previous next

After the king had marched out of Babylon and while he was still on the road, there came to him, sent by Antipater, five hundred Macedonian cavalry and six thousand infantry, six hundred Thracian cavalry and three thousand five hundred Trallians, and from the Peloponnese four thousand infantry and little less than a thousand cavalry.1 From Macedonia also came fifty2 sons of the king's Friends sent by their fathers to serve as bodyguards. [2] The king welcomed all of these, continued his march, and on the sixth day crossed over into the province of Sittacene.3

This was a rich country abounding in provisions of all sorts, and he lingered here for a number of days, at once anxious to rest his army from the fatigue of their long marches and concerned to review the organization of his army. He wanted to advance some officers and to strengthen the forces by the number and the ability of the commanders. [3] This he effected. He scrutinized closely the reports of good conduct and promoted many from a high military command to an even higher responsibility, so that by giving all the commanders greater prestige he bound them to himself by strong ties of affection. [4] He also examined the situation of the individual soldiers and introduced many improvements by considering what was useful. He brought the whole force up to an outstanding devotion to its commander and obedience to his commands, and to a high degree of effectiveness, looking toward the battles to come.4 [5]

From there he entered Susiane without opposition and took over the fabulous palace of the kings. The satrap Abuleutes5 surrendered the city to him voluntarily, and some have written that he did this in compliance with orders given by Dareius to his trusted officials. The king of Persia hoped by this policy, it is suggested, that Alexander would be kept busy with dazzling distractions and the acquisition of brilliant cities and huge treasures, while he, Dareius, won time by his flight to prepare for a renewed warfare.6

1 Curtius 5.1.39-42 gives the same figures, with the exception of specifying 380 cavalry. These troops must have been sent by Antipater before trouble was anticipated in Greece. They had been recruited by Amyntas (chap. 49.1; Curtius 5.1.40). The Trallians were a Thracian people.

2 The same figure is given by Curtius 5.1.42.

3 Curtius 5.2.1. This district lay parallel to Babylonia on the left bank of the Tigris.

4 Curtius 5.2.2-7 describes these measures in more detail, but without satisfying our desire for specific military information. It may be that Alexander was re-organizing his dispositions in view of the impending mountain and steppe warfare, requiring increased fire-power and mobility (Rüstow-Köchly, op. cit. 252).

5 Curtius 5.2.8 and Arrian. 3.16.9 give his name as Abulites, and say that Alexander left him in Susa as governor.

6 This rumour is not mentioned by the other Alexander historians, and its source is unknown.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (16 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: