Book 4

1.1. Darius, but lately the king of so great an army, who had entered the battle lifted high upon his chariot, after the manner of one celebrating a triumph rather than fighting, was now fleeing through regions which he had filled with all but immeasurable columns — now empty and waste with a vast solitude.

1.2. Few followed the king: for not all had directed their flight by the same road, and, their horses failing, they could not keep pace with those that the king was changing from time to time.

1.3. He then reached Onchae, where four thousand Greeks received him; yet none the less he pressed on to the Euphrates, believing now that this alone would be his own — what he could anticipate by speed.

1.4. But Alexander put Parmenio — through whom the booty had been recovered at Damascus, with orders to guard that very booty and the captives with diligent watch — in charge of Syria, which they call Coele.

1.5. The Syrians, not yet sufficiently tamed by the disasters of war, spurned the new dominion; but, speedily subdued, they obediently did what was commanded. The island of Aradus too was surrendered to the king.

1.6. The maritime coast at that time, and most of the country that recedes even further from the sea, was held by Strato, the king of that island: he being received into allegiance, Alexander moved his camp to the city of Marathus.

1.7. There a letter from Darius was delivered to him, at which, as written haughtily, he was vehemently offended: above all this moved him, that Darius had assigned the title of king to himself, but not the same to the name of Alexander.

1.8. He demanded, rather than asked, that, on receipt of as much money as the whole of Macedonia could contain, Alexander should restore to him his mother, his wife, and his children: and that he should, if he wished, contend for the kingdom on equal terms in battle.

1.9. If at last he could bring himself to endure saner counsels — to be content with his ancestral realm and to withdraw from the bounds of another's empire — he should be his ally and friend.

1.10. To this he was ready both to give his pledge and to receive Alexander's. In reply Alexander wrote back chiefly to this effect: "King Alexander to Darius, greeting. The Darius whose name you have assumed laid waste with every calamity the Greeks who hold the coast of the Hellespont and the Ionian colonies of the Greeks; then with a great army he crossed the sea, bringing war upon Macedonia and Greece.

1.11. Again Xerxes, of the same race, came to attack us with the forces of savage barbarians; and he, defeated in a sea-battle, yet left Mardonius in Greece, so that, even in his absence, he might lay waste our cities and burn our fields.

1.12. As for Philip, my father, who does not know that he was killed by men whom yours had tempted with the hope of an immense sum of money? For you undertake impious wars and, though you have arms, you bid for the heads of your enemies, just as you yourself lately, the king of so great an army, wished to buy an assassin against me for a thousand talents.

1.13. I am repelling war, therefore, not bringing it on. And the gods too stand on the better cause: I have reduced a great part of Asia under my dominion, and you yourself I have conquered in battle. Although you ought to obtain nothing from me, inasmuch as you have not observed even the laws of war against me, yet, if you come as a suppliant, I promise that you shall recover your mother and your wife and your children without ransom.

1.14. I know both how to conquer and how to spare the conquered. But if you are afraid to entrust yourself to us, we will give you a pledge that you shall come unharmed. For the rest, when you write to me, remember that you are writing not only to a king, but to your own king." To deliver this letter Thersippus was sent.

1.15. Then he went down into Phoenicia and received the town of Byblos, which was surrendered. Thence he came to Sidon, a city renowned for its antiquity and for the fame of its founders.

1.16. Strato reigned in it, supported by the resources of Darius: and since he had made the surrender through the will of his people rather than of his own accord, he was judged unworthy of the kingdom; and it was permitted to Hephaestion to set up as king whomever among the Sidonians he should judge most worthy of that eminence.

1.17. Hephaestion had two hosts, young men distinguished among their own people: who, when the power of reigning was offered to them, declared that no one could be received into that eminence after the ancestral fashion unless he were sprung of royal stock.

1.18. Hephaestion, marvelling at the greatness of spirit of men who scorned what others sought through fire and sword, said: "Blessing on your virtue, you who have been the first to understand how much greater a thing it is to disdain a kingdom than to accept one. But give me someone of royal stock, who will remember that he has received his kingdom from you."

1.19. And they, since they perceived that many were hovering over so great a hope — each of Alexander's friends now flattering them out of an excessive desire for the kingdom — resolved that no one was preferable to a certain Abdalonymus, connected indeed by distant kinship with the royal stock, but, by reason of his poverty, tending a small suburban garden for a meagre wage.

1.20. The cause of his poverty, as with very many, was his probity; and, intent upon his daily labour, he did not hear the din of arms which had shaken all Asia.

1.21. Then suddenly the men of whom we spoke above, with the insignia of the royal robe, entered the garden which Abdalonymus happened to be clearing, picking out the barren weeds.

1.22. Then, having saluted him as king, one of them said: "This dress, which you behold in my hands, must be exchanged by you for that squalor of yours. Wash your body, foul with grime and earthy filth: take on the spirit of a king, and into that fortune of which you are worthy carry that self-restraint of yours. And when you shall sit upon the royal throne, the master of the life and death of all the citizens, beware lest you forget the condition in which you receive your kingdom — nay, by Heaven, on account of which you receive it."

1.23. The thing seemed to Abdalonymus like a dream: from time to time he kept asking whether they were quite in their senses, who so insolently mocked him. But when, as he hesitated, his squalor had been washed away, and a robe distinguished with purple and gold thrown over him, and faith given by their oaths, then in earnest, the same men attending him, the king came to the palace.

1.24. The report then, as is usual, ran briskly through the whole city: the zeal of some, the indignation of others, was conspicuous; every wealthiest man brought charges of his lowliness and poverty before Alexander's friends.

1.25. The king ordered him to be admitted at once, and, after gazing at him for a long while, said: "The bearing of your body does not belie the report of your birth; but I should like to know with what patience you have borne your poverty." Then he replied: "Would that I may bear my kingdom with the same spirit! These hands sufficed for my needs: having nothing, I lacked nothing."

1.26. From this speech of Abdalonymus he conceived a high opinion of his natural endowment. And so he ordered to be assigned to him not only the royal furniture of Strato, but also most of the Persian booty: he also added to his dominion the region adjoining the city.

1.27. Meanwhile Amyntas — who, as we said, had deserted from Alexander to the Persians — with four thousand Greeks who had followed him in his flight from the battle line, reached Tripolis. Thence, having put his soldiers aboard ships, he crossed to Cyprus; and, since in that state of affairs he supposed that each man would hold whatever he had seized, as though possessed by a sure right, he resolved to make for Egypt — an enemy to both kings, and forever hanging upon the doubtful change of the times.

1.28. And, exhorting his soldiers to the hope of so great an enterprise, he told them that Sabaces, the satrap of Egypt, had fallen in battle: the Persian garrison was both without a leader and weak; the Egyptians, always hostile to their satraps, would reckon them as allies, not as enemies.

1.29. Necessity compelled them to try everything: for when fortune forsakes our first hopes, the future seems better than the present. And so they cried out that he should lead them wherever he thought best. And he, thinking that he must use their spirits while they were warm with hope, penetrated to the Pelusiac mouth, pretending that he had been sent as satrap by Darius.

1.30. Having gained possession, then, of Pelusium, he advanced his forces to Memphis. At the report of this the Egyptians — a fickle people, fitter for stirring up affairs than for conducting them — flocked thither each from his own villages and cities, to destroy the garrisons of the Persians.

1.31. These, though terrified, yet did not abandon the hope of holding Egypt. But Amyntas, having overcome them in battle, drove them into the city, and, having pitched camp, sent his victors to plunder the fields. Everything was done as though the goods of the enemy lay open in the midst:

1.32. and so Mazaces, although he had learned that the spirits of his men had been terrified by the unhappy battle, yet, pointing out that they were straggling and unwary in their confidence of victory, prevailed on them not to hesitate to burst out from the city and recover what had been lost.

1.33. This counsel was no more prudent in its reasoning than fortunate in its outcome: to a man they were all killed, together with their leader. This penalty Amyntas paid to both kings, no more faithful to the one to whom he had deserted than to the one whom he had abandoned.

1.34. The satraps of Darius who had survived the battle at Issus, with all the band that had followed them in flight, having taken on besides the young men of the Cappadocians and Paphlagonians, attempted to recover Lydia.

1.35. Antigonus, a satrap of Alexander, was governor of Lydia: and though he had dismissed most of his soldiers from the garrisons to the king, yet, despising the barbarians, he led his men out into the line of battle. There too the same fortune of the parties prevailed: in three battles, fought in one place and another, the Persians were routed.

1.36. At the same time the fleet of the Macedonians, summoned from Greece, overcame Aristomenes — who had been sent by Darius to recover the coast of the Hellespont — by capturing or destroying his ships.

1.37. Then Pharnabazus, the commander of the Persian fleet, having exacted money from the Milesians and introduced a garrison into the city of Chios, made with a hundred ships for Andros and thence for Siphnos. These islands too he occupied with garrisons and fined them money.

1.38. The magnitude of the war, which was being waged by the most opulent kings of Europe and Asia in the hope of seizing the whole world, had stirred to arms Greece too and Crete.

1.39. Agis, king of the Lacedaemonians, having gathered eight thousand Greeks who, fugitives from Cilicia, had returned to their homes, was preparing war against Antipater, the governor of Macedonia.

1.40. The Cretans, attaching themselves to one side or the other, were now occupied by Spartan, now by Macedonian garrisons. But the contests among them were of slighter moment: fortune was watching the one struggle on which all the rest depended.

2.1. Now all Syria, now Phoenicia too, except Tyre, was the Macedonians'; and the king had his camp on the mainland, from which a narrow strait divides the city.

2.2. Tyre, in both its size and its renown the most memorable of all the cities of Syria and Phoenicia, seemed likely to accept the alliance of Alexander more readily than his dominion. Envoys, therefore, brought a golden crown as a gift, and had carried out of the town provisions liberally and hospitably. He ordered the gifts to be received as from friends, and, having addressed the envoys kindly, said that he wished to sacrifice to Hercules, whom the Tyrians especially worshipped:

2.3. that the kings of the Macedonians believed they derived their descent from that god, and that he himself had even been warned by an oracle to do this.

2.4. The envoys replied that there was a temple of Hercules outside the city, in the place which they themselves call Palaetyrus: there the king might duly make sacrifice to the god.

2.5. He did not restrain his anger, of which otherwise he was not master. And so he said: "You indeed, in your confidence in your situation, because you inhabit an island, despise this army on foot; but in a short time I will show you that you are on the mainland. So you may be sure: I will either enter your city or storm it."

2.6. Dismissed with this answer, they began to warn their people to permit a king whom Syria, whom Phoenicia had received, to enter their city too.

2.7. But the Tyrians, sufficiently confident in their position, had resolved to endure a siege. For a strait of four stades divides the city from the mainland, much exposed to the south-west wind, which rolls frequent waves from the deep upon the shore.

2.8. And to the work by which the Macedonians were preparing to join the island to the mainland nothing was a greater hindrance than that wind. For scarcely on a gentle and tranquil sea can the moles be driven forward; but the south-west wind undermines whatever has first been heaped up by the buffeting of the dashing sea, nor is any mole so firm that the waves do not eat it away, both trickling through the joints of the works and, where a sharper blast arises, pouring over the very top of the work.

2.9. Besides this difficulty there was another no less great. A very deep sea surrounded the walls and towers of the city: no engines could be brought to bear except discharged from ships at a distance, no ladders applied to the walls; a wall plunging sheer into the sea had cut off the approach on foot. And ships the king neither had, nor, if he had brought them up, could they, swaying and unstable, be kept off from the missiles.

2.10. Amid these things a matter small to tell of inflamed the confidence of the Tyrians. The envoys of the Carthaginians had then come to celebrate the annual sacrifice after the ancestral fashion: for the Tyrians founded Carthage and were always honoured in the place of parents.

2.11. The Carthaginians, then, began to exhort them to endure the siege with a brave heart: that aid would shortly come from Carthage. For at that time the seas were for the most part beset by the Punic fleets.

2.12. War being therefore resolved upon, they dispose engines along the walls and towers, distribute arms among the younger men, assign the craftsmen, of whom the city had an abundance, to the workshops. Everything resounds with the apparatus of war: iron hands too — they call them grapnels — to throw upon the enemy's works, and ravens, and other devices contrived for the defence of cities, were being made ready.

2.13. But when the iron that had to be wrought had been placed in the furnaces, and they were kindling the fire with the blast of bellows applied to it, rivulets of blood are said to have appeared beneath the very flames: and this omen the Tyrians turned to the destruction of the Macedonians.

2.14. Among the Macedonians too, when by chance some of the soldiers were breaking bread, they noted drops of flowing blood; and, the king being terrified, Aristander, most skilled of seers, said that, if the gore had flowed from the outer part, it would have boded ill for the Macedonians: but, on the contrary, since it had flowed from the inner part, it portended destruction for the city which they had resolved to besiege.

2.15. Alexander, since he both had his fleet far off and saw that a long siege would be a great hindrance to him in other matters, sent heralds to constrain them to peace: but the Tyrians, against the law of nations, killed them and cast them headlong into the deep. And he, moved by so unworthy a death of his men, resolved to besiege the city.

2.16. But first a mole had to be thrown up to connect the city with the mainland. A great despair, therefore, fell upon the spirits of the soldiers as they beheld the deep sea, which could scarcely be filled by divine help: what stones so vast, what trees so tall could be found? Whole regions must be emptied out, that that space might be piled up; the strait, they said, was always seething, and the more narrowly it was rolled between the island and the mainland, the more fiercely it raged.

2.17. But he, by no means inexperienced in handling the minds of soldiers, declared that a vision of Hercules had been presented to him in sleep, holding out his right hand: that with him as guide, with him as the one who opened the way, he had seemed to enter the city. Meanwhile he kept relating that the heralds had been killed, the laws of nations violated: that this was the one city which had dared to delay the course of a victor.

2.18. The task was then given to the officers, that each should chastise his own men; and, when all had been sufficiently spurred on, he began the work. A great quantity of stone was at hand, Old Tyre furnishing it; timber for making rafts and towers was brought from Mount Lebanon.

2.19. And now the work had risen from the bottom of the sea to a moderate height, yet it did not yet equal the surface of the water,

2.20. it did not yet equal the surface of the water, when the Tyrians, bringing up small craft, in mockery reproached them that those men, famous in arms, were carrying burdens on their backs like beasts of burden; they even asked whether Alexander were greater than Neptune. This very taunting kindled the eagerness of the soldiers.

2.21. And now the mole rose a little above the water, and at the same time the breadth of the embankment grew and was brought up to the city, when the Tyrians, having beheld the magnitude of the mole, whose increase had before escaped them, began to circle in light craft the work not yet completed, and to assail with missiles those who stood at the work.

2.22. Many therefore being wounded with impunity, since it was easy both to draw off and to bring up their boats, they had turned aside from the work to the care of protecting themselves. And the further the mole was driven from the shore, the more did the very deep sea swallow up whatever was thrown in.

2.23. The king, therefore, ordered hides and sails to be stretched before the men at work, that they might be beyond the throw of a weapon, and set up two towers at the head of the mole, from which weapons might be hurled upon the boats as they came up.

2.24. The Tyrians, on the contrary, brought up vessels far from the sight of the enemy to the shore and, having landed their soldiers, cut down those who were carrying stones. On Lebanon too they attacked the Macedonians, scattered as they were, and killed about thirty, taking fewer prisoners.

3.1. This thing compelled Alexander to divide his forces; and, lest he seem to sit idly down before one city, he put Perdiccas and Craterus in charge of the work, while he himself made for Arabia with a light-armed band.

3.2. Meanwhile the Tyrians loaded a ship of extraordinary size with stones and sand at the stern, so that the prow stood much aloft, smeared it with bitumen and sulphur, and drove it on with oars; and, when the sails too had caught a great force of wind, it came up swiftly to the mole.

3.3. Then, its prow being set on fire, the rowers leaped down into boats which, made ready for this very purpose, followed; but the ship, having caught fire, began to spread the conflagration more widely, which, before it could be met, seized the towers and the other works placed at the head of the mole.

3.4. And those who had leaped down into the small craft kept hurling torches, and whatever was suitable for feeding the fire, upon those same works. And now not only the lowest towers of the Macedonians, but even the topmost stages had caught fire, when those who were in the towers were partly engulfed by the conflagration, and partly, casting away their arms, flung themselves into the sea.

3.5. But the Tyrians, who would rather take them than kill them, mangled with stakes and stones the hands of the swimmers, until, disabled, they could be taken up into the vessels with impunity.

3.6. Nor were the works consumed by fire alone, but by chance on the same day a more violent wind dashed the sea, stirred from the deep, against the mole; and the joints of the work, beaten by the frequent waves, loosened themselves, and the water, flowing through, broke the work in the middle.

3.7. The heaps of stone, then, by which the heaped-up earth was held, being thrown down, it fell sheer into the deep; and Alexander, returning from Arabia, scarcely found any traces of so great a work. Here, as is wont to happen in adversity, one referred the blame to another, though all might more truly have complained of the savagery of the sea.

3.8. The king, beginning the mound of a new work against the wind, directed it not with its side but with its front straight on: thus it protected the other works, lying as it were beneath it; he also added breadth to the embankment, so that the towers raised in the middle might be far beyond the throw of a weapon.

3.9. They threw whole trees with their huge branches into the deep, then loaded them with stones, and again upon the heap of these threw other trees; then earth was heaped up; and over another pile of stones and trees heaped up they had joined the work, continuous as though by a kind of bond. Nor did the Tyrians slothfully carry out whatever could be devised to hinder the mole.

3.10. Their chief resource was men who, far from the enemy's sight, went under the water and, by a hidden passage, penetrated right up to the mole, drawing towards them with hooks the projecting branches of the trees. When these had followed, they carried most of the work down with them into the deep: then they had no great difficulty in heaving away the stakes and the trunks of the trees, relieved of their burden; and then the whole work, which had rested upon the stakes, followed, its foundation slipping away.

3.11. While Alexander was sick at heart, and not quite certain whether to persevere or to withdraw, the fleet arrived from Cyprus, and at the same time Cleander with the Greek soldiers recently brought over into Asia. He divides the hundred and ninety vessels into two wings: the left Pnytagoras, king of the Cyprians, guarded with Craterus; on the right the royal quinquereme bore Alexander.

3.12. Nor did the Tyrians, although they had a fleet, dare to enter upon a naval contest: three only they set up before their very walls, against which the king, charging, himself sank them.

3.13. The next day, his fleet being brought up to the walls, he shakes the walls from every side with engines and especially with the battering of rams: these the Tyrians hastily repaired with stones built up in front, and they also began to fortify an inner wall, so that, if the first should fail, they might defend themselves by that.

3.14. But the force of the calamity pressed from every side: the mole was within the throw of a weapon, the fleet was circling the walls; they were overwhelmed by ruin on land and sea at once. For the Macedonians had so joined two quadriremes to one another that their prows clung together, while their sterns stood apart at as great an interval as they could allow:

3.15. this interval of the sterns they had filled in, fastening together yardarms and strong beams and laying over them bridges to support the soldiers. Quadriremes thus equipped they drove against the city: from these missiles were hurled upon the defenders in safety, because the soldiers were protected by the prows.

3.16. It was midnight when he ordered the fleet, equipped as has been said, to circle the walls. And now the ships were being brought up to the city on every side, and the Tyrians were torpid with despair, when suddenly thick clouds drew themselves over the sky, and whatever light glimmered through was extinguished by the gloom that overspread it.

3.17. Then the sea, growing rough, was little by little heaved up, then, stirred by a sharper wind, raised its waves and dashed the vessels against one another. And now the bonds by which the quadriremes were connected began to be torn apart; the bridges to fall and, with a huge crash, to drag the soldiers down with them into the deep.

3.18. For the connected vessels could by no means be steered in that tumult: the soldier disordered the services of the sailors, the rower the duties of the soldier, and, as happens in such a case, the skilled obeyed the unskilled. For the steersmen, accustomed at other times to command, then through fear of death obeyed orders. At last the sea, beaten more stubbornly with oars, gave way as the vessels were as it were snatched from it; and most of them were driven to the shore in a battered state.

3.19. By chance, in those same days, thirty envoys of the Carthaginians arrived, more a consolation to the besieged than an aid.

3.20. For they reported that the Carthaginians were hampered by a war at home, and were fighting not for empire but for their very existence. The Syracusans were then burning Africa and had pitched their camp not far from the walls of Carthage. Yet the Tyrians did not lose heart, although they had been disappointed of a great hope; but they handed over their wives and children to be carried off to Carthage, meaning to bear more bravely whatever might befall, if they had set the dearest part of themselves beyond the lot of the common peril.

3.21. And when one of the citizens declared in the assembly that there had been presented to him in sleep a vision of Apollo — whom they worshipped with surpassing reverence — deserting the city, and that the mole thrown up by the Macedonians in the sea had been changed into a woodland glen,

3.22. although the author was of light authority, yet, inclined through fear to believe the worse, they bound the statue with a golden chain, and inserted the fastening into the altar of Hercules, to whose divine power they had dedicated the city, as though that god would hold Apollo back. The Carthaginians had carried off that statue from Syracuse and placed it in their mother city, and with many other spoils of the cities they had taken they had adorned not Carthage more than Tyre.

3.23. There were some too who urged the renewal of a sacrifice, intermitted for many ages — which, indeed, I should believe to be by no means pleasing to the gods — namely, that a freeborn boy should be sacrificed to Saturn; and this sacrilege rather than sacrifice, handed down from their founders, the Carthaginians are said to have performed even to the destruction of their city. And had not the elders, by whose counsel everything was done, opposed it, a dreadful superstition would have overcome humanity.

3.24. But necessity, more effectual than any art, brought into play not only the usual defences, but even certain new ones. For, to entangle the vessels that came up to the walls, they had fastened strong beams to ropes, so that, when they had thrust the beams forward by an engine, they might suddenly, by loosening the ropes, fling them down upon the ships.

3.25. Hooks too and sickles, hanging from the same beams, mangled either the defenders or the vessels themselves. And they heated bronze shields with much fire, which, filled with hot sand and boiled mud, they suddenly rolled down from the walls.

3.26. Nor was any plague more dreaded: for when the burning sand had penetrated between the breastplate and the body, it could be shaken out by no force, and burned through whatever it touched; and the men, casting away their arms, with all that could protect them torn off, lay open to wounds without means of revenge. The ravens, too, and the iron hands, let loose by the engine, snatched up very many.

4.1. At this point the king, weary, had resolved to raise the siege and make for Egypt. For, after he had traversed Asia with immense speed,

4.2. he was sticking fast about the walls of one city, while the opportunity of so many great enterprises slipped away. But he was ashamed either to depart baffled or to linger, and he reckoned that his fame too — by which he had overthrown more than by arms — would be the lighter, if he should leave Tyre behind as a witness, so to speak, that he could be conquered. Therefore, lest he leave anything untried, he ordered more ships to be brought up and chosen soldiers to be placed aboard.

4.3. And by chance a sea-beast of unusual size, rising above the very waves with its back, applied its huge body to the mole which the Macedonians had thrown up; and, cleaving the waves, it lifted itself up and was seen on either side:

4.4. then from the head of the mole it plunged again into the deep, and now rising above the waves with a great part of itself, now hidden by the overflowing waters, it sank not far from the fortifications of the city.

4.5. The sight of the beast was pleasing to both sides: the Macedonians augured that it had shown the way for throwing up the work, the Tyrians that Neptune, the avenger of the sea they had usurped, had snatched the beast away, and that the mole would surely soon fall. Glad at this omen, they dispersed to feasting and loaded themselves with wine, with which, heavy at sunrise, they board their vessels, wreathed with flowers and garlands: so completely had they anticipated not only the omen of victory, but even the congratulation of it.

4.6. By chance the king had ordered the fleet to be driven to the opposite quarter, thirty smaller vessels being left on the shore: of these the Tyrians captured two, and terrified the rest with great fear, until Alexander, hearing the shouting of his men, brought the fleet up to the shore from which the cries had come.

4.7. The first of the Macedonian ships, a quinquereme conspicuous among the rest for its speed, met them: and when the Tyrian ships caught sight of it, two of them charged from opposite sides upon its flanks; against one of these the same quinquereme, driving on, was both itself struck by the ram and in turn held the other fast.

4.8. And now that one which was not clinging was carried by a free charge against the other flank of the quinquereme. With wonderful timeliness a trireme from Alexander's fleet bore down upon that very ship which threatened the quinquereme, with such force that the Tyrian steersman was flung from the stern into the sea.

4.9. Then more Macedonian ships came up, and the king too was at hand, when the Tyrians, backing water with their oars, with difficulty tore away the ship that was sticking fast, and made for the harbour with all their vessels together. The king, pursuing them at once, could not indeed enter the harbour, since he was kept off from afar by missiles from the walls, but he sank or captured almost all the ships.

4.10. Then, two days being given to the soldiers for rest, and orders given to bring up both the fleet and the engines together, that he might press upon the enemy, terrified on every side, he himself climbed into the highest tower, with great spirit but greater peril: for, conspicuous by his royal insignia and his gleaming arms, he above all was made the special target of the weapons.

4.11. And he performed deeds altogether worthy of the spectacle: many of the defenders on the walls he transfixed with his spear, some he even thrust down headlong with his sword and shield in hand-to-hand combat. For the tower from which he fought all but clung to the enemy's walls.

4.12. And now, the joints of the stonework loosened by the frequent rams, the fortifications had given way, and the fleet had entered the harbour, and some of the Macedonians had got onto the deserted towers of the enemy, when the Tyrians, overcome by so many calamities at once, some fled as suppliants into the temples, others, having barred the doors of their houses, seized the free choice of death, while not a few rushed upon the enemy, to perish, yet not unavenged;

4.13. a great part held the tops of the roofs and hurled stones, and whatever chance had put into their hands, upon those who came up. Alexander ordered all to be killed, except those who had fled into the temples, and fire to be set to the houses.

4.14. Though these things were proclaimed by the heralds, no armed man could bring himself to seek help from the gods: boys and maidens had filled the temples, the men stood each in the vestibule of his own house, a throng made ready for the slayers.

4.15. Yet to many the Sidonians were a salvation, who were within the Macedonian forces. These had indeed entered the city among the victors, but, mindful of their kinship with the Tyrians — for they believed that Agenor had founded both cities — secretly protected many of the Tyrians and led them to their own ships: hidden in which, they were carried off to Sidon.

4.16. Fifteen thousand were withdrawn from the slaughter by this stratagem. And how much blood was shed can be estimated even from this, that within the fortifications of the city six thousand armed men were cut down.

4.17. A grim spectacle then the king's anger furnished to the victors: two thousand, for the killing of whom his fury had flagged, hung fixed to crosses along a vast stretch of the shore.

4.18. The Carthaginian envoys he spared, with the added declaration of a war which the necessity of present affairs deferred.

4.19. Tyre was taken in the seventh month after the siege had been begun — a city distinguished, for the memory of posterity, both by the antiquity of its origin and by the frequent vicissitudes of its fortune. Founded by Agenor, it long held under its sway the sea, not only the neighbouring sea, but whatever its fleets approached. And, if one cares to believe report, this people was the first either to teach letters or to learn them. Its colonies at any rate are spread well-nigh over the whole world: Carthage in Africa, Thebes in Boeotia, Gades on the Ocean.

4.20. I believe that, ranging the open sea and often approaching lands unknown to the rest, they chose abodes for the youth in which they then abounded; or else that, wearied by frequent earthquakes — for this too is recorded — its inhabitants were compelled to seek for themselves new and foreign homes by force of arms.

4.21. Having passed, then, through many vicissitudes, and reborn after its destruction, the city now at last rests, all things being cherished by a long peace, under the protection of Roman gentleness.

5.1. In nearly those same days a letter from Darius was brought, written at last as to a king. He asked that Alexander should join to himself in marriage his daughter — her name was Statira — and that the dowry should be the whole region situated between the Hellespont and the river Halys: with the lands looking toward the east from there, he himself would be content.

5.2. He should not hesitate to accept what was offered: fortune never long stood in the same place, and men, however great a felicity they had, always felt a greater envy.

5.3. He feared lest, like birds, whom their natural lightness bears to the stars, he should exalt himself with an empty and childish mind: nothing was more difficult than to contain at that age so great a fortune.

5.4. He still had many resources left, nor could he always be caught in narrow places: Alexander must cross the Euphrates and the Tigris and the Araxes and the Choaspes, the great bulwarks of his kingdom; he must come into the plains, where he would have to blush at the fewness of his men, into Media, Hyrcania, Bactra:

5.5. and when would he reach the Indians, the dwellers by the Ocean, not to name the Sogdians and the Arachosians and the other nations extending to the Caucasus and the Tanais?

5.6. He would have to grow old merely traversing so great an extent of lands, even without a battle. Let him cease to summon Darius to come to him: for to that one's ruin he would himself come.

5.7. Alexander replied to those who had brought the letter that Darius was promising him what was another's, and wished to share what he had wholly lost. As a dowry was being given to him Lydia, the Ionians, Aeolis, the coast of the Hellespont, the prizes of his own victory. But terms are dictated by the victors, accepted by the conquered: if Darius alone did not know in which state each of them was, let him decide it as soon as possible in battle.

5.8. And, when he crossed the sea, he had marked out for his empire not Cilicia or Lydia — for these were a paltry reward for so great a war — but Persepolis, the capital of his kingdom, then Bactra and Ecbatana and the coast of the farthest East. Wherever Darius could flee, he himself could follow: let him cease to frighten with rivers a man whom he knew to have crossed seas.

5.9. These things, indeed, the kings had written to one another. But the Rhodians were surrendering their city and harbours to Alexander. He had handed over Cilicia to Socrates, Philotas being ordered to take charge of the region around Tyre. Syria, which is called Coele, Parmenio had handed over to Andromachus, meaning himself to take part in the war that remained.

5.10. The king, having ordered Hephaestion to coast along the shore of Phoenicia with the fleet, came with all his forces to the city of Gaza.

5.11. In nearly those same days the solemn games of the Isthmus were being held, which are celebrated by an assembly of the whole of Greece: in that council the Greeks — as is the way of dispositions that shift with the times — decreed that fifteen envoys should be sent to the king to bear a golden crown, as a gift of victory, for the deeds he had done on behalf of the safety and freedom of Greece.

5.12. These same men had a little before caught at the breath of uncertain rumour, so that, wherever fortune should have borne their wavering minds, they might follow.

5.13. But not only did the king himself go round the cities that still refused the yoke of his empire, but his satraps too, distinguished commanders, had invaded most parts: Calas Paphlagonia, Antigonus Lycaonia; Balacrus, having overcome Hydarnes, a satrap of Darius, took Miletus a second time,

5.14. Amphoterus and Hegelochus, with a fleet of a hundred and sixty ships, reduced under Alexander's dominion the islands between Achaea and Asia. Tenedos too being recovered, they had resolved to occupy Chios, its inhabitants of their own accord inviting them,

5.15. but Pharnabazus, a satrap of Darius, having seized those who were drawing affairs towards the Macedonians, again handed over the city to Apollonides and Athenagoras, men of his own party, with a moderate garrison of soldiers.

5.16. The officers of Alexander persevered in the siege of the city, trusting not so much in their own strength as in the goodwill of those who were besieged. Nor did this opinion deceive them: for a sedition arising among the commanders gave the soldiers an opportunity of bursting into the city,

5.17. and when, the gate being broken open, a cohort of Macedonians had entered, the townsmen, who had long been agitating a plan of betrayal, joined themselves to Amphoterus and Hegelochus; and, the Persian garrison being cut down, Pharnabazus with Apollonides and Athenagoras was handed over in chains,

5.18. with twelve triremes and their soldiers and rowers, besides thirty empty ones and the pirate galleys, and three thousand Greeks engaged for pay by the Persians. These last being distributed to fill up their own forces, and the pirates being punished, they added the captive rowers to their fleet.

5.19. By chance Aristonicus, tyrant of the Methymnaeans, with his pirate ships, ignorant of all that had been done at Chios, came up at the first watch to the bars of the harbour and, on being asked by the guards who he was, replied that Aristonicus was coming to Pharnabazus.

5.20. They told him that Pharnabazus was indeed now at rest and could not then be approached, but that the harbour stood open to an ally and guest, and that on the next day there would be an opportunity to see Pharnabazus.

5.21. Nor did Aristonicus hesitate to enter first; the pirate galleys followed their leader; and, while they were bringing their vessels up to the quay of the harbour, the bar was thrown across them by the watch, and those who were keeping guard nearby were roused by the same men. None of them daring to resist, chains were thrown upon them all, and they were then handed over to Amphoterus and Hegelochus.

5.22. From here the Macedonians crossed to Mytilene. This Chares the Athenian, having recently occupied it, held with a garrison of two thousand Persians; but, since he could not endure a siege, the city being surrendered, on condition that he be allowed to depart unharmed, he made for Imbros. The Macedonians spared those who surrendered.

6.1. Darius, having despaired of the peace which he had believed could be obtained through letters and envoys, bent his mind to repairing his strength and to renewing the war with energy.

6.2. He ordered, therefore, the commanders of his forces now to assemble at Babylon, and Bessus too, the satrap of the Bactrians, to come down to him with as great an army as he could muster.

6.3. Now the Bactrians are the most ready among those nations, of rough disposition and much abhorring the luxury of the Persians: situated not far from the Scythians, a most warlike people and accustomed to live by plunder, they were always in arms.

6.4. But Bessus, his loyalty suspected, by no means with an even mind containing himself in the second rank, was a terror to the king: for, since he aspired to the kingdom, treachery, by which alone he could attain it, was feared.

6.5. But Alexander, though he searched out with every care the region for which Darius had made, yet could not discover it, by reason of a certain custom of the Persians, who conceal the secrets of their kings with wonderful fidelity:

6.6. neither fear nor hope draws out a word by which their secrets are betrayed. The ancient discipline of the kings had sanctioned silence on pain of life: the tongue is more grievously chastised than any disgrace, nor do the Magi believe that any great matter can be sustained by a man to whom it is a burden to keep silent about that which Nature wished to be easiest for a man.

6.7. For this reason Alexander, ignorant of all that was being done among the enemy, was besieging the city of Gaza. The city was commanded by Betis, of surpassing loyalty to his king; and with a moderate garrison he guarded walls of vast construction.

6.8. Alexander, having estimated the lie of the ground, ordered mines to be driven, the easy and light soil being apt for hidden work: for the neighbouring sea throws up much sand, nor do rocks and crags, which would interrupt the tunnels, stand in the way.

6.9. Therefore, beginning the work on that side which the townsmen could not see, in order to divert them from any sense of it, he ordered towers to be brought up to the walls. But the same soil, useless for moving the towers, the sand subsiding, hindered the nimbleness of the wheels and even broke through the stages of the towers, and many were wounded with impunity, since the same labour of withdrawing the towers as of bringing them up wearied them.

6.10. And so, the signal for retreat being given, on the next day he ordered the walls to be encircled with a ring of men. And at sunrise, before he brought up his army, beseeching the help of the gods, he was offering sacrifice after the ancestral fashion.

6.11. By chance a raven, flying past, suddenly let fall a clod which it was carrying in its claws: and when this had struck the king's head, it broke up and slid down, but the bird itself settled on the nearest tower. The tower was smeared with bitumen and sulphur, on which, its wings sticking, after vainly trying to lift itself, it was caught by the bystanders.

6.12. The thing seemed worthy of consulting a seer about: and his was a mind not untouched by superstition. So Aristander, to whom the greatest faith was given, said that the destruction of the city was indeed portended by that omen: but that there was danger lest the king should receive a wound. He warned him, therefore, to begin nothing that day.

6.13. He, although he bore it ill that one city stood in his way to keep him from entering Egypt secure, yet obeyed the seer and gave the signal for retreat. At this the spirit of the besieged grew, and, sallying out from the gate, they brought their standards against the retreating men, thinking that the enemy's hesitation would be their own opportunity.

6.14. But they entered the battle more fiercely than steadily: for, when they saw the standards of the Macedonians wheeled about, they suddenly halted. And now the shouting of the combatants had reached the king, who, by no means mindful of the danger that had been foretold, yet, his friends entreating, put on the breastplate which he rarely wore, and came to the foremost standards.

6.15. At the sight of him a certain Arab, a soldier of Darius, daring a deed greater than his own fortune, hiding his sword with his shield, threw himself, as a deserter, at the knees of the king. He ordered the suppliant to rise and to be received among his men.

6.16. But the barbarian, briskly shifting his sword to his right hand, aimed at the neck of the king. He, by a slight bending of his body, avoiding the blow, cut off with his sword the barbarian's hand as it slipped harmlessly past, having now, as he himself supposed, discharged the danger foretold for that day.

6.17. But, as I think, fate is inevitable: for while he was fighting too eagerly among the foremost, he was struck by an arrow, which his physician Philip drew out, driven through the breastplate and standing in his shoulder.

6.18. Then much blood began to flow, to the terror of all, because they had not perceived, the breastplate blocking the view, how deeply the weapon had penetrated. He himself, without even the colour of his face changing, ordered the blood to be stanched and the wound to be bound up.

6.19. For a long time he had stood firm before the very standards, his pain either dissembled or overcome, when the blood, a little before stanched, the bandage by which it had been held back slipping, began to flow more freely, and the wound, which, still warm, had not provoked pain, swelled as the blood grew cold.

6.20. Then he began to faint and to sink upon his knee, and those nearest, catching him, carried him back to camp. And Betis, supposing him killed, sought the city again, exulting in victory.

6.21. But Alexander, before his wound was healed, built up a mound to equal the height of the walls, and ordered the walls to be undermined by many tunnels.

6.22. The townsmen built up a new fortification to the former height of the walls, but not even this could equal the towers placed on the mound.

6.23. And so the inner parts of the city too were exposed to the weapons. The final destruction of the city was a wall undermined by a tunnel, through whose ruins the enemy entered.

6.24. The king himself led the foremost ranks, and, while he came up too incautiously, his leg was struck by a stone. Yet, leaning on his spear, the scar of his former wound not yet closed, he fought among the foremost, inflamed too with anger, that he had received two wounds in the siege of that city.

6.25. Betis, having put up a distinguished fight and being spent by many wounds, was abandoned by his own men, yet none the less briskly he kept up the battle, his arms slippery alike with his own and the enemy's blood.

6.26. But when he was assailed with weapons from every side, at last, his strength exhausted, he came alive into the power of the enemy. When he had been brought before him, the young king, elated by an unwonted joy — at other times an admirer of valour even in an enemy — said: "You shall not die as you wished, but reflect that you must suffer whatever can be devised against a captive."

6.27. But Betis, looking at the king with a countenance not only undaunted but even defiant, returned no word to his threats.

6.28. Then Alexander said: "Do you see how obstinately he keeps silent? Has he bent his knee? Has he uttered a suppliant word? Yet I will conquer his silence, and, if nothing else, I will at least interrupt it with a groan."

6.29. His anger then turned into fury, a new fortune already at that time prompting him to foreign rites. For thongs were passed through the ankles of the still-breathing man, and, tied to a chariot, horses dragged him around the city, the king boasting that he had imitated Achilles, from whom he derived his own descent, in taking vengeance on an enemy.

6.30. Of the Persians and Arabs there fell about ten thousand, nor was the victory bloodless for the Macedonians. The siege at any rate was made famous not so much by the renown of the city as by the twofold peril of the king. He, hastening to reach Egypt, sent Amyntas with ten triremes into Macedonia to recruit fresh soldiers.

6.31. For even in success his forces were nevertheless worn down, and less trust was placed in the soldiery of conquered nations than in the home-bred.

7.1. The Egyptians, long hostile to the power of the Persians — for they believed that they had been ruled greedily and arrogantly — had raised their spirits at the hope of his coming, inasmuch as they had received gladly even Amyntas, a deserter and one coming with a precarious authority.

7.2. So a great multitude had assembled at Pelusium, where he seemed likely to enter. And on the seventh day after he had moved his forces from Gaza, he reached the region of Egypt which they now call the Camp of Alexander.

7.3. Then, having ordered the infantry to make for Pelusium, he himself with a light-armed band of chosen men was carried down the river Nile. Nor did the Persians, terrified too by the defection, withstand his coming.

7.4. And now he was not far from Memphis: Mazaces, a satrap of Darius, who had been left to garrison it, having of his own accord crossed the river, handed over to Alexander eight hundred talents and all the royal furniture.

7.5. From Memphis, carried by the same river, he penetrated to the interior of Egypt; and, having settled affairs in such a way as to change nothing of the ancestral custom of the Egyptians, he resolved to visit the oracle of Jupiter Hammon.

7.6. The route to be undertaken was scarcely tolerable even for unencumbered men and few in number: by land and sky there is a scarcity of water, the barren sands lie waste. And when the vapour of the sun kindles these, the burning soil scorching the footsteps, an intolerable heat arises,

7.7. and one must struggle not only with the heat and dryness of the region, but also with the most clinging sand, which, being very deep and yielding to the foot, the feet move through with difficulty.

7.8. These difficulties the Egyptians magnified beyond the truth: but a great desire goaded his mind to approach Jupiter, whom, not content with a mortal eminence, he either believed to be the author of his race or wished to be believed so.

7.9. So with those whom he had resolved to take with him he went down the river to the Mareotic marsh. There the envoys of the Cyrenaeans brought him gifts, asking for peace and that he should visit their cities.

7.10. He, having received the gifts and concluded friendship, went on to carry out his resolution. And on the first day indeed, and the next, the toil seemed tolerable, since they had not yet reached such vast and bare wastes, though the land was already barren and dying.

7.11. But when there opened before them plains overwhelmed with deep sand, no otherwise than as men who had entered a deep sea they sought the land with their eyes:

7.12. no tree, no trace of cultivated soil met them. The water too had failed which the camels had carried in skins, and in the dry soil and burning sand there was none.

7.13. Besides this, the sun had set everything ablaze, and their mouths were dry and parched, when suddenly — whether it was a gift of the gods or chance — clouds drawn over the sky hid the sun, a great help to men wearied by the heat, even if water were lacking.

7.14. And indeed, when the storms shook out a generous rain too, each man for himself began to catch it,

7.15. some, beside themselves with thirst, catching it even with gaping mouth. Four days were consumed in passing through the vast wastes. And now they were not far from the seat of the oracle, when several ravens met the column: in moderate flight going before the foremost standards, they now settled on the ground, when the column advanced more slowly, now lifted themselves on their wings after the manner of guides showing the way.

7.16. At last they came to the seat consecrated to the god. Incredible to tell, set amid vast wastes, it is covered on every side by encompassing branches, through which the sun scarcely falls into the dense shade, and many springs, with their sweet waters flowing here and there, nourish the woods.

7.17. The temperature of the climate too is wonderful, very like the warmth of spring, and runs through all the seasons of the year with equal salubrity.

7.18. The neighbours of the seat are, on the east, the nearest of the Ethiopians. Towards the south face the Arabs — they are surnamed Trogodytes —: their region runs as far as the Red Sea.

7.19. But where it inclines to the west, other Ethiopians dwell, whom they call the Simi. To the north are the Nasamones, a people of the Syrtis, gaining their livelihood from the spoils of ships: for they beset the shores and seize, by shoals known to themselves, the ships left stranded by the ebb.

7.20. The inhabitants of the grove, whom they call the Hammonii, dwell in scattered huts: they have the middle of the grove for a citadel, surrounded by a triple wall.

7.21. The first fortification enclosed the ancient palace of the rulers; in the next their wives with their children and concubines dwelt — here too is the oracle of the god —; the last fortifications were the abodes of the guards and armour-bearers.

7.22. There is also another grove of Hammon: in its midst it has a spring — they call it the Water of the Sun —: toward sunrise it flows warm, at midday, when the heat is most intense, the same flows cold, toward evening it grows warm, at midnight it boils up hot, and the nearer the night verges to dawn, the more it abates of its nocturnal heat, until at the very rising of the day it languishes with its accustomed warmth.

7.23. The thing that is worshipped as the god has not the same effigy which artists commonly give to the gods: its shape is most like a navel, and it is compacted of emerald and gems.

7.24. This, when a response is sought, the priests carry in a gilded boat, with many silver bowls hanging from either side of the boat: there follow married women and maidens, singing after the ancestral fashion a kind of rude hymn, by which they believe Jupiter is propitiated, that he may deliver a sure oracle.

7.25. And then indeed, as the king approached, the eldest of the priests addressed him as "son," declaring that this name was given him by his father Jupiter. And he said that he both accepted and acknowledged it, forgetful of his mortal lot.

7.26. He then asked whether the empire of the whole world was destined for him by the fates. The priest, equally disposed to flattery, declared that he would be the ruler of all the lands.

7.27. After this he went on to ask whether all the murderers of his father had paid the penalty. The priest said that his father could be wronged by no man's crime, but that all the murderers of Philip had suffered punishment: and he added that he would be unconquered until he should depart to the gods.

7.28. Then, a sacrifice being made, gifts were given both to the priests and to the god, and his friends were permitted to consult Jupiter themselves too. They asked nothing further than whether the god authorized them to worship their king with divine honours. The seers replied that this too would be acceptable to Jupiter.

7.29. By a true and wholesome estimate the credit given to the oracle might surely have eluded these empty responses; but fortune, those whom she compels to trust her alone, for the most part makes more greedy of glory than capable of it.

7.30. He suffered himself, therefore, not only to be called the son of Jupiter, but even ordered it; and, while he wished to magnify the fame of his deeds by such an appellation,

7.31. he corrupted it. And the Macedonians, accustomed indeed to royal rule, but living in a greater shadow of liberty than the rest, turned away from one who affected immortality more stubbornly than was expedient either for them or for the king.

7.32. But let these things each be reserved for their own time: now I will go on to relate the rest.

8.1. Alexander, returning from Hammon, came to the Mareotic marsh, situated not far from the island of Pharos. Having contemplated the nature of the place, he had at first resolved to found a new city on the island itself:

8.2. then, when it appeared that the island was not capable of a great settlement, he chose a site for the city where Alexandria now is, drawing its name from the name of its founder. Embracing whatever soil there is between the marsh and the sea, he marks out a circuit of eighty stades for the walls, and, leaving men to preside over the building of the city, made for Memphis.

8.3. A desire, not unjustifiable indeed, but ill-timed, had come upon him to visit not only the interior of Egypt, but also Ethiopia: the famous palace of Memnon and Tithonus drew him, eager to learn of antiquity, almost beyond the bounds of the sun.

8.4. But the impending war, of which much the greater mass remained, had taken away the leisure for a peaceful excursion. And so he put Aeschylus the Rhodian and Peucestes the Macedonian in charge of Egypt, four thousand soldiers being given them for the garrison of that region, and ordered Polemon to guard the barriers of the river Nile: thirty triremes were given for this purpose.

8.5. Then Apollonius was set over Africa, which is joined to Egypt, and Cleomenes over the revenues of that same Africa and of Egypt. The inhabitants of the neighbouring cities being ordered to migrate to Alexandria, he filled the new city with a great multitude.

8.6. There is a report that, when the king had marked out the circuit of the future wall with barley meal, as is the custom of the Macedonians, flocks of birds flew up and fed on the meal: and when this omen was taken as a sad one by most, the seers replied that that city would foster a great concourse of strangers, and would furnish food to many lands.

8.7. Hector, the son of Parmenio, of exceeding bloom of youth, dear to Alexander among a few, wishing to overtake the king as he was floating down the river, boarded a small vessel, more men being put aboard than it could hold.

8.8. And so the ship, foundering, abandoned them all. Hector, struggling long with the river, when his sodden clothing and his feet bound by his sandals prevented him from swimming, yet escaped half-dead to the bank; and, as soon as, wearied, he relaxed the breath which fear and danger had held tense, with no one to help — for the others had escaped in a different direction — he expired.

8.9. By the loss of him Alexander was grievously afflicted; and, the body being found, he honoured it with a magnificent funeral. The news of the death of Andromachus, whom he had set over Syria, added to this grief: the Samaritans had burned him alive.

8.10. To avenge his death he hastened with all the speed he could; and on his arrival the authors of so great a crime were handed over to him.

8.11. He then put Menon in the place of Andromachus, and, having punished those who had killed the satrap, he handed over to their fellow-citizens the tyrants — among whom were Aristonicus and Stesilaus of the Methymnaeans —: whom they, tortured for their wrongs, put to death.

8.12. Then he heard the envoys of the Athenians, Rhodians, and Chians: the Athenians congratulated him on his victory and begged that the captive Greeks should be restored to their own people; the Rhodians and Chians complained about the garrison.

8.13. All seeming to ask what was fair, they obtained their request. To the Mytilenaeans too, for their distinguished loyalty to his cause, he repaid the money which they had spent on the war, and added a great neighbouring region.

8.14. To the kings of the Cyprians also, who had both deserted Darius for him and sent a fleet against him as he besieged Tyre, honour was paid according to their desert.

8.15. Then Amphoterus, the commander of the fleet, was sent to free Crete — for most of that island was beset by the arms of the Persians and the Spartans — and was ordered above all to clear the sea of the pirate fleets: for, both wars being turned against the king, it was exposed to the robbers.

8.16. These things being settled, he dedicated to the Tyrian Hercules a bowl of gold with thirty cups, and, threatening Darius, ordered the march to the Euphrates to be proclaimed.

9.1. But Darius, when he had learned that the enemy had turned aside from Egypt into Africa, had been in doubt whether he should halt about Mesopotamia or make for the interior of his kingdom — without doubt a more powerful advocate, if present, of energetically taking up the war among the farthest nations, which he was striving to do with difficulty through his satraps.

9.2. But when report, on trustworthy authority, gave out that Alexander would make for whatever region he himself had reached, not unaware with how energetic a man he had to deal, he ordered all the auxiliaries of the distant nations to be drawn together into Babylonia. The Bactrians and the Scythians and the Indians had now assembled, and the forces of the other nations came up to their stations at the same time.

9.3. But although the army was nearly half as large again as it had been in Cilicia, arms were lacking to many. These were procured with the greatest care: there were coverings for the cavalry and horses, of iron plates joined together in a series; to those to whom previously nothing but javelins had been given, shields and swords were added,

9.4. and herds of horses were distributed among the infantry, so that the cavalry might be larger than before.

9.5. And, as he believed, a great terror to the enemy — two hundred scythed four-horse chariots, the one peculiar aid of those nations, followed: from the top of the pole spears tipped with iron projected, on either side of the yoke he had directed three swords; among the spokes of the wheels many points projected forward; then other scythes, lowered, clung to the rims of the wheels, and others, let down to the ground, were to cut off whatever should come in the way of the horses at full charge.

9.6. His army thus arranged and fully armed, he moved his forces from Babylon. On the right was the Tigris, a famous river; the left the Euphrates covered; the column had filled the plains of Mesopotamia.

9.7. Then, having crossed the Tigris, when he heard that the enemy was not far off, he sent ahead Satropates, a commander of cavalry, with a thousand chosen men.

9.8. To Mazaeus the satrap six thousand were given, with whom to keep the enemy from crossing the river: it was also entrusted to him to lay waste and burn the region which Alexander was likely to enter. For he believed that one having nothing but what he had seized by plundering could be conquered by want: while to himself supplies were brought up, some by land, some by the Tigris.

9.9. He had now reached Arbela, an obscure village, which he was to make famous by his own disaster. Here, the greater part of his supplies and baggage being deposited, he joined the river Lycus by a bridge and, in five days, as before the Euphrates, brought his army across.

9.10. Thence, having advanced about eighty stades, he pitched camp at another river — Boumelus is its name. The region was suitable for deploying his forces, a plain fit for horsemen and vast: not even stumps and low brushwood cover the soil, and a clear view is granted to the eyes even to those things that recede far off: and, if anything of the plain stood up, he ordered it to be levelled and the whole surface to be made even.

9.11. To Alexander, those who estimated the number of his forces, as far as could be conjectured from a distance, scarcely made it credible that, with so many thousands slain, greater forces had been repaired.

9.12. But, a contemner of all peril and especially of multitude, in eleven encampments he reached the Euphrates. Having bridged it, he orders the cavalry to go first, the phalanx to follow, Mazaeus — who with six thousand horsemen had come to bar his crossing — not daring to put himself to the test.

9.13. Then, a few days being given to the soldiery not for rest but for preparing their spirits, he began briskly to pursue the enemy, fearing lest he should make for the interior of his kingdom and have to be followed through places waste with utter solitude and want.

9.14. And so on the fourteenth day, passing Armenia, he penetrated to the Tigris. The whole region beyond the river was smoking with recent fire: for Mazaeus, wherever he had come, was burning it no otherwise than an enemy.

9.15. And at first, the gloom which the smoke had poured out darkening the light, he halted for fear of an ambush; then, when the scouts sent ahead reported all safe, he sent ahead a few cavalry to try the ford of the river. The depth of it at first reached the upper breasts of the horses, then, as they came to the middle of the channel, it reached even their necks.

9.16. Nor indeed does any other river toward the region of the East flow with such violence, dragging with it not only the waters of many torrents, but also stones. And so from the speed with which it flows down the Tigris has its name, because in the Persian tongue they call an arrow tigris.

9.17. So the infantry, as it were divided into wings, the cavalry being set around them, their arms lifted above their heads, penetrated not without difficulty to the very channel.

9.18. First among the infantry the king came out onto the bank, and showed the soldiers the ford with his hand, since his voice could not be heard. But they could scarcely make their footing firm, when now the slippery stones deceived their step, now a more rapid wave drew them away.

9.19. Their chief labour was that of those who carried burdens on their shoulders: for, since they could not govern themselves, they were swept off into the rapid eddies by their cumbrous load; and, while each strove to recover his own spoil, a greater struggle arose among themselves than with the river, and the heaps of baggage, floating here and there, struck many men down.

9.20. The king kept urging them to be content with holding onto their arms: the rest he would restore. But neither counsel nor command could be heeded: fear drowned them out on one side, and besides this the mutual shouting of the men struggling with one another.

9.21. At last, where the river opens a ford with a gentler current, they emerged, and nothing was lost except a few pieces of baggage.

9.22. The army could have been destroyed, had anyone dared to conquer; but the king's unbroken fortune turned the enemy away from there. Thus he had crossed the Granicus, with so many thousands of cavalry and infantry standing on the further bank; thus, in the narrow paths of Cilicia, so great a multitude of enemies:

9.23. the credit too for the boldness in which he most flourished can be diminished, because he never came into the crisis of finding whether he had acted rashly. Mazaeus, who, if he had come upon them as they crossed the river, would without doubt have crushed them in their disorder, only when they were on the bank, already fully armed, began to ride up against them.

9.24. He had sent ahead about a thousand horsemen: their fewness being ascertained, and then despised, Alexander ordered Aristo, the commander of the Paeonian cavalry, to charge with loosened reins.

9.25. Distinguished that day was the fight of the cavalry, and especially of Aristo: he transfixed Satropates, the commander of the Persian cavalry, with a spear directed at his throat, and, having pursued him as he fled through the midst of the enemy, hurled him from his horse and, as he struggled, took off his head with his sword. This, brought back, he laid amid great applause before the king's feet.

10.1. There the king kept a standing camp for two days: then he ordered the march for the next day to be proclaimed.

10.2. But at about the first watch the moon, eclipsed, first hid the brightness of her own orb, then, suffused with the colour of blood, defiled all her light; and a great religious awe, and from it a kind of dread, was struck into the anxious men, at the very onset of so great a crisis.

10.3. They complained that, against the will of the gods, they were being dragged to the ends of the earth: that now neither could the rivers be approached, nor did the stars keep their former brightness; that vast lands, deserted regions everywhere met them: that for the vaunting of one man the blood of so many thousands was being spent; that he despised his fatherland, disowned Philip his father, and aimed at heaven with empty imaginings.

10.4. It was on the verge of mutiny, when the king, undaunted at everything, ordered the leaders and the chiefs of the soldiers to attend in numbers at his tent, and the Egyptian seers, whom he believed most skilled in the heavens and the stars, to declare what they thought.

10.5. But they, who knew well enough that the cycles of time fulfil their appointed turns, and that the moon is eclipsed when either she passes beneath the earth or is overshadowed by the sun, did not teach the common throng the reckoning understood by themselves:

10.6. but they declared that the sun belonged to the Greeks, the moon to the Persians, and that, as often as she was eclipsed, ruin and slaughter were portended to those nations; and they recounted old examples of the kings of Persia, whom an eclipse of the moon had shown to have fought against the will of the gods.

10.7. Nothing rules the multitude more effectively than superstition: otherwise unruly, savage, changeable, when once it is seized by an empty religious fear, it obeys its seers better than its leaders. So, the responses of the Egyptians being published abroad, they raised again to hope and confidence the men who had been torpid.

10.8. The king, thinking that the impulse of their spirits must be used, moved camp at the second watch:

10.9. on the right he had the Tigris, on the left the mountains which they call the Gordyaean. As they entered upon this route, the scouts who had been sent ahead reported, toward sunrise, that Darius was approaching. So, his soldiery being drawn up and his column ordered, he advanced.

10.10. But they were loiterers of the Persians, about a thousand, who had made the appearance of a great column: for, where the truth cannot be ascertained, falsehood is magnified by fear.

10.11. This being known, the king, with a few of his men, overtaking the column of those who fled back to their fellows, killed some, captured others: and he sent ahead horsemen to reconnoitre, and at the same time to put out the fire with which the barbarians had burned the villages.

10.12. For the fugitives had in haste thrown flames upon the houses and the heaps of grain, which, since they had caught at the top, had not yet penetrated to the lower parts.

10.13. So, the fire being put out, very much grain was found: they began to abound in a plenty of other things too. This very thing fired the soldiers' spirit to pursue the enemy: for, as he was burning and laying waste the land, they had to make haste, lest he should anticipate everything by fire.

10.14. Necessity, therefore, was turned into a wise course: for Mazaeus, who had before, at his leisure, burned the villages, now content to flee, left most things untouched for the enemy.

10.15. Alexander had ascertained that Darius was no further than a hundred and fifty stades from him: and so, being supplied even to satiety with an abundance of provisions, he halted for four days in the same place.

10.16. A letter of Darius was then intercepted, by which the Greek soldiers were being incited either to kill the king or to betray him; and he doubted whether to read it out before the assembly, being sufficiently confident of the goodwill and faith of the Greeks too toward him.

10.17. But Parmenio dissuaded him, declaring that the ears of the soldiers ought not to be steeped in such promises: that the king lay open to the plots even of a single man, and that nothing was unlawful to avarice.

10.18. Following the advice of this counsellor, he moved camp. As he was on the march, a eunuch from among the captives who attended the wife of Darius announced that she was failing and could scarcely draw breath.

10.19. Wearied by the toil of the continuous journey and by distress of mind, she had collapsed amid the hands of her mother-in-law and her maiden daughters, and then had even expired.

10.20. Another arrived announcing this very thing. And the king, no otherwise than as if the death of a parent had been announced, uttered frequent groans; and, his tears welling up such as Darius might have shed, he came into the tent in which was the mother of Darius, sitting beside the dead body.

10.21. Here indeed her grief was renewed, when she saw the woman stretched on the ground. Reminded by the recent calamity of her earlier ones too, she had taken into her bosom the grown maidens, great solaces indeed of their mutual grief, but to whom she herself ought to have been a solace.

10.22. Before her eyes was her little grandson, on this very account the more pitiable, that he did not yet feel the calamity that redounded for the most part upon himself.

10.23. You might have believed that Alexander wept amid his own kin, and was not offering consolation, but seeking it. He at any rate abstained from food, and observed every honour for the funeral after the ancestral fashion of the Persians — worthy, by Heaven, that he should now too reap the fruit of so great a gentleness and self-restraint.

10.24. Only once in all had he seen her, on the day she was captured, nor to see her, but to see the mother of Darius; and the surpassing beauty of her form had been to him an incitement not to lust but to glory.

10.25. Of the eunuchs who were about the queen, Tyriotes, escaping amid the confusion of the mourners through that gate which, because it was turned away from the enemy, was more lightly guarded, reached the camp of Darius and, received by the watch, was led to the king's tent, groaning and with his garments torn.

10.26. When Darius caught sight of him, moved by the manifold expectation of grief and uncertain what most to fear, he said: "Your face bespeaks some great calamity, I know not what; but beware of sparing the ears of an unhappy man: I have learned to be unhappy, and often it is a consolation in calamity to know one's own lot.

10.27. Surely — what I most suspect, and what I fear to utter — you are come to announce to me the outrages done to my dear ones, and, as I believe, things more grievous to them than any torture?"

10.28. To this Tyriotes said: "That indeed is far from the truth: for whatever honour can be paid to queens by those who serve them, has been preserved to yours by the victor. But your wife a little while ago departed from life."

10.29. Then indeed not groaning only, but wailing too, was heard throughout the whole camp. Nor did Darius doubt that she had been killed because she had been unable to endure dishonour, and he cried out, beside himself with grief: "What so great a crime have I committed, Alexander? Which of your kinsmen have I killed, that you should repay my cruelty with this return? You hate me, though indeed unprovoked: but grant that you brought a just war — ought you then to wage it against women?"

10.30. Tyriotes swore by the ancestral gods that nothing more grievous had been done against her: that Alexander too had groaned at her death and had wept no more sparingly than Darius himself was weeping.

10.31. At these very words the heart of the lover relapsed into anxiety and suspicion, conjecturing that his desire for the captive had surely arisen from the practice of debauchery.

10.32. So, the bystanders being removed, only Tyriotes being kept back, no longer weeping but sighing, he said: "Do you see, Tyriotes, that there is no room for a lie? Tortures will presently be here; but do not wait for them, by the gods, if you have any reverence for your king: did he dare — what I both long to know and am ashamed to ask — being both a master and a young man?"

10.33. He offered his body to torture, called the gods to witness that the queen had been kept chastely and inviolably.

10.34. At last, when proof had been given that what the eunuch declared was true, Darius wept long with veiled head, and, his tears still flowing, having thrown back the garment from his face and stretching his hands to heaven, he said: "Gods of my fathers, first establish my kingdom for me; but then, if all is now over with me, I pray that no one may be king of Asia rather than this so just an enemy, this so merciful a victor."

11.1. And so, although in vain he had twice sought peace and had turned all his counsels to war, yet, overcome by the self-restraint of his enemy, he sent envoys, chiefs of his kinsmen, to propose new conditions of peace: whom Alexander, having summoned his council, ordered to be brought in.

11.2. The eldest of them said: "No force has compelled Darius to seek peace of you now this third time, but your justice and self-restraint have wrung it from him.

11.3. His mother, his wife, his children, except that they are without him, we have not felt to be captives: their chastity, those who survive, you guard, caring for them no otherwise than a parent; you call them queens, you suffer them to retain the appearance of their former fortune.

11.4. I see your countenance, such as Darius's was when we were dismissed by him: and yet he was mourning a wife, you an enemy. You would now be standing in the line of battle, did not the care of her burial detain you. Is it any wonder, if he seeks peace from so friendly a spirit? What need is there of arms among those between whom hatred has been taken away?

11.5. Before, he was fixing the boundary of your empire at the river Halys, which bounds Lydia: now whatever lies between the Hellespont and the Euphrates he offers as the dowry of his daughter, whom he gives to you.

11.6. Ochus, his son, whom you have, keep as a hostage of peace and fidelity; restore his mother and his two maiden daughters: for the three persons he beseeches you to accept a thousand talents of gold.

11.7. If I did not know the moderation of your spirit, I should not say that this is the time when you ought not only to grant peace, but even to be the first to seek it.

11.8. Look back at how much you have left behind you: behold how much you seek. An over-heavy empire is dangerous: for it is difficult to hold what you cannot grasp. Do you see how ships that exceed their proper size cannot be steered? I know not whether Darius has on that very account lost so much, because excessive wealth makes room for great loss.

11.9. It is easier indeed to conquer than to keep: how much more readily, by Heaven, do our hands snatch than hold! The very death of the wife of Darius can remind you that less is now permitted to your mercy than was permitted."

11.10. Alexander, having ordered the envoys to leave the tent, refers to his council what they thought best. For a long time no one dared say what he felt, the king's wish being uncertain:

11.11. at last Parmenio said that he had before advised that the captives should be given back at Damascus to those who would ransom them: that an immense sum could have been raised from those who, prisoners in great numbers, kept the hands of brave men occupied.

11.12. And now he strongly advised that one old woman and two girls, the encumbrances of journeys and marches, should be exchanged for thirty thousand talents of gold.

11.13. A rich kingdom could be obtained by agreement, not by war; nor had anyone else possessed lands between the Hister and the Euphrates, separated by so vast a space and interval. Let him have regard rather to Macedonia than gaze upon Bactra and the Indies.

11.14. The speech was unwelcome to the king: and so, when Parmenio had made an end of speaking, he said: "I too would prefer money to glory, if I were Parmenio: but now I am Alexander, free from care about poverty, and I remember that I am not a trader but a king.

11.15. I have indeed nothing for sale, but my fortune at any rate I do not sell.

11.16. If it is your pleasure that the captives be given back, I will give them as a gift more honourably than send them back for a price." Then, the envoys being brought in, he answered in this manner: "Report to Darius that what I have done mercifully and liberally I have ascribed not to friendship for him, but to my own nature.

11.17. I am not wont to wage war against captives and women: he whom I would hate must be in arms. But if at least he sought peace in good faith, I should perhaps deliberate whether to grant it. But in fact, since now he tempts my soldiers by letters to treachery, now my friends by money to my destruction, he must be pursued by me to extermination, not as a just enemy, but as a poisoning assassin. As for the conditions of peace which you bring, if I accept them, they make him the victor.

11.19. What lies beyond the Euphrates he liberally bestows. You have forgotten, then, where you approach me: for I am beyond the Euphrates. The boundary, therefore, of the dowry he promises, most liberal as it is, my camp overpasses.

11.20. Drive me from here, that I may know that what you yield is yours. With the same liberality he gives me his daughter: namely, one whom I know is to be married to one of his slaves.

11.21. He confers much on me indeed, if he prefers me to Mazaeus for a son-in-law! Go, report to your king both what he has lost and what he still has: that these are the prizes of war; that, with this war deciding the boundaries of both kingdoms, each will have what the fortune of the coming day shall assign."

11.22. The envoys replied that, since war was in his mind, he did simply in not deceiving them with the hope of peace. They asked that they themselves be dismissed to their king as soon as possible: he too must prepare for war. Dismissed, they announced that the contest was at hand.

12.1. He at once sent ahead Mazaeus with three thousand horsemen to occupy the routes by which the enemy was likely to come.

12.2. Alexander, having paid the due rites to the body of his wife, and having left within the same fortifications, with a moderate garrison, all the heavier retinue, hastened against the enemy.

12.3. He had divided the infantry into two wings, cavalry being set about either flank: the baggage followed the column.

12.4. Then, having sent ahead Menidas with his cavalry, he orders him to discover where Darius was. But he, since Mazaeus had encamped not far off, not daring to advance further, reported that he had heard nothing but the murmur of men and the neighing of horses.

12.5. Mazaeus too, having caught sight of the scouts from afar, withdrew into camp, a messenger of the enemy's approach. So Darius, who desired to fight it out in open plains, orders his soldiery to arm and disposes his line.

12.6. On the left wing went the Bactrian cavalry, about a thousand, the Dahae as many, and the Arachosians and Susianians made up four thousand. These a hundred scythed chariots followed. Next to the chariots was Bessus with eight thousand, likewise Bactrian cavalry.

12.7. The Massagetae, two thousand, closed up his column. The infantry of several nations, not intermingled but each of its own nation, he had joined to these forces. Then Ariobarzanes and Orontobates led the Persians with the Mardi and Sogdians.

12.8. They commanded portions of the forces, while over the whole was Orsines, sprung from the seven Persians, tracing his origin even to Cyrus, that most noble king.

12.9. These were followed by other nations, not well enough known even to their allies. After them Phradates went before a great column of Caspians with fifty four-horse chariots.

12.10. The Indians and the other dwellers by the Red Sea, names rather than aids, were behind the chariots. This column was closed by other scythed chariots, to which he had joined the foreign soldiery. These the Armenians, whom they call the Lesser, the Babylonian Armenians, and both the Belitae and those who inhabited the mountains of the Cossaeans, followed.

12.11. After these went the Gortuae, a people indeed of Euboean stock, who had once followed the Medes, but were now degenerate and ignorant of their ancestral custom. He had attached to these the Phrygians and Cataonians. Then the nation of the Parthyaeans, who inhabit the lands which now the Parthians, come forth from Scythia, hold, closed the column.

12.12. Such was the aspect of the left wing. The right was held by the nation of Greater Armenia, the Cadusii, the Cappadocians, the Syrians, and the Medes.

12.13. These too had fifty scythed chariots. The total of the whole army, the cavalry, made up forty-five thousand, the line of infantry two hundred thousand. Arranged in this manner, they advanced ten stades, and, being ordered to halt, awaited the enemy under arms.

12.14. A panic, for which there was no cause, fell upon Alexander's army: for, as though distraught, they began to tremble, a hidden fear running through the breasts of all. The flashing of the sky, like a thing afire in the summer season, presented the appearance of darting fire, and they believed that flames gleamed from the camp of Darius as though it had been rashly set upon their outposts.

12.15. And if Mazaeus, who was guarding the route, had come upon them in their alarm, a great disaster could have been suffered: now, while he sat idle on the hill he had occupied, content not to be provoked,

12.16. Alexander, having learned of the panic of his army, ordered the signal to be given that they should halt, that they should lay down their arms before their very position and rest their bodies, reminding them that there was no cause for sudden terror, that the enemy stood far off.

12.17. At last, masters of themselves, they recovered alike their arms and their spirits. Nor did anything in the present circumstances seem safer than to fortify a camp in the same place.

12.18. The next day Mazaeus — who with chosen horsemen had settled on a high hill, from which the camp of the Macedonians could be seen — either through fear, or because he had been ordered only to reconnoitre, returned to Darius.

12.19. The Macedonians occupied that very hill which he had abandoned: for it was both safer than the plain, and from it the line of the enemy, which was being deployed in the field, could be seen.

12.20. But a mist, which the moist mountains round about had poured out, did not indeed take away the appearance of the whole, but prevented the distinctions and order of the columns from being discerned. The multitude had flooded the plains, and the din of so many thousands, even of those standing far off, had filled the ears.

12.21. The king wavered in mind and, by a too-late reckoning, weighed now his own counsel, now Parmenio's: for it had come to this, that the army could not be drawn back without disaster unless it were victorious.

12.22. And so, dissembling his mind, he ordered the mercenary cavalry from Paeonia to go before.

12.23. He himself had extended the phalanx, as has been said before, into two wings: each wing the cavalry covered. And now a clearer light, the mist being dispelled, had revealed the enemy's line, and the Macedonians, whether from eagerness or from weariness of waiting, raised a great shout after the manner of men in battle. It was answered too by the Persians, and had filled the surrounding groves and valleys with a terrible sound,

12.24. nor could the Macedonians now be held back from rushing at a run against the enemy. The king, thinking it still better to fortify a camp on the same hill, ordered a rampart to be thrown up; and, the work being briskly finished, he withdrew into his tent, from which the whole line of the enemy could be seen.

13.1. Then indeed the whole aspect of the coming crisis was before his eyes: horses and men shone with splendid arms, and the anxiety of the enemy's officers, riding among their columns, showed that everything was being prepared with more intent care,

13.2. and most things vain in themselves — such as the din of men, the neighing of horses, the gleam of glittering arms — had disturbed a mind anxious with expectation.

13.3. So, whether doubtful in mind, or in order to test his men, he held a council, inquiring what would be best to do.

13.4. Parmenio, most skilled among the leaders in the arts of war, judged that there was need of stratagem, not of battle. The enemy could be surprised in the dead of night: of discordant customs and tongues, and besides terrified by sleep and unforeseen peril, how would they ever come together amid the alarm of the night?

13.5. But by day, first the dreadful faces of the Scythians and Bactrians would meet them: shaggy were their countenances and unshorn their hair, and besides, the surpassing size of their vast bodies. By empty and idle, rather than just, causes of dread the soldier is more moved.

13.6. Then, so great a multitude could surround the fewer, since they were fighting not in the narrows and trackless paths of Cilicia, but on an open and broad plain.

13.7. Almost all agreed with Parmenio: Polypercon thought that the victory was without doubt placed in that counsel.

13.8. Looking at him — for he could not bring himself to chide Parmenio again, having lately rebuked him more sharply than he wished — the king said: "That cleverness which you urge upon me belongs to footpads and thieves: for their one wish is to deceive.

13.9. But I will not suffer either the absence of Darius, or the narrowness of places, or the stratagem of the night, ever to stand in the way of my glory. I am resolved to attack openly, by daylight: I prefer to regret my own fortune than to be ashamed of my victory.

13.10. To this is added also: I have ascertained that the barbarians keep watch and stand under arms, so that they cannot even be surprised. Make ready for battle, then." So, having roused them, he dismissed them to tend their bodies.

13.11. Darius, conjecturing that the enemy would do what Parmenio had advised, had ordered the horses to be kept bridled, a great part of the army to be under arms, and the watches to be kept with more intent care: therefore his whole camp gleamed with fires.

13.12. He himself, with his leaders and kinsmen, went round the columns of those standing under arms, invoking the Sun and Mithra and the sacred and eternal fire, that they might breathe into them a courage worthy of their ancient glory and the records of their forefathers.

13.13. And surely, if any auguries of divine help could be conceived by the human mind, the gods stood with them. They had lately struck a sudden dread into the spirits of the Macedonians, who even now were borne distraught, throwing away their arms; and the guardian gods of the Persian empire were exacting from these madmen the penalties they owed.

13.14. Nor was their own leader more in his right mind: for, after the manner of wild beasts, gazing only upon the prey he sought, he was running upon the destruction that lay before the prey. A like anxiety was among the Macedonians too, and they passed the night as though the contest had been proclaimed for that very night, in fear.

13.15. Alexander, never more alarmed, ordered Aristander to be summoned to make vows and prayers. He, in a white robe, holding sprigs of vervain in his hand, his head veiled, led the prayers of the king as he propitiated Jupiter and Minerva and Victory.

13.16. Then indeed, the sacrifice being duly performed, he returned to his tent to rest for the remainder of the night. But he could neither take sleep nor endure quiet: now he debated whether to send down his line from the mountain ridge against the right wing of the Persians, now to charge the enemy with a straight front, at times he hesitated whether rather to wheel his column to the left.

13.17. At last his body, weighed down by anxiety of mind, was overcome by a deeper sleep. And now, the light having risen, the leaders had assembled to receive their orders, astonished at the unwonted silence about the headquarters:

13.18. for at other times he was wont to summon them himself, and at times to chide them for lingering; now they marvelled that he had not been roused even by the final crisis of affairs, and they believed that he was not resting in sleep, but drooping with fear.

13.19. Yet none of the bodyguard dared to enter the tent. And now the time was pressing, nor could the soldier, without the leader's order, either take up his arms or go to his ranks.

13.20. Parmenio, having long hesitated, himself proclaims that they should take food. And now it was necessary to go forth: then at last he enters the tent, and, having called him by name several times, when he could not by his voice, roused him by his touch.

13.21. "It is broad day," he said: "the enemy has brought up his line drawn up for battle, your soldier, still unarmed, awaits the command. Where is that vigour of your spirit? Surely it is you who are wont to rouse the sentinels."

13.22. To this Alexander said: "Do you suppose that I could have taken sleep before I had freed my mind of the anxiety that was delaying my rest?" And he ordered the signal for battle to be given by the trumpet.

13.23. And when Parmenio persisted in the same wonder, because he had said that, freed of cares, he had taken sleep: "It is no wonder at all," he said: "for I, while Darius was burning the land, ravaging the villages, spoiling the supplies, was not master of myself:

13.24. but now what should I fear, when he is preparing to decide it in battle? By Heaven, he has fulfilled my wish. But the reasoning of this counsel shall be rendered later too: go you to the forces over which each presides; I will be there presently and will explain what I wish done."

13.25. Very rarely, and more at the warning of his friends than from fear of going into the crisis, was he wont to use a cuirass: then at any rate, having taken up the defence of his body, he came forth to the soldiers. They had never seen the king so eager, and from his undaunted countenance they augured a sure hope of victory.

13.26. And he, the rampart being torn down, orders the forces to go out and disposes his line. On the right wing were stationed the cavalry whom they called the agema: over these Clitus presided, to whom he joined the squadrons of Philotas, and the rest of the cavalry commanders he attached to his flank.

13.27. The squadron of Meleager stood last, which the phalanx followed. Behind the phalanx were the Argyraspids: over these Nicanor, the son of Parmenio, presided.

13.28. In the reserves, with his own band, was Coenos; behind him were placed the Orestae and Lyncestae, behind them Polypercon, then the foreign soldiers. The chief of this column, Amyntas, was absent: Philippus, the son of Balacrus, recently admitted into the alliance, commanded them.

13.29. Such was the aspect of the right wing. On the left Craterus had the Peloponnesian cavalry, with the squadrons of the Achaeans and Locrians and Malians joined to him. These the Thessalian cavalry closed, under the command of Philippus. The line of infantry was covered by cavalry. Such was the front of the left wing.

13.30. But, lest it could be surrounded by the multitude, he had girt the rearmost column with a strong band. The wings too he strengthened with reserves placed not with a straight front, but on the flank, so that, if the enemy should attempt to surround the line, they might be ready for battle.

13.31. Here were the Agrianians, over whom Attalus presided, with the Cretan archers joined to them. The rearmost ranks he turned away from the front, so as to fortify the whole line in a ring. Here were the Illyrians, with the soldiery engaged for pay joined to them; the Thracians too, light-armed, he had set against them at the same time.

13.32. And he set the line so capable of facing about, that those who stood last, lest they be surrounded, might yet turn and wheel round to the front. And so the front was not better fortified than the flanks, nor the flanks than the rear.

13.33. These things being thus ordered, he commanded that, if the barbarians sent forth the scythed chariots with a din, they themselves, loosening their ranks, should receive the charge of the oncoming chariots in silence, having no doubt that they would run past without harm, if no one opposed them: but if they should send them in without din, they themselves should terrify them with a shout, and stab the frightened horses with weapons from both sides.

13.34. Those who commanded the wings were ordered to extend them in such a way that they should neither be surrounded, if they stood too close, nor yet empty the rearmost line.

13.35. The baggage, with the captives, among whom were guarded the mother and children of Darius, he placed on a high hill not far from the line, a moderate garrison being left. The left wing, as on other occasions, was given to Parmenio to guard; he himself stood on the right.

13.36. They had not yet come within the throw of a weapon, when a certain Bion, a deserter, came to the king at the greatest speed he could, announcing that Darius had scattered iron caltrops in the ground, where he believed the enemy would send out his cavalry, and that the spot had been marked with a sure sign, so that the trick might be avoided by his own men.

13.37. The deserter being ordered to be kept under guard, he summons his leaders, and, having explained what had been announced, warns them to turn aside from the spot pointed out and to acquaint the cavalry with the danger.

13.38. But the army could not hear him as he exhorted them, the din of the two columns intercepting the use of their ears; but in the sight of all he addressed the leaders and each nearest man as he rode among them:

14.1. that, having traversed so many lands in hope of the victory for which they were to fight, this one crisis remained. He recalled the river Granicus here, the mountains of Cilicia, and Syria and Egypt snatched from those who fled before them — mighty incitements of hope and glory.

14.2. That the Persians, recovered from flight, would fight because they could not flee. That now for the third day, bloodless with fear, weighed down by their own arms, they stuck fast in the same spot. That there was no greater proof of their despair than that they burned their cities, that they burned their fields, having confessed that whatever they had not destroyed belonged to the enemy.

14.3. Let them not be terrified by the mere empty names of unknown nations: for it had nothing to do with the crisis of war, who among them were called Scythians or who Cadusii. For this very reason, that they were unknown, they were ignoble:

14.4. brave men were never unknown, but cowards, dragged out of their hiding-places, bring nothing but their names. The Macedonians by their valour had brought it to pass that there was no place in the whole world that did not know such men.

14.5. Let them look upon the disorderly column of the barbarians: one had nothing but a javelin, another whirled stones from a sling, few had proper arms. And so on that side more men stood, on this more would fight.

14.6. Nor did he ask of them that they should take up the battle bravely, unless he himself had been to the rest an example of bravery: he would fight before the foremost standards. So many scars were his pledge for himself, so many decorations of his body: they themselves knew that, almost alone exempt from the common booty, he took as the prizes of victory the cherishing and adorning of his men.

14.7. These things he said to brave men. If any were unlike them, he would have said this: that they had come to a place from which they could not flee. So many stretches of land traversed, so many rivers and mountains set behind them, the way home to their household gods must be made by their own hand. Thus the leaders, thus the nearest of the soldiers, were stirred.

14.8. Darius was on the left wing, with a great column of his men, hemmed in by chosen cavalry and infantry; and he had despised the fewness of the enemy, thinking the line, with its extended wings, an empty show.

14.9. But, as he was conspicuous on his chariot, carrying his eyes and his hands round to the columns standing on either side, he said: "Of the lands which here the Ocean washes, there the Hellespont shuts in, you who but lately were lords must now fight not for glory but for safety and — what you set above safety — for freedom:

14.10. this day will either establish or end an empire greater than any age has seen. At the Granicus we contended with the enemy with the least part of our strength; when we were beaten in Cilicia, Syria could receive us; great bulwarks of the kingdom were the Tigris and Euphrates.

14.11. We have come to a point from which, once driven, there is no room even for flight. Everything behind us is exhausted by so long a war: the cities have not their own inhabitants, the lands have not their tillers. Our wives too and children follow this line, a ready prey for the enemy, unless we set our bodies before our dearest pledges.

14.12. What was my part, I have done: I have provided an army which a well-nigh measureless plain could scarcely hold; I have distributed horses and arms; I have seen to it that supplies should not be lacking for so great a multitude; I have chosen a place where the line could be deployed.

14.13. The rest is in your power: only dare to conquer, and despise rumour, the feeblest weapon against brave men. It is rashness, which you have hitherto feared as if it were valour: which, as soon as it has poured out its first charge, grows numb, like certain animals when their sting is spent.

14.14. But these plains have laid bare the fewness which the mountains of Cilicia had concealed. You see their thin ranks, their extended wings, their hollow centre: for the rearmost, whom he placed facing about, now turn their backs. They can be trodden down, by Heaven, by the hooves of horses, even if I send out nothing but the scythed chariots.

14.15. And we shall have won the war, if we have won the battle. For not even for them is there room for flight: here the Euphrates, there the Tigris bars them in, hemmed in as they are.

14.16. And what before was in their favour is turned to the contrary. Our column is mobile and unencumbered, theirs is heavy with booty. Entangled, then, with our spoils, we shall butcher them, and the same thing will be both the cause of victory and its reward.

14.17. But if the name of any nation moves any of you, let him reflect that the Macedonians' arms are there, not their bodies. For we have shed much of one another's blood, and the loss is always heavier in fewness.

14.18. For Alexander, however great he may seem to the spiritless and the timid, is but a single creature, and, if you believe me at all, rash and frenzied, more fortunate hitherto through our fear than through his own valour.

14.19. But nothing can be lasting that has no reason behind it. Though felicity may seem to favour him, yet in the end it does not suffice for rashness. Besides, the changes of things are brief and shifting, and fortune never indulges simply.

14.20. Perhaps the gods have so ordained the fates, that the empire of the Persians, which by a prosperous course through two hundred and thirty years they had raised to its highest pinnacle, they should shake by a great convulsion rather than overthrow, and should remind us of human frailty, of which in prosperity there is too great forgetfulness.

14.21. But lately we were carrying war of our own accord against the Greeks: now in our own abodes we are repelling war brought upon us. We are tossed in turn by the vicissitude of fortune. Manifestly empire, because we both aim at it in turn, no single nation can hold.

14.22. But even if hope were not at hand, necessity ought nevertheless to spur us. We have come to the last extremity. My mother, my two daughters, Ochus born to the hope of this empire, the chiefs, that offspring of royal stock, your own leaders, he holds bound like criminals: unless there is some hope in you, I am, in the greater part of myself, a captive. Tear my own flesh and blood from their chains, restore to me the pledges for which you yourselves do not refuse to die — my parent, my children: for my wife I have lost in that prison.

14.23. Believe now that all these stretch out their hands to you, implore the gods of their fathers, demand your aid, your mercy, your faith, that you free them from fetters, from slavery, from a precarious sustenance. Or do you believe that they serve with an even mind those whose kings they disdain to be?

14.24. I see the enemy's line being brought up: but the nearer I approach the crisis, the less can I be content with what I have said. By the gods of our fathers, then, and by the eternal fire that is borne before the altars, and by the splendour of the sun rising within the bounds of my kingdom, by the eternal memory of Cyrus, who first brought into Persia the empire taken from the Medes and Lydians, I conjure you: rescue from the uttermost disgrace the name and nation of the Persians.

14.25. Go, eager and full of spirit, that the glory you have received from your forefathers you may leave to your posterity. In your right hands you now carry your freedom, your strength, your hope of time to come. He escapes death who has despised it: it overtakes every most timid man.

14.26. I myself am borne, not only after the ancestral fashion, but so that I may be seen, upon a chariot, nor do I refuse that you should imitate me, whether I shall be an example of bravery or of cowardice."

15.1. Meanwhile Alexander, both to skirt the place of the ambush pointed out by the deserter and to meet Darius, who was guarding the wing, ordered his column to advance obliquely.

15.2. Darius too turned his line to the same point, Bessus being warned to order the Massagetan cavalry to charge upon Alexander's left wing from the flank.

15.3. He himself had the scythed chariots before him: these, at a given signal, he poured out all together upon the enemy. The drivers rushed on with loosened reins, that they might crush the more before the charge was sufficiently foreseen.

15.4. Some, then, the spears projecting far beyond the pole, others, the scythes let down from either side, mangled. Nor did the Macedonians give way little by little, but in headlong flight had thrown their ranks into confusion.

15.5. Mazaeus too struck fear into the dismayed men, having ordered a thousand horsemen to ride round to plunder the enemy's baggage, thinking that the captives too, who were guarded together, would break their chains when they saw their own people approaching.

15.6. This had not escaped Parmenio, who was on the left: so he speedily sends Polydamas to show the king the danger and to consult what he ordered to be done.

15.7. He, having heard Polydamas, said: "Go, tell Parmenio that, if we win the battle, we shall not only recover our own, but seize also what is the enemy's.

15.8. Therefore there is no reason why he should withdraw any of his strength from the line, but, as is worthy of me, as is worthy of Philip my father, let him fight bravely, despising the loss of the baggage."

15.9. Meanwhile the barbarians had thrown the baggage into confusion, and, most of the guards being killed, the captives, their chains broken, snatch up whatever was at hand by which they could arm themselves, and, joining the cavalry of their own people, fall upon the Macedonians, surrounded by a twofold calamity.

15.10. Those who were about Sisigambis joyfully announce that Darius had conquered, had laid low the enemy with immense slaughter, and at last had even stripped them of their baggage: for they believed that the same fortune prevailed everywhere, and that the victorious Persians had run off to plunder.

15.11. Sisigambis, though the captives urged her to lift her spirit from its grief, persevered in the same bearing as before. No word fell from her, no colour of her face or her countenance was changed: she sat motionless — fearing, I believe, by a premature joy to provoke fortune — so that it was uncertain to those who watched her what she would prefer.

15.12. Meanwhile Menidas, the commander of Alexander's cavalry, had come with a few squadrons to bring aid to the baggage — it is uncertain whether by his own counsel or by the king's command — but he did not withstand the charge of the Cadusii and Scythians: for, the contest scarcely tried, he fled back to the king, a witness rather than an avenger of the lost baggage.

15.13. Now grief had overcome Alexander's resolution, and he feared, not without reason, lest the care of recovering their property should turn the soldier away from the battle: and so he sends Aretes, the leader of the lancers — they were called sarissophoroi — against the Scythians.

15.14. Meanwhile the chariots which had thrown the line into confusion about the foremost standards had charged into the phalanx: the Macedonians, their spirits steadied, receive them into the middle of their column.

15.15. The line was like a rampart: they had joined their spears and stabbed the flanks of those who charged in rashly from either side. Then they began to surround the chariots and to hurl down the defenders.

15.16. A great ruin of horses and drivers had filled the line: these could not govern the frightened beasts, which by the frequent tossing of their necks had not only shaken off the yoke but even overturned the chariots; the wounded dragged the dead, and, terrified, could neither stand still nor, disabled, go forward.

15.17. A few four-horse chariots, however, got through to the rearmost line, those on whom they fell being consumed by a pitiable death: for the severed limbs of men lay on the ground, and, because the wounds, still warm, were without pain, some, maimed and disabled too, did not let go their arms, until, much blood being shed, they sank down lifeless.

15.18. Meanwhile Aretes, the leader of the Scythians who were plundering the baggage being killed, pressed the more upon the now sorely frightened men. Then the Bactrians, sent by Darius, came up and turned the fortune of the fight. Many, then, of the Macedonians were crushed in the first charge, more fled back to Alexander.

15.19. Then the Persians, raising such a shout as victors are wont to utter, charged fiercely upon the enemy as if everywhere overthrown. Alexander chid the terrified, exhorted them, and alone rekindled the battle, which had now grown languid: and, their spirits at last steadied, he ordered them to advance against the enemy.

15.20. The line was thinner on the right wing of the Persians: for from there the Bactrians had withdrawn to overpower the baggage. And so Alexander attacks the loosened ranks and charges on with great slaughter of the enemy.

15.21. But the Persians who were on the left wing, in the hope of being able to enclose him, set their column behind him as he fought: and he, sticking fast in the midst, would have come into great danger, had not the Agrianian cavalry, setting spurs, fallen upon the barbarians who surrounded the king, and, by cutting down their rear, compelled them to turn against themselves.

15.22. Both lines were thrown into confusion. Alexander had the enemy both in front and in rear. Those who pressed upon his rear were themselves pressed by the Agrianian cavalry. The Bactrians, having plundered the enemy's baggage, on their return could not recover their own ranks; and many columns, broken off at the same time from the rest, fought wherever chance had mingled one man with another.

15.23. The two kings, their columns almost joined, had kindled the battle. More Persians fell, nearly an equal number were wounded on both sides.

15.24. Darius was borne on a chariot, Alexander on a horse. Chosen men guarded each, careless of themselves: for, their king lost, they neither wished nor were able to be safe. Each man counted it glorious to fall before the eyes of his own king.

15.25. Yet those incurred the greatest danger whom they most protected: for each man sought for himself the glory of having slain the king.

15.26. But, whether it was a deception of the eyes or a true appearance, those who were about Alexander believed they saw an eagle flying gently a little above the king's head, frightened neither by the clash of arms nor by the groans of the dying; and for a long while it appeared about Alexander's horse, more like a thing hovering than flying.

15.27. The seer Aristander at any rate, clad in a white robe and holding forth a laurel in his right hand, kept pointing out the bird to the soldiers intent upon the fight, an unmistakable omen of victory.

15.28. A great eagerness and confidence, therefore, kindled to battle the men who a little before had been terrified, especially after the charioteer of Darius, who sat before him and guided the horses, was transfixed by a spear. Nor did either the Persians or the Macedonians doubt that the king himself had been killed.

15.29. So with mournful wailing and disorderly shouting and groaning the kinsmen and armour-bearers of Darius threw into confusion almost the whole line, which was still fighting on even terms. And the left wing, scattered in flight, had abandoned the chariot, which those who were crowded on the right received into the middle of their column.

15.30. It is said that Darius, drawing his scimitar, doubted whether to avoid the disgrace of flight by an honourable death: but, conspicuous on his chariot, he was ashamed to abandon his whole line while it had not yet withdrawn from the battle,

15.31. and, while he hesitated between hope and despair, little by little the Persians gave way and had loosened their ranks. Alexander, having changed his horse — for he had worn out several — stabbed the faces of those who resisted, the backs of those who fled.

15.32. And now it was no longer a battle but a slaughter, when Darius too turned his chariot to flight. The victor hung upon the backs of the fugitives, but a cloud of dust, which was raised to the sky, took away the prospect of his eyes:

15.33. so they wandered, no otherwise than in the dark, gathering from time to time at the sound of a known voice or at a signal. They could hear, however, the cracking of the reins with which the horses drawing the chariot were repeatedly lashed: this alone was the track caught of the fugitive.

16.1. But on the left wing of the Macedonians — which Parmenio, as has been said before, guarded — the affairs of each side were carried on with a far different fortune. Mazaeus, having charged vehemently with all his cavalry, pressed hard upon the squadrons of the Macedonians.

16.2. And now, abounding in multitude, he had begun to ride round the line, when Parmenio orders horsemen to announce to Alexander in what peril they were: unless aid were brought in good time, the flight could not be stayed.

16.3. The king had already gained much ground, hanging upon the backs of the fugitives, when a grim message came from Parmenio. Those who were riding were ordered to rein in their horses, and the column halted, Alexander gnashing his teeth that victory was being snatched from his hands and that Darius was fleeing more luckily than he could pursue.

16.4. Meanwhile the report of the king's defeat had reached Mazaeus: and so, although he was the stronger, yet, terrified by the fortune of the parties, he pressed more feebly upon the dismayed. Parmenio knew not indeed the cause of the battle's slackening of its own accord, but he briskly used the opportunity of conquering.

16.5. He orders the Thessalian cavalry to be summoned to him: "Do you not see," he said, "those men who but lately fiercely pressed us, falling back, panic-stricken by a sudden fear? Surely the fortune of our king has won the day for us too.

16.6. Everything is strewn with the slaughter of the Persians. Why do you delay? Are you not a match even for fugitives?" He seemed to speak the truth, and hope had roused even the languishing: setting spurs, they burst upon the enemy. And they were now retiring not little by little, but at a quickened pace, and nothing was wanting to flight except that they had not yet turned their backs. Parmenio, however, ignorant of what fortune the king had on the right wing, restrained his men.

16.7. Mazaeus, a space being given for flight, crossed the Tigris, not by a direct route, but by a longer and therefore safer circuit, and entered Babylon with the remnants of the conquered army.

16.8. Darius, with a few companions of his flight, had hastened to the river Lycus: which being crossed, he doubted whether to break down the bridge. For it was reported that the enemy would soon be at hand. But he saw that so many thousands of his men, who had not yet reached the river, would, the bridge being cut, become a prey to the enemy.

16.9. It is established that, as he departed, leaving the bridge untouched, he said that he preferred to give a way to those who pursued than to take one from those who fled. He himself, having traversed a vast distance in flight, reached Arbela at about midnight.

16.10. Who could either grasp in his mind or comprehend in speech so many mockeries of fortune, the manifold slaughter of leaders and columns, the flight of the conquered, the disasters now of individuals, now of whole peoples?

16.11. Wellnigh the events of an age fortune heaped into that one day — alas! Some made for the way where the shortest route lay open, others for the byways and the paths unknown to their pursuers. Horse and foot, confused, without a leader, the unarmed mingled with the armed, the disabled with the whole.

16.12. Then, pity being turned into fear, those who could not keep up were abandoned amid mutual groanings. Thirst above all scorched the weary and the wounded, and everywhere along all the streams they had stretched out their bodies, catching with gaping mouth the water that flowed past.

16.13. And when they had greedily drunk it, turbid as it was, their bowels were immediately stretched, the mud weighing them down; and, their limbs unstrung and torpid, when the enemy came upon them, they were roused by fresh wounds.

16.14. Some, the nearest streams being taken, had turned aside further off, to catch whatever hidden moisture trickled anywhere; nor was there any hollow so out of the way and dry that it escaped the thirst of those who sought.

16.15. From the villages nearest the road the wailing of old men and women could be heard, calling out, after the barbarian fashion, upon Darius as still their king.

16.16. Alexander, as has been said above, the charge of his men being checked, had reached the river Lycus, where a great multitude of fugitives had burdened the bridge, and very many, when the enemy pressed, had flung themselves into the river, and, heavy with arms and worn out by battle and flight, were swallowed in the eddies.

16.17. And now not only the bridge, but not even the river itself could hold the columns that heedlessly heaped themselves upon it from time to time: for when fear has entered men's minds, they dread only that which they first began to dread.

16.18. Alexander, his men urging him not to leave off the pursuit of the enemy who was escaping unpunished, pleaded that the weapons were blunt and the hands weary, the bodies spent by so great a run, and the time of day verging on night,

16.19. but in truth, anxious about the left wing, which he believed still stood in the line, he resolved to return to bring aid to his men. And he had now turned his standards, when horsemen sent by Parmenio announced the victory of that part too.

16.20. But on this day he incurred no greater peril than while he was leading his forces back into camp. Few and disordered men followed him, exulting in victory — for they believed that all the enemy were either scattered in flight or had fallen in the line —:

16.21. when suddenly there appeared opposite a column of horsemen, who at first checked their course, then, the fewness of the Macedonians being perceived, drove their squadrons against those they met.

16.22. The king rode before the standards, his danger rather dissembled than despised.

16.23. Nor did his unbroken good fortune in doubtful matters fail him. For the commander of the cavalry, eager for combat and for that very reason rushing too incautiously upon him, he transfixed with his spear; and, when this man had fallen from his horse, he pierced through with the same weapon the next, and then several more.

16.24. His friends too charged upon the men thus thrown into confusion. Nor did the Persians fall unavenged: for not even whole lines of battle joined contest more vehemently than did these tumultuary bands.

16.25. At last the barbarians, since in the dim light flight seemed safer than fight, departed in scattered columns. The king, having come safely through this extraordinary peril, led his men back unharmed into camp.

16.26. Of the Persians, whose number the victors could fix, forty thousand fell; of the Macedonians fewer than three hundred were lost.

16.27. But this victory the king owed for the greater part to his valour rather than to his fortune: he conquered by his spirit, not, as before, by the ground.

16.28. For he both drew up his line most skilfully and himself fought most promptly, and with great judgment despised the loss of his baggage and impedimenta, when he saw that the crisis of the whole matter lay in the line of battle itself; and, the issue of the fight still doubtful, he bore himself as a victor.

16.29. Then, having routed the dismayed enemy, he pursued the fugitives — what can scarcely be believed amid that ardour of spirit — more prudently than greedily.

16.30. For if, while part of the army still stood in the line, he had persevered in pressing upon those who gave way, he would either have been conquered by his own fault or have conquered by another's valour. And if he had been afraid of the multitude of horsemen who met him, the victor would have had either to flee shamefully or to fall pitiably.

16.31. Nor are the leaders of the forces to be defrauded of their own praise. For the wounds which each received are tokens of valour:

16.32. Hephaestion's arm was struck by a spear; Perdiccas and Coenos and Menidas were nearly killed by arrows.

16.33. And if we are willing to estimate truly the Macedonians who then were, we shall confess both that the king was most worthy of such ministers, and that they were most worthy of so great a king.