Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 · Plutarch
LIFE OF ALEXANDER.
XXIV. After the battle of Issus, he sent troops to Damascus, and captured all the treasure, the baggage, and the women and children of the Persian army. Those who chiefly benefited by this were the Thessalian cavalry, who had distinguished themselves in the battle, and had been purposely chosen for this service by Alexander as a reward for their bravery; yet all the camp was filled with riches, so great was the mass of plunder. Then did the Macedonians get their first taste of gold and silver, of Persian luxury and of Persian women; and after this, like hounds opening upon a scent, they eagerly pressed forward on the track of the wealthy Persians. Alexander, however, thought it best, before proceeding further, to complete the conquest of the sea-coast. Cyprus was at once surrendered to him by its local kings, as was all Phœnicia, except Tyre. He besieged Tyre for seven months, with great mounds and siege artillery on the land side, while a fleet of two hundred triremes watched it by sea. During the seventh month of the siege he dreamed that Herakles greeted him in a friendly manner from the walls of Tyre, and called upon him to come in. Many of the Tyrians also dreamed that Apollo appeared to them, and said that he was going to Alexander, since what was being done in the city of Tyre did not please him. The Tyrians, upon this, treated the god as though he were a man caught in the act of deserting to Alexander, for they tied cords round his statue, nailed it down to its base, and called him Alexandristes, or follower of Alexander. Alexander now dreamed another dream, that a satyr appeared to him at a distance, and sported with him, but when he endeavoured to catch him, ran away, and that, at length, after much trouble, he caught him. This was very plausibly explained by the prophets to mean "Sa Tyros"--"Tyre shall be thine," dividing the Greek word Satyros into two parts. A well is shown at the present day near which Alexander saw the satyr in his dream.
During the siege, Alexander made an expedition against the neighbouring Arab tribes, in which he fell into great danger through his old tutor Lysimachus, who insisted on accompanying him, declaring that he was no older and no less brave than Phœnix when he followed Achilles to Troy. When they reached the mountains, they were forced to leave their horses and march on foot. The rest proceeded on their way, but Lysimachus could not keep up, although night was coming on and the enemy were near. Alexander would not leave him, but encouraged him and helped him along until he became separated from his army, and found himself almost alone. It was now dark, and bitterly cold. The country where they were was very rugged and mountainous, and in the distance appeared many scattered watch-fires of the enemy. Alexander, accustomed to rouse the disheartened Macedonians by his own personal exertions, and trusting to his swiftness of foot, ran up to the nearest fire, struck down with his sword two men who wore watching beside it, and brought a burning firebrand back to his own party. They now made up an enormous fire, which terrified some of the enemy so much that they retreated, while others who had intended to attack them, halted and forbore to do so, thus enabling them to pass the night in safety.
XXV. The siege of Tyre came to an end in the following manner. The greater part of Alexander's troops were resting from their labours, but in order to occupy the attention of the enemy, he led a few men up to the city walls, while Aristander, the soothsayer, offered sacrifice. When he saw the victims, he boldly informed all who were present that during the current month, Tyre would be taken. All who heard him laughed him to scorn, as that day was the last of the month, but Alexander seeing him at his wits' end, being always eager to support the credit of prophecies, gave orders that that day should not be reckoned as the thirtieth of the month, but as the twenty-third. After this he bade the trumpets sound, and assaulted the walls much more vigorously than he had originally intended. The attack succeeded, and as the rest of the army would no longer stay behind in the camp, but rushed to take their share in the assault, the Tyrians were overpowered, and their city taken on that very day. Afterwards, while Alexander was besieging Gaza, the largest city in Syria, a clod of earth was dropped upon his shoulder by a bird, which afterwards alighted upon one of the military engines, and became entangled in the network of ropes by which it was worked. This portent also was truly explained by Aristander; for the place was taken, and Alexander was wounded in the shoulder.
"Hard by, an island in the stormy main Lies close to Egypt, Pharos is its name." As soon as he woke, he proceeded to Pharos, which then was an island near the Canopic mouth of the Nile, though at the present day so much earth has been deposited by the river that it is joined to the mainland. When he saw the great advantages possessed by this place, which is a long strip of land, stretching between the sea and a large inland lake, with a large harbour at the end of it, he at once said that Homer, besides his other admirable qualities, was a splendid architect, and gave orders to his workmen to mark out a site for a city suitable to such a situation. There was no chalk or white earth, with which it is usual to mark the course of the walls, but they took barley-groats, and marked out a semicircular line with them upon the black earth, dividing it into equal segments by lines radiating from the centre, so that it looked like a Macedonian cloak, of which the walls formed the outer fringe. While the king was looking with satisfaction at the plan of the new city, suddenly from the lake and the river, innumerable aquatic birds of every kind flew like great clouds to the spot, and devoured all the barley.
This omen greatly disturbed Alexander; however, the soothsayers bade him take courage, and interpreted it to mean that the place would become a very rich and populous city. Upon this he ordered the workmen at once to begin to build, while he himself started to visit the shrine and oracle of Zeus Ammon. This journey is tedious and difficult, and dangerous also, because the way lies over a waterless desert, where the traveller is exposed to violent storms of sand whenever the south wind blows. It was here that fifty thousand men of the army of Cambyses are said to have been overwhelmed by the sand, which rolled upon them in huge billows until they were completely ingulfed. All these perils were present to all men's minds, but it was hard to turn Alexander away from any project upon which he had once set his heart. The invariable good fortune which he had enjoyed confirmed his self-will, and his pride would not allow him to confess himself vanquished either by human enemies or natural obstacles.
XXVII. During his journey, the signal assistance which he received from the gods in all his difficulties was more remarkable and more generally believed than the oracular response which he is said to have received, although these portents made men more inclined to believe in the oracle. In the first place, plentiful showers were sent, which quite dissipated any fears which the expedition had entertained about suffering from thirst, while the rain cooled the sand and thus tempered the hot air of the desert to a pleasant warmth. Next, when the guides lost their way, and all were wandering helplessly, birds appeared who guided them on the right path, flying before them and encouraging them to march, and waiting for those of them who fell behind wearied. "We are even assured by Kallisthones that, at night, the birds by their cries recalled stragglers, and kept all on the direct road. When Alexander had crossed the desert, and arrived at the temple, the priest of Ammon greeted him as the son of the god. He inquired whether anyone of his father's murderers had escaped, to which the priest answered that he must not ask such questions, for his father was more than man. Alexander now altered the form of his inquiry and asked whether he had punished all the murderers of Philip: and then he asked another question, about his empire, whether he was fated to conquer all mankind. On receiving as an answer that this would be granted to him and that Philip had been amply avenged, he made splendid presents to the god, and amply rewarded the priests.
This is the account which most historians give about the response of the oracle; but in a letter to his mother, Alexander says that he received certain secret prophecies, which upon his return he would communicate to her alone. Some narrate that the priest, wishing to give him a friendly greeting in the Greek language, said "My son," but being a foreigner, mispronounced the words so as to say "Son of Zeus," a mistake which delighted Alexander and caused men to say that the god himself had addressed him as "Son of Zeus." We are told that while in Egypt, he attended the lectures of the philosopher Psammon, and was especially pleased when he pointed out that God is King over all men, because that which rules and conquers must be king. He himself thought that he had improved upon this by saying that although God is the common father of all men, yet that he makes the best men more peculiarly his own. XXVIII. In his dealings with Asiatics, he always acted and spoke with the greatest arrogance, and seemed firmly convinced of his own divine parentage, but he was careful not to make the same boast when among Greeks. On one occasion, indeed, he wrote to the Athenians the following letter about their possession of Samos. "I," he said, "should not have presented you with that free and glorious city; but it was presented to you by its former master, my reputed father Philip."
Yet afterwards when he was wounded by an arrow and in great pain he said "This, my friends, is blood that runs from my wound, and not "Ichor, that courses through the veins of gods." Once when a great thunderstorm terrified every one, Anaxarchus the sophist, who was with him, said "Son of Zeus, canst thou do as much?" To this, Alexander answered with a smile, "Nay, I love not to frighten my friends, as you would have me do, when you complained of my table, because fish was served upon it instead of princes' heads." Indeed we are told that once, when Alexander had sent some small fish to Hephæstion, Anaxarchus used this expression ironically disparaging those who undergo great toils and run great risks to obtain magnificent results which, after all, make them no happier or able to enjoy themselves than other men. From these anecdotes we see that Alexander himself did not put any belief in the story of his divine parentage, but that he used it as a means of imposing upon others.
XXIX. From Egypt he returned to Phœnicia, and there offered magnificent sacrifices to the gods, with grand processions, cyclic choruses, and performances of tragic dramas. These last were especially remarkable, for the local kings of Cyprus acted as choragi, that is, supplied the chorus and paid all the expenses of putting the drama upon the stage, just as is done every year at Athens by the representatives of the tribes, and they exhibited wonderful emulation, desiring to outdo each other in the splendour of their shows. The contest between Nikokreon, King of Salamis, and Pasikrates, King of Soli, is especially memorable. These two had obtained by lot the two most celebrated actors of the day, who were named Athenodorus and Thessalus, to act in their plays. Of these, Athenodorus was assigned to Nikokreon, and Thessalus, in whose success Alexander himself was personally interested, to Pasikrates. Alexander, however, never allowed any word to escape him denoting his preference for one over the other until after the votes had been given, and Athenodorus had been proclaimed the winner, when, as he was going home, he said that he would willingly have given up a province of his kingdom to save Thessalus from being vanquished. As Athenodorus was fined by the Athenians for being absent from their Dionysian festival, in which he ought to have taken part, he begged Alexander to write them a letter to excuse him. Alexander refused to do this, but paid his fine himself. And when Lykon, of Skarphia, an excellent actor who had pleased Alexander well, inserted a verse into the comedy which he was acting, in which he begged to be given ten talents, Alexander laughed and gave them to him.
Darius now sent an embassy to Alexander, bearing a letter, in which he offered to pay ten thousand talents as a ransom for his wife and children, and proposed that Alexander should receive all the territory west of the Euphrates, and become his ally and son-in-law. Alexander laid this proposal before his friends, and when Parmenio said, "I should accept it, if I were Alexander." "So would I," replied Alexander, "if I were Parmenio." He wrote, however, a letter in answer to Darius, informing him that if he would come to him, and submit himself, he should be used with courtesy; but that if not, he should presently march against him. XXX. Soon after this the wife of Darius died in child-bed, which greatly grieved Alexander, as he thereby lost a great opportunity of displaying his magnanimity: nevertheless he granted her a magnificent funeral. We are told that one of the eunuchs attached to the royal harem, named Teireus, who had been captured with the ladies, made his escape shortly after the queen's death, rode straight to Darius, and informed him of what had happened. Darius, at this, beat his face and wept aloud, saying, "Alas for the fortune of Persia! that the wife and sister of the king should not only have been taken captive while she lived, but also have been buried unworthily of her rank when she died." To this the eunuch answered, "You have no cause to lament the evil fortune of Persia on account of your wife's burial, or of any want of due respect to her. Our lady Statira, your children, and your mother, when alive wanted for nothing except the light of your countenance, which our lord Oromasdes will some day restore to them, nor was she treated without honour when she died, for her funeral was even graced by the tears of her enemies. Alexander is as gracious a conqueror as he is a terrible enemy."
These words roused other suspicions in the mind of Darius: and, leading the eunuch into an inner chamber in his tent, he said to him, "If you have not, like the good luck of Persia, gone over to Alexander and the Macedonians, and if I am still your master Darius, tell me, I conjure you by the name of great Mithras our lord, and by the right hand of a king, which I give thee, do I lament over the least of Statira's misfortunes when I weep for her death, and did she not in her life make us more miserable by her dishonour, than if she had fallen into the hands of a cruel enemy? For what honest communication can a young conqueror have with the wife of his enemy, and what can be the meaning of his showing such excessive honour to her after her death?" While Darius was yet speaking, Teireus threw himself at his feet, and besought him to be silent, and not to dishonour Alexander and his dead wife and sister by such suspicions, nor yet to take away from himself that thought which ought to be his greatest consolation in his misfortunes, which was that he had been conquered by one who was more than man.
Rather ought he to admire Alexander, whose honourable treatment of the Persian women proved him to be even greater than did his bravery in vanquishing their men. Those words the eunuch assured him, with many protestations and oaths, were perfectly true. Darius, when he heard this, came out of his tent to his friends, and, raising his hands to heaven, said, "Ye parent gods, who watch over the Persian throne, grant that I may again restore the fortune of Persia to its former state, in order that I may have an opportunity of repaying Alexander in person the kindness which he has shown to those whom I hold dearest; but if indeed the fated hour has arrived, and the Persian empire is doomed to perish, may no other conqueror than Alexander mount the throne of Cyrus." The above is the account given by most historians of what took place on this occasion. XXXI. Alexander, after conquering all the country on the higher bank of the Euphrates, marched to attack Darius, who was advancing to meet him with an army of a million fighting men.
During this march, one of Alexander's friends told him as a joke, that the camp-followers had divided themselves into two bodies in sport, each of which was led by a general, the one called Alexander, and the other Darius; and that after beginning to skirmish with one another by throwing clods of earth, they had come to blows of the fist, and had at length become so excited that they fought with sticks and stones, and that it was hard to part them. On hearing this, Alexander ordered the two leaders to fight in single combat: and he himself armed the one called Alexander, while Philotas armed the representative of Darius. The whole army looked on, thinking that the result would be ominous of their own success or failure. After a severe fight, the one called Alexander conquered, and was rewarded with twelve villages and the right of wearing the Persian garb. This we are told by Eratosthenes the historian. The decisive battle with Darius was fought at Gaugamela, not at Arbela, as most writers tell us. It is said that this word signifies "the house of the camel," and that one of the ancient Kings of Persia, whose life had been saved by the swiftness with which a camel bore him away from his enemies, lodged the animal there for the rest of its life, and assigned to it the revenues of several villages for its maintenance.
During the month Bœdromion, at the beginning of the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, there was an eclipse, of the moon: and on the eleventh day after the eclipse the two armies came within sight of one another. Darius kept his troops under arms, and inspected their ranks by torch-light, while Alexander allowed the Macedonians to take their rest, but himself with the soothsayer Aristander performed some mystical ceremonies in front of his tent, and offered sacrifice to Phœbus. When Parmenio and the elder officers of Alexander saw the entire plain between Mount Niphates and the confines of Gordyene covered with the watch fires of the Persians, and heard the vague, confused murmur of their army like the distant roar of the sea, they were astonished, and said to one another that it would indeed be a prodigious effort to fight such a mass of enemies by daylight in a pitched battle.
As soon as Alexander had finished his sacrifice they went to him, and tried to persuade him to fall upon the Persians by night, as the darkness would prevent his troops from seeing the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. It was then that he made that memorable answer, "I will not steal a victory," which some thought to show an over-boastful spirit, which could jest in the presence of such fearful danger; while others thought that it showed a steady confidence and true knowledge of what would happen on the morrow, and meant that he did not intend to give Darius, when vanquished, the consolation of attributing his defeat to the confusion of a night attack; for Darius had already explained his defeat at Issus to have been owing to the confined nature of the ground, and to his forces having been penned up between the mountains and the sea. It was not any want of men or of arms which would make Darius yield, when he had so vast a country and such great resources at his disposal: it was necessary to make pride and hope alike die within him, by inflicting upon him a crushing defeat in a fair field and in open daylight.
XXXII. After his officers had retired, Alexander retired to his tent and is said to have slept more soundly than was his wont, which surprised the generals who came to wait upon him early in the morning. On their own responsibility they gave orders to the soldiers to prepare their breakfast; and then, as time pressed, Parmenio entered his tent, and standing by his bed-side, twice or thrice called him loudly by name. When he was awake, Parmenio asked him why he slept so soundly, as if he had already won the victory instead of being just about to fight the most important of all his battles. Alexander answered with a smile; "Do you not think we have already won the victory, now that we are no longer obliged to chase Darius over an enormous tract of wasted country?" Alexander both before the battle, and in the most dangerous crisis of the day proved himself truly great, always taking judicious measures, with a cheerful confidence of success. His left wing was terribly shaken by a tumultuous charge of the Bactrian cavalry, who broke into the ranks of the Macedonians, while Mazæus sent some horsemen completely round the left wing, who fell upon the troops left to guard the baggage. Parmenio, finding his men thrown into confusion by these attacks, sent a message to Alexander, that his fortified camp and baggage would be lost, if he did not at once despatch a strong reinforcement to the rear. At the time when Alexander received this message, he was in the act of giving his own troops orders to attack, and he answered that Parmenio must, in his confusion, have forgotten that the victors win all the property of the vanquished, and that men who are defeated must not think about treasure or prisoners, but how to fight and die with honour.
After sending back this answer to Parmenio, he put on his helmet; for he had left his tent fully armed at all other points, wearing a tunic of Sicilian manufacture closely girt round his waist, and over that a double-woven linen corslet, which had been among the spoils taken at Issus. His helmet was of steel, polished as bright as silver, and was wrought by Theophilus, while round his neck he wore a steel gorget, inlaid with precious stones. His sword, his favourite weapon, was a miracle of lightness and tempering, and had been presented to him by the King of Kitium in Cyprus. The cloak which hung from his shoulders was by far the most gorgeous of all his garments, and was the work of the ancient artist Helikon,[410] presented to Alexander by the city of Rhodes, and was worn by him in all his battles. While he was arraying his troops in order of battle, and giving final directions to his officers, he rode another horse to spare Boukephalus, who was now somewhat old. As soon as he was ready to begin the attack, he mounted Boukephalus and led on his army.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.