Persia. These troops retired to a small
rising ground, and begged for quarter. Alexander, however, furiously
attacked them by riding up to them by himself, in front of his men.

He lost his horse, which was killed by a sword-thrust, and it is said
that more of the Macedonians perished in that fight, and that more
wounds were given and received, than in all the rest of the battle, as
they were attacking desperate men accustomed to war.

The Persians are said to have lost twenty thousand infantry, and two
thousand five hundred cavalry. In the army of Alexander, Aristobulus
states the total loss to have been thirty-four men, nine of whom were
foot soldiers. Alexander ordered that each of these men should have
his statue made in bronze by Lysippus; and wishing to make the Greeks
generally partakers of his victory, he sent the Athenians three
hundred captured shields, and on the other spoils placed the following
vainglorious inscription:[408] "Alexander, the son of Philip, and the
Greeks, all but the Lacedaemonians, won these spoils from the
barbarians of Asia." As for the golden drinking-cups, purple hangings,
and other plunder of that sort, he sent it nearly all to his mother,
reserving only a few things for himself.

XVII. This victory wrought a great change in Alexander's position.
Several of the neighbouring states came and made their submission to
him, and even Sardis itself, the chief town in Lydia, and the main
station of the Persians in Asia Minor, submitted without a blow. The
only cities which still resisted him, Halikarnassus and Miletus, he
took by storm, and conquered all the adjacent territory, after which
he remained in doubt as to what to attempt next; whether to attack
Darius at once and risk all that he had won upon the issue of a single
battle, or to consolidate and organise his conquests on the coast of
Asia Minor, and to gather new strength for the final struggle. It is
said that at this time a spring in the country of Lykia, near the city
of Xanthus, overflowed, and threw up from its depths a brazen tablet,
upon which, in ancient characters, was inscribed a prophecy that the
Persian empire should be destroyed by the Greeks. Encouraged by this
portent, he extended his conquests along the sea coast as far as
Phoenicia and Kilikia. Many historians dwelt with admiration on the
good fortune of Alexander, in meeting with such fair weather and such
a smooth sea during his passage along the stormy shore of P