A Young Macedonian in the Army of Alexander the Great

by Alfred John Church

“I have never been able to find more than one general,” the king had been wont to remark, “and that general is Parmenio.” Accordingly his voice had no little weight. Even Alexander had at least to listen. The substance of his counsel on the present occasion was this: “Let us fight by all means; but let us fight on our own ground. If we march to attack Darius on the plains where he has pitched his camp, we shall be giving him all the advantage of place; if we wait here till he comes to attack us here, this advantage will be ours.”

Alexander listened with respectful attention, but was not convinced. “We cannot afford to wait,” he said, “an invader must attack, not be attacked. But perhaps we shall be able to combine your policy, which I allow to be admirable, and mine, which I hold to be necessary.”

The event justified the hope. We may attribute the result to good fortune; but it was probably due to the extraordinary power of guessing the probable action of an antagonist, which was one of Alexander’s most characteristic merits as a general.

To put the thing very briefly, the king’s idea was this. Let Darius once get the impression that the invaders were hanging back, and in his overweening confidence in his own superior strength, he would abandon his favourable position, and precipitate an attack. And this is exactly what happened.

The Macedonian army was formed into two divisions. With one of them Parmenio hurried on to occupy the passes from Cilicia into Syria. There were strong places which might have been easily defended; but it was not Darius’s policy to hinder the advance of an enemy whom he felt sure of being able to crush; and the garrisons retired according to order when the Macedonian force came in sight.

Some little time after, Alexander himself followed with the rest of his army, taking the same route, and overtaking Parmenio’s force at a place that was about two days’ march beyond the passes.

And now came the extraordinary change of policy on the part of Darius which Alexander, with a sagacity that seemed almost more than human, had divined. The delay of the Macedonian king in advancing from Cilicia had produced just the impression which apparently it had been intended to produce. Darius imagined, and the imagination was encouraged by the flatterers who surrounded him, that his enemy was losing confidence, that though he had routed the king’s lieutenants, he shrank from meeting the king himself. And now the one prevailing idea in his mind was that the invader must not be permitted to escape. Accordingly, though his ablest counsellors sought to dissuade him, he broke up his encampment on the level ground which suited so admirably the operations of his huge army, and hurried to get into the rear of Alexander. He blindly missed the opportunity that was almost in his hands of cutting Alexander’s army in two, and took up a position wholly unsuited to the character of his forces, but which had the advantage, as he thought, of cutting off the enemy’s retreat.

And now that I have explained the antecedent circumstances of the great struggle that followed, I must return to the fortunes of Charidemus and his friend. A rapid march performed under a burning sky had caused not a little sickness in the army, and Alexander had left his invalids at Issus, a delightful little town which had the advantage of enjoying both sea and mountain air. A detachment was told off to protect the place, and as Charondas was among the sick, Charidemus, though always anxious to be with the front, was not altogether displeased to be left in command.

But the change in the Persian plan brought terrible disaster on the occupants of Issus. It was an unwalled town, and, even had it been strongly fortified, it could not have been defended by the couple of hundred men under Charidemus’s command. When the Persians appeared, for it was naturally in their line of march, there was nothing for it but to capitulate and to trust to the mercy of the conquerors. Unhappily the Persian temper, always pitiless when the vanquished were concerned, had been worked up into furious rage by recent disasters. Many of the prisoners were massacred at once; those whose lives were spared were cruelly mutilated, to be sent back, when the occasion served, to the camp of Alexander, as examples of the vengeance which the audacious invaders of Asia might expect.

Charidemus and his Theban friend, with such other officers as had been captured, were brought before the king himself. Charondas, happily for himself, was recognized by a Theban exile, who had attached himself to the fortunes of Darius, and who happened to be a distant relative of his own. The man made an effort to save him. “O king,” he said, “this is a kinsman and a fellow-citizen. I saw him last fighting against the Macedonians. How he came hither I know not, but I beseech you that you will at least reserve him for future inquiry. Meanwhile I will answer for his safe custody.”