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[5] At length, some of the Macedonians were killed at the very gates, among them an officer Neoptolemus, a man of distinguished family.1

Presently two towers were levelled with the ground and two curtains overthrown, and some of Perdiccas's soldiers, getting drunk, made a wild night attack on the walls of the citadel.2 Memnon's men noticed the awkwardness of these attackers and issuing forth themselves in considerably larger numbers routed the Macedonians and killed many of them.

1 According to Arrian. 1.20.10, Neoptolemus, the son of Arrhabaeus and brother of that Amyntas who accompanied Alexander as a staff officer (Arrian. 1.12.7; 14.1; 28.4), had deserted to the Persians and was killed in the attack on Halicarnassus. Diodorus here places him on the Macedonian sideā€”and in view of the continued trust reposed by Alexander in his brother, this is a more reasonable account.

2 Two men only of Perdiccas's battalion; the event took place some days later (Arrian. 1.21.1). Was Perdiccas trying to repeat his success at Thebes (chap. 12.3)? It was the kind of exploit which Alexander would reward liberally. The drunkenness may have been a fiction, since Perdiccas acted without orders.

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