Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
book:
chapter:
The Seventeenth Book of Diodorus: in Two Parts
chapter 1chapter 2chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5chapter 6chapter 7chapter 8chapter 9chapter 10chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16chapter 17chapter 18chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21chapter 22chapter 23chapter 24chapter 25chapter 26chapter 27chapter 28chapter 29chapter 30chapter 31chapter 32chapter 33chapter 34chapter 35chapter 36chapter 37chapter 38chapter 39chapter 40chapter 41chapter 42chapter 43chapter 44chapter 45chapter 46chapter 47chapter 48chapter 49chapter 50chapter 51chapter 52chapter 53chapter 54chapter 55chapter 56chapter 57chapter 58chapter 59chapter 60chapter 61chapter 62chapter 63chapter 64chapter 65chapter 66chapter 67chapter 68chapter 69chapter 70chapter 71chapter 72chapter 73chapter 74chapter 75chapter 76chapter 77chapter 78chapter 79chapter 80chapter 81chapter 82chapter 83chapter 84chapter 85chapter 86chapter 87chapter 88chapter 89chapter 90chapter 91chapter 92chapter 93chapter 94chapter 95chapter 96chapter 97chapter 98chapter 99chapter 100chapter 101chapter 102chapter 103chapter 104chapter 105chapter 106chapter 107chapter 108chapter 109chapter 110chapter 111chapter 112chapter 113chapter 114chapter 115chapter 116chapter 117chapter 118
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Dareius based his formation for battle on the characteristics of his national
contingents,1 and posting himself opposite Alexander gave the
command to advance on the Macedonians. As the lines approached each other, the trumpeters on
both sides sounded the attack and the troops charged each other with a loud shout.
[2]
First the scythed chariots swung into action at full gallop and created
great alarm and terror among the Macedonians,2 especially since Mazaeus3 in
command of the cavalry made their attack more frightening by supporting it with his dense
squadrons of horse.
[3]
As the phalanx joined shields, however,
all beat upon their shields with their spears as the king had commanded and a great din arose.
[4]
As the horses shied off, most of the chariots were turned
about and bore hard with irresistible impact against their own ranks. Others continued on
against the Macedonian lines, but as the soldiers opened wide gaps in their ranks the chariots
were channelled through these. In some instances the horses were killed by javelin casts and in
others they rode through and escaped, but some of them, using the full force of their momentum
and applying their steel blades actively, wrought death among the Macedonians in many and
various forms.
[5]
Such was the keenness and the force of the
scythes ingeniously contrived to do harm that they severed the arms of many, shields and all,
and in no small number of cases they cut through necks and sent heads tumbling to the ground
with the eyes still open and the expression of the countenance unchanged, and in other cases
they sliced through ribs with mortal gashes and inflicted a quick death.4
1 The Persian dispositions are given by Curtius 4.12.5-13 and Arrian. 3.11.3-7 from captured records.
2 Curtius 4.15.3; Arrian. 3.13.5.
3 Mazaeus appears below (chap. 59.5) in command of the Persian right wing, not the left.
4 Curtius 4.15.14-17. Arrian is not interested in such descriptions.
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
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.
show
Browse Bar
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 (9 total)
- Cross-references to this page
(1):
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), ARGYRAS´PIDES
- Cross-references in notes from this page (5):
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(3):
- LSJ, ἀναρρήγνυ_μι
- LSJ, περιοχ-ή
- LSJ, χαλκ-εύω
hide
Search
hideStable Identifiers
hide
Display Preferences