Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/265

 CHAPTER X

THROUGH PLACES PASSED ON ALEXANDER'S ROUTE

' When Alexander heard that Darius had been traitorously seized, he marched with greater speed than ever,'

— Arrian, Anabasis, 3. 21. 2.

Time for repose was short, for he who travels on Alexander's track must travel fast; so haste was our watchword. The halt which the conqueror made after passing the Gates had been somewhere in the vicinity of our very station — most likely at Aradan, as stated above ; ^ and here, on completing the second stage of his march, he had learned that Darius had been feloniously seized by his own generals. ^ ' Upon hearing this,' as Arrian narrates, 'Alexander marched with greater speed than ever, taking with him only the Companions ^ and the skirmishing cavalry, and picking out the lightest and strongest of the infantry. He did not even wait for Coenus to come back from the foraging expedition, but placed Craterus in charge of the men left behind, with instructions to follow by short stages. His own men took with them nothing but their arms and rations for two days. He marched the whole night and until noon of the next day, when he gave his army a short rest.'*

This third stage of Alexander's march was the one we were about to follow, and it must have carried him along the barren

1 See p. 138. ber and divided into eight squadrons.

2 Arrian, Anabasis, 3. 21. 1. Compare Droysen, Geschichte Alexan- 8 These 'Companions '(fTatpoi) were ders des Grossen, pp. 96-97, Hamburg

a body of cavalry made up from the [1834], and Wheeler, Alexander the flower of the young nobility, and they Great, pp. 215-216, New York, 1909. formed a sort of royal guard for the * Arrian, Anabasis, 3. 21. 2-3.

king, about twelve hundred in num-

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