been too slow for him to overtake Darius, because, though he wheeled round at the first breaking asunder of the phalanx, yet he did not turn to pursue him until he observed that the Grecian mercenaries and the Persian cavalry had been driven away from the river.
Of the Persians were killed Arsames, Rheomithres, and Atizyes who had commanded the cavalry at the Granicus. Sabaces, viceroy of Egypt, and Bubaces, one of the Persian dignitaries, were also killed, besides about 100,000 of the private soldiers, among them being more than 10,000 cavalry.[1] So great was the slaughter that Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who then accompanied Alexander, says that the men who were with them pursuing Darius, coming in the pursuit to a ravine, filled it up with the corpses and so passed over it. The camp of Darius was taken forthwith at the first assault, containing his mother, his wife,—who was also his sister,—and his infant son.[2] His two daughters, and a few other women, wives of Persian peers,[3] who were in attendance upon them, were likewise captured. For the other Persians happened to have despatched their women along with the rest of their property to Damascus;[4] because Darius had sent to that city the greater part of his money and all the other things which the Great King was in the habit of taking with him as necessary for his luxurious mode of living, even though
- ↑ Diodorus (xvii. 36) and Curtius (iii. 29) agree with Arrian as to the number of slain in the army of Darius. Plutarch (Alex., 20) gives the number as 110,000.
- ↑ Justin (xi. 9) agrees with Arrian, that the wife of Darius was also his sister. Grote speaks of the mother, wife, and sister of Darius being captured, which is an error. Diodorus (xvii. 38) and Curtius (iii. 29) say that the son was about six years of age.
- ↑ Cf. Xenophon (Cyropaedia,ii. 1, 3; vii, 5, 85).
- ↑ Damascus,—the Hebrew name of which is Dammesek,—a very ancient city in Syria, at the foot of the Antilibanus, at an elevation of 220 feet above the sea, in a spacious and fertile plain about 30 miles in diameter, which is watered by three rivers, two of which are called in the Bible Abana and Pharpar. It has Still a population of 150,000. The emperor Julian, in one of his letters, calls it " the Bye of all the East."
