His next action was to give Parmenion his separate command. If the young King’s rejection of his advice was stressed in later chronicles for expedient reasons, this is no proof that such incidents were fictitious. They suggest a familiar human pattern. Parmenion was now in his middle sixties. He had been Philip’s intimate friend for more than twenty years. He now found himself working with a high command mostly a full generation younger, under a leader in his early twenties. If he had adjusted with ease from Philip’s mental processes to Alexander’s, it would have been little short of a miracle. Shakespeare’s Antony complains that Octavius’ tutelary genius daunts his own, and Parmenion may have felt this perennial situation. On Alexander’s side, a man who had been so close to his father, who had married a daughter of Attalus when he was in power and Alexander in disgrace, must always have created some sense of tension. At all events, he now detached Parmenion to command the communication lines over the conquered territory. A tendency to repeat this policy was to have terrible results for both of them.
Alexander now gave home leave to all Macedonian soldiers newly married before setting out; a wildly popular directive, and thoughtful for future Macedonian manpower. He next moved against the mountain hill tribes, everywhere in the world intractable; midwinter had driven them down into the valleys, easing the task of subjugation. During this time, Parmenion intercepted a message from Darius to Alexandros of Lyncestis—whose two brothers had been executed for complicity in Philip’s murder—offering him the throne of Macedon if he would procure Alexander’s death. This prince had now been promoted to command of the Thracian cavalry. As a possible successor should Alexander die childless, he had always been a source of danger; his survival represented a notable departure from Macedonian royal precedent. Even now, however, Alexander, lacking proof that the Persian offer had been solicited, did not charge him with treason, but kept him under precautionary arrest. It was remembered that during the recent siege, a swallow had entered the royal tent, and fluttered over its sleeping occupant. Half waking, Alexander had gently brushed it away, but it had returned and perched on his head. The seers divined that the warnings of this domestic bird meant domestic danger. However, Alexander still held his hand.
The winter was spent in reducing coastal strongholds, working south and down round Asia Minor’s eastward curve. With the spring he struck inland as far as Gordium, locale of the famous knot. It was a leather thong, intricately wound about the shaft of an ancient vehicle on which their most famous king, the legendary Midas, was supposed to have arrived. Plutarch says, most probably by hindsight, that the man who could undo it was destined to rule the world. Arrian says that by some accounts Alexander cut it with his sword in proverbial manner; by others, he tugged out the shaft it was wound round, and discovered the hidden end. “I shall not try,” writes Arrian conscientiously, “to say exactly how Alexander dealt with this knot.” It is agreed he dealt with it. There were thunderings and lightnings, to clinch the matter.
Further south, he approached the almost impregnable pass of the Cilician Gates, but had not to force it. Its holding force fled as soon as they heard he was there in person. At Tarsus, he nearly killed himself by jumping into the Cydnus (the stream that carried Cleopatra’s barge to Antony) while tired, hot and sweating. It was snow water; he got cramp and a bad chill, and his life was thought in danger. Here he made one of his impassioned testimonies to friendship. His doctor, Philip, was about to dose him, when a letter arrived from Parmenion, assuring him that Darius had bribed the man to poison him. In view of the offer to Alexandros of Lyncestis, this cannot have seemed trivial. It may even have been tried on Philip, though ignored. Alexander handed him the letter and, while he read it, tossed the medicine down. Philip, looking up in horror, saw Alexander smiling and holding the empty cup. The potion was a strong purge. He endured without loss of trust this benighted treatment, though it must have delayed his recovery, which took some weeks.
Darius meantime, stirred at last to action, had marched west from Babylon with an enormous army, and made camp on level ground where he had plenty of room to deploy it, barring the Macedonians’ southward march, somewhere near modern Aleppo. Unaware that Alexander was ill—his convalescence probably prolonged by two years’ incessant labour—Darius thought he was hanging back from fear, and was much encouraged.
The Great King, who stood six and a half feet tall, is said by Diodorus to have won renown during Ochus’ reign by killing in single combat a Cilician champion whom no other warrior would face. He was now about fifty; the duel, if it ever took place, may have been fought a quarter century before. It may have been propaganda to support his accession, which needed support; power and luxury may have changed him; or his courage may have been, as courage can be, specific rather than general. It would seem at any rate that since the news from the Granicus he had been a frightened man. The recent death of Memnon, from illness while on campaign, had further disconcerted him.
Alexander, when on his feet again, conducted methodical mopping-up operations to safeguard his flanks and communications. Darius, much cheered by this further delay, began to think of offensive action. Arrian blames flattering courtiers for this overconfidence; it is also possible that keener soldiers simply wanted to push him into the field.
With a formidable battle now ahead, Alexander set up a field hospital by the inlet bay of Issus, left there his sick and wounded, and marched southward to meet Darius; unaware that Darius, by a different inland route, was marching north. Hidden from each other the armies passed. Darius arrived at Issus in Alexander’s rear. The only Macedonians he found were the patients in the hospital. Whether or not by his orders, they were cut up alive. This atrocity was never repaid in kind by Alexander; a restraint seldom practised in the ancient world or, indeed, in some parts of the modern one.
The news that Darius had left his first-class position in the plain, and marched to Issus where he had no room to manoeuvre, seemed so incredible to Alexander that he sent a scout ship to make sure. The bay was reported swarming with Persians. He assembled his officers for briefing.
Arrian says he told them how Xenophon and his Ten Thousand, a body of isolated, unsupported infantry, had successfully fought their way from Babylon to the sea. He recalled their own ordeals successfully overcome together, “and whatever else at such a time in the face of danger a brave general would say to hearten brave men”—a thing he was very good at. The fact that they were cut off if they lost was unworthy even of mention. At the end they crowded round him, grasping his hands and begging him to lead them on. Latter-day clichés about the stiff upper lip, derived from Roman tradition, tend to obscure the highly emotional bond between Alexander and his men, which was to last his lifetime.
As at the Granicus, the Persians formed up behind a steep-banked river. Their front stretched from the sea to the near hills; a host which could have encircled the Macedonians with ease, had the terrain given them room. As it was, a great mass of reserves stood uselessly in the rear.
Ptolemy’s reckoning of the Persian force at 600,000 is thought by modern historians much exaggerated. To the Macedonians, outnumbered even on conservative estimates at eight or ten to one, it must have looked like it at the time. Darius’ Greek mercenaries alone are still thought to have been 12,000; the 5,000 Macedonian horse were a squadron compared with the heavily mailed Persian cavalry. Its commander was the distinguished general Nabarzanes, for whom the battle would be the prologue to a sombre drama.
Alexander took the intervening passes unhurriedly, keeping his men fresh. When, on the edge of the bay, he formed them in battle order, he made no speeches. He rode about the line, having a word with the officers, singling out men who had done well before and speaking of their exploits. The fact that he must have known several thousand men by name was one of Alexander’s secret weapons. Xenophon speaks highly of this gift in a commander.