands of them was the last of their existence. The morning of the first of October dawned slowly to their wearied watching, and they could hear the note of the Macedonian trumpet sounding to arms, and could see King Alexander’s forces descend from their tents on the heights, and form in order of battle on the plain.
There was deep need of skill, as well as of valour, on Alexander’s side; and few battle-fields have witnessed more consummate generalship than was now displayed by the Macedonian king.[24] There were no natural barriers by which he could protect his flanks; and not only was he certain to be overlapped on either wing by the vast lines of the Persian army, but there was imminent risk of their circling round him and charging him in the rear, while he advanced against their centre. He formed, therefore, a second or reserve line, which was to wheel round, if required, or to detach troops to either flank, as the enemy’s movements might necessitate: and thus with their whole army ready at any moment to be thrown into one vast hollow square, the Macedonians advanced in two lines against the enemy, Alexander himself leading on the right wing, and the renowned phalanx forming the centre, while Parmenion commanded on the left.
Such was the general nature of the disposition which Alexander made of his army. But we have in Arrian the details of the position of each brigade and regiment; and as we know that these details were taken from the journals of Macedonian generals, it is interesting to examine them, and to read the names and stations of King Alexander’s generals and colonels in this the greatest of his battles.
The eight troops of the royal horse-guards formed the right of Alexander’s line. Their captains were Clitus (whose regiment was on the extreme right, the post of peculiar danger), Glaucias, Ariston, Sopolis, Heraclides, Demetrias, Meleager, and Hagelochus. Philotas was general of the whole division. Then came the shield-bearing infantry; Nicanor was their general. Then came the phalanx, in six brigades. Cœnus’ brigade was on the right, and nearest to the shield-bearers; next to this stood the brigade of Perdiccas, then Meleager’s, then Polysperchon’s; and then the brigade of Amyntas, but which was now commanded by Simmias, as Amyntas had been sent to Macedonia to levy recruits. Then came the infantry of the left wing, under the command of Craterus. Next to Craterus’ infantry was placed the cavalry regiments of the allies, with Erigyius for their general. The Thessalian cavalry, commanded by Philippus, were next, and held the extreme left of the whole army. The whole left wing was entrusted to the command of Parmenion, who had round his person the Pharsalian troop of cavalry, which was the strongest and best amid all the Thessalian horse-regiments.
The centre of the second line was occupied by a body of Phalangite infantry, formed of companies, which were drafted for this purpose from each of the brigades of their phalanx. The officers in command of this corps were ordered to be ready to face about, if the enemy should succeed in gaining the rear of the army. On the right of this reserve of infantry, in the second line, behind the royal horse-guards, Alexander placed half the Agrianian light-armed infantry under Attalus, and with them Brison’s body of Macedonian archers, and Cleander’s regiment of foot. He also placed in this part of his army Menidas’ squadron of cavalry, and Aretes’ and Ariston’s light horse. Menidas was ordered to watch if the enemy’s cavalry tried to turn the flank, and if they did so, to charge them before they wheeled completely round, and so take them in flank themselves. A similar force was arranged on the left of the second line for the same purpose. The Thracian infantry of Sitalces was placed there, and Cœranus’ regiment of the cavalry of the Greek allies, and Agathon’s troops of the Odrysian irregular horse. The extreme left of the second line in this quarter was held by Andromachus’ cavalry. A division of Thracian infantry was left in guard of the camp. In advance of the right wing and centre was scattered a number of light-armed troops, of javelin-men and bowmen, with the intention of warding off the charge of the armed chariots.[25]
Conspicuous by the brilliancy of his armour, and by the chosen band of officers who were round his person, Alexander took his own station, as his custom was, in the right wing, at the head of his cavalry; and when all the arrangements for the battle were complete, and his generals were fully instructed how to act in each probable emergency, he began to lead his men towards the enemy.
It was ever his custom to expose his life freely in battle, and to emulate the personal prowess of his great ancestor, Achilles. Perhaps in the bold enterprise of conquering Persia, it was politic for Alexander to raise his army’s daring to the utmost by the example of his own heroic valour; and, in his subsequent campaigns, the love of the excitement, of “the rapture of the strife,” may have made him, like Murat, continue from choice a custom which he commenced from duty. But he never suffered the ardour of the soldier to make him lose the coolness of the general; and at Arbela, in particular, he showed that he could act up to his favourite Homeric maxim of being
Ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής.[26]
Great reliance had been placed by the Persian king on the effects of the scythe-bearing chariots. It was designed to launch these against the Macedonian phalanx, and to follow them up by a heavy charge of cavalry, which it was hoped would find the ranks of the spearmen disordered by the rush of the chariots, and easily destroy this most formidable part of Alexander’s force. In front, therefore, of the Persian centre, where Darius took his station, and which it was supposed the phalanx would attack, the ground had been carefully levelled and smoothed, so as to allow the chariots to charge over it with their full sweep and speed. As the Macedonian army approached the Persian, Alexander found that the front of his whole line barely equalled the front of the Persian centre, so that he was outflanked on his right by the entire left wing of the enemy, and by their entire right wing on his left. His tactics were to assail some one point of the hostile army, and gain a decisive advantage, while he refused, as far as possible, the encounter along the rest of the line. He therefore inclined his order of march to the right, so as to enable his right wing and centre to come into collision with the enemy on as favourable terms as possible, though the manœuvre might in some respects compromise his left.
The effect of this oblique movement was to bring the phalanx and his own wing nearly beyond the limits of the ground which the Persians had prepared for the operations of the chariots; and Darius, fearing to lose the benefit of this arm against the most important parts of the Macedonian force, ordered the Scythian and Bactrian cavalry, who were drawn up on his extreme left, to charge upon Alexander’s right wing, and check its further lateral progress. Against these assailants Alexander sent from his second line Menidas’ cavalry. As these proved too few to make head against the enemy, he ordered Ariston also from the second line with his light horse, and Cleander with his foot, in support of Menidas. The Bactrians and Scythians now began to give way, but Darius reinforced them by the mass of Bactrian cavalry from his main line, and an obstinate cavalry fight now took place. The Bactrians and Scythians were numerous, and were better armed than the horsemen under Menidas and Ariston; and the loss at first was heaviest on the Macedonian side. But still the European cavalry stood the charge of the Asiatics, and at last, by their superior discipline, and by acting in squadrons that supported each other instead of fighting in a confused mass like the barbarians, the Macedonians broke their adversaries, and drove them off the field.
Darius now directed the scythe-armed chariots to be driven against Alexander’s horse-guards and the phalanx; and these formidable vehicles were accordingly sent rattling across the plain, against the Macedonian line. When we remember the alarm which the war-chariots of the Britons created among Cæsar’s legions, we shall not be prone to deride this arm of ancient warfare as always useless. The object of the chariots was to create unsteadiness in the ranks against which they were driven, and squadrons of cavalry followed close upon them, to profit by such disorder. But the Asiatic chariots were rendered ineffective at Arbela by the light-armed troops whom Alexander had specially appointed for the service, and who, wounding the horses and drivers with their missile weapons, and running alongside so as to cut the traces or seize the reins, marred the intended charge; and the few chariots that reached the phalanx passed harmlessly through the intervals which the spearmen opened for them, and were easily captured in the rear.
A mass of the Asiatic cavalry was now, for the second time, collected against Alexander’s extreme right, and moved round it, with the view of gaining the flank of his army. At the critical moment, Aretes, with his horsemen from Alexander’s second line, dashed on the Persian squadrons when their own flanks were exposed by this evolution. While Alexander thus met and baffled all the flanking attacks of the enemy with troops brought up from his second line, he kept his own horse-guards and the rest of the front line of his wing fresh, and ready to take advantage of the first opportunity for striking a decisive blow. This soon came. A large body of horse, who were posted on the Persian left wing nearest to the centre, quitted their station, and rode off to help their comrades in the cavalry fight that still was going on at the extreme right of Alexander’s wing against the detachments from his second line. This made a huge gap in the Persian array, and into this space Alexander instantly dashed with his guard; and then pressing towards his left, he soon began to make havoc in the left flank of the Persian centre. The shield-bearing infantry now charged also among the reeling masses of the Asiatics; and five of the brigades of the phalanx, with the irresistible might of their sarissas, bore down the Greek mercenaries of Darius, and dug their way through the Persian centre. In the early part of the battle, Darius had shown skill and energy; and he now for some time encouraged his men, by voice and example, to keep firm. But the lances of Alexander’s cavalry and the pikes of the phalanx now gleamed nearer and nearer to him. His charioteer was struck down by a javelin at his side; and at last Darius’ nerve failed him; and, descending from his chariot, he mounted on a fleet horse and galloped from the plain, regardless of the state of the battle in other parts of the field, where matters were going on much more favourably for his cause.
Alexander’s operations with his right and centre had exposed his left to an immensely preponderating force of the enemy. Parmenion kept out of action as long as possible; but Mazæus, who commanded the Persian right wing, advanced against him, completely outflanked him, and pressed him severely with reiterated charges by superior numbers. Seeing the distress of Parmenion’s wing, Simmias, who commanded the sixth brigade of the phalanx, which was next to the left wing, did not advance with the other brigades in the great charge upon the Persian centre, but kept back to cover Parmenion’s troops on their right flank; as otherwise they would have been completely surrounded and cut off from the rest of the Macedonian army. By so doing, Simmias had unavoidably opened a gap in the Macedonian left centre; and a large column of Indian and Persian horse, from the Persian right centre, had galloped forward through this interval, and right through the troops of the Macedonian second line. Instead of then wheeling round upon Parmenion, or upon the rear of Alexander’s conquering wing, the Indian and Persian cavalry rode straight on to the Macedonian camp, overpowered the Thracians who were left in charge of it, and began to plunder. This was stopped by the phalangite troops of the second line, who, after the enemy’s horsemen had rushed by them, faced about, countermarched upon the camp, killed many of the Indians and Persians in the act of plundering, and forced the rest to ride off again. Just at this crisis, Alexander had been recalled from his pursuit of Darius, by tidings of the distress of Parmenion, and of his inability to bear up any longer against the hot attacks of Mazæus. Taking his horse-guards with him, Alexander rode towards the part of the field where his left wing was fighting; but on his way thither he encountered the Persian and Indian cavalry on their return from his camp.
These men now saw that their only chance of safety was to cut their way through; and in one huge column they charged desperately upon the Macedonians. There was here a close hand-to-hand fight, which lasted some time, and sixty of the royal horse-guards fell, and three generals, who fought close to Alexander’s side, were wounded. At length the Macedonian discipline and valour again prevailed, and a large number of the Persian and Indian horsemen were cut down; some few only succeeded in breaking through and riding away. Relieved of these obstinate enemies, Alexander again formed his horse-guards, and led them towards Parmenion; but by this time that general also was victorious. Probably the news of Darius’ flight had reached Mazæus, and had damped the ardour of the Persian right wing; while the tidings of their comrades’ success must have proportionally encouraged the Macedonian forces under Parmenion. His Thessalian cavalry particularly distinguished themselves by their gallantry and persevering good conduct; and by the time that Alexander had ridden up to Parmenion, the whole Persian army was in full flight from the field.[27]
It was of the deepest importance to Alexander to secure the person of Darius, and he now urged on the pursuit. The Upper Zab was between the field of battle and the city of Arbela, whither the fugitives directed their course, and the passage of this river was even more destructive to the Persians than the swords and spears of the Macedonians had been in the engagement. The narrow bridge was soon choked up by the flying thousands who rushed towards it, and vast numbers of the Persians threw themselves, or were hurried by others, into the rapid stream, and perished in its waters. Darius had crossed it, and had ridden on through Arbela without halting. Alexander reached that city on the next day, and made himself master of all Darius’ treasure and stores; but the Persian king had fled too fast for his conqueror.
A few days after the battle Alexander entered Babylon, “the oldest seat of earthly empire” then in existence, as its acknowledged lord and master. There were yet some campaigns of his brief and bright career to be accomplished. Central Asia was yet to witness the march of his phalanx. He was yet to effect that conquest of Afghanistan in which England since has failed. His generalship, as well as his valour, were yet to be signalised on the banks of the Hydaspes, and the field of Chillianwallah; and he was yet to precede the queen of England in annexing the Punjab to the dominions of a European sovereign. But the crisis of his career was reached; the great object of his mission was accomplished; and the ancient Persian empire, which once menaced all the nations of the earth with subjection, was irreparably crushed, when Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela.[j]
FOOTNOTES
[21] [Somewhere about this period belongs a picturesque tradition which Grote, Bury, Holm, and others do not mention at all, even to deny; and that is, Alexander’s reception in Palestine as described by Josephus. While it is disbelieved, even by such Jewish historians as Ewald and Milman, it is not entirely impossible. Thirlwall, unlike Mitford, found it credible.]
[22] [“The city was, in form, like unto a soldier’s coat,” says Diodorus.]
[23] As to the ravens, there is no reason to doubt the literal fact. It appears that these birds are looked upon as indicating the vicinity of a well in the African desert. Two ravens met Belzoni, as he was approaching the oasis El Wak. Ritter, Afrika, p. 969.
[24] [“In so far as we can follow the dispositions of Alexander they appear the most signal example recorded in integrity of military genius and sagacious combination,” says Grote.[h] “He had really as great an available force as his enemy, because every company in his army was turned to account.”]
[25] Kleber’s arrangement of his troops at the battle of Heliopolis, where, with ten thousand Europeans, he had to encounter eighty thousand Asiatics in an open plain, is worth comparing with Alexander’s tactics at Arbela. See Thiers’ Histoire du Consulat, etc., vol. ii. book v.
[26] [“Both a good king and a valiant warrior.”]
[27] [The Persian dead were 300,000 according to Arrian, 90,000 according to Diodorus; 40,000 according to Curtius. Arrian says the Macedonians lost 100; Curtius, 300; Diodorus, 500.]
LIV. THE FALL OF PERSIA
THE ENTRY INTO BABYLON DESCRIBED BY QUINTUS CURTIUS
As Alexander was continuing his march towards Babylon, Mazæus (who had fled thither from the battle) came with his children that were at the age of maturity, and surrendered himself and the town to the king. His submission was very acceptable to the king, by reason that the siege of so strong a place must of necessity have been tedious. Besides this, his quality and bravery were very considerable, and he had but lately distinguished himself in the last great action, and his example might be a great inducement to others to imitate him. The king therefore received him and his children very graciously; however, he formed his army, which he led in person, into a square, and commanded them to enter the town in that order, as if they had been going to an engagement.
In Babylon the walls were filled with Babylonians who flocked thither, eager to behold their new sovereign; but the greatest part went out to meet him. Among these were Bagophanes, governor of the castle and the keeper of the king’s treasure, who was unwilling to be outdone in zeal by Mazæus. The road he had strewed all over with flowers and garlands, and was adorned on each side with silver altars, which were filled, not only with frankincense, but all manner of perfumes. He was followed by the presents he designed for the king, viz., droves of cattle and horses, with lions and leopards in strong cages for that purpose. These were followed by the Magi singing hymns after the manner of the country. After these came the Chaldeans, and not only the Babylonian prophets, but also the musicians with their respective instruments. These were closed by the Babylonian cavalry, whose rich clothing and furniture, for themselves and their horses, denoted luxury rather than magnificence.
The king commanded the multitude of townspeople to follow in the rear of his foot, and being encompassed by his guards, entered the city in a chariot, and repaired to the palace. The next day he took a view of Darius’ furniture, and all his treasure. The beauty and antiquity of the place attracted not only Alexander’s eyes, but likewise those of all that beheld it.
“The king resided longer here,” Curtius continues, “than he had done anywhere; nor could any place be more destructive of discipline. Nothing can be more corrupt than the manners of this city,[28] nor better provided with all the requisites to stir up and promote all sorts of debauchery and lewdness: for parents and husbands suffer their children and wives to prostitute themselves to their guests, if they are but paid for the crime. The kings and noblemen of Persia take great delight in licentious entertainments: and the Babylonians are very much addicted to wine, and the consequences of drunkenness. The women, in the beginning of their feasts, are modestly clad; then after some time, they lay aside their upper garment, and violate their modesty by degrees; at last (without offence be it spoken) they fling away even their lower apparel: nor is this the infamous practice of the courtesans only, but likewise of the matrons and their daughters, who look upon this vile prostitution of their bodies as an act of complaisance.
“It is reasonable to think, that that victorious army, which had conquered Asia, having wallowed thirty-four days in all kinds of lewdness and debauchery, would have found itself much weakened, for any following engagements, if an enemy had presented itself; but that the damage might be less sensible, it was from time to time as it were renewed with fresh recruits, for Amyntas, the son of Andromenes, brought from Antipater 6000 Macedonian foot, and 500 horse of the same nation; and with these 600 Thracian horse, and 3500 foot of that country. There came also from Peloponnesus 4000 mercenary foot, and 380 horse. The said Amyntas likewise brought him 50 young gentlemen of the nobility of Macedonia, to serve as guards of his person.”
The king having appointed Agathon governor of the castle of Babylon, assigning him seven hundred Macedonians and three hundred mercenaries for that purpose, left the government of the territory and city to Menes and Apollodorus, allotting them a garrison of two thousand foot, and one thousand talents, commanding both to make new levies to recruit the army. He gave to Mazæus who came over to him, the superintendency of Babylon, and ordered Bagophanes, who had surrendered the castle to him, to follow him. He gave the government of Armenia to Mithrenes, who had yielded up Sardis. Out of the money found in Babylon, he ordered every Macedonian trooper six hundred denarii [about £20 or $100], and five hundred to every foreign trooper, and to every foot soldier two hundred.
Alexander having settled things after this manner, marched into the country called Satrapene.
As the king was on his march to Susa, Abulites, who was governor of that province, sent his son to meet him on the road, and assure him he was ready to surrender the town. It is uncertain whether he did this of his own accord, or by Darius’ order, thereby to amuse Alexander with the booty. Having entered the town, Alexander took out of the treasury a prodigious sum, viz., fifty thousand talents of silver, not coined, but in the wedge and bar.[29] Several kings had been a long time heaping up these vast treasures, as they thought, for their children, and posterity, but one single hour put them all into the hands of a foreign prince.
He then seated himself in the regal throne, which, being much too high for his stature, his feet could not reach the ground; one of his pages therefore brought a table and set it under his feet. Hereupon one of Darius’ eunuchs sighed, which the king observing, enquired into the cause of his grief. Then the eunuch told him, “That Darius was used to eat upon that table; and that he could not behold, without shedding tears, the table, which was consecrated to his master’s use, applied in a manner so insulting and contemptuous.” At these words, the king began to be ashamed to violate the gods of hospitality, and commanded it to be taken away: but Philotas entreated him by no means to do so, but on the contrary to take it as a good omen, that that table, off of which his enemy used to eat, was now become his footstool.
[Sidenote: [330 B.C.]]
Alexander designing now to pass into Persia, gave the government, of Susa to Archelaus, leaving him a garrison of three thousand men; Xenophilus had the charge of the castle, having with him for garrison the superannuated Macedonians. The care of the treasury was committed to Callicrates, and the lieutenancy of the county of Susa was restored to Abulites. Darius’ mother and children were likewise left here.
Alexander having passed the river with nine thousand foot, the Agrianes, mercenary Greeks, and three thousand Thracians, came into the country of the Uxians; it borders upon the territory of Susa, and extends itself as far as the frontier of Persia. He afterwards united the Uxian nation to the government of Susa; then having divided his army with Parmenion, he commanded him to march through the flat country, while he, with the light-armed forces, took his way along the mountains, which run in a perpetual ridge into Persia.
AT THE BORDER OF PERSIA
Having ravaged all this country, he arrived the third day on the borders of Persia, and on the fifth he entered the straits Pylæ Susidæ. Ariobarzanes, with twenty-five thousand foot, had taken possession of these rocks, which were on all sides steep and craggy, on the tops whereof the barbarians kept themselves, being there out of the cast of the darts. Here they remained quiet on purpose, and seemed to be afraid till the army was advanced within the narrowest part of the straits; but when they perceived them to continue their march, as it were in contempt of them, they rolled down stones of a prodigious bigness upon them, which rebounding often from the lower rocks, fell with the greater force, and not only crushed single persons, but even whole companies.
They likewise plied their slings and bows from all parts; even this did not seem a hardship to these brave men, save that they were forced to perish unrevenged, like beasts taken in a pitfall: upon this, their anger turning into rage, they caught hold of the rocks, and helping one another up, did all they could to get to the enemy; but the parts they laid hold on giving way to the strength of so many hands, fell upon those that loosened them. In these sad circumstances they could neither stand still nor go forward, nor protect themselves with their bucklers, by reason of the great size of the stones the barbarians pushed upon them. The king was not only grieved, but ashamed he had so rashly brought his army into these straits. Till this day he had been invincible, having never attempted anything in vain. He had entered the straits of Cilicia without damage, and had opened himself a new way by sea into Pamphylia; but here that happiness which had always attended him, seemed to be at a stand, and there was no other remedy but to return the same way he came. Having therefore given the signal for a retreat, he commanded the soldiers to march in close order, and to join their bucklers over their heads, and so retire out of these straits, after they had advanced thirty furlongs within them.
A SHEPHERD GUIDE
The king, at his return from the straits, having pitched his camp in a plain open ground, not only held a council on the present juncture of affairs, but also was so superstitious as to consult the prophets concerning what was the most advisable to be done: but what, in such a case, could Aristander (who was then in greatest esteem) pretend to foretell? Laying aside therefore the unseasonable sacrifices, he gave orders to bring to him such men as were well acquainted with the country; these men told him of a way through Media, which was safe and open, but the king was ashamed to leave his soldiers unburied, for there was no custom more religiously observed amongst the Macedonians, than that of burying their dead: he therefore commanded the prisoners he had lately taken to be brought before him; among these, there was one who was skilled in both the Greek and Persian languages; this man told him, it was in vain for him to think of leading his army into Persia, over the tops of the mountains; that the narrow ways lay all among woods, and were hardly passable to single persons; that he had been a shepherd, and knew all those byways perfectly well: and that he had been twice taken prisoner; once by the Persians in Lycia, and now by himself.
This answer put the king in mind of the oracle that had told him, “a Lycian should be his guide into Persia;” having therefore made him large promises, suitable to the present necessity, and the prisoner’s condition, he ordered him “to be armed after the Macedonian manner, and in the name of fortune to lead the way.” Then having committed the guard of the camp to Craterus, with the foot which he commanded, and the forces under Meleager, and a thousand horse archers, he ordered him “to observe the same form of encampment, and to keep a great many fires, that the barbarians might by that think the king was there in person; but if he found Ariobarzanes got intelligence of his march through the winding narrow ways, and thereupon made detachments to oppose his passage; that then Craterus should use his utmost efforts to terrify him, and oblige him to keep his troops together to oppose the present danger; but if he (the king) deceived the enemy, and gained the wood, that then, upon the alarm among the enemies endeavouring to pursue the king, he should boldly enter the straits they had been repulsed in the day before, since he might be sure they were undefended, and the enemy turned upon himself.”
At the third watch, he broke up in great silence, without so much as the signal from the trumpet, and followed his guide towards the narrow way. Every light-armed soldier had orders to carry with him three days’ provision. But besides the steepness of the rocks, and the slipperiness of the stone that often deceived their feet, the driven snow very much incommoded them; for it sometimes swallowed them up as if they had fallen into pits; and when their fellow-soldiers endeavoured to help them out, they themselves were pulled down into the same pits. Moreover, the night, and unknown country, besides the uncertainty whether the guide was faithful or not, very much increased their fear: for if he deceived the guards, and made his escape, they were liable to be taken like wild beasts: so that the king’s and their safety depended on the fidelity and life of one prisoner. At length they gained the top of the mountain.
Having there refreshed his men both with food and sleep, at the second watch he continued his march, without any great difficulty. However, by reason of the declivity of the mountains towards the plain, there was a great gulf (occasioned by the meeting of several torrents that had worn away the earth) which stopped their further progress. Besides, the branches of the trees were so entangled one within the other, and joined so close, that it opposed their passage like a thick hedge. This cast them into the utmost despair, and they had much ado, to retain their tears: the darkness of the night also increased their terror, for if any stars appeared, they were intercepted by the close contexture of the boughs. The very use of their ears was also taken away; for the wind was high, and by blowing against the interfering branches of the trees, its noise was greatly increased. At last, the long-expected light lessened the terrors which the night had enhanced; for by fetching a small compass, they avoided the gulf: and now every one began to be a guide to himself. Having therefore gained the top of a hill, from whence they could discover the enemy’s out-guards, they resolutely showed themselves at the back of the enemy, who mistrusted no such thing. Those few who dared engage, were killed; and the groans of those that were dying, together with the dismal appearance of those that fled to their main body, struck such a terror amongst them, that they took to their heels without so much as trying their fortune.
The noise having reached Craterus’ camp, he presently advanced to take possession of those straits where they had been baffled the day before. At the same time, Philotas with Polysperchon, Amyntas, and Cœnus, who had been ordered to march another way, gave a fresh surprise to the barbarians, who were now surrounded on all sides by the Macedonians; notwithstanding which, they behaved themselves gallantly. Oftentimes despair is the cause of hope: for naked as they were, they closed in with those that were armed, and by the bulk of their bodies, brought them down to the ground, and then stuck several of them with their own weapons. However, Ariobarzanes with forty horse, and about five thousand foot, broke through the Macedonian army (a great many falling on both sides) and endeavoured to possess himself of Persepolis, the chief city of the country. But being denied entrance by the garrison, and the enemy pursuing him closely, he renewed the fight, and was slain with all his men. By this time Craterus marching with the utmost expedition, also joined the king.
The king fortified his camp in the same place where he had defeated the enemy: for notwithstanding that he had gained a complete victory, yet the large and deep ditches in many places retarded his march, and so he thought it more advisable to proceed leisurely; not suspecting so much any attempt from the barbarians, as the treachery of the ground.
In his march he received letters from Tiridates (keeper of the royal treasure at Persepolis) notifying him, “that upon advice of his approach, the inhabitants would have rifled the treasury; wherefore he desired him to hasten his march, and come and take possession of it; that the way was safe, although the river Araxes ran across.” No other virtue of Alexander’s is so admirable as his expedition in all actions. Leaving therefore his foot behind, he marched all night with his cavalry, notwithstanding their late fatigues, and arrived by break of day at the Araxes. There were several villages in the neighbourhood, which having pillaged and demolished, he made a bridge of the materials.
THE RELEASED CAPTIVES; SACKING PERSEPOLIS
The king was not far from Persepolis, when so sad a spectacle presented itself to his eyes, as can hardly be paralleled in history. It consisted of four thousand Greek captives, whom the Persians had mangled after a miserable manner. For some had their feet cut off, others their hands and ears, and all their bodies were burnt with barbarous characters, and thus reserved for the cruel diversion of their inhuman enemies; who now finding themselves under foreign subjection, did not oppose their desire to go out and meet Alexander. They resembled some strange figures more than men, being only distinguishable as such by their voice. They drew more tears from their spectators, than they shed themselves; for in so great a variety of calamities, notwithstanding they were all sufferers, yet their punishment was so diversified, that it was a difficult matter to determine which of them was most miserable. But when they cried out, that at last Jupiter the revenger of Greece had opened his eyes, all the beholders were so moved with compassion, that they thought their sufferings their own. Alexander having dried his eyes (for he could not forbear weeping at so sad an object) bade them “have a good heart,” and assured them, “they should see their native country, and their wives again.”
Some few accepted, but the remainder were overcome by a long habit, which is stronger than nature; they agreed therefore “to desire the king to assign them some place for their habitation”; and chose a hundred out of their body, to prefer their petition. Alexander, thinking they would ask what he himself intended for them, told them, he had “ordered every one of them a horse, and a thousand denarii [£34 or $170]; and that when they should come to Greece, he would so provide for them that (except for the calamities they had experienced in their captivity) none should be happier than they.” At these words, they fell to weeping, and being dejected, could neither look up, nor speak; which made the king inquire into the cause of their sadness. Then Euthymon made an answer suitable to what he had said to his companions. Hereupon the king, moved with their misfortune and resolution, ordered three thousand denarii [£102 or $510] to be distributed to every one of them, besides ten suits of clothes, with cattle, sheep, and such a quantity of corn, as was sufficient to cultivate the land that was assigned them.
The next day, having called together all his generals, he represented to them, “that no city had been more mischievous to the Greeks than this seat of the ancient kings of Persia: from hence came all those vast armies: from hence Darius first, and then Xerxes, made their impious wars upon Europe: it was therefore necessary to raze it, to appease the Manes of their ancestors.” The inhabitants had abandoned it, and were fled some one way, and some another; so that the king led the phalanx into it without further delay. He had before this made himself master of many towns of regal wealth and magnificence, some by force, and some by composition, but the riches of this exceeded all the rest. Hither the Persians had brought all their substance; gold and silver lay here in heaps: of clothes there was a prodigious quantity; the furniture of the houses seemed not only designed for use, but for luxury and ostentation. This gave occasion to the conquerors to fight among themselves, each taking for an enemy his companion that had got the richest spoils: and as they could not carry off all they found, they were now no longer employed in taking, but in picking and choosing.
They tore the royal garments, every one being willing to have his share of them: with axes they cut in pieces vessels of exquisite art; in fine, nothing was left untouched, nor carried away entire; the images of gold and silver were broken in pieces, according as every one could lay hold on them. Avarice did not only rage here, but cruelty likewise; for being loaded with gold and silver, they would not be troubled to guard their prisoners, but inhumanly killed them, and now barbarously murdered those they had at first shown mercy to in hopes of gain. This occasioned a great many to give themselves over to a voluntary death, so that putting on their richest apparel, they cast themselves headlong from the walls, with their wives and children; some set fire to their houses (which they thought the enemy would do) and perished, with their families, in the flames. At last the king gave orders, not to injure the persons of the women, nor meddle with their apparel.
CURTIUS TELLS OF THE ENORMOUS LOOT
The immense treasures taken here exceeded all belief: but we must either doubt of all the rest, or believe that in the exchequer of this place was found 120,000 talents,[30] which the king, designing for the use of the war, caused “horses and camels to be brought from Susa to Babylon, to carry it off for that purpose.” This sum was afterwards increased, by taking Pasargada, wherein were found six thousand talents. Cyrus had built this city; and Gobares, who was governor thereof, surrendered it to Alexander.
The king made Nicarthides governor of the castle of Persepolis, leaving with him a garrison of three thousand Macedonians; he also continued Tiridates (who had delivered up the treasure) in the same honours he had enjoyed under Darius.
Alexander left here the greatest part of his army, with the baggage, under the command of Parmenion and Craterus; and taking with him a thousand horse, and part of the light-armed foot, penetrated farther into the country of Persia about the beginning of winter. On his way he was very much incommoded with storms of rain, and tempests that seemed intolerable; notwithstanding which, he pursued his intended progress. He was now in a country covered over with snow and ice: the sad view of the place, and the impassable wastes and solitudes, struck the tired soldier with horror; he now began to think he was at the end of the world. They beheld with astonishment the frightful solitudes, which had not the least signs of human culture; they therefore required him to return, “before the very light and heavens failed them.” The king forebore chastising them in the amazement they were in, but leaping from his horse, marched on foot before them through the snow and ice. They were ashamed not to follow him; therefore first his friends, then the captains, and at last the soldiers marched after him.
The king was the first that with a pickaxe broke the ice, and made himself a passage; then the rest imitated his example. At length, having made their way through woods almost impassable, they began to discover here and there some tokens that the place was inhabited, as also flocks of sheep wandering up and down. The inhabitants lived in cottages, and thought themselves sufficiently secured by the impracticableness of the country. At the sight of the enemy, they presently killed those who could not follow them, and fled to the remotest mountains, which were covered with snow; but after some conferences with the prisoners, their fright abated, and they surrendered themselves to the king, who was no way severe to them.
CURTIUS DESCRIBES AN ORGY AND THE BURNING OF PERSEPOLIS
Alexander having ravaged the country of Persia, and reduced several towns under his obedience, came at last into the country of the Mardians, who were a warlike nation, and very different from the rest of the Persians in their manner of living. “They dig themselves caves in the mountains,” says Curtius, “where they dwell, feeding on their flocks, or wild beasts. The women are not of a softer nature than the men; they have bushy hair, and their garments hardly reach their knees. They bind their forehead with a sling, which serves them both for ornament and weapon.” However, the same torrent of fortune bore down this nation, as it had done the rest; so that on the thirteenth day after he departed from Persepolis, he returned thither again.
Then he made presents to his friends, and to the rest according to their respective merit, distributing amongst them almost all that had been taken in the town.
But the excellent endowments of his mind, that noble disposition whereby he surpassed all kings, that manly constancy in surmounting dangers, that unparalleled celerity in undertaking and executing the greatest designs, his inviolable faith to those who submitted to him, his wonderful clemency towards the prisoners, and his temperance in allowable and usual pleasures, were all sullied by his excessive love of wine: for notwithstanding his enemy and rival, for the empire was at this very instant making the greatest preparations to renew the war, and the late conquered nations were yet uneasy under his new government, yet he would spend the day-time in revelling and feasting; to which entertainments the women were also admitted; not such whom it was a crime to violate, but such as were common, and whose conversation was a disgrace to a man in arms. One of these, whose name was Thais, being heated with wine, told him, he could not do anything that would more oblige all the Greeks, than if he burnt the palace of the kings of Persia; that they expected this by way of reprisal for those towns of theirs the barbarians had destroyed. This drunken harlot had no sooner spoken her opinion in a matter of so great a consequence, but presently some of the company (who were also loaded with wine) applauded the proposal: and the king not only heard it with patience, but, eager to put it in execution, said:
“Why do we not revenge Greece? Why do we delay setting fire to the town?” They were all heated with wine, and in that drunken condition immediately rose to burn that city they had spared when armed. The king showed them the example, and was the first that set fire to the palace, after which his guests, servants, and concubines did the same. There being a great deal of cedar in this noble structure, it presently took fire, and communicated the flames. The army, which was encamped not far from the town, perceived the conflagration, and imagining it to be casual, ran to help to quench it; but being come to the entrance of the palace, and seeing the king himself carrying fresh flambeaux to increase the fire, they flung down the water they had brought, and fed the flames with dry materials.
This was the end of the noblest city of the East, from whence so many nations received their laws; which had been the birthplace of so many kings; formerly the chief terror of Greece; had fitted out a fleet of a thousand sail of ships, and sent out armies, which, like an inundation, almost covered all Europe, had laid bridges over the sea, and hollowed mountains to make the sea a passage; and in so long a time as has elapsed since its destruction, never was rebuilt: for the Macedonian kings made choice of other towns for their residence, which are now in the possession of the Parthians. The ruin of this city was so complete, that were it not for the river Araxes, we should hardly know where it stood. This river ran at no great distance from the walls of this town, which (as the neighbouring inhabitants rather conjecture than certainly know) was situate about twenty furlongs from it.
The Macedonians were ashamed so famous a city should be destroyed by their king in a drunken humour. They therefore made a serious matter of it, and persuaded themselves, “it was expedient it should be consumed this way.” But as for Alexander, as soon as rest had restored him to himself, it is certain he repented of what he had done; and he said, the Persians “would have made more ample satisfaction to Greece had they been necessitated to behold him sitting in Xerxes’ throne in his royal city.”
The next day he ordered thirty talents to be given to the Lycian who had been his guide into Persia. From hence he passed into the country of Media, where he was met by new recruits from Cilicia. They consisted of five thousand foot, and one thousand horse, both the one and the other were under the command of Plato the Athenian. Having received this reinforcement, he resolved to pursue Darius.[b]
THE NEW MEANING OF THE CONQUEST
From this time (330 B.C.) forward to the close of Alexander’s life, a period of about seven years, his time was spent in conquering the eastern half of the Persian empire, together with various independent tribes lying beyond its extreme boundary. But neither Greece, nor Asia Minor, nor any of his previous western acquisitions, was he ever destined to see again.
Now in regard to the history of Greece, the first portion of Alexander’s Asiatic campaigns (from his crossing the Hellespont to the conquest of Persia, a period of four years, March 334 B.C. to March 330 B.C.), though not of direct bearing, is yet of material importance. Having in his first year completed the subjugation of the Hellenic world, he had by these subsequent campaigns absorbed it as a small fraction into the vast Persian empire, renovated under his imperial sceptre. He had accomplished a result substantially the same as would have been brought about if the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, destined, a century and half before, to incorporate Greece with the Persian monarchy, had succeeded instead of failing. Towards the kings of Macedonia alone, the subjugation of Greece would never have become complete, so long as she could receive help from the native Persian kings, who were perfectly adequate as a countervailing and tutelary force, had they known how to play their game. But all hope for Greece from without was extinguished, when Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis became subject to the same ruler as Pella and Amphipolis--and that ruler too, the ablest general, and most insatiate aggressor, of his age, to whose name was attached the prestige of success almost superhuman. Still, against even this overwhelming power, some of the bravest of the Greeks at home tried to achieve their liberation with the sword: we shall see presently how sadly the attempt miscarried.
But though the first four years of Alexander’s Asiatic expedition, in which he conquered the western half of the Persian empire, had thus an important effect on the condition and destinies of the Grecian cities, his last seven years, on which we are now about to enter, employed chiefly in conquering the eastern half, scarcely touched these cities in any way. The stupendous marches to the rivers Jaxartes, Indus, and Hyphasis, which carried his victorious armies over so wide a space of Central Asia, not only added nothing to his power over the Greeks, but even withdrew him from all dealings with them, and placed him almost beyond their cognisance. To the historian of Greece, therefore, these latter campaigns can hardly be regarded as included within the range of his subject. They deserve to be told as examples of military skill and energy, and as illustrating the character of the most illustrious general of antiquity--one who, though not a Greek, had become the master of all Greeks.
THE PURSUIT OF DARIUS
About six or seven months had elapsed from the battle of Arbela to the time when Alexander prepared to quit his most recent conquest--Persia proper. During all this time, Darius had remained at Ecbatana, the chief city of Media, clinging to the hope, that Alexander, when possessed of the three southern capitals and the best part of the Persian empire, might have reached the point of satiation, and might leave him unmolested in the more barren East. As soon as he learned that Alexander was in movement towards him, he sent forward his harem and his baggage to Hyrcania, on the southeastern border of the Caspian Sea. Himself, with the small force around him, followed in the same direction, carrying off the treasure in the city, 7000 talents [£1,400,000 or $7,000,000] in amount, and passed through the Caspian Gates into the territory of Parthyene. His only chance was to escape to Bactria at the eastern extremity of the empire, ruining the country in his way for the purpose of retarding pursuers. But this chance diminished every day, from desertion among his few followers, and angry disgust among many who remained.
Eight days after Darius had quitted Ecbatana, Alexander entered it. How many days had been occupied in his march from Persepolis, we cannot say: in itself a long march, it had been further prolonged, partly by necessity of subduing the intervening mountaineers called Parætacene, partly by rumours exaggerating the Persian force at Ecbatana, and inducing him to advance with precaution and regular array. Possessed of Ecbatana, the last capital stronghold of the Persian kings and their ordinary residence during the summer months, he halted to rest his troops, and establish a new base of operations for his future proceedings eastward. He made Ecbatana his principal depot; depositing in the citadel, under the care of Harpalus as treasurer, with a garrison of six thousand or seven thousand Macedonians, the accumulated treasures of his past conquests, out of Susa and Persepolis; amounting we are told, to the enormous sum of 180,000 talents [£36,000,000 sterling $180,000,000]. Parmenion was invested with the chief command of this important post, and of the military force left in Media; of which territory Oxodates, a Persian who had been imprisoned at Susa by Darius, was named satrap.
At Ecbatana, Alexander was joined by a fresh force of six thousand Grecian mercenaries, who had marched from Cilicia into the interior, probably crossing the Euphrates and Tigris at the same points as Alexander himself had crossed. Hence he was enabled the better to dismiss his Thessalian cavalry, with other Greeks who had been serving during his four years of Asiatic war, and who now wished to go home. He distributed among them the sum of two thousand talents [£400,000 or $2,000,000] in addition to their full pay, and gave them the price of their horses, which they sold before departure. The operations which he was now about to commence against the eastern territories of Persia were not against regular armies, but against flying corps and distinct native tribes, relying for defence chiefly on the difficulties which mountains, deserts, privation, or mere distance, would throw in the way of an assailant. For these purposes he required an increased number of light troops, and was obliged to impose even upon his heavy-armed cavalry the most rapid and fatiguing marches, such as none but his Macedonian companions would have been contented to execute; moreover he was called upon to act less with large masses, and more with small and broken divisions. He now therefore for the first time established a regular taxis, or division of horse-bowmen.
Remaining at Ecbatana no longer than was sufficient for these new arrangements, Alexander recommenced his pursuit of Darius. He hoped to get before Darius to the Caspian Gates, at the northeastern extremity of Media; by which gates was understood a mountain pass, or rather a road of many hours’ march, including several difficult passes stretching eastward along the southern side of the great range of Taurus towards Parthia. He marched to Rhagæ, about fifty miles north of the Caspian Gates; which town he reached in eleven days, by exertions so severe that many men as well as horses were disabled on the road. But in spite of all speed, he learned that Darius had already passed through the Caspian Gates. After five days of halt at Rhagæ, indispensable for his army, Alexander passed them also. A day’s march on the other side of them, he was joined by two eminent Persians, Bagistanes and Antibelus, who informed him that Darius was already dethroned and in imminent danger of losing his life.
The conspirators by whom this had been done were: Bessus, satrap of Bactria; Barsaentes, satrap of Drangiana and Arachosia; and Nabarzanes, general of the regal guards. The small force of Darius having been thinned by daily desertion, most of those who remained were the contingents of the still unconquered territories, Bactria, Arachosia, and Drangiana, under the orders of their respective satraps. The Grecian mercenaries, fifteen hundred in number, and Artabazus, with a band under his special command, adhered inflexibly to Darius, but the soldiers of Eastern Asia followed their own satraps. Bessus and his colleagues intended to make their peace with Alexander by surrendering Darius, should Alexander pursue so vigorously as to leave them no hope of escape; but if they could obtain time to reach Bactria and Sogdiana, they resolved to organise an energetic resistance, under their own joint command, for the defence of those eastern provinces--the most warlike population of the empire. Under the desperate circumstances of the case, this plan was perhaps the least unpromising that could be proposed. The chance of resisting Alexander, small as it was at the best, became absolutely nothing under the command of Darius, who had twice set the example of flight from the field of battle, betraying both his friends and his empire, even when surrounded by the full force of Persia. For brave and energetic Persians, unless they were prepared at once to submit to the invader, there was no choice but to set aside Darius; nor does it appear that the conspirators intended at first anything worse. At a village called Thara in Parthia, they bound him in chains of gold, placed him in a covered chariot surrounded by the Bactrian troops, and thus carried him onward, retreating as fast as they could; Bessus assuming the command. Artabazus, with the Grecian mercenaries, too feeble to prevent the proceeding, quitted the army in disgust, and sought refuge among the mountains of the Tapyri bordering on Hyrcania towards the Caspian Sea.
On hearing this intelligence, Alexander strained every nerve to overtake the fugitives and get possession of the person of Darius. At the head of his companion cavalry, his light horse, and a body of infantry picked out for their strength and activity, he put himself in instant march, with nothing but arms and two days’ provisions for each man; leaving Craterus to bring on the main body by easier journeys. A forced march of two nights and one day, interrupted only by a short midday repose (it was now the month of July), brought him at daybreak to the Persian camp which his informant, Bagistanes, had quitted. But Bessus and his troops were already beyond it, having made considerable advance in their flight; upon which Alexander, notwithstanding the exhaustion both of men and horses, pushed on with increased speed through all the night to the ensuing day at noon. He there found himself in the village where Bessus had encamped on the preceding day. Yet learning from deserters that his enemies had resolved to hasten their retreat by night marches, he despaired of overtaking them unless he could find some shorter road. He was informed that there was another shorter, but leading through a waterless desert. Setting out by this road with his cavalry, he got over no less than forty-five miles during the night, so as to come on Bessus by complete surprise.
The Persians, marching in disorder without arms, and having no expectation of an enemy, were so panic-stricken at the sudden appearance of their indefatigable conqueror, that they dispersed and fled without any attempt to resist. In this critical moment, Bessus and Barsaentes urged Darius to leave his chariot, mount his horse, and accompany them in their flight. But he refused to comply. They were determined however that he should not fall alive into the hands of Alexander, whereby his name would have been employed against them, and would have materially lessened their chance of defending the eastern provinces; they were moreover incensed by his refusal, and had contracted a feeling of hatred and contempt to which they were glad to give effect. Casting their javelins at him, they left him mortally wounded, and then pursued their flight. His chariot, not distinguished by any visible mark, nor known even to the Persian soldiers themselves, was for some time not detected by the pursuers. At length a Macedonian soldier named Polystratus found him expiring, and is said to have received his last words; wherein he expressed thanks to Alexander for the kind treatment of his captive female relatives, and satisfaction that the Persian throne, lost to himself, was about to pass to so generous a conqueror. It is at least certain that he never lived to see Alexander himself.
Alexander had made the prodigious and indefatigable marches of the last four days, not without destruction to many men and horses, for the express purpose of taking Darius alive. It would have been a gratification to his vanity to exhibit the Great King as a helpless captive, rescued from his own servants by the sword of his enemy, and spared to occupy some subordinate command as a token of ostentatious indulgence. Moreover, apart from such feelings, it would have been a point of real advantage to seize the person of Darius, by means of whose name Alexander would have been enabled to stifle all further resistance in the extensive and imperfectly known regions eastward of the Caspian Gates. The satraps of these regions had now gone thither with their hands free, to kindle as much Asiatic sentiment and levy as large a force as they could, against the Macedonian conqueror; who was obliged to follow them, if he wished to complete the subjugation of the empire. We can understand therefore that Alexander was deeply mortified in deriving no result from this ruinously fatiguing march, and can the better explain that savage wrath which we shall hereafter find him manifesting against the satrap Bessus.
Alexander caused the body of Darius to be buried, with full pomp and ceremonial, in the regal sepulchres of Persis. The last days of this unfortunate prince have been described with almost tragic pathos by historians; and there are few subjects in history better calculated to excite such a feeling, if we regard simply the magnitude of his fall, from the highest pitch of power and splendour to defeat, degradation, and assassination. But an impartial review will not allow us to forget that the main cause of such ruin was his own blindness--his long apathy after the battle of Issus, and abandonment of Tyre and Gaza, in the fond hope of repurchasing queens whom he had himself exposed to captivity--lastly, what is still less pardonable, his personal cowardice in both the two decisive battles deliberately brought about by himself. If we follow his conduct throughout the struggle, we shall find little of that which renders a defeated prince either respectable or interesting. Those who had the greatest reason to denounce and despise him, were his friends and countrymen, whom he possessed ample means of defending, yet threw those means away. On the other hand, no one had better grounds for indulgence towards him than his conqueror; for whom he had kept unused the countless treasures of the three capitals, and for whom he had lightened in every way the difficulties of a conquest, in itself hardly less than impracticable.
The recent forced march, undertaken by Alexander for the purpose of securing Darius as a captive, had been distressing in the extreme to his soldiers, who required a certain period of repose and compensation. This was granted to them at the town of Hecatompylos in Parthia, where the whole army was again united. Alexander now began to feel and act manifestly as successor of Darius on the Persian throne; to disdain the comparative simplicity of Macedonian habits, and to assume the pomp, the ostentatious apparatus of luxuries, and even the dress, of a Persian king.
To many of Alexander’s soldiers, the conquest of Persia appeared to be consummated and the war finished, by the death of Darius. They were reluctant to exchange the repose and enjoyments of Hecatompylos for fresh fatigues; but Alexander, assembling the select regiments, addressed to them an emphatic appeal which revived the ardour of all. His first march was across one of the passes into Hyrcania, the region bordering the southeastern corner of the Caspian Sea. Here he found no resistance. Alexander undertook an expedition into the mountains of the Mardi, and reduced the remnant of the half-destroyed tribes to sue for peace.
After repose and festivity at Zeudracarta, the chief town of Hyrcania, Alexander marched eastward with his united army through Parthia into Aria. A few days enabled him to crush the Arians. He then marched southward into the territory of the Drangi, or Drangiana (the modern Seistan), where he found no resistance.
CONSPIRACIES AGAINST ALEXANDER
In the chief town of Drangiana occurred the revolting tragedy, of which Philotas was the first victim, and his father Parmenion the second. Parmenion, now seventy years of age, and therefore little qualified for the fatigue inseparable from the invasion of the eastern satrapies, had been left in the important post of commanding the great depot and treasure at Ecbatana. His long military experience, and confidential position even under Philip, rendered him the second person in the Macedonian army, next to Alexander himself. His three sons were all soldiers. The youngest of them, Hector, had been accidentally drowned in the Nile, while in the suite of Alexander in Egypt; the second, Nicanor, had commanded the hypaspists or light infantry, but had died of illness, fortunately for himself, a short time before; the eldest, Philotas, occupied the high rank of general of the companion cavalry, in daily communication with Alexander, from whom he received personal orders.
A revelation came to Philotas, that a soldier named Dimnus had made boast to Nicomachus, his intimate friend or beloved person, under vows of secrecy, of an intended conspiracy against Alexander, inviting him to become an accomplice. Nicomachus, at first struck with abhorrence, at length simulated compliance, asked who were the accomplices of Dimnus, and received intimation of a few names; all of which he presently communicated to his brother Cebalinus, for the purpose of being divulged. Cebalinus told the facts to Philotas, entreating him to mention them to Alexander. But Philotas, though every day in communication with the king, neglected to do this for two days; upon which Cebalinus began to suspect him of connivance, and caused the revelation to be made to Alexander through one of the pages named Metron. Dimnus was immediately arrested, but ran himself through with his sword, and expired without making any declaration.
Of this conspiracy, real or pretended, everything rested on the testimony of Nicomachus. Alexander indignantly sent for Philotas, demanding why he had omitted for two days to communicate what he had heard. Philotas replied that the source from which it came was too contemptible to deserve notice--that it would have been ridiculous to attach importance to the simple declarations of such a youth as Nicomachus, recounting the foolish boasts addressed to him by a lover. Alexander received, or affected to receive, the explanation, gave his hand to Philotas, invited him to supper, and talked to him with his usual familiarity.
But it soon appeared that advantage was to be taken of this incident for the disgrace and ruin of Philotas, whose free-spoken criticisms on the pretended divine paternity--coupled with boasts, that he and his father Parmenion had been chief agents in the conquest of Asia--had neither been forgotten nor forgiven.
Some of the generals around Alexander, especially Craterus the first suborner of Antigone, fomented these suspicions from jealousy of the great ascendency of Parmenion and his family. There was not a tittle of evidence against him, except the fact that the deposition had been made known to him, and that he had seen Alexander twice without communicating it. Upon this single fact, however, Craterus and the other enemies of Philotas worked so effectually as to inflame the suspicions and the pre-existing ill-will of Alexander into fierce rancour. He resolved on the disgrace, torture, and death of Philotas--and on the death of Parmenion besides.
To accomplish this, however, against the two highest officers in the Macedonian service, one of them enjoying a separate and distant command, required management. Alexander was obliged to carry the feelings of the soldiers along with him, and to obtain a condemnation from the army, according to an ancient Macedonian custom, in regard to capital crimes, though, as it seems, not uniformly practised. He not only kept the resolution secret, but is even said to have invited Philotas to supper with the other officers, conversing with him just as usual. In the middle of the night, Philotas was arrested while asleep in his bed, put in chains, and clothed in an ignoble garb. A military assembly was convened at daybreak, before which Alexander appeared with the chief officers in his confidence. Addressing the soldiers in a vehement tone of mingled sorrow and anger, he proclaimed to them that his life had just been providentially rescued from a dangerous conspiracy organised by two men hitherto trusted as his best friends--Philotas and Parmenion--through the intended agency of a soldier named Dimnus, who had slain himself when arrested. The dead body of Dimnus was then exhibited to the meeting, while Nicomachus and Cebalinus were brought forward to tell their story. A letter from Parmenion to his sons Philotas and Nicanor, found among the papers seized on the arrest, was read to the meeting. Its terms were altogether vague and unmeaning; but Alexander chose to construe them as it suited his purpose.
We may easily conceive the impression produced upon these assembled soldiers by such denunciations from Alexander himself--revelations of his own personal danger, and reproaches against treacherous friends. Amyntas, and even Cœnus, the brother-in-law of Philotas, were yet more unmeasured in their invectives against the accused. They, as well as the other officers with whom the arrest had been concerted, set the example of violent manifestation against him, and ardent sympathy with the king’s danger. Philotas was heard in his defence, which, though strenuously denying the charge, is said to have been feeble. It was indeed sure to be so, coming from one seized thus suddenly, and overwhelmed with disadvantages; while a degree of courage, absolutely heroic, would have been required for any one else to rise and presume to criticise the proofs. The royal pages began the cry, echoed by all around, that they would with their own hands tear the parricide in pieces.
It would have been fortunate for Philotas if their wrath had been sufficiently ungovernable to instigate the execution of such a sentence on the spot. But this did not suit the purpose of his enemies. Aware that he had been condemned upon the regal word, with nothing better than the faintest negative ground of suspicion, they determined to extort from him a confession such as would justify their own purposes, not only against him, but against his father Parmenion--whom there was as yet nothing to implicate. Accordingly, during the ensuing night, Philotas was put to the torture. Hephæstion, Craterus, and Cœnus--the last of the three being brother-in-law of Philotas--themselves superintended the ministers of physical suffering. Alexander himself, too, was at hand, but concealed by a curtain. It is said that Philotas manifested little firmness under torture, and that Alexander, an unseen witness, indulged in sneers against the cowardice of one who had fought by his side in so many battles. All who stood by were enemies, and likely to describe the conduct of Philotas in such manner as to justify their own hatred. The tortures inflicted, cruel in the extreme and long continued, wrung from him at last a confession, implicating his father along with himself. He was put to death; and at the same time, all those whose names had been indicated by Nicomachus, were slain also--apparently by being stoned, without preliminary torture. Philotas had serving in the army a numerous kindred, all of whom were struck with consternation at the news of his being tortured. It was the Macedonian law that all kinsmen of a man guilty of treason were doomed to death along with him. Accordingly, some of these men slew themselves, others fled from the camp, seeking refuge wherever they could. Such was the terror and tumult in the camp, that Alexander was obliged to proclaim a suspension of this sanguinary law for the occasion.
It now remained to kill Parmenion, who could not be safely left alive after the atrocities used towards Philotas; and to kill him, moreover, before he could have time to hear of them, since he was not only the oldest, most respected, and most influential of all Macedonian officers, but also in separate command of the great depot at Ecbatana. Alexander summoned to his presence one of the companions named Polydamas; a particular friend, comrade, or aide-de-camp, of Parmenion. Every friend of Philotas felt at this moment that his life hung by a thread; so that Polydamas entered the king’s presence in extreme terror, as he was ordered to bring with him his two younger brothers. Alexander addressed him, denouncing Parmenion as a traitor, and intimating that Polydamas would be required to carry a swift and confidential message to Ecbatana, ordering his execution. Polydamas was selected as the attached friend of Parmenion, and therefore as best calculated to deceive him. Two letters were placed in his hands, addressed to Parmenion; one from Alexander himself, conveying ostensibly military communications and orders; the other, signed with the seal-ring of the deceased Philotas, and purporting to be addressed by the son to the father. Together with these, Polydamas received the real and important despatch, addressed by Alexander to Cleander and Menidas, the officers immediately subordinate to Parmenion at Ecbatana; proclaiming Parmenion guilty of high treason, and directing them to kill him at once. Large rewards were offered to Polydamas if he performed this commission with success, while his two brothers were retained as hostages against scruples or compunction. He promised even more than was demanded--too happy to purchase this reprieve from what had seemed impending death. Furnished with native guides and with swift dromedaries, he struck by the straightest road across the desert of Khorasan, and arrived at Ecbatana on the eleventh day--a distance usually requiring more than thirty days to traverse. Entering the camp by night, without the knowledge of Parmenion, he delivered his despatch to Cleander, with whom he concerted measures. On the morrow he was admitted to Parmenion, while walking in his garden with Cleander and the other officers marked out by Alexander’s order as his executioners. Polydamas ran to embrace his old friend, and was heartily welcomed by the unsuspecting veteran, to whom he presented the letters professedly coming from Alexander and Philotas. While Parmenion was absorbed in perusal, he was suddenly assailed by a mortal stab from the hand and sword of Cleander. Other wounds were heaped upon him as he fell, by the remaining officers--the last even after life had departed.
The soldiers in Ecbatana, on hearing of this bloody deed, burst into furious mutiny, surrounded the garden wall, and threatened to break in for the purpose of avenging their general, unless Polydamas and the other murderers should be delivered to them. But Cleander, admitting a few of the ringleaders, exhibited to them Alexander’s written orders, to which the soldiers yielded, not without murmurs of reluctance and indignation. Most of them dispersed, yet a few remained, entreating permission to bury Parmenion’s body. Even this was long refused by Cleander, from dread of the king’s displeasure. At last, however, thinking it prudent to comply in part, he cut off the head, delivering to them the trunk alone for burial. The head was sent to Alexander.
Among the many tragical deeds recounted throughout the course of this history, there is none more revolting than the fate of these two generals. Alexander, violent in all his impulses, displayed on this occasion a personal rancour worthy of his ferocious mother Olympias, exasperated rather than softened by the magnitude of past services. When we see the greatest officers of the Macedonian army directing in person, and under the eye of Alexander, the laceration and burning of the naked body of their colleague Philotas, and assassinating with their own hands the veteran Parmenion, we feel how much we have passed out of the region of Greek civic feeling into that of the more savage Illyrian warrior, partially orientalised. It is not surprising to read, that Antipater, viceroy of Macedonia, who had shared with Parmenion the favour and confidence of Philip as well as of Alexander, should tremble when informed of such proceedings, and cast about for a refuge against the like possibilities to himself. Many other officers were alike alarmed and disgusted with the transactions. Hence Alexander, opening and examining the letters sent home from his army to Macedonia, detected such strong expressions of indignation, that he thought it prudent to transfer many pronounced malcontents into a division by themselves, parting them off from the remaining army. Instead of appointing any substitute for Philotas in the command of the companion cavalry, he cast that body into two divisions, nominating Hephæstion to the command of one, and Clitus to that of the other.
CAPTURE OF BESSUS
[Sidenote: [330-329 B.C.]]
The autumn and winter (330-329 B.C.) were spent by Alexander in reducing Drangiana, Gedrosia, Arachosia, and the Paropamisadæ, the modern Seistan, Afghanistan, and the western part of Kabul, lying between Ghazna on the north, Kandahar or Kelar on the south, and Furrah in the west. He experienced no combined resistance, but his troops suffered severely from cold and privation. Near the southern termination of one of the passes of the Hindu-Kush (apparently northeast of the town of Kabul) he founded a new city, called Alexandria ad Caucasum, where he planted seven thousand old soldiers, Macedonians, and others as colonists. Towards the close of winter he crossed over the mighty range of the Hindu-Kush; a march of fifteen days through regions of snow, and fraught with hardship to his army. On reaching the north side of these mountains, he found himself in Bactria.
The Bactrian leader Bessus, who had assumed the title of king, could muster no more than a small force, with which he laid waste the country, and then retired across the river Oxus into Sogdiana, destroying all the boats. Alexander overran Bactria with scarcely any resistance; the chief places, Bactra (Balkh) and Aornus, surrendering to him on the first demonstration of attack. Having named Artabazus satrap of Bactria, and placed Archelaus with a garrison in Aornus, he marched northward towards the river Oxus, the boundary between Bactria and Sogdiana. It was a march of extreme hardship; reaching for two or three days across a sandy desert destitute of water, and under very hot weather. The Oxus, six furlongs in breadth, deep, and rapid, was the most formidable river that the Macedonians had yet seen. Alexander transported his army across it on the tent-skins inflated and stuffed with straw. It seems surprising that Bessus did not avail himself of this favourable opportunity for resisting a passage in itself so difficult; he had however been abandoned by his Bactrian cavalry at the moment when he quitted their territory. Some of his companions, Spitamenes and others, terrified at the news that Alexander had crossed the Oxus, were anxious to make their own peace by betraying their leader. They sent a proposition to this effect; upon which Ptolemy with a light division was sent forward by Alexander, and was enabled, by extreme celerity of movements, to surprise and seize Bessus in a village. Alexander ordered that he should be held in chains, naked, and with a collar round his neck, at the side of the road along which the army were marching. On reaching the spot, Alexander stopped his chariot, and sternly demanded from Bessus, on what pretence he had first arrested, and afterwards slain, his king and benefactor Darius. Bessus replied, that he had not done this single-handed; others were concerned in it along with him, to procure for themselves lenient treatment from Alexander. The king said no more, but ordered Bessus to be scourged, and then sent back as prisoner to Bactra.[31]
In his onward march, Alexander approached a small town, inhabited by the Branchidæ; descendants of those Branchidæ near Miletus on the coast of Ionia, who had administered the great temple and oracle of Apollo on Cape Posidium, and who had yielded up the treasures of that temple to the Persian king Xerxes, 150 years before. This surrender had brought upon them so much odium, that when the dominion of Xerxes was overthrown on the coast, they retired with him into the interior of Asia. Delighted to find themselves once more in commerce with Greeks, they poured forth to meet and welcome the army, tendering all that they possessed. Alexander, when he heard who they were and what was their parentage, gave orders to massacre the entire population--men, women, and children. They were slain without arms or attempt at resistance, resorting to nothing but prayers and suppliant manifestations. Alexander next commanded the walls to be levelled, and the sacred groves cut down, so that no habitable site might remain, nor anything except solitude and sterility. Such was the revenge taken upon these unhappy victims for the deeds of their ancestors in the fourth or fifth generation before. Alexander doubtless considered himself to be executing the wrath of Apollo against an accursed race who had robbed the temple of the god. The Macedonian expedition had been proclaimed to be undertaken originally for the purpose of revenging upon the contemporary Persians the ancient wrongs done to Greece by Xerxes; so that Alexander would follow out the same sentiment in revenging upon the contemporary Branchidæ the acts of their ancestors--yet more guilty than Xerxes, in his belief. The massacre of this unfortunate population was in fact an example of human sacrifice on the largest scale, offered to the gods by the religious impulses of Alexander, and worthy to be compared to that of the Carthaginian general Hannibal, when he sacrificed three thousand Grecian prisoners on the field of Himera, where his grandfather Hamilcar had been slain seventy years before.
LIMIT OF ALEXANDER’S PROGRESS NORTHWARD
[Sidenote: [329-327 B.C.]]
Alexander then continued his onward progress, first to Maracanda (Samarcand), the chief town of Sogdiana--next to the river Jaxartes, which he and his companions, in their imperfect geographical notions, believed to be the Tanaïs, the boundary between Asia and Europe. In his march, he left garrisons in various towns, but experienced no resistance, though detached bodies of the natives hovered on his flanks.
Here, on the river Jaxartes, Alexander projected the foundation of a new city to bear his name; intended as a protection against incursions from the Scythian nomads on the other side of the river. He planted in it some Macedonian veterans and Grecian mercenaries, together with volunteer settlers from the natives around. An army of Scythian nomads, showing themselves on the other side of the river, piqued his vanity to cross over and attack them. Carrying over a division of his army on inflated skins, he defeated them with little difficulty, pursuing them briskly into the desert. But the weather was intensely hot, and the army suffered much from thirst; while the little water to be found was so bad, that it brought upon Alexander a diarrhœa which endangered his life. This chase of a few miles on the right bank of the Jaxartes (seemingly in the present Khanat of Khokand), marked the utmost limit of Alexander’s progress northward.
Shortly afterwards, a Macedonian detachment, unskilfully conducted, was destroyed in Sogdiana by Spitamenes and the Scythians: a rare misfortune, which Alexander avenged by overrunning the region near the river Polytimetus (the Kohik), and putting to the sword the inhabitants of all the towns which he took. He then recrossed the Oxus, to rest during the extreme season of winter at Zariaspa in Bactria, from whence his communications with the West and with Macedonia were more easy, and where he received various reinforcements of Greek troops.
Alexander, distributing his army into five divisions, traversed the country and put down all resistance, while he also took measures for establishing several military posts, or new towns, in convenient places. After some time the whole army was reunited at the chief place of Sogdiana, Maracanda, where some halt and repose was given.
ALEXANDER MURDERS HIS FRIEND
[Sidenote: [327 B.C.]]
During this halt at Maracanda (Samarcand), 328-327 B.C., the memorable banquet occurred wherein Alexander murdered Clitus. Clitus had saved his life at the battle of the Granicus, by cutting off the sword arm of the Persian Spithridates, when already uplifted to strike him from behind. Since the death of Philotas, the important function of general of the companion cavalry had been divided between Hephæstion and Clitus. Moreover, the family of Clitus had been attached to Philip, by ties so ancient, that his sister, Lanice, had been selected as the nurse of Alexander himself when a child. Two of her sons had already perished in the Asiatic battles. If, therefore, there were any man who stood high in the service, or was privileged to speak his mind freely to Alexander, it was Clitus.
In this banquet at Maracanda, when wine, according to the Macedonian habit, had been abundantly drunk, and when Alexander, Clitus, and most of the other guests were already nearly intoxicated, enthusiasts or flatterers heaped immoderate eulogies upon the king’s previous achievements. They exalted him above all the most venerated legendary heroes; they proclaimed that his superhuman deeds proved his divine paternity, and that he had earned an apotheosis like Hercules, which nothing but envy could withhold from him even during his life. Alexander himself joined in these boasts, and even took credit for the later victories of the reign of his father, whose abilities and glory he depreciated. To the old Macedonian officers, such an insult cast on the memory of Philip was deeply offensive. But among them all, none had been more indignant than Clitus, with the growing insolence of Alexander--his assumed filiation from Zeus Ammon, which put aside Philip as unworthy--his preference for Persian attendants, who granted or refused admittance to his person--his extending to Macedonian soldiers the contemptuous treatment habitually endured by Asiatics, and even allowing them to be scourged by Persian hands and Persian rods. The pride of a Macedonian general in the stupendous successes of the last five years, was effaced by his mortification, when he saw that they tended only to merge his countrymen amidst a crowd of servile Asiatics, and to inflame the prince with high-flown aspirations transmitted from Xerxes or Ochus. But whatever might be the internal thoughts of Macedonian officers, they held their peace before Alexander, whose formidable character and exorbitant self-estimation would tolerate no criticism.
At the banquet of Maracanda, this long-suppressed repugnance found an issue, accidental, indeed, and unpremeditated, but for that very reason all the more violent and unmeasured. The wine, which made Alexander more boastful, and his flatterers fulsome to excess, overpowered altogether the reserve of Clitus. He rebuked the impiety of those who degraded the ancient heroes in order to make a pedestal for Alexander. He protested against the injustice of disparaging the exalted and legitimate fame of Philip, whose achievements he loudly extolled, pronouncing them to be equal, and even superior, to those of his son. For the exploits of Alexander, splendid as they were, had been accomplished, not by himself alone, but by that unconquerable Macedonian force which he had found ready made to his hands; whereas those of Philip had been his own--since he had found Macedonia prostrate and disorganised, and had to create for himself both soldiers and a military system. The great instruments of Alexander’s victories had been Philip’s old soldiers, whom he now despised, and among them Parmenion, whom he had put to death.
Remarks such as these, poured forth in the coarse language of a half-intoxicated Macedonian veteran, provoked loud contradiction from many, and gave poignant offence to Alexander; who now for the first time heard the open outburst of disapprobation, before concealed and known to him only by surmise. But wrath and contradiction, both from him and from others, only made Clitus more reckless in the outpouring of his own feelings, now discharged with delight after having been so long pent up. He passed from the old Macedonian soldiers to himself individually. Stretching forth his right hand towards Alexander, he exclaimed, “Recollect that you owe your life to me; this hand preserved you at the Granicus. Listen to the outspoken language of truth, or else abstain from asking freemen to supper, and confine yourself to the society of barbaric slaves.” All these reproaches stung Alexander to the quick. But nothing was so intolerable to him as the respectful sympathy for Parmenion, which brought to his memory one of the blackest deeds of his life--and the reminiscence of his preservation at the Granicus, which lowered him into the position of a debtor towards the very censor under whose reproof he was now smarting.
At length wrath and intoxication together drove him into uncontrollable fury. He started from his couch, and felt for his dagger to spring at Clitus; but the dagger had been put out of reach by one of his attendants. In a loud voice and with the Macedonian word of command, he summoned the bodyguards and ordered the trumpeter to sound an alarm. But no one obeyed so grave an order, given in his condition of drunkenness. His principal officers, Ptolemy, Perdiccas, and others, clung round him, held his arms and body, and besought him to abstain from violence; others at the same time tried to silence Clitus and hurry him out of the hall, which had now become a scene of tumult and consternation. But Clitus was not in a humour to confess himself in the wrong by retiring; while Alexander, furious at the opposition now, for the first time, offered to his will, exclaimed that his officers held him in chains as Bessus had held Darius, and left him nothing but the name of a king. Though anxious to restrain his movements, they doubtless did not dare to employ much physical force; so that his great personal strength, and continued efforts, presently set him free. He then snatched a pike from one of the soldiers, rushed upon Clitus, and thrust him through on the spot, exclaiming, “Go now to Philip and Parmenion.”
REMORSE OF ALEXANDER
No sooner was the deed perpetrated than the feelings of Alexander underwent an entire revolution. The spectacle of Clitus, a bleeding corpse on the floor--the marks of stupefaction and horror evident in all the spectators, and the reaction from a furious impulse instantaneously satiated--plunged him at once into the opposite extreme of remorse and self-condemnation. Hastening out of the hall, and retiring to bed, he passed three days in an agony of distress, without food or drink. He burst into tears and multiplied exclamations on his own mad act; he dwelt upon the names of Clitus and Lanice with the debt of gratitude which he owed to each, and denounced himself as unworthy to live after having requited such services with a foul murder. His friends at length prevailed on him to take food, and return to activity. All joined in trying to restore his self-satisfaction. The Macedonian army passed a public vote that Clitus had been justly slain, and that his body should remain unburied; which afforded opportunity to Alexander to reverse the vote, and to direct that it should be buried by his own order. The prophets comforted him by the assurance that his murderous impulse had arisen, not from his own natural mind, but from a maddening perversion intentionally brought on by the god Dionysus, to avenge the omission of a sacrifice due to him on the day of the banquet, but withheld. Lastly, the Greek sophist or philosopher, Anaxarchus of Abdera, revived Alexander’s spirits by well-timed flattery, treating his sensibility as nothing better than generous weakness; reminding him that in his exalted position of conqueror and Great King, he was entitled to prescribe what was right and just, instead of submitting himself to laws dictated from without. Callisthenes the philosopher was also summoned, along with Anaxarchus, to the king’s presence, for the same purpose of offering consolatory reflections. But he is said to have adopted a tone of discourse altogether different, and to have given offence rather than satisfaction to Alexander.
To such remedial influences, and probably still more to the absolute necessity for action, Alexander’s remorse at length yielded. Like the other emotions of his fiery soul, it was violent and overpowering while it lasted. But it cannot be shown to have left any durable trace on his character, nor any effects justifying the unbounded admiration of Arrian; who has little but blame to bestow on the murdered Clitus, while he expresses the strongest sympathy for the mental suffering of the murderer.
After ten days, Alexander again put his army in motion, to complete the subjugation of Sogdiana. He found no enemy capable of meeting him in pitched battle; yet Spitamenes, with the Sogdians and some Scythian allies, raised much hostility of detail, which it cost another year to put down. Alexander underwent the greatest fatigue and hardships in his marches through the mountainous parts of this wide, rugged, and poorly supplied country, with rocky positions, strong by nature, which his enemies sought to defend. One of these fastnesses, held by a native chief named Sisymithres, seemed almost unattackable, and was indeed taken rather by intimidation than by actual force. The Scythians, after a partial success over a small Macedonian detachment, were at length so thoroughly beaten and overawed, that they slew Spitamenes, and sent his head to the conqueror as a propitiatory offering.
After a short rest at Nautaca during the extreme winter, Alexander resumed operations, by attacking a strong post called the Sogdian Rock, whither a large number of fugitives had assembled, with an ample supply of provision. It was a precipice supposed to be inexpugnable; and would seemingly have proved so, in spite of the energy and abilities of Alexander, had not the occupants altogether neglected their guard, and yielded at the mere sight of a handful of Macedonians who had scrambled up the precipice. Among the captives taken by Alexander on this rock, were the wife and family of the Bactrian chief Oxyartes; one of whose daughters, named Roxane, so captivated Alexander by her beauty that he resolved to make her his wife. He then passed out of Sogdiana into the neighbouring territory Parætacene, where there was another inexpugnable site called the Rock of Chorienes, which he was also fortunate enough to reduce.
From hence Alexander went to Bactra. Sending Craterus with a division to put the last hand to the reduction of Parætacene, he himself remained at Bactra, preparing for his expedition across the Hindu Kush to the conquest of India. As a security for tranquillity of Bactria and Sogdiana during his absence, he levied thirty thousand young soldiers from those countries to accompany him.
It was at Bactra that Alexander celebrated his marriage with the captive Roxane, in the spring of 327 B.C. Amidst the repose and festivities connected with that event, the oriental temper which he was acquiring displayed itself more forcibly than ever. He could no longer be satisfied without obtaining prostration, or worship, from Greeks and Macedonians as well as from Persians; a public and unanimous recognition of his divine origin and superhuman dignity. Some Greeks and Macedonians had already rendered to him this homage. Nevertheless to the greater number, in spite of their extreme deference and admiration for him, it was repugnant and degrading. Even the imperious Alexander shrank from issuing public and formal orders on such a subject; but a manœuvre was concerted, with his privity, by the Persians and certain compliant Greek sophists or philosophers, for the purpose of carrying the point by surprise.
During a banquet at Bactra, the philosopher Anaxarchus, addressing the assembly in a prepared harangue, extolled Alexander’s exploits as greatly surpassing those of Dionysus and Hercules. He proclaimed that Alexander had already done more than enough to establish a title to divine honours from the Macedonians; who, he said, would assuredly worship Alexander after his death, and ought in justice to worship him during his life, forthwith.
This harangue was applauded, and similar sentiments were enforced, by others favourable to the plan; who proceeded to set the example of immediate compliance, and were themselves the first to tender worship. Most of the Macedonian officers sat unmoved, disgusted at the speech. But though disgusted, they said nothing. To reply to a speech doubtless well-turned and flowing, required some powers of oratory; moreover, it was well known that whoever dared to reply stood marked out for the antipathy of Alexander. The fate of Clitus, who had arraigned the same sentiments in the banqueting hall of Maracanda, was fresh in the recollection of every one. The repugnance which many felt, but none ventured to express, at length found an organ in Callisthenes of Olynthus.
This philosopher, whose melancholy fate imparts a peculiar interest to his name, was nephew of Aristotle, and had enjoyed through his uncle an early acquaintance with Alexander during the boyhood of the latter. At the recommendation of Aristotle, Callisthenes had accompanied Alexander in his Asiatic expedition.
On occasion of the demonstration incited by Anaxarchus at the banquet, Callisthenes had been invited by Hephæstion to join in the worship intended to be proposed towards Alexander; and Hephæstion afterwards alleged, that he had promised to comply. But his actual conduct affords reasonable ground for believing that he made no such promise; for he not only thought it his duty to refuse the act of worship, but also to state publicly his reasons for disapproving it; the more so, as he perceived that most of the Macedonians present felt like himself. He contended that the distinction between gods and men was one which could not be confounded without impiety and wrong. Alexander had amply earned--as a man, a general, and a king--the highest honours compatible with humanity; but to exalt him into a god would be both an injury to him and an offence to the gods. Anaxarchus, he said, was the last person from whom such a proposition ought to come, because he was one of those whose only title to Alexander’s society was founded upon his capacity to give instructive and wholesome counsel.
Callisthenes spoke out what numbers of his hearers felt. The speech was so warmly applauded by the Macedonians present, especially the older officers, that Alexander thought it prudent to forbid all further discussion upon this delicate subject. Presently the Persians present, according to Asiatic custom, approached him and performed their prostration; after which Alexander pledged, in successive goblets of wine, those Greeks and Macedonians with whom he had held previous concert. To each of them the goblet was handed, and each, after drinking to answer the pledge, approached the king, made his prostration, and then received a salute. Lastly, Alexander sent the pledge to Callisthenes, who, after drinking like the rest, approached him for the purpose of receiving the salute but without any prostration. Of this omission Alexander was expressly informed by one of the companions; upon which he declined to admit Callisthenes to a salute. The latter retired, observing, “Then I shall go away, worse off than others as far as the salute goes.”
Callisthenes certainly would have done well to withdraw earlier (if indeed he could have withdrawn without offence) from the camp of Alexander, in which no lettered Greek could now associate without abnegating his freedom of speech and sentiment, and emulating the servility of Anaxarchus. But being present, as Callisthenes was, in the hall at Bactra when the proposition of Anaxarchus was made, and when silence would have been assent--his protest against it was both seasonable and dignified for being fraught with danger to himself.
Callisthenes knew that danger well, and was quickly enabled to recognise it in the altered demeanour of Alexander towards him. He was, from that day, a marked man in two senses: first, to Alexander himself, as well as to the rival sophists and all promoters of the intended deification--for hatred, and for getting up some accusatory pretence such as might serve to ruin him; next, to the more free-spirited Macedonians, indignant witnesses of Alexander’s increased insolence, and admirers of the courageous Greek who had protested against the motion of Anaxarchus. By such men he was doubtless much extolled; which praises aggravated his danger, as they were sure to be reported to Alexander. The pretext for his ruin was not long wanting.
CONSPIRACY OF THE ROYAL PAGES
Among those who admired and sought the conversation of Callisthenes, was Hermolaus, one of the royal pages--the band, selected from noble Macedonian families, who did duty about the person of the king. It had happened that this young man, one of Alexander’s companions in the chase, on seeing a wild boar rushing up to attack the king, darted his javelin, and slew the animal. Alexander, angry to be anticipated in killing the boar, ordered Hermolaus to be scourged before all the other pages and deprived him of his horse. Thus humiliated and outraged--for an act not merely innocent, but the omission of which, if Alexander had sustained any injury from the boar, might have been held punishable--Hermolaus became resolutely bent on revenge. He enlisted in the project his intimate friend Sostratus, with several others among the pages; and it was agreed among them to kill Alexander in his chamber, on the first night when they were all on guard together. The appointed night arrived, without any divulgation of their secret; yet the scheme was frustrated by the accident, that Alexander continued till daybreak drinking with his officers, and never retired to bed. On the morrow, one of the conspirators, becoming alarmed or repentant, divulged the scheme to his friend Charicles, with the names of those concerned. Eurylochus, brother to Charicles, apprised by him of what he had heard, immediately informed Ptolemy, through whom it was conveyed to Alexander. By Alexander’s order, the persons indicated were arrested and put to the torture; under which they confessed that they had themselves conspired to kill him, but named no other accomplices, and even denied that anyone else was privy to the scheme. In this denial they persisted, though extreme suffering was applied to extort the revelation of new names. They were then brought up and arraigned as conspirators before the assembled Macedonian soldiers. There the confession was repeated. It is even said that Hermolaus, in repeating it, boasted of the enterprise as both legitimate and glorious; denouncing the tyranny and cruelty of Alexander as having become insupportable to a freeman. Whether such boast was actually made or not, the persons brought up were pronounced guilty, and stoned to death forthwith by the soldiers.
The pages thus executed were young men of good Macedonian families, for whose condemnation accordingly Alexander had thought it necessary to invoke--what he was sure of obtaining against any one--the sentence of the soldiers. To satisfy his hatred against Callisthenes--not a Macedonian, but only a Greek citizen, one of the remnants of the subverted city of Olynthus--no such formality was required. In his case, therefore, as in that of Philotas before, it was necessary to pick up matter of suspicious tendency from his reported remarks and conversations. He was alleged to have addressed dangerous and inflammatory language to the pages, holding up Alexander to odium, instigating them to conspiracy, and pointing out Athens as a place of refuge; he was moreover well known to have been often in conversation with Hermolaus. For a man of the violent temper and omnipotent authority of Alexander, such indications were quite sufficient as grounds of action against one whom he hated.
On this occasion, we have the state of Alexander’s mind disclosed by himself, in one of the references to his letters given by Plutarch. Writing to Craterus and to others immediately afterwards, Alexander distinctly stated that the pages throughout all their torture had deposed against no one but themselves. Nevertheless, in another letter addressed to Antipater in Macedonia, he used these expressions: “The pages were stoned to death by the Macedonians; but I myself shall punish the sophist, as well as those who sent him out here, and those who harbour in their cities conspirators against me.” The sophist Callisthenes had been sent out by Aristotle, who is here designated; and probably the Athenians after him. Fortunately for Aristotle, he was not at Bactra, but at Athens. That he could have had any concern in the conspiracy of the pages, was impossible. In this savage outburst of menace against his absent preceptor, Alexander discloses the real state of feeling which prompted him to the destruction of Callisthenes--hatred towards that spirit of citizenship and free speech, which Callisthenes not only cherished, in common with Aristotle and most other literary Greeks, but had courageously manifested in his protest against the motion for worshipping a mortal.
Callisthenes was first put to the torture and then hanged. His tragical fate excited a profound sentiment of sympathy and indignation among the philosophers of antiquity.
The halts of Alexander were formidable to friends and companions; his marches, to the unconquered natives whom he chose to treat as enemies.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[28] [Curtius is obviously speaking of the Babylon of his own day (the early part of the first century A.D.), and assuming, no doubt correctly, that the venerable city had not greatly changed since the time of Alexander. The reader will recall the tales of Babylon quoted from Herodotus in our first volume.]
[29] [Grote values this at £11,500,000 which amounts to about $55,000,000. Reckoned as Æginetan talents the sum would be far greater. Grote says it would seem incredible were it not that the treasures of Persepolis were found far greater.]
[30] [This sum, which Grote reckons at £27,600,000 or $138,000,000, need not be considered impossible, viewing the extent and the extortion of Persian despotism; the soldiers were paid by the provinces that contributed them; the servants of the government had no salaries in cash from above; and the royal disbursements for necessary expenses were accordingly small. Grote notes that when Nadia-Shah took Delhi in 1739, he found a treasure stated as £32,000,000--even more than Alexander’s loot. A pride, too, was taken in vast hoards of precious metal by the oriental despots. Prof. Bury[d] notes how the sudden circulation of such an amount would “perturb the markets of the world.”]
[31] [Later he was brought forth and Alexander had his nose and ears cut off. Mutilation was abhorrent to the Greeks, and even Arrian[e] (IV, 7) rebukes his hero for this atrocity. Bessus was then turned over to the Medes and Persians who, according to Diodorus,[f] XVII, 9,“after they had put him to all manner of torments, and used him with all the despite and disgrace imaginable, cut his body into small pieces and hurled every part here and there away out of their slings.” Plutarch,[g] however, says that two straight trees were bent together, and one of Bessus’ legs fastened to each so that when they were released and sprang apart, his body was torn asunder.]