EFFECTS OF ALEXANDER’S VICTORY
No victory could be more decisive or terror-striking than that of Alexander. There remained no force in the field to oppose him. The impression made by so great a public catastrophe was enhanced by two accompanying circumstances: first, by the number of Persian grandees who perished, realising almost the wailings of Atossa, Xerxes, and the Chorus, in the Persæ of Æschylus, after the battle of Salamis; next, by the chivalrous and successful prowess of Alexander himself, who, emulating the Homeric Achilles, not only rushed foremost into the mêlée, but killed two of these grandees with his own hand. Such exploits, impressive even when we read of them now, must at the moment when they occurred have acted most powerfully upon the imagination of the contemporaries.[f]
Battle-field of Issus