lexander, at the head of his cavalry, pushed straight for the person of
Darius. He could not get near the king, who was well protected, but he
got near enough to fill his dastard soul with terror. The sight of the
serried ranks of the Macedonian phalanx, the terrific noise of their
war-cries, the failure of the chariots, all combined to destroy his late
confidence and replace it by dread. As at Issus, he suddenly had his
chariot turned round and rushed from the field in full flight.

His attendants followed. The troops around him, the best in the army,
gave way. Soon the field was dense with fugitives. So thick was the
cloud of dust raised by the flying multitude that nothing could be seen.
Amid the darkness were heard a wild clamor of voices and the noise of
the whips of the charioteers as they urged their horses to speed. The
cloud of dust alone saved Darius from capture by the pursuing horsemen.
The left of the Persian army fought bravely, but at length it too gave
way. Everything was captured,--camp, treasure, the king's equipage,
everything but the king himself. How many were killed and taken is not
known, but the army, as an army, ceased to exist. As at Issus, so at
Arbela, it was so miserably managed that three-fourths of it had nothing
whatever to do with the battle. Its dispersal ended the Persian
resistance; the empire was surrendered to Alexander almost without
another blow.

Great a soldier as Alexander unquestionably was, he was remarkably
favored by fortune, and won the greatest empire the world had up to that
time known with hardly an effort, and with less loss of men than often
takes place in a single battle. The treasure gained was immense. Darius
seemed to have been heaping up wealth for his conqueror. Babylon and
Susa, the two great capitals of the Persian empire, contained vast
accumulations of money, part of which was used to enrich the soldiers of
the victorious army. At Persepolis, the capital of ancient Persia, a
still greater treasure was found, amounting to one hundred and twenty
thousand talents in gold and silver, or about one hundred and
twenty-five million dollars. It took five thousand camels and a host of
mules to transport the treasure away. The cruel conqueror rewarded the
Persians for this immense gift, kept through generations for his hands,
by burning the city and slaughtering its inhabitants, in revenge, as he
declared, for the harm which Xerxes had done to Greece a century and a
h