Plutarch, De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute
Frank Cole Babbitt, Ed.

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Moreover, there were the trials of the campaign itself : storms, droughts, deep rivers, the heights of the Birdless Rock,¹ the monstrous shapes of savage beasts, an uncivilized manner of life, the constant succession of petty kings and their repeated treachery. Then there were also the difficulties before his expedition:² Greece was still gasping over Philip's wars ; Thebes, staggering to her feet after her fall, was shaking the dust of Chaeroneia from her arms, and Athens was stretching forth a helping hand to join with Thebes. All Macedonia was festering with revolt and looking toward Amyntas and the children [p. 389] of Aëropus³; the Illyrians were again rebelling, and trouble with the Scythians was impending for their Macedonian neighbours, who were in the throes of political change ; Persian gold flowed freely through the hands of the popular leaders everywhere, and helped to rouse the Peloponnesus ; Philip's treasuries were bare of money, and in addition there was owing a loan of two hundred talents⁴ (as Onesicritus records). In such poverty⁵ and in circumstances fraught with such uncertainty, a stripling, scarcely older than a boy, had the daring to hope for Babylon and Susa ; nay more, to conceive the project of dominion over all the world, relying only on the thirty thousand foot and four thousand cavalry which were his ; for, according to Aristobulus, that was the full extent of their number. But King Ptolemy puts them at thirty thousand foot and five thousand horse, Anaximenes at forty-three thousand foot, fifty-five hundred horse. And the great and glorious war-chest which Fortune had ready for him was only seventy talents,⁶ as Aristobulus⁷ says, though Duris⁸ says it was provision for only thirty days.