Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
book:
chapter:
The Seventeenth Book of Diodorus: in Two Parts
chapter 1chapter 2chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5chapter 6chapter 7chapter 8chapter 9chapter 10chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16chapter 17chapter 18chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21chapter 22chapter 23chapter 24chapter 25chapter 26chapter 27chapter 28chapter 29chapter 30chapter 31chapter 32chapter 33chapter 34chapter 35chapter 36chapter 37chapter 38chapter 39chapter 40chapter 41chapter 42chapter 43chapter 44chapter 45chapter 46chapter 47chapter 48chapter 49chapter 50chapter 51chapter 52chapter 53chapter 54chapter 55chapter 56chapter 57chapter 58chapter 59chapter 60chapter 61chapter 62chapter 63chapter 64chapter 65chapter 66chapter 67chapter 68chapter 69chapter 70chapter 71chapter 72chapter 73chapter 74chapter 75chapter 76chapter 77chapter 78chapter 79chapter 80chapter 81chapter 82chapter 83chapter 84chapter 85chapter 86chapter 87chapter 88chapter 89chapter 90chapter 91chapter 92chapter 93chapter 94chapter 95chapter 96chapter 97chapter 98chapter 99chapter 100chapter 101chapter 102chapter 103chapter 104chapter 105chapter 106chapter 107chapter 108chapter 109chapter 110chapter 111chapter 112chapter 113chapter 114chapter 115chapter 116chapter 117chapter 118
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Now the most prudent
of the Macedonians looked on this reversal of fortune with compassion and felt pity for the
case of those who had seen their former lot so violently changed; everything belonging to their
high rank was far removed from them, and they were encompassed by what was foreign and hostile.
(This, however, was not the attitude of most of the soldiery,)1 and the women were herded off into a
luckless and humiliating captivity.
[2]
What particularly moved to tears of pity those who saw it was the family of Dareius,
his mother, wife, two daughters of marriageable age, and a son who was a mere boy.2
[3]
In their case, the change in fortune and the magnitude of
their loss of position, incredible as it was, was a spectacle that might well inspire
compassion in those who beheld it.
[4]
They knew nothing of
Dareius, whether he lived and survived or had perished in the general disaster, but they saw
their tent plundered by armed men who were unaware of the identity of their captives and
committed many improper acts through ignorance. They saw the whole of Asia taken prisoner with
them, and as the wives of the satraps fell at their feet and implored their help, they were not
able to assist any one of of them, but themselves sought the assistance of the others in their
own misfortunes.
[5]
The royal
pages now took over the tent of Dareius and prepared Alexander's bath and dinner and, lighting
a great blaze of torches, waited for him, that he might return from the pursuit and, finding
ready for him all the riches of Dareius, take it as an omen for his conquest of the empire of
all Asia.3
[6]
In the course of the battle
there died on the Persian side more than one hundred thousand infantry and not less than ten
thousand cavalry4; on the Macedonian side, the casualties were three hundred infantry and one
hundred and fifty cavalry.5 This was the conclusion of the battle
at Issus of Cilicia.
1 There seems to be an omission in the manuscript here. The words in parenthesis represent what may have been the original sense.
2 In chap. 38.2, he is said to have been six years old.
3 Curtius 3.11.23; Justin 11.10.1-5; Plut. Alexander 20.6-8. Justin and Plut. Alexander 21.4 state that Alexander married Barsine at this time (above, 23.5, note). Curtius mentions Barsine (Curtius 3.13.14) but not the marriage.
4 These same figures are given by Curtius 3.11.27, Plut. Alexander 20.2, and Arrian. 2.11.8. Justin gives (Justin 11.9.10) 61,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry killed and 40,000 captured.
5 Curtius gives 4500 wounded, 302 missing, 150 killed (Curtius 3.11.27); Justin 11.9.10, 130 infantry killed and 150 cavalry; Arrian. 2.10.7, 120 Macedonians killed.
Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
References (8 total)
- Cross-references in notes from this page (7):
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(1):
- LSJ, πυ^ρά
hide
Search
hideStable Identifiers
hide
Display Preferences