Note 278 — Chapter XCIII · SECOND AND THIRD ASIATIC CAMPAIGNS OF ALEXANDER — BATTLE OF ISSUS — SIEGE OF TYRE.

Arrian, ii. 11, 6. εὐθὺς, ὡς εἶχεν ἐπὶ τοῦ ἅρματος, ξὺν τοῖς πρώτοις ἔφευγε, etc.

This simple statement of Arrian is far more credible than the highly wrought details given by Diodorus (xvii. 34) and Curtius (iii. 11, 9) about a direct charge of Alexander upon the chariot of Darius, and a murderous combat immediately round that chariot, in which the horses became wounded and unmanageable, so as to be on the point of overturning it. Chares even went so far as to affirm that Alexander had come into personal conflict with Darius, from whom he had received his wound in the thigh (Plutarch, Alex. 20). Plutarch had seen the letter addressed by Alexander to Antipater, simply intimating that he had received a slight wound in the thigh.

In respect to this point, as to so many others, Diodorus and Curtius have copied the same authority.

Kallisthenes (ap. Polyb. xii. 22) stated that Alexander had laid his plan of attack with a view to bear upon the person of Darius, which is not improbable (compare Xenoph. Anab. i. 8, 22), and was in fact realized, since the first successful charge of the Macedonians came so near to Darius as to alarm him for the safety of his own person. To the question put by Polybius—How did Alexander know in what part of the army Darius was?—we may reply, that the chariot and person of Darius would doubtless be conspicuous: moreover the Persian kings were habitually in the centre—and Cyrus the younger, at the battle of Kunaxa, directed the attack to be made exactly against the person of his brother Artaxerxes.

After the battle of Kunaxa, Artaxerxes assumed to himself the honor of having slain Cyrus with his own hand, and put to death those who had really done the deed, because they boasted of it (Plutarch, Artax. 16).