CHAPTER XCIII.
SECOND AND THIRD ASIATIC CAMPAIGNS OF ALEXANDER — BATTLE OF ISSUS — SIEGE OF TYRE.
It was about February or March 333 B. C., when Alexander reached Gordium; where he appears to have halted for some time, giving to the troops who had been with him in Pisidia a repose doubtless needful. While at Gordium, he performed the memorable exploit familiarly known as the cutting of the Gordian knot. There was preserved in the citadel an ancient waggon of rude structure, said by the legend to have once belonged to the peasant Gordius and his son Midas—the primitive rustic kings of Phrygia, designated as such by the gods, and chosen by the people. The cord (composed of fibres from the bark of the cornel tree), attaching the yoke of this waggon to the pole, was so twisted and entangled as to form a knot of singular complexity, which no one had ever been able to untie. An oracle had pronounced, that to the person who should untie it the empire of Asia was destined. When Alexander went up to see this ancient relic, the surrounding multitude, Phrygian as well as Macedonian, were full of expectation that the conqueror of the Granikus and of Halikarnassus would overcome the difficulties of the knot, and acquire the promised empire. But Alexander, on inspecting the knot, was as much perplexed as others had been before him, until at length, in a fit of impatience, he drew his sword and severed the cord in two. By every one this was accepted as a solution of the problem, thus making good his title to the empire of Asia; a belief which the gods ratified by a storm of thunder and lightning during the ensuing night.[237]
At Gordium, Alexander was visited by envoys from Athens, entreating the liberation of the Athenian prisoners taken at the Granikus, who were now at work chained in the Macedonian mines. But he refused this prayer until a more convenient season. Aware that the Greeks were held attached to him only by their fears, and that, if opportunity occurred, a large fraction of them would take part with the Persians, he did not think it prudent to relax his hold upon their conduct.[238]
Such opportunity seemed now not unlikely to occur. Memnon, excluded from efficacious action on the continent since the loss of Halikarnassus, was employed among the islands of the Ægean (during the first half of 333 B. C.), with the purpose of carrying war into Greece and Macedonia. Invested with the most ample command, he had a large Phenician fleet and a considerable body of Grecian mercenaries, together with his nephew Pharnabazus and the Persian Autophradates. Having acquired the important island of Chios, through the co-operation of a part of its inhabitants, he next landed on Lesbos, where four out of the five cities, either from fear or preference, declared in his favor; while Mitylênê, the greatest of the five, already occupied by a Macedonian garrison, stood out against him. Memnon accordingly disembarked his troops and commenced the blockade of the city both by sea and land, surrounding it with a double palisade wall from sea to sea. In the midst of this operation he died of sickness; but his nephew Pharnabazus, to whom he had consigned the command provisionally, until the pleasure of Darius could be known, prosecuted his measures vigorously, and brought the city to a capitulation. It was stipulated that the garrison introduced by Alexander should be dismissed; that the column, recording alliance with him, should be demolished; that the Mityleneans should become allies of Darius, upon the terms of the old convention called by the name of Antalkidas; and that the citizens in banishment should be recalled, with restitution of half their property. But Pharnabazus, as soon as admitted, violated the capitulation at once. He not only extorted contributions, but introduced a garrison under Lykomêdes, and established a returned exile named Diogenes as despot.[239] Such breach of faith was ill calculated to assist the farther extension of Persian influence in Greece.
Had the Persian fleet been equally active a year earlier, Alexander’s army could never have landed in Asia. Nevertheless, the acquisitions of Chios and Lesbos, late as they were in coming, were highly important as promising future progress. Several of the Cyclades islands sent to tender their adhesion to the Persian cause; the fleet was expected in Eubœa, and the Spartans began to count upon aid for an anti-Macedonian movement.[240] But all these hopes were destroyed by the unexpected decease of Memnon.
It was not merely the superior ability of Memnon, but also his established reputation both with Greeks and Persians, which rendered his death a fatal blow to the interests of Darius. The Persians had with them other Greek officers—brave and able—probably some not unfit to execute the full Memnonian schemes. But none of them had gone through the same experience in the art of exercising command among Orientals—none of them had acquired the confidence of Darius to the same extent, so as to be invested with the real guidance of operations, and upheld against court-calumnies. Though Alexander had now become master of Asia Minor, yet the Persians had ample means, if effectively used, of defending all that yet remained, and even of seriously disturbing him at home. But with Memnon vanished the last chance of employing these means with wisdom or energy. The full value of his loss was better appreciated by the intelligent enemy whom he opposed, than by the feeble master whom he served. The death of Memnon lessening the efficiency of the Persians at sea, allowed full leisure to reorganize the Macedonian fleet,[241] and to employ the undivided land-force for farther inland conquest.[242]
If Alexander was a gainer in respect to his own operations by the death of this eminent Rhodian, he was yet more a gainer by the change of policy which that event induced Darius to adopt. The Persian king resolved to renounce the defensive schemes of Memnon, and to take the offensive against the Macedonians on land. His troops, already summoned from the various parts of the empire, had partially arrived, and were still coming in.[243] Their numbers became greater and greater, amounting at length to a vast and multitudinous host, the total of which is given by some as 600,000 men; by others, as 400,000 infantry and 100,000 cavalry. The spectacle of this showy and imposing mass, in every variety of arms, costume, and language, filled the mind of Darius with confidence; especially as there were among them between 20,000 and 30,000 Grecian mercenaries. The Persian courtiers, themselves elate and sanguine, stimulated and exaggerated the same feeling in the king himself, who became confirmed in his persuasion that his enemies could never resist him. From Sogdiana, Baktria, and India, the contingents had not yet had time to arrive; but most of those between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian sea had come in—Persians, Medes, Armenians, Derbikes, Barkanians, Hyrkanians, Katdakes, etc.; all of whom, mustered in the plains of Mesopotamia, are said to have been counted, like the troops of Xerxes in the plain of Doriskus, by paling off a space capable of containing exactly 10,000 men, and passing all the soldiers through it in succession.[244] Neither Darius himself, nor any of those around him, had ever before seen so overwhelming a manifestation of the Persian imperial force. To an Oriental eye, incapable of appreciating the real conditions of military preponderance,—accustomed only to the gross and visible computation of numbers and physical strength,—the king who marched forth at the head of such an army appeared like a god on earth, certain to trample down all before him—just as most Greeks had conceived respecting Xerxes,[245] and by stronger reason Xerxes respecting himself, a century and a half before. Because all this turned out a ruinous mistake, the description of the feeling, given in Curtius and Diodorus, is often mistrusted as baseless rhetoric. Yet it is in reality the self-suggested illusion of untaught men, as opposed to trained and scientific judgment.
But though such was the persuasion of Orientals, it found no response in the bosom of an intelligent Athenian. Among the Greeks now near Darius, was the Athenian exile Charidemus, who having incurred the implacable enmity of Alexander, had been forced to quit Athens after the Macedonian capture of Thebes, and had fled together with Ephialtes to the Persians. Darius, elate with the apparent omnipotence of his army under review, and hearing but one voice of devoted concurrence from the courtiers around him, asked the opinion of Charidemus, in full expectation of receiving an affirmative reply. So completely were the hopes of Charidemus bound up with the success of Darius, that he would not suppress his convictions, however unpalatable, at a moment when there was yet a possibility that they might prove useful. He replied (with the same frankness as Demaratus had once employed towards Xerxes), that the vast multitude now before him were unfit to cope with the comparatively small number of the invaders. He advised Darius to place no reliance on Asiatics, but to employ his immense treasures in subsidizing an increased army of Grecian mercenaries. He tendered his own hearty services either to assist or to command. To Darius, what he said was alike surprising and offensive; in the Persian courtiers, it provoked intolerable wrath. Intoxicated as they all were with the spectacle of their present muster, it seemed to them a combination of insult with absurdity, to pronounce Asiatics worthless as compared with Macedonians, and to teach the king that his empire could be defended by none but Greeks. They denounced Charidemus as a traitor who wished to acquire the king’s confidence in order to betray him to Alexander. Darius, himself stung with the reply, and still farther exasperated by the clamors of his courtiers, seized with his own hands the girdle of Charidemus, and consigned him to the guards for execution. “You will discover too late (exclaimed the Athenian), the truth of what I have said. My avenger will soon be upon you.”[246]
Filled as he now was with certain anticipations of success and glory, Darius resolved to assume in person the command of his army, and march down to overwhelm Alexander. From this moment, his land-army became the really important and aggressive force, with which he himself was to act. Herein we note his distinct abandonment of the plans of Memnon—the turning-point of his future fortune. He abandoned them, too, at the precise moment when they might have been most safely and completely executed. For at the time of the battle of the Granikus, when Memnon’s counsel was originally given, the defensive part of it was not easy to act upon; since the Persians had no very strong or commanding position. But now, in the spring of 333 B. C., they had a line of defence as good as they could possibly desire; advantages, indeed, scarcely to be paralleled elsewhere. In the first place, there was the line of Mount Taurus, barring the entrance of Alexander into Kilikia; a line of defence (as will presently appear) nearly inexpugnable. Next, even if Alexander had succeeded in forcing this line and mastering Kilikia, there would yet remain the narrow road between Mount Amanus and the sea, called the Amanian Gates, and the Gates of Kilikia and Assyria—and after that, the passes over Mount Amanus itself— all indispensable for Alexander to pass through, and capable of being held, with proper precautions, against the strongest force of attack. A better opportunity, for executing the defensive part of Memnon’s scheme, could not present itself; and he himself must doubtless have reckoned that such advantages would not be thrown away.