Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/159

 EFFECT OF THE BATTLE OF ISSUS. 127 childish ; ' nay, that faith, though overweening beforehand, disap- peared at once when he found his enemies did not run away, but faced him boklly — as was seen by his attitude on the banks of the Pinarup, where he stood to be attacked instead of executing his threat of treading down the handful opposed to him.2 But it was not merely as a general, that Darius acted in such a manner as to render the loss of the battle certain. Had his dispositions been ever so skilful, his personal cowardice, in quitting the field and thinking only of his own safety, would have sutficed to nullify their effect.^ Though the Persian grandees are generally con- spicuous for personal courage, yet we shall find Darius hereafter again exhibiting the like melancholy timidity, and the like incom- petence for using numbers with effect, at the battle of Arbela, though fought in a spacious plain chosen by himself. Happy was it for Memnon, that he did not live to see the re- nunciation of his schemes, and the ruin consequent upon it ! The fleet in the ^gean, which had been transferred at his death to Pharnabazus, though weakened by the loss of those mercenaries whom Darius had recalled to Issus, and disheartened by a serious defeat which the Persian Orontobates had received from the Macedonians in Karia,* was nevertheless not inactive in trying to organize an anti-Macedonian manifestation in Greece. While Pharnabazus was at the island of Siphnos with his 100 triremes, he was visited by the Lacedaemonian king Agis, who pressed him to embark for Peloponnesus as large a force as he could spare, to second a movement projected by the Spartans. But such ag- gressive plans were at once crushed by the teiTor-striking news ' See this faith put forward in the speech of Xerxes — llerodot. vii. 48* compare the speech of Achaemenes, vii. 236. ' Arrian, ii. 10, 2. nal Tavry wj- dr/?i,oc lysvero (Darius) toi( u^cj,' 'A^tf- avdpov T7j yv^fiy SedovXuuivoc (a remarkable expression borrowed from Thucydides, iv. 34). Compare Arrian, ii. 6, 7. •'* Immediately before the battle of Kunaxa, Cyrus the younger was asked by some of the Grecian officers, whether he thought that his brother Art-a- xerxes (who had as yet made no resistance) would fight — " To be sure he will (was the reply) if he is the son of Darius and Parysatis, and my brother I shall not obtain the crown without fighting ! " Personal cowardice, in a king of Persia at the head of his army, seemed inconceivable (Xenoph. Anab. i. 7, 9) * Arrian, ii. 5, 8.