He must have begun this northward march very shortly after Parmenion's scouts had retired with news of his whereabouts. In some four or five days, he would have reached the Hasenbeyli pass, still expecting to swing round on to the main road and occupy Issus. He would either wait

there to fight Alexander as he came east down the road over the Kara Kapu pass from Tarsus, or else he would move westwards to Tarsus and hope to catch him on his sick bed. He cannot have known that as he marched north on the inland side of the Amanid range, Alexander was marching south down its coastal side, still less that Alexander was marching at a pace that has seemed incredible to those who have never tried a forced march. During one night, Alexander careered down one side of the coast road, while Darius was either encamped or marching on the other; there are few stranger tributes to the lack of proper reconnaissance in the history of ancient warfare. On the same night that Darius came through the Kalekoy pass into Issus, expecting to meet Alexander marching east, Alexander crossed the Pillar of Jonah, expecting to meet Darius encamped to the east at Sochoi. Neither knew the other's whereabouts.

When Darius descended into Issus, he found the Macedonian invalids whom Alexander had already abandoned. He was now some fifteen miles north of Alexander, facing into his rear, and yet it was only the exceptional speed of Alexander's advance which had given him this enviable position. At most Darius may have hoped to separate Alexander from Parmenion; he can take no credit for arriving in the rear of them both. As if to celebrate, he cut off the hands of the Macedonian sick whom he found at Issus, a pointless atrocity which was to cost him dear, for others escaped by boat and warned Alexander that the King of Kings was actually encamped in his rear. At Myriandrus on the sea, Alexander was unable to credit what they told him. But he sent several Companions in a thirty-oared skiff up the coastline to test the facts for themselves, and on rowing into the Gulf of Alexandretta, they sighted the campfires of the Persian army and realized that the worst had happened At last Alexander's legendary luck appeared to have deserted him.

Footsore from his forced march and soaked by the past day's rain, Alexander was given little chance by natives who were freely assisting Darius's army. There was one hope of escape from the trap into which his headlong advance had thrown him. Darius, presumably, would march south down the coastal narrows, and expect to fall on Alexander's rear once he had emerged into the open beyond the Beilan pass. What if Alexander faced about and met the king in the Cilician narrows first?

With a wet and weary army that is a difficult order to give, but, as Amyntas the Macedonian deserter had told Darius, advising him never to leave the plains; 'Alexander was sure to come wherever he heard Darius to be.' Within hours, sarissas had been shouldered, horses had been wheeled about, and a fight was to be made on Alexander's terms; Alexander was indeed coming, coming to where he had heard of Darius. Darius, however, had not yet heard of Alexander's return, and for the battle on the morrow surprise would not be the least of the Great King's disadvantages.

CHAPTER TWELVE

At Myriandrus, on turning back to face Darius, Alexander's first move was to harangue his troops. To each unit he is said to have made a different point, advising them that the gods were on their side. 'He also recalled their past successes as a team and mentioned any individual feats of daring which were especially brilliant or conspicuous, naming the man and his action in each case. In the most unexceptionable way, he described his own unsparing part in the battles.' He is also said to have added historical encouragement, reminding his men of Xenophon's long safe march through the Persian Empire seventy years before; in reply, said his Macedonian historians, possibly exaggerating the case, 'his men crowded round and clasped their King's hand, bidding him lead them forwards then and there'. First, Alexander ordered them to eat their dinner, while advance troops returned in the winter evening to hold the Syrian Gates through which they had passed the night before.

After dark the rest of the army turned about and headed for the Syrian-Cilician border which they duly reached at midnight. Pickets guarded the camp, with the Mediterranean seashore below them to their left, and the troops took a cold but well-earned rest on the hillside around the Gates. By the light of torches, Alexander is said to have conducted certain sacrifices and in one late narrative history, of which only a few short sentences survive on papyrus, these sacrifices are specified: 'In great anxiety. Alexander resorted to prayers, calling on Thetis, Nereus and the Nereids, nymphs of the sea and invoking Poseidon the sea-god, for whom he ordered a four-horsed chariot to be cast into the waves; he also sacrificed to Night.' This scrap of information cannot be checked, but it would have been most appropriate if the new Achilles did indeed offer prayers to his hero's mother, to Thetis of the silver feet in her cave beneath the waves, consoler of Homer's Achilles at similar moments of crisis.

As dawn broke at half past five in the morning, on or about 1 November 333, the trumpet announced the beginning of the all-important march. In columns, the troops strode down the road of the narrow rocky pass by the Pillar of Jonah, with the sea on their left and hills encroaching on their right. Some four miles from Darius's reported position, the ground opened slightly and the infantry found room to fan out into line formation, while the cavalry trotted behind in traditional order. Where the mountains receded from the seashore, curving inwards to leave a sinuous plain between their foot and the beach. Alexander spread his infantry still wider, arranging them in their classic battle-order, Shield Bearers on the right, protecting the vulnerable flank of the infantry, Foot Companions in the centre, and foreign mercenaries adjoining on the left. As the mountain buttresses gave way and the plain spread out still further, Alexander passed the word for his formations to broaden again, thinning their depth from sixteen to a mere eight men, unless this thinness has been exaggerated by his flatterers, while the cavalry moved up from the rear, allied brigades to the far left, Companions, Thessalians and Lancers to the far right. The line now stretched from foothills to seashore, Alexander commanding the right, Parmenion commanding the left, and battle was expected on an advantageously narrow front. By midday Darius's army would be in full view.

At this point, geography intervenes. As at the Granicus, the Persian army had taken up a defensive position behind a river south of the town of Issus but this time, the river has not been identified beyond doubt, though immense industry has been devoted to the problem, culminating in 690 unpublished pages by a French Commandant, based on a false premise. There are three main rivers and five intervening streams for consideration, and this range of choice is most awkward for those who claim to have found the solution. But before consulting the ground, a more important decision must be taken; parts of the battle narrative of Callisthenes have survived but can the details of Alexander's own historian be trusted?

Even in antiquity, Callisthenes's battle narrative was criticized, and although the criticism is illogical, it gives the only hint of what he wrote: three of his measurements are specified and he describes the riverbanks of the battle as 'sheer and difficult to cross'. The many experts who have placed the battle on the most northerly river available, the Deli Chai, have defied the indications which Callisthenes has given them. Their excuses are none too cogent. It is possible, as they point out, that Callisthenes exaggerated the roughness of the riverbanks in order to glorify his king's victory and that the two of his measurements which are given in round numbers are only estimates; that does not make them wholly untrue, and his third measurement, the most important for what follows, cannot be avoided so easily. The battle site, he claimed, was fourteen stades wide and though the exact length of his stade can be disputed to two places of decimals, this amounts to some one and a half miles. A