d he made
his way thither with a small chosen band. The oasis was green with
laurels and palms; and the emblem of the god, a gold disk, adorned with
precious stones, and placed in a huge golden ship, was carried to meet
him by eighty priests, with maidens dancing round them. He was taken
alone to the innermost shrine. What he heard there he never told; but
after this he wore rams' horns on his helmet, because a ram's head was
one sign of the god, whom the Greeks made out to be the same as Jupiter;
and from this time forward he became much more proud and puffed up, so
that it is likely that he had been told by this oracle just what pleased
him.

He then went back to Tyre, and thence set out for the East. A bridge was
thrown across the Euphrates, but the Tigris was forded by the foot
soldiers, holding their shields above their heads out of the water. On
the other side Darius was waiting with all the men of the East to fight
for their homes, not for distant possessions, as had been the lands of
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. The Greeks had four days' march along the
banks of the Tigris before coming in sight of the Persian host at Arbela.
It was so late that the two armies slept in sight of one another.
Parmenio advised the king to make a night attack, but all the answer he
got was, "It would be base to steal a victory;" and when he came in the
morning to say that all was ready, he found his master fast asleep, and
asked him how he could rest so calmly with one of the greatest battles in
the world before him. "How could we not be calm," replied Alexander,
"since the enemy is coming to deliver himself into our hands?"

He would not wear such a corslet as had been crushed into his shoulder at
Gaza, but put on a breastplate of thick quilted linen, girt with a broad
leather belt, guarded with a crust of finely-worked metal, and holding a
light, sharp sword. He had a polished steel helmet, a long spear in his
right hand, and a shield on his left arm; and thus he went forth to meet
Darius, who came in the midst of 200 chariots, armed with scythes, and
fifteen trained elephants. He had so many troops that he intended to
close the wings of his army in upon the Greeks, fold them up, and cut
them off; but Alexander, foreseeing this, had warned his men to be ready
to face about on any side, and then drew them up in the shape of a wedge,
and thus broke into the very heart of the Immortal band, and was on the
point of taking D