[236] Pratt (ii. 276, n.) notices from Athenaios that these movable towers were invented by Dyades, pupil of Polyeîdes, who accompanied Alexander.
[237] According to Arrian, the besieged lost heart not from terror of the engines, but on seeing their commander killed. We read in Caesar that his engines produced a similar effect on the minds of the Gauls. They said that they could not believe the Romans were warring without the help of the gods since they were able to move forward engines of so great a height and with such celerity (De Bell. Gall. ii. 31).
[238] Curtius had no doubt here in his eye a passage from Livy, whose picturesque style was his exemplar: “Ipse collis est in modum metae in acutum cacumen a fundo satis lato fastigatus” (B. xxxvii. 27). In the centre of the Roman circus ran lengthways down the course a low wall, at each extremity of which were placed, upon a base, three wooden cylinders of a conical shape which were called metae—the goals.
[239] Ex sua cohorte—that is, from the retinue of pages in immediate attendance on the king. From this body officers were selected to fill the highest civil and military posts in the Macedonian state.
[240] Perhaps passed by a council of war or a general assembly of the troops. Philôtas, the son of Parmenion, was condemned to death by the Macedonian army.
[241] The readers of Virgil will be reminded by this episode of that of Euryalus and Nisus. Curtius indeed seems to me to have borrowed his account of the death-scene from that poet rather than from any historical authority.
[242] He is called Aphrikês by Diodôros.
[243] Diodôros less accurately calls him Môphis. His name Ambhi (in Sanskrit) is found in the Gana-pâtha, a genuine appendix to Pânini’s Grammar (v. Journal Asiatique, Series VIII. tome xv. p. 235). For remarks on the coined money which he gave to Alexander, see [Note Kk].
[244] It was Krateros, however, and not Ptolemy, who was left in charge of the division of the army which faced the camp of Pôros. Curtius has therefore here made a mistake.
[245] That is, Pôros had been enticed down the bank so far that the island which lay where the passage was really to be made was no longer visible. Curtius says nothing of the other island on which the Macedonians landed under the erroneous impression that they had gained the bank of the river, and Diodôros is equally silent.