GORDIUM
Arrian does not expressly state the object of this movement, which, as Alexander designed next to make for the coast of Syria, involved an enormous circuit. It is hardly credible that he was deterred from advancing directly into Cilicia by the difficulty of passing through the mountain region (the Rugged Cilicia), which immediately follows Pamphylia. He probably thought it necessary to establish his authority in the central provinces, so far at least as to break off their relations with the Persian government, and thus to secure the Greek cities on the western coast from the attacks which might have been made on them from this quarter, if the peninsula, east of Lydia, had remained subject to Darius. The central situation of Gordium also afforded means of easier communication with Macedonia, which the movements of the Persian fleet in the Ægean rendered very desirable, while it enabled him to negotiate on a more advantageous footing with the satraps of the provinces on the Euxine, who, when they saw him so near, might apprehend an immediate invasion. Accordingly, it seems to have been from Gordium that he sent Hegelochus to the coast, with orders to equip another fleet to protect the islands which were threatened by the Persians.
Here he was rejoined by the troops he had sent to winter by their own hearths, accompanied by the new levies, 3000 Macedonian infantry and 650 horse, 300 from Macedonia, 200 from Thessaly, the rest from Elis. Here also he received an embassy from Athens, which came to request that he would release the Athenian prisoners who had been taken among the mercenaries in the battle of the Granicus, and had been sent to Macedonia. Alexander did not think it prudent, while he was on the eve of a decisive contest with Darius, to relax his severity towards the Greeks who took part with the barbarians, but he gave the Athenians leave to renew their application at a more seasonable juncture.
Gordium had been in very early times the seat of the Phrygian kings, and was supposed to have derived its name from Gordius, the father of the more celebrated Midas. In the citadel was preserved with religious veneration a wagon, in which, according to the tradition of the country, Midas with his father and mother entered the town, at a time when the people, who were distracted by civil discord, were holding an assembly. They had been informed by an oracle that a wagon should bring them a king who should compose their strife. The sudden appearance of Midas convinced them that he was the king destined for them; and when he had mounted the throne, he dedicated the wagon in the citadel, as a thank-offering to the king of the gods, who, before his birth, had sent an eagle to alight upon its yoke, while Gordius was ploughing, as a sign of the honour reserved for his race.
[333 B.C.]
This legend had given rise to a prophecy that whoever untied the knot of bark by which the yoke was fastened to the pole, must become lord of Asia. Alexander did not leave Gordium before he had proved that this prophecy related to himself. He went up to the citadel, and separated the yoke from the pole. Whether he loosened the knot by drawing out a peg,[20] or cut it with his sword, his own followers were not agreed. But all the spectators were convinced that he had legitimately fulfilled the prophecy, and a storm of thunder and lightning which took place the same night, removed every shadow of doubt on the subject (333).
He now resumed his march eastward, and at Ancyra received an embassy from Paphlagonia, promising obedience on the somewhat ambiguous condition that he should abstain from entering their country. The subjugation of this extensive and very mountainous region would have detained him much too long from the more important objects which he had in view, and he therefore contented himself with this show of submission, which at least heightened, while it proved, the terror inspired by his name, and annexed Paphlagonia to the satrapy of Calas. As he advanced through Cappadocia towards the passes of Taurus, he met with no resistance; and his authority was at least nominally acknowledged to a great distance beyond the Halys, so that he could appoint a satrap of Cappadocia. On his way he received tidings from Tarsus, that the satrap Arsames, having heard that he had passed the Gates, was about to quit the city, which at first he meant to defend, and, it was feared, would plunder it before his departure. Hereupon Alexander pushed forward with his cavalry and the lightest part of the infantry at full speed for Tarsus, and Arsames, whatever his intention may have been, fled, leaving the city unhurt, to join the army of Darius.
Alexander, on his arrival at Tarsus, while his blood was still violently heated by these extraordinary exertions, had been tempted to plunge into the clear and limpid waters of the Cydnus, which flowed through the city. This imprudence was generally supposed to have been the cause of a fever which seized him immediately after, and which soon became so threatening in its symptoms that most of his physicians despaired of his life. One however, an Acarnanian named Philippus, who stood high in his confidence, undertook to prepare a medicine which would relieve him. In the meanwhile, a letter was brought to the king from Parmenion, informing him of a report that Philippus had been bribed by Darius to poison him. Alexander, it is said, had the letter in his hand, when the physician came in with the draught, and, giving it to him, drank while he read—a theatrical scene, as Plutarch unsuspectingly observes, but one which would not have been invented but for such a character, and which Arrian was therefore induced, though doubtingly, to record. The remedy, or Alexander’s excellent constitution, prevailed over the disease; but it was long before he had regained sufficient strength to resume his march.
In the meanwhile, he sent Parmenion forward with about a third of the army, to occupy the nearest of the maritime passes leading out of Cilicia into Syria. He himself, when sufficiently recovered, proceeded westward with the rest of his forces to Anchialus, where he beheld the statue of its reputed founder Sardanapalus, the voluptuous king, who judged so differently from himself—as the Assyrian inscription on his monument and the figure itself attested—of the value and use of life. At Soli, where he arrived next, he found a strong leaning to the Persian interest, which induced him to place a garrison there, and afforded him a fair ground for demanding a contribution of two hundred talents. Yet it seems to have been only an oligarchical party that had favoured the Persians, and perhaps the penalty was levied on them alone; for he established a democratical government, and the garrison may have been needed for its security. Before he returned to Tarsus, he made an inroad with a division of his forces into the mountains of the rugged Cilicia, and in the course of seven days reduced their wild inhabitants by force or terror to submission. On his return to Soli, he received the agreeable intelligence that Orontobates had been defeated in a hard-fought battle by Ptolemy and Asander, and that the citadel of Halicarnassus, and the other places which he had retained on the coast of Caria, had fallen.
Darius had previously suffered a much greater loss in the death of Memnon, who was carried off by a sudden illness while engaged in the siege of Mytilene, which, after having made himself master of Chios through treachery, and of the rest of Lesbos, he had invested closely by sea and land. Alexander, before he left Soli, celebrated the victory of his generals and at the same time testified his gratitude for his own convalescence by a solemn sacrifice to Æsculapius, with a military procession, a torch race, and musical and gymnastic contests.
He then marched back to Tarsus, and, sending Philotas forward with the bulk of cavalry across the Aleian plain, himself took a more circuitous route along the coast through Magarsus to Mallus, a town which claimed the Argive hero Amphilochus, as its founder. On this ground, as himself descended from the Heraclids of Argos, he both healed its intestine disorders, and exempted it from the tribute which it had paid to the Persian government. At Mallus for the first time he heard of the approach of the great Persian army commanded by Darius in person.[b]