Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/520

Rh 482 ALEXANDER THE GEE AT for offensive warfare by land. From all parts of his vast empire was gathered a host, numbering, as some said, 600,000 men ; and the despot was as much elated at the eight as Xerxes, when ho looked down on his motley multi tudes at Doriscus. Like Xerxes he had one (the Athenian Charidemus) by his side to warn him that Asiatic myriads were not to be trusted in an encounter with the disciplined thousands of Alexander ; but he lacked the generosity which made Xerxes dismiss Demaratus with a smile for his good-will. Darius seized the exile with his own hand, and gave him over to the executioner. &quot; My avenger,&quot; said Charidemus, &quot; will soon teach you that I have spoken the truth.&quot; The Persian acted as though he wished to bring about the speediest fulfilment of the prediction. The Greek mercenaries were withdrawn from the fleet to be added to the land forces ; but although a hundred of these could have effectually barred the passage of Alex ander across the range of Taurus, and the passes of the Amanian, Cilician, and Assyrian gates, the invader was suffered to cross these denies without the loss of a man. Nay, so great was the contempt of Darius for the few thousands of the enemy, that he wished to give them a free path until they reached the plain from which he would sweep them away. But he could not wait patiently for them in his position to the east of the Amanian range. Alexander had been ill, and he had work to do in subju gating western Cilicia. When at length he set out on his march to the southern Amanian pass, Darius, with his unwieldy train, crossed the northern pass, and entered Issus two days after Alexander had left it. He had placed himself in a trap. In a space barely more than a mile and a half in width, hemmed in by the mountains on the one side and the sea on the other, Darius, in his royal chariot, in the midst of multitudes who had scarcely room to move, awaited the attack of Alexander, who fell suddenly on his right wing. The first onset was enough. The Persians broke and fled. Darius, thinking himself in danger, fled among the foremost. The Persian centre behaved well ; but it mattered little now what they might do. Even the Greek mercenaries were pushed back and scattered. Four thousand talents filled the treasure-chest of the conqueror, and the wife, mother, and son of Darius, appearing before him as prisoners, were told that they should retain their royal titles, his enterprise being directed, not against Darius personally, but to the issue which was to determine whether he or Alexander should be lord of Asia. The true value of armed Asiatic hordes was now as clear to all as the sun at noonday. Parmenion advanced to attack Damascus, but he needed not to strike a blow. The governor allowed the treasure in his charge to fall into his hands, and then surrendered the city. Alexander himself marched southward to Phoenicia. At Marathus he replied to a letter in which Darius demanded the restoration of his family and reproached him for his wanton aggression. His answer repeated what he had already said to his wife, adding that, if he wrote again, Darius must address him, not as his equal, but as his lord. &quot; I am now master of Asia,&quot; he wrote, &quot; and if you will not own me as such, I shall treat you as an evil-doer. If you wish to debate the point, do so like a man on the battlefield. I shall take care to find you wherever you may be.&quot; The island city of Aradus was surrendered on his approach. Sidon opened her gates. From the Tyrians he received a submission which demurred only to his entering their city. A siege of seven months ended in its fall ; and Alexander hanged 2000 of the citizens, it is said, on the sea-shore. The survivors, with the women and children, were sold as slaves. Before the catastrophe of the great Phoenician city he had received a second letter, in which Darius offered him his daughter in marriage, to gether with the cession of all lands to the west of the Euphrates. &quot; Were I Alexander,&quot; said Parmenion (if we may believe the story), &quot; I should take these terms, and run no further risk.&quot; &quot; So should I,&quot; an.swered Alexander, &quot; if I were Parmenion ; but as I am Alexander, I cannot.&quot; &quot; You offer me,&quot; he wrote accordingly to Darius, &quot; part of your possession, when I am lord of all. If I choose to marry your daughter, I will do so whether you like it or not.&quot; Darius sent no more letters. The issue, he saw, must be determined by the sword. For the present he was left to himself. Alexander s face was turned towards Egypt. Gaza dared to resist ; but a siege of two months was followed by a ruin as complete as that of Tyre. From Gaza a march of seven days brought him to Pelusium. The Persian governor opened its gates to receive him ; and the Egyptians expressed their delight at exchanging a Persian for a Macedonian master. Marching in triumph to Memphis, he offered solemn sacrifice to the calf-god Apis ; and then, with the true instinct of the ruler and the statesman, he hastened to found for his new kingdom a new capital, which, after more than two millenniums, remains a highway for the commerce of three continents. Success thus unparalleled was, it would seem, already producing its effects upon him. Calmly reviewing the course of his march from Sestus and Ilium to Memphis, he could explain it only on the supposition that he was no child of a human father, and he determined to obtain from the oracle of Ammon, in the Libyan Oasis, a solution of this mystery. The response greeted him as the son, not of Philip, but of Zeus ; and he returned, it is said, with the conviction that the divine honours paid to Hercules 331 B.C and Perseus were his own by indubitable right. March ing back through Phoenicia, he hastened to Thapsacus, and then crossed the Euphrates. Thence turning north wards, he made a sweep which brought him to the Tigris below Nineveh (Mosul), and there, without opposition, crossed a stream where the resistance of a few hundreds might have destroyed his army. After a few days march to the south-east, he received the news that Darius, Avith all his host, was close at hand. Still convinced that mere mimbers must, with ample space, decide the issue of any fight, and attributing his defeat at Issos only to the cramped position of his troops, he had gathered a vast horde, which some represent as more than a million, on the broad plain stretching from Gaugamela eastwards to Arbcla. His hopes were further raised by changes made in the weapons of his troops, and more -especially in. the array of his war- chariots. For the Macedonians it is enough to say that they were led by a man whose consummate generalship had never shone more conspicuously than in the cautious arrangements which preceded the battle of Arbela, or rather of Gaugamela. All went as he had anticipated. As at Issus, Darius fled ; and the bravery and even gallantry of the- Persians opposed to Parmenion were of no avail when the main body had hurried away after the king. So ended the last of the three great battles (if such they may be termed) which sufficed to destroy the Persian empire, or rather to make Alexander king of Persia ; and so ended the first act in the great drama of his life. The victory of Gaugamela opened for the conqueror the gates of Babylon and Susa. The treasures found in the former furnished an ample donation for all his men : those of Susa amounted, it is said, to nearly twelve millions of pounds sterling. The Persian king had wasted men on the battlefield ; he had hoarded coin which, freely spent in getting up a Greek army under Greek generals, might have rendered the enterprise of Alexander impossible. From Susa the conqueror turned his face towards Per- sepolis, the ancient capital of Cyrus. Before him lay the fortresses of the Uxii, to whom the Persian monarchs had