On the evening of 21 September, the day after the eclipse, Alexander broke camp and marched beyond the Tigris through country which his guides called Aturia, transcribing its Aramaic name into Greek. His route

was the well-defined line of the Royal Road; on his right, flowed the river; on his left rose the Kurdish mountains which bordered the lands of the Medes; before him galloped his mounted scouts searching hard for the enemy. For three whole days they ranged south-east while sixty miles passed without any sign, but at dawn on 25 September they were back in a flurry, reporting that Darius's army had at last been seen on the march. Again, this was a failure in advance intelligence, as on a closer look the 'army' turned out to be a thousand horsemen who had been detailed to burn any local barns of grain. They had arrived too late to hold the Tigris, and before their firebrands caused much damage, they were routed by Alexander and his mounted lancers in a typically brisk charge. Prisoners were taken and these put the reconnaissance to rights, warning Alexander that 'Darius was not far away with a large force'. On the evening of the 25th Alexander ordered a halt to take stock of the situation. A ditch was to be dug, a palisade set around it and a base camp made for his baggage-train and followers.

In this camp, at least seven miles from the enemy, Alexander remained for the next four days, in no way distressed by lack of supplies. It was a time, no doubt, for checking horses' fitness and polishing sarissa wood and blades, but as the night of 29 September came on, he at last arrayed his army in battle order and led them off shortly before midnight, evidently meaning to surprise Darius at daybreak. He had already been observed from the hills ahead, perhaps by Mazacus and a small advance force, but he was unaware of this. Four miles from Darius's lines, Alexander surmounted the ridge which overlooks the plains to the north of the Jebel Maqlub; he looked down to the village of Gaugamela in the foreground and the Tell Gomel or 'camel's hump' beside it, from which it took its name. Here he halted his line of battle and summoned all his commanders to a sudden council of war; nothing is said to explain this, but at the very last moment the plans for attack had obviously worried him. Most of those present at the council advised him to march straight ahead, but Parmenion urged encampment and the inspection of the enemy's units and the terrain, in case of hidden obstacles such as stakes and ditches. For once, Parmenion's advice is said to have prevailed, perhaps because it was true to life; the men were ordered to encamp, keeping their order of battle.

It is not difficult to find reasons for Alexander's hesitance; it does not follow that those reasons are true. He had hoped, no doubt, to surprise his enemy at daybreak, only to see from his hill-top that they were already forewarned and lined up for battle; possibly he had never realized what overwhelming numbers Darius could put into the field. Without surprise, there was little point now in hurrying, especially as Parmenion's advice of reconnaissance was sound; there was much to occupy another day and by waiting, he could pay back Darius for his forethought by keeping his subjects waiting another day and night under arms. The battle would open with a trial of nerves, and he would have dictated its terms.

For all these reasons a halt was advisable, but nerves were perhaps a double edged weapon, a threat not only among the waiting Persians but also where the historians were later loth to admit them, inside the Macedonian army itself. The men had marched in the dark towards an enemy many times larger than any they had ever seen before, knowing that their king was risking all on the coming encounter. At one point, they are said to have been struck by such panic that Alexander had to order a halt during which they could lay down their weapons until they had recovered; the occasion was probably the night of 29 September, when Alexander did down arms, and the troops, seeing 100,000 camp fires beyond them, had every reason for terror. On the following evening, Alexander was to offer certain secret sacrifices attended by his prophet Aristander, and for the first and only known time in his life, he killed a victim in honour of Fear. This mysterious gesture may have been his propitiation of a power too much in evidence on the night before.

With a day of valuable reconnaissance, morale had reason to revive. On 30 September Alexander took a group of Companions and galloped in a circle round the battlefield; snares and stakes, they saw, had been driven into the ground to hold up a cavalry charge, while the pitch had elsewhere been levelled for the two hundred scythed chariots. Darius's broad plan of battle could be detected, and for once this was advance intelligence which Alexander could put to use. He returned to camp, and as darkness fell he went with Aristander the prophet to offer the necessary sacrifices. When the offerings were complete, Parmenion and the older Companion nobles came out to join him in the royal tent. To a man, they urged Alexander to attack under cover of night, Parmenion helping to put the case, but the King made memorable reply: 'Alexander,' he answered, 'does not steal his victories.' Whether a true remark or only flattery invented to please the king, this was an answer as outrageous as the moment deserved. A night attack would be a confused risk, better foregone. Alexander, like a true Hellene, had never been above tricks in the interest of his army: had he not set out the night before in order to attack, if not in darkness, at least at the break of dawn? He answered boldly for others to hear or at least to record in his public myth; he then turned about, having ordered a march for the following morning, entered his tent and settled down to a night of plans, sifting all that he had seen and working into the small hours of the morning, while the camp fires burnt low among the enemy host whom he had long sought.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Deep in thought, Alexander sat by torchlight, pondering his tactics for the morrow. Outside the royal tent midnight had come and gone, but not until the small hours of the morning was he ready for bed, where he soon fell asleep. Dawn broke on I October but still Alexander slept on. The morning sun grew full; the officers, it is said, began to worry, until Parmenion gave the troops their orders and gathered a group of generals to rouse Alexander from his bed. They found him relaxed and calm, ready with an answer to their rebukes: 'How can you sleep,' they are said to have asked, 'as if you had won the battle already?' 'What?' he replied with a smile, 'do you not think that this battle is already won, now that we have been spared from pursuing a Darius who bums his land and fights by retreating?'

This story may be fanciful, but Alexander would indeed have been relieved that as long planned, the mastery of Asia was to depend on a pitched battle. The battle itself was daunting. The enemy's numbers were reported to be immense, at least some quarter of a million men, though they could never have been reckoned accurately. In the open plain, where no natural barriers protected his flanks, Alexander was bound to be encircled by the Great King's cavalry who were drawn in thousands not only from the horse-breeding areas of the empire, from Media, Armenia and even from Cappadocia behind his lines, but also from the tribes of the upper satrapies, Indians, Afghans and others, some of them mounted archers, all of them born to ride, none more so than the allied Scythian nomads from the steppes beyond the Oxus. Against their total, perhaps, of 30,000, Alexander's own cavalry totalled a mere 7,000, and not even weaponry was in his favour. Many enemy riders were heavily armoured, a doubtful advantage if the fighting became open and mobile, but since Issus, Darius had revised their weapons of attack, giving them larger shields, swords and thrusting-spears, not javelins, to bring them into line with Alexander's Companions. As for the mounted sarissa-bearers, even they had met their match: some of the Scythian horsemen could perhaps fight with a lance requiring both hands and it was probably for this reason that Darius had placed them opposite Alexander's right, where he had seen their Macedonian equivalents in action two years before. Only his