These numbers probably were enlarged to enhance Alexander’s subsequent glory, but there are
indications that Darius did indeed assemble a very large army. Arrian confirms that Darius had
30,000 Greek mercenaries in the van of his heavy infantry and that these were supplemented by
60,000 Persian hoplite infantry (the so-called Kardakes).
Whatever the exact numbers, Alexander’s army clearly was outnumbered, perhaps by a very wide
margin, and this time the Persians would be led by the Great King himself. Having rejected the
counsel of his adviser, Charidemus, who advised him to divide his forces and let Charidemus attack
the Macedonians with the smaller force, Darius decided to lead his entire army against Alexander.
The Great King had cast the die.
Ever since, historians have debated whether Darius was right to risk his army and his life in one
great battle. The outcome went against him, but his decision to wager all cannot be judged by the
result. So why did Darius do it? It undoubtedly was important to the prestige, and even to the
legitimacy, of his kingship (which had come into being only after a messy dynastic struggle) for
Darius to be seen as willing to lead the Persians into battle and to fight for his empire. The Great
Kings of Persia, favored by Ahuramazda, simply did not hide from upstart twenty-three-year-olds,
leaders of former slaves, who once had paid earth and water to Darius I. Therefore, by September
333, Darius and his army had marched down to Sochi, in the Amik Plain, on the edge of the Amanus
Range, ready to take on Alexander and the Macedonians. To make the immense force more mobile, its
enormous baggage train was sent south to Damascus.
Alexander, meanwhile, marched along eastward, first to Magarsus, then northward to Mallus
(where he learned that Darius was at Sochi), next northeast to Castabulum, and finally to Issos.
Leaving his sick and wounded there, Alexander went on past the Pillar of Jonah, all the way to
Myriandrus, perhaps in search of Darius, or to lure Darius into battle somewhere in the coastal
narrows, with the Pillar of Jonah at his back and the sea and the Amanus Range on his flanks for
protection. Given the Persians’ numerical superiority, which he must have anticipated, it was clearly
in Alexander’s interest to fight in a confined space, where Darius would find it more difficult to
maneuver.
Darius, on the other hand, probably wanted to meet Alexander somewhere on the Amik Plain,
where the country was open and flat, a good terrain for cavalry action and for maneuvering his vast
infantry. If the Persians at Sochi marched down through the Belen pass and confronted Alexander
somewhere near Myriandrus, they would end up meeting Alexander on a smaller battlefield, and one
of Alexander’s choosing to boot.
After a delay of as much as two weeks to see who would move first, Darius finally took the
initiative. His decision to leave Sochi, thus losing the potential advantage of meeting Alexander on
the Amik Plain, has puzzled some historians. But the Persians had sent most of their supplies to
Damascus, and they could not be resupplied from the area of the plain for very long. So Darius could
not wait forever, while Alexander and the Macedonians, in a pinch, could be resupplied from the sea.
When Darius set out, however, he did not advance in the direction the Macedonians perhaps
expected. Instead of coming down through the closer Belen pass, he marched north at least a hundred
miles, then through the Bahçe pass, and finally down through the Toprakkale narrows to the coastal
plain north of Issos.
In Issos, Darius made his first significant mistake of the campaign: he tortured, and then put to
death, every invalid Macedonian whom Alexander had left there. Strangely, some who have criticized
Alexander severely for his decision not to spare the Greek mercenaries at the Granicus have passed
over this shameful massacre in silence. The Macedonian rank and file, however, surely must have
been made aware of what had happened to their defenseless comrades, and would have been enraged
by Darius’ actions. Throughout the history of warfare, the torture or execution of prisoners of war
very often has come back to haunt the perpetrators.
The Persians were now north of Alexander, cutting him off from his newly acquired land bases in
Cilicia. Alexander, at first disbelieving the news, sent a galley of Companions back to Issos to have a
look. They quickly confirmed the report: Darius was indeed behind the Macedonians. Alexander may
have been invincible, as the Delphic oracle proclaimed; the Pythia never said he was omniscient.
Necessity now relieved Alexander of the embarrassment of choice; cut off by land from his bases, he
would have to fight Darius as soon as possible.
Leaving the allied infantry to keep an eye on the southern passes, Alexander and the rest of the army
marched back up north, spending the night before the coming battle on safe, high ground at the top of
the Pillar of Jonah.
South of the Pinarus River, the Persians formed up in a defensive position, so that Darius could get
the main body of his army into formation safely. Alexander’s official historian, Callisthenes, later
recorded that the field of battle was 2.59 kilometers from the sea to the foothills of the Amanus
Range; that would make the battlefield about 1.75 miles wide. The relatively narrow width of the
battlefield would give Alexander’s much smaller army something of an advantage, as it greatly
reduced the chances that the Macedonians would be enveloped by the larger Persian force.
Nevertheless, Alexander would have to make sure that the Persians did not get up and around his
flank on the inland side or break through his line on his left (seaward) flank, and the complex
movements of infantry and cavalry he directed as the Macedonians moved into position are a
testament to his understanding both of the topography of the battlefield and the tactical exigencies.
THE BATTLE FORMATIONS
When Darius discovered that Alexander was moving forward at last, he sent 30,000 mounted troops
and 20,000 light infantry across the river Pinarus to give himself a chance to get his main army into
position. The Greek mercenary infantry made up the center of the Persian line; they were supported on
each flank by the 30,000 Kardakes. Another division of 20,000 was sent up into the hills to work their
way around to Alexander’s rear. A great mass of light and heavy infantry supported the main force
from the rear. These were organized according to their countries of origin and were drawn up in
depth greater than was likely to prove of much service—inevitably so, in view of the numbers
involved.
Alexander meanwhile made an impassioned speech to his infantry and cavalry commanders and to
the allied officers. We are told that he emphasized the differences between the Greeks and the
Persians—“We are free men, and they are slaves”—and that he reminded his soldiers that the
Persians were fighting for pay, while they were fighting for Greece. Alexander then ordered his men
to eat and to rest, albeit on the rocky ground. Many battles have been lost because one side fought on
an empty stomach or got no sleep at all the night before. Alexander always took care that the
Macedonians went into battle well fed and rested.
Just before daylight, the Macedonians marched down from the pass, the infantry leadi
ng the
cavalry. The infantry was deployed in a formation thirty-two deep, but as the phalanx spread out into
the plain its ranks were thinned to a depth of eight men.
Reaching open ground, Alexander sent three battalions of guards under Nicanor to his right wing on
the nearby rising ground, with Coenus’ battalion on their left, in close touch with Perdiccas’ men. On
the extreme left were Amyntas’ troops, and in touch with them, working toward the center, Ptolemy’s
battalion and then Meleager’s. Command of the infantry on the left side of the line was given to
Craterus. Overall command of the left wing belonged to Parmenio. His orders were to see to it that
the Macedonians were not outflanked on their left, the seaward side.
As soon as Alexander found the ground in front of him opening up a little more, he brought up the
Companion and Thessalian divisions of cavalry from the rear to the right wing under his command,
and he sent the Peloponnesians, and other allied divisions, around to Parmenio on the left.
Darius, once his main infantry was in position, recalled the mounted troops he had sent across the
river and moved them over to his right to threaten Parmenio on the seaward side of the plain. Darius
himself took up a position in the center of the formation, the traditional station of the Persian kings in
battle.
Alexander sent the Thessalian cavalry to counter the threat on his left, concealing their movement
by having them pass behind his infantry battalions. At the other end of the line, he threw forward his
advance scouts under the command of Protomachus, the Paeonians under Ariston, and the archers
under Antiochus. The Agrianes under Attalus were then ordered out toward the high ground at an
angle to the front line of the main army, where they were to engage the Persians who had worked their
way up onto that high ground.
Observing a weakness in his own line, Alexander withdrew two squadrons of Macedonian cavalry
from his center and ordered them over to his right, once again concealing the movement. He also
strengthened his right by the addition of a contingent of Agrianes and Greek mercenaries, and so
outflanked the Persian left. A raiding party of Agrianes and archers drove the Persians in the hills
higher up, allowing Alexander to return to his main attacking force the men he had intended to check
them with.
After Alexander had completed these realignments, the Macedonians advanced slowly and
deliberately, halting now and then, at Alexander’s order, to give the Persians the impression that time
was on their side. Darius and his army waited on the opposite riverbank, which was steep in places
and strengthened elsewhere with stockades.
THE BATTLE OF ISSOS
Once the battle began, the combat was furious and the issue decided relatively quickly. As soon as
Alexander was within missile range, he rode at a gallop into the stream at the head of his own troops
on the right wing. The left of the Persian line collapsed the moment Alexander was upon them—an
indication that the Persians had never before faced such a ferocious attack.
In the center of the battlefield the combat did not go as well for the Macedonians. The Macedonian
infantry phalanx was much slower off the mark than Alexander, who rode into battle. Some of the
Macedonian infantry broke away toward the right, leaving a gap in the line. In a number of places, the
steep banks of the stream prevented the phalanx from maintaining a regular and unbroken line. Darius’
Greek mercenaries attacked at precisely the spot in the Macedonian line where the gap was widest. A
violent struggle ensued.
Arrian tells us that the Greek mercenaries of the Persians fought to save the day for their left wing,
which was already in retreat at the shock of Alexander’s charge, while the Macedonian phalanx was
determined to equal Alexander’s success, which they could see on the narrow battlefield. The fierce
clash of the infantries was further fueled by the old ethnic rivalry between Greeks and Macedonians.
During this phase of the battle about 120 Macedonians of distinction lost their lives.
Alexander and the Companion cavalry, however, having shattered resistance on the Persian left,
then turned left, toward the center, forcing Darius’ mercenaries back from the river. Outflanking the
Persian left, Alexander then delivered a devastating flank attack on the Persian mercenary infantry.
The Companion cavalry was soon cutting them to pieces.
On the far left of the Macedonian line, the Persian cavalry had refused to stay on the far side of the
river; they charged across in a furious onslaught against the Thessalian cavalry, breaking off from this
attack only when they saw that the Greek mercenaries were being destroyed by Alexander’s infantry,
and that Darius himself was in headlong flight. The attack by the Persian cavalry here, which took
them away from the center of the Persian line, was perhaps the key tactical blunder of the engagement.
Or, to put the case another way, it was the successful defensive action fought by Parmenio and the
Thessalians that gave Alexander time to break the Persian left wing and then roll up the Persian
center, too.
Arrian reports that Darius fled in a panic the moment the Persian left went to pieces under
Alexander’s attack. But both Diodorus and Curtius tell a very different story. In Diodorus’ account,
Alexander, after shattering the Persian left, rode hard with his cavalry directly at the Persian king
himself. By now the rest of the cavalry on both sides was engaged, and many were killed as the battle
raged indecisively. Some of the fiercest fighting took place around Darius’ royal chariot. Many of his
most famous generals fell fighting before the very eyes of their king; all of their mortal wounds were
in the front of their bodies. The violent deaths of these men in combat once again confirm the bravery
of Darius’ governors and officers and also indirectly support the thesis that Darius did not flee at the
beginning of the battle. These Persian commanders died in a desperate fight focused on Darius
himself; indeed, we are told that Darius’ horses were covered with wounds, and Alexander himself
received a dagger wound in the thigh. It was only when Darius’ horses, pierced by lances and
distracted with pain, began to toss their yokes and were about to hurl the king from his chariot that
Darius, frightened that he might fall into his enemies’ hands, jumped down and mounted a horse to
escape.
Most of the literary evidence thus does not support Arrian’s claim that Darius fled as soon as the
Persian left collapsed. Moreover, Diodorus’ and Curtius’ accounts are perhaps broadly supported by
the scene depicted on the famous “Alexander Mosaic” now displayed in the National Archaeological
Museum of Naples.
The magnificent mosaic itself is usually thought to have been created c. 120–100 B.C.E., but it was
inspired by a contemporary painting of the battle of Issos, probably by the famous artist Philoxenos of
Eretria. Philoxenos’ painting was based upon eyewitness accounts. Although it obviously was not a
photograph of the battle, but an artistic interpretation of one moment during the engagement, if the
Alexander Mosaic in Naples is in any sense a faithful representation of the fourth-century painting, it
could be argued that the starting point of the painting’s compositional assum
ptions coincides with the
narrative accounts of Diodorus and Curtius Rufus, rather than that of Arrian.
If Arrian is right about the way the battle unfolded, Alexander and Darius never got close enough
for their eyes to meet, as they do in the Alexander Mosaic. In the mosaic, Alexander and Darius are
shown within close striking distance of each other, as both Curtius Rufus and Diodorus report. Thus,
Darius could not have fled at the moment when the left of the Persian line was shattered (by
Alexander’s charge). That charge certainly took place long before Alexander could have gotten close
to the Persian king, stationed, as we know Darius was, in the middle of the Persian battle formation.
We also know from later Greek sources that Darius had a reputation among the Persians for
personal bravery. So it is likely that he left the battle of Issos only after the issue had been decided,
perhaps to ensure that the all-important connection between the divine and human worlds, which the
Persian king embodied, should not be broken. It was unacceptable for Ahuramazda’s divinely
selected king and representative to be killed on the field of battle.
Whatever the timing of Darius’ flight, it led to a general rout. Tens of thousands of Persians tried to
escape through narrow passes, and the whole countryside was soon covered with bodies. Ptolemy,
who was present, wrote that the Macedonians crossed a ravine on the bodies of the Persian dead.
Some have considered Ptolemy’s description a literary exaggeration. But it is not implausible. At
Issos something like 100,000 soldiers were killed on the Persian side, including no fewer than 10,000
cavalry.
Reports of Macedonian casualties vary widely. A low figure of 504 wounded, with 32 infantry and
150 cavalry dead, appears in Curtius. Diodorus gives similar totals of 300 infantry and 150
Macedonian or allied cavalry casualties. These figures may be deflated, but before we dismiss the
vast disproportion of fatalities in the armies’ losses, we should keep in mind that the battle at the
Issos was not a prolonged, equal struggle, but a short, fierce clash followed by a total rout. At no time
are soldiers more vulnerable to outright slaughter than when they simply turn their backs and flee.
The Persian survivors fled in all directions as quickly as possible. This was no organized, tactical
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