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 subsidising 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 intolerant wrath. Intoxicated as they all were with the spectacle of their immense 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 further exasperated by the clamours 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.”
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. In the first place, there was the line of Mount Taurus, barring the entrance of Alexander into Cilicia; a line of defence nearly inexpugnable. Next, even if Alexander had succeeded in forcing this line and mastering Cilicia, there would yet remain the narrow road between Mount Amanus and the sea, called the Amanian Gates, and the Gates of Cilicia 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.
The momentous change of policy, on the part of the Persian king, was manifested by the order which he sent to the fleet after receiving intelligence of the death of Memnon. Confirming the appointment of Pharnabazus (made provisionally by the dying Memnon) as admiral, he at the same time despatched Thymodes (son of Mentor and nephew of Memnon) to bring away from the fleet the Grecian mercenaries who served aboard, to be incorporated with the main Persian army. Here was a clear proof that the main stress of offensive operations was henceforward to be transferred from the sea to the land.
It is the more important to note such desertion of policy, on the part of Darius, as the critical turning-point in the Greco-Persian drama—because Arrian and the other historians leave it out of sight, and set before us little except secondary points in the case. Thus, for example, they condemn the imprudence of Darius, for coming to fight Alexander within the narrow space near Issus, instead of waiting for him on the spacious plains beyond Mount Amanus. Now, unquestionably, granting that a general battle was inevitable, this step augmented the chances in favour of the Macedonians. But it was a step upon which no material consequences turned; for the Persian army under Darius was hardly less unfit for a pitched battle in the open plain; as was afterwards proved at Arbela. The real imprudence—the neglect of the Memnonian warning—consisted in fighting the battle at all. Mountains and defiles were the real strength of the Persians, to be held as posts of defence against the invader.
DARIUS AT ISSUS
Darius had marched out of the interior his vast and miscellaneous host, stated at six hundred thousand men. His mother, his wife, his harem, his children, his personal attendants of every description, accompanied him, to witness what was anticipated as a certain triumph. All the apparatus of ostentation and luxury was provided in abundance, for the king and for his Persian grandees. The baggage was enormous: of gold and silver alone, we are told that there was enough to furnish load for six hundred mules and three hundred camels. A temporary bridge being thrown over the Euphrates, five days were required to enable the whole army to cross. Much of the treasure and baggage, however, was not allowed to follow the army to the vicinity of Mount Amanus, but was sent under a guard to Damascus in Syria.
At the head of such an overwhelming host, Darius was eager to bring on at once a general battle. It was not sufficient for him simply to keep back an enemy, whom, when once in presence, he calculated on crushing altogether. Accordingly, he had given no orders (as we have just seen) to defend the line of the Taurus; he had admitted Alexander unopposed into Cilicia, and he intended to let him enter in like manner through the remaining strong passes—first, the Gates of Cilicia and Syria, between Mount Amanus and the sea—next, the pass, now called Beylan, across Amanus itself. He both expected and wished that his enemy should come into the plain to fight, there to be trodden down by the countless horsemen of Persia.
But such anticipation was not at once realised. The movements of Alexander, hitherto so rapid and unremitting, seemed suspended. We have already noticed the dangerous fever which threatened his life, occasioning not only a long halt, but much uneasiness among the Macedonian army. All was doubtless reported to the Persians, with abundant exaggerations; and when Alexander, immediately after recovery, instead of marching forward towards them, turned away from them to subdue the western portion of Cilicia, this again was construed by Darius as an evidence of hesitation and fear. It is even asserted that Parmenion wished to await the attack of the Persians in Cilicia, and that Alexander at first consented to do so. At any rate, Darius, after a certain interval, contracted the persuasion, and was assured by his Asiatic councillors and courtiers, that the Macedonians, though audacious and triumphant against frontier satraps, now hung back intimidated by the approaching majesty and full muster of the empire, and that they would not stand to resist his attack. Under this impression Darius resolved upon an advance into Cilicia with all his army.
Thymodes indeed, and other Grecian advisers—together with the Macedonian exile Amyntas—deprecated his new resolution, entreating him to persevere in his original purpose. They pledged themselves that Alexander would come forth to attack him wherever he was, and that, too, speedily. They dwelt on the imprudence of fighting in the narrow defiles of Cilicia, where his numbers, and especially his vast cavalry, would be useless. Their advice, however, was not only disregarded by Darius, but denounced by the Persian councillors as traitorous. Even some of the Greeks in the camp shared, and transmitted in their letters to Athens, the blind confidence of the monarch. The order was forthwith given for the whole army to quit the plains of Syria and march across Mount Amanus into Cilicia. To cross, by any pass, over such a range as that of Mount Amanus, with a numerous army, heavy baggage, and ostentatious train (including all the suite necessary for the regal family), must have been a work of no inconsiderable time; and the only two passes over this mountain were, both of them, narrow and easily defensible. Darius followed the northernmost of the two, which brought him into the rear of the enemy.
Thus at the same time that the Macedonians were marching southward to cross Mount Amanus by the southern pass, and attack Darius in the plain, Darius was coming over into Cilicia by the northern pass to drive them before him back into Macedonia. Reaching Issus, seemingly about two days after they had left it, he became master of their sick and wounded left in the town. With odious brutality, his grandees impelled him to inflict upon these poor men either death or amputation of hands and arms. He then marched forward, along the same road by the shore of the gulf which had already been followed by Alexander, and encamped on the banks of the river Pinarus.