CHAPTER XI.
Defeat and Flight of Darius.
Hereupon the regiments on the right wing, perceiving that the Persians opposed to them had already been put to rout, wheeled round towards the Grecian mercenaries of Darius and their own hard-pressed detachment. Having driven the Greeks away from the river, they extended their phalanx beyond the Persian army on the side which had been broken; and attacking the Greeks on the flank, were already beginning to cut them up. However the Persian cavalry which had been posted opposite the Thessalians did not remain on the other side of the river during the struggle, but came through the water and made a vigorous attack upon the Thessalian squadrons.[1] In this plape a fierce cavalry battle ensued; for the Persians did not give way until they perceived that Darius had fled and the Grecian mercenaries had been cut up by the phalanx and severed from them. Then at last the flight of all the Persians was plainly visible. Their horses suffered much injury in the retreat, because the riders[2] were heavily armed; and the horsemen themselves, being so many in number and retreating in panic terror without any regard to order along narrow roads, were trampled on and injured no less by each other than by the pursuing enemy. The Thessalians also followed them up with vigour, so that no fewer of the cavalry than of the infantry[3] were slaughtered in the flight.
But as soon as the left wing of Darius was terrified and
- ↑ Polybius, who lived nearly three centuries before Arrian, censures Callisthenes for asserting that the Persian cavalry crossed the river Pinarus and attacked the Thessalians. No doubt Arrian received this information from the lost works of Ptolemy and Aristobulus (Poly., xii. 18).
- ↑ ἀμπάτης is the poetical form of ἀναβάτης, the word used by Xenophon, Plato, and other Attic writers. The latter is found only once in Arrian (III. xiii. 5).
- ↑ ἢ τῶν πεζῶν is Martin's emendation for ἢ ὡς πεζῶν.
