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:
Dareius hurried to Babylon and gathered together the survivors of the battle at Issus.
He was not crushed in spirit in spite of the tremendous setback he had received, but wrote to
Alexander advising him to bear his success as one who was only human and to release the
captives in return for a large ransom. He added that he would yield to Alexander the territory
and cities of Asia west of the Halys River if he would sign a treaty of friendship with him.
[2]
Alexander summoned his Friends to a council and concealed the
real letter. Forging another more in accord with his interests he introduced it to his advisers
and sent the envoys away empty handed.1
[3]
So Dareius gave up the attempt to reach an agreement with
Alexander by diplomatic means and set to work on vast preparations for war. He re-equipped
those who had lost their armour in the defeat and he enlisted others and assigned them to
military units. He sent for the levies from the upper satrapies,2
which he had previously left unemployed because of the haste of the last campaign.
[4]
He took such pains over the constitution of the army that he ended up
with one twice the size of that which had been engaged at Issus. He assembled eight hundred
thousand infantry and two hundred thousand cavalry, and a force of scythe-bearing chariots in
addition.These were the events of this year.
1 Diodorus is the only author to report this forgery. Three approaches by Dareius to Alexander are mentioned. (1) After the battle of Issus. Justin 11.12.1-2, Arrian 2.14, and Curtius 4.1.7-14 state that this letter of Dareius demanded that Alexander withdraw from Asia and release his captives with (Curtius, Justin) or without (Arrian) a ransom. Curtius adds that this letter was cast in an insulting tone, suggesting the manner of the one here stated to have been forged by Alexander. (2) After the capture of Tyre. Dareius now offered the hand of one of his daughters and all the territory west of the Halys River (Curtius 4.5.1-8) or a share in the kingdom (Justin 11, 12.3-4). This is approximately the same as the true letter which Diodorus mentions here. Arrian locates at this point what appears elsewhere as the third letter. (3) After the departure from Egypt and before Gaugamela, and connected with Alexander's kindly treatment of Dareius's queen. This took the form of an embassy, probably (Diodorus, 17.54.1-6; Curtius 4.11; Arrian 2.25), rather than a letter (Justin 11.12.7-16); Plut. Alexander 29.4). Dareius offered the hand of another daughter in marriage, cession of all territory west of the Euphrates, and a ransom for the royal women of 10,000 (Plutarch, Arrian) or 30,000 (Diodorus, Curtius, Justin) talents. An extensive correspondence, largely fictional, between Alexander and Dareius was in circulation in antiquity, and fragments of it occur in the papyri (cp. PSI, 12.1285). Much of if found a place in or contributed to the Alexander Romance.
2 These are listed by Arrian. 3.8.3-6.
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
Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1285 AD (1)Click on a date to search for it in this document.
hide
References (7 total)
hide
Search
hideStable Identifiers
hide
Display Preferences