Alexander

Then, while he was thus engaged with Rhoesaces, Spithridates rode up from one side, raised himself up on his horse, and with all his might came down with a barbarian battle-axe upon Alexander’s head. Alexander’s crest was broken off together with one of its plumes, and his helmet could barely and with difficulty resist the blow, so that the edge of the battle-axe touched the topmost hair of his head. But while Spithridates was raising his arm again for another stroke, Cleitus, Black Cleitus, got the start of him and ran him through the body with his spear. At the same time Rhoesaces also fell, smitten by Alexander’s sword.

While Alexander’s cavalry were making such a dangerous and furious fight, the Macedonian phalanx crossed the river and the infantry forces on both sides engaged. The enemy, however, did not resist vigorously, nor for a long time, but fled in a rout, all except the Greek mercenaries. These made a stand at a certain eminence, and asked that Alexander should promise them quarter.

But he, influenced by anger more than by reason, charged foremost upon them and lost his horse, which was smitten through the ribs with a sword (it was not Bucephalas, but another); and most of the Macedonians who were slain or wounded fought or fell there, since they came to close quarters with men who knew how to fight and were desperate. Of the Barbarians, we are told, twenty thousand footmen fell, and twenty-five hundred horsemen.[*](Diodorus (xvii. 21, 6) says that more than ten thousand Persian footmen fell, and not less than two thousand horsemen; while over twenty thousand were taken prisoners.) But on Alexander’s side, Aristobulus says there were thirty-four dead in all, of whom nine were footmen.

Of these, then, Alexander ordered statues to be set up in bronze, and Lysippus wrought them.[*](According to Arrian (Anab. i. 16, 4), about twenty-five of Alexander’s companions, a select corps, fell at the first onset, and it was of these that Alexander ordered statues to be made by Lysippus.) Moreover, desiring to make the Greeks partners in his victory, he sent to the Athenians in particular three hundred of the captured shields, and upon the rest of the spoils in general he ordered a most ambitious inscription to be wrought: Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians from the Barbarians who dwell in Asia. But the drinking vessels and the purple robes and whatever things of this nature he took from the Persians, all these, except a few, he sent to his mother.

This contest at once made a great change in the situation to Alexander’s advantage, so that he received the submission even of Sardis, the bulwark of the barbarian dominion on the sea-coast, and added the rest of the country to his conquests. Halicarnassus alone withstood him, and Miletus, which cities he took by storm[*](The siege and capture of these cities occupied Alexander till the late autumn of 334 B.C.) and subdued all the territories about them. Then he was in doubt as to his future course.

Many times he was eager to encounter Dareius and put the whole issue to hazard, and many times he would make up his mind to practice himself first, as it were, and strengthen himself by acquiring the regions along the sea with their resources, and then to go up against that monarch. Now, there is in Lycia, near the city of Xanthus, a spring, which at this time, as we are told, was of its own motion upheaved from its depths, and overflowed, and cast forth a bronze tablet bearing the prints of ancient letters, in which it was made known that the empire of the Persians would one day be destroyed by the Greeks and come to an end.

Encouraged by this prophecy, Alexander hastened to clear up the seacoast as far as Cilicia and Phoenicia. His rapid passage along the coasts of Pamphylia has afforded many historians material for bombastic and terrifying description. They imply that by some great and heaven-sent good fortune the sea retired to make way for Alexander, although at other times it always came rolling in with violence from the main, and scarcely ever revealed to sight the small rocks which lie close up under the precipitous and riven sides of the mountain.[*](According to Arrian (Anab. i. 26, 1 f.), there is no route along this beach except when the north wind blows. But at that time, after strong south winds, the north winds blew and rendered his passage easy and quick, not without the divine intervention, as both he and his followers interpreted. )

And Menander, in one of his comedies,[*](Kook, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 240.) evidently refers jestingly to this marvel:—

1. How Alexander-like, indeed, this is; and if I seek some one,
2. Spontaneous he’ll present himself; and if I clearly must
3. Pass through some place by sea, this will lie open to my steps.

This was the reason for his spending several days in that city, during which he noticed that a statue of Theodectas, a deceased citizen of Phaselis, had been erected in the marketplace. Once, therefore, after supper and in his cups, he led a band of revellers to the statue and crowned it with many of their garlands, thus in pleasantry returning no ungraceful honour for the past association with the man which he owed to Aristotle and philosophy.