Between Phaselis and the maritime plains of Pamphylia, the mountains which form the southern branch of Taurus descend abruptly on the coast, leaving only a narrow passage along the beach, and this never open but in calm weather, or during the prevalence of a northerly wind. The promontory was called Mount Climax. At the time when Alexander was about to resume his march eastward, the wind was blowing from the south, and the waves washed the foot of the cliffs. He therefore sent the main body of his army over the mountains to Perga, by a circuitous and difficult road, which however he had ordered to be previously cleared by his Thracian pioneers. But for himself he determined with a few followers to try the passage along the shore; danger and difficulty had a charm for him which he could scarcely resist. Perhaps the wind had already subsided; soon after it shifted to the north—a change in which he recognised a special interposition of the gods. Yet, according to Strabo’s authors, he found the water still nearly breast high, and had to wade through it for a whole day. As he advanced from Perga, he was met by an embassy from the neighbouring town of Aspendus, which lay a little further eastward near the mouth of the Eurymedon, offering to acknowledge his authority, but praying that they might not be compelled to receive a Macedonian garrison. This request he granted, requiring one hundred talents and yearly tribute, and exacting hostages for their performance. Then he began his march towards Phrygia.

His road led through the heart of Pisidia, where he was the more desirous of striking terror, as its fierce and lawless inhabitants, secure in their mountain barriers and almost impregnable fortresses, had constantly defied the power of the Persian government. Yet he could not spare the time which would have been necessary to reduce all its strongholds. Termessus, situated on a steep rock, commanding a narrow pass which led from Pisidia into Phrygia, appeared to him too strong to be attempted, though he had dislodged the barbarians from the position which they had taken up without the walls, and made himself master of the pass. But the resistance of Termessus procured for him offers of alliance from its enemy Selge, another of the principal cities, which proved very useful to him. He stormed Sagalassus, though besides its natural strength its inhabitants were accounted the most warlike of the Pisidians; and this success was followed by the submission of most of the smaller towns. He then advanced by the lake Ascania to Celænæ, where the citadel, on an almost inaccessible rock, was guarded by a garrison of one thousand Carians, and one hundred Greeks, placed there by the satrap of Phrygia. It however offered to surrender unless it should be relieved within sixty days; and Alexander thought it best to accept these conditions; and having left a body of fifteen hundred men to observe it, and appointed Antigonus, son of Philip, to the important satrapy of central Phrygia, he prosecuted his march to Gordium, where he had ordered Parmenion to meet him.

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.