"Grant us our lives, O king!" they cried.
"They surrender," Parmenio said. "They are ready to join us. Why not accept them? It will cost many lives to punish them."
Alexander's brow darkened. "They are traitors to Greece," he said. "I will have none in my army who has raised his hand against his country."
The deep phalanx rolled onward to the chant of the pæan, and the despairing mercenaries knew that they could expect no quarter.
"Let us die like Greeks, since we must die," their captains exhorted. "There is no escape for us."
The phalanx dashed upon them with a rending shock. The long sarissas tore through their ranks; but they stood firm, giving blow for blow, and calling upon each other not to disgrace their name. They even forced the veterans of Macedon to recoil, and the phalanx surged back like a mighty wave that dashes itself against a sounding cliff and returns with renewed strength.
Had only the foot-soldiers, with whom they could fight on equal terms, been arrayed against them, the issue might have remained in doubt; but the cavalry, against which they had no defence, fell upon their rear ranks with terrible effect. Their squares were broken; their captains fell; disordered and without guidance, they went down before lance and sword, fighting to the last.
Alexander's horse was killed under him while he was leading the cavalry charge upon the left, and for the second time that day he narrowly escaped with his life.
"They fought like men," he said sadly to Ptolemy. "I wish they had been with us instead of against us, for they were Greeks."
He gave command to stop the carnage. Where the mercenary line had stood the dead lay in heaps, friend and foe together. A few of the mercenaries who had been cut off from the main body by the cavalry had succeeded in making their escape; but of the twenty thousand whom Memnon had led, eighteen thousand never left that bloody field. At least, they had shown the barbarians how to die.