The Anabasis of Alexander or, The history of the wars and conquests of Alexander the Great
daughter of Darius, he would marry her, even though Darius refused her
to him. He commanded Darius to come to him if he wished to experience
any generous treatment from him. When Darius heard this answer, he
despaired of coming to terms with Alexander, and began to make fresh
preparations for war.
Alexander now resolved to make an expedition into Egypt. All the other
parts of what was called Palestine Syria[334] had already yielded to
him; but a certain eunuch, named Batis, who was in possession of the
city of Gaza, paid no heed to him; but procuring Arabian mercenaries,
and having been long employed in laying up sufficient food for a long
siege, he resolved not to admit Alexander into the city, feeling
confident that the place could never be taken by storm.
CHAPTER XXVI.
SIEGE OF GAZA.
Gaza is about twenty stades from the sea;[335] the approach to it
is sandy and over heavy soil, and the sea near the city everywhere
shallow. The city of Gaza[336] was large, and had been built upon a
lofty mound, around which a strong wall had been carried. It is the
last city the traveller meets with going from Phoenicia to Egypt,
being situated on the edge of the desert. When Alexander arrived near
the city, on the first day he encamped at the spot where the wall
seemed to him most easy to assail, and ordered his military engines to
be constructed. But the engineers expressed the opinion that it was
not possible to capture the wall by force, on account of the height
of the mound. However, the more impracticable it seemed to be, the
more resolutely Alexander determined that it must be captured. For he
said that the action would strike the enemy with great alarm from its
being contrary to their expectation; whereas his failure to capture
the place would redound to his disgrace when mentioned either to the
Greeks or to Darius. He therefore resolved to construct a mound right
round the city, so as to be able to bring his military engines up to
the walls from the artificial mound which had been raised to the same
level with them. The mound was constructed especially over against
the southern wall of the city, where it appeared easiest to make an
assault. When he thought that the mound had been raised to the proper
level with the walls, the Macedonians placed their military engines
upon it, and brought them close to the wall of Gaza. At this time while
Alexander was offering sacrifice, and, crowned with a garland, was
about to commence the first sacred rite according to custom, a certain
carnivorous bird, flying over the altar, let a stone which it was
carrying with its claws fall upon his head. Alexander asked Aristander,
the soothsayer,[337] what this omen meant. He replied: “O king, thou
wilt indeed capture the city, but thou must take care of thyself on
this day.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
CAPTURE OF GAZA.
When Alexander heard this, he kept himself for a time near the military
engines, out of the reach of missiles. But when a vigorous sortie was
made from the city, and the Arabs were carrying torches to set fire
to the military engines, and from their commanding position above
hurling missiles at the Macedonians, who were defending themselves
from lower ground, were driving them down from the mound which they
had made, then Alexander either wilfully disobeyed the soothsayer, or
forgot the prophecy from excitement in the heat of action. Taking the
shield-bearing guards, he hastened to the rescue where the Macedonians
were especially hard pressed, and prevented them from being driven
down from the mound in disgraceful flight. But he was himself wounded
by a bolt from a catapult, right through the shield and breastplate
into the shoulder. When he perceived that Aristander had spoken the
truth about the wound, he rejoiced, because he thought he should also
capture the city by the aid of the soothsayer. And yet indeed he was
not easily cured of the wound. In the meantime the military engines
with which he had captured Tyre arrived, having been sent for by sea;
and he ordered the mound to be constructed quite round the city on all
sides, two stades[338] in breadth and 250 feet in height. When his
engines had been prepared, and brought up along the mound, they shook
down a large extent of wall; and mines being dug in various places,
and the earth being drawn out by stealth, the wall fell down in many
parts, subsiding into the emptied space.[339] The Macedonians then
commanded a large extent of ground with their missiles, driving back
the men who were defending the city, from the towers. Nevertheless, the
men of the city sustained three assaults, though many of their number
were killed or wounded; but at the fourth attack, Alexander led up the
phalanx of the Macedonians from all sides, threw down the part of the
wall which was undermined, and shook down another large portion of it
by battering it with his engines, so that he rendered the assault an
easy matter through the breaches with his scaling ladders. Accordingly
the ladders were brought up to the wall; and then there arose a great
emulation among those of the Macedonians who laid any claim to valour,
to see who should be the first to scale the wall. The first to do so
was Neoptolemus, one of the Companions, of the family of the Aeacidae;
and after him mounted one rank after another with their officers. When
once some of the Macedonians got within the wall, they split open in
succession the gates which each party happened to light upon, and thus
admitted the whole army into the city. But though their city was now
in the hands of the enemy, the Gazaeans nevertheless stood together
and fought; so that they were all slain fighting there, as each man had
been stationed. Alexander sold their wives and children into slavery;
and having peopled the city again from the neighbouring settlers, he
made use of it as a fortified post for the war.[340]
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
CONQUEST OF EGYPT.—FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDRIA.
Alexander now led an expedition into Egypt, whither he had set out
at first (from Tyre); and marching from Gaza, on the seventh day
he arrived at Pelusium[341] in Egypt. His fleet had also set sail
from Phoenicia to Egypt; and he found the ships already moored at
Pelusium.[342] When Mazaces the Persian, whom Darius had appointed
viceroy of Egypt,[343] ascertained how the battle at Issus had
resulted, that Darius had fled in disgraceful flight, and that
Phoenicia, Syria, and most of Arabia were already in Alexander’s
possession, as he had no Persian force with which he could offer
resistance, he admitted Alexander into the cities and the country in a
friendly way.[344] Alexander introduced a garrison into Pelusium, and
ordering the men in the ships to sail up the river as far as the city
of Memphis,[345] he went in person towards Heliopolis,[346] having the
river Nile[347] on his right. He reached that city through the desert,
after getting possession of all the places on the march through the
voluntary surrender of the inhabitants. Thence he crossed the stream
and came to Memphis; where he offered sacrifice to Apis[348] and the
other gods, and celebrated a gymnastic and musical contest, the most
distinguished artists in these matters coming to him from Greece.
From Memphis he sailed down the river towards the sea, embarking the
shield-bearing guards, the archers, the Agrianians, and of the cavalry
the royal squadron of the Companions. Coming to Canobus,[349] he sailed
round the Marian lake,[350] and disembarked where now is situated the
city of Alexandria, which takes its name from him. The position seemed
to him a very fine one in which to found a city, and he foresaw that
it would become a prosperous one.[351] Therefore he was seized by an
ardent desire to undertake the enterprise, and himself marked out the
boundaries of the city, pointing out the place where the agora was to
be constructed, where the temples were to be built, stating how many
there were to be, and to what Grecian gods they were to be dedicated,
and specially marking a spot for a temple to the Egyptian Isis.[352]
He also pointed out where the wall was to be carried round it. In
regard to these matters he offered sacrifice, and the victims appeared
favourable.
CHAPTER II.
FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDRIA.—EVENTS IN THE AEGEAN.
The following story is told, which seems to me not unworthy of
belief[353]:—that Alexander himself wished to leave behind for the
builders the marks for the boundaries of the fortification, but that
there was nothing at hand with which to make a furrow in the ground.
One of the builders[354] hit upon the plan of collecting in vessels
the barley which the soldiers were carrying, and throwing it upon
the ground where the king led the way; and thus the circle of the
fortification which he was making[355] for the city was completely
marked out. The soothsayers, and especially Aristander the Telmissian,
who was said already to have given many other true predictions,
pondering this, told Alexander that the city would become prosperous in
every respect, but especially in regard to the fruits of the earth.
At this time Hegelochus[356] sailed to Egypt and informed Alexander
that the Tenedians had revolted from the Persians and attached
themselves to him; because they had gone over to the Persians against
their own wish. He also said that the democracy of Chios were
introducing Alexander’s adherents in spite of those who held the city,
being established in it by Autophradates and Pharnabazus. The latter
commander had been caught there and kept as a prisoner, as was also the
despot Aristonicus, a Methymnaean,[357] who sailed into the harbour of
Chios with five piratical vessels, fitted with one and a half banks
of oars, not knowing that the harbour was in the hands of Alexander’s
adherents, but being misled by those who kept the bars of the harbour,
because forsooth the fleet of Pharnabazus was moored in it. All the
pirates were there massacred by the Chians; and Hegelochus brought to
Alexander, as prisoners Aristonicus, Apollonides the Chian, Phisinus,
Megareus, and all the others who had taken part in the revolt of Chios
to the Persians, and who at that time were holding the government of
the island by force. He also announced that he had deprived Chares[358]
of the possession of Mitylene, that he had brought over the other
cities in Lesbos by a voluntary agreement, and that he had sent
Amphoterus to Cos with sixty ships, for the Coans themselves invited
him to their island. He said that he himself had sailed to Cos and
found it already in the hands of Amphoterus. Hegelochus brought all the
prisoners with him except Pharnabazus, who had eluded his guards at
Cos and got away by stealth. Alexander sent the despots who had been
brought from the cities back to their fellow-citizens, to be treated as
they pleased; but Apollonides and his Chian partisans he sent under a
strict guard to Elephantinē, an Egyptian city.[359]
CHAPTER III.
ALEXANDER VISITS THE TEMPLE OF AMMON.
After these transactions, Alexander was seized by an ardent desire
to visit Ammon[360] in Libya, partly in order to consult the god,
because the oracle of Ammon was said to be exact in its information,
and Perseus and Heracles were said to have consulted it, the former
when he was despatched by Polydectes[361] against the Gorgons, and
the latter, when he visited Antaeus[362] in Libya and Busiris[363] in
Egypt. Alexander was also partly urged by a desire of emulating Perseus
and Heracles, from both of whom he traced his descent.[364] He also
deduced his pedigree from Ammon, just as the legends traced that of
Heracles and Perseus to Zeus. Accordingly he made the expedition to
Ammon with the design of learning his own origin more certainly, or at