On or about 5 November 333 BC Alexander the Great faced the Persian king Darius III on the Pinarus River near Issus, on a narrow strip of plain between the mountains and the sea in what is now southern Turkey. Darius had come down behind Alexander's army with a far larger force, but the cramped ground robbed him of his numbers. Alexander led his Companion cavalry across the river at a run, the Persian left gave way, and Darius fled, leaving his chariot, his camp and his family behind. The same date saw Frederick the Great rout a French and Imperial army at Rossbach in 1757, and British and French troops hold the fog-bound heights of Inkerman in the Crimea in 1854.
A king behind the lines
By the autumn of 333 BC Alexander had marched through Asia Minor into Cilicia, and Darius came west from Babylon with the royal army to stop him. Alexander pushed on down the coast toward Syria, and, Plutarch says, the two armies missed each other in the night: Darius crossed the Amanus mountains by a northern pass and came down at Issus, behind the Macedonians. At Issus he found Macedonians who had been left behind sick, and according to Arrian he had them mutilated and killed.1
Alexander at first would not believe the news and sent some of his Companions back up the coast in a thirty-oared ship to look. When they confirmed it, he gathered his officers and told them that the god had led Darius into a cramped place where his numbers would be of no use to him. Plutarch says a Macedonian exile in Darius's service, Amyntas, had begged the king to wait on the open plains, but Darius feared that Alexander would slip away from him.2
Across the Pinarus
The armies met on the Pinarus, which Jona Lendering places about 15 km south of Issus. Darius took the center, as Persian custom required, with Greek mercenaries at the front of his line and most of his cavalry on the beach on his right. Arrian gives him 30,000 Greek mercenaries, and modern estimates cited by Donald Wasson put them nearer 10,000. Alexander held the right wing with his Companion cavalry, and Parmenion commanded the left along the sea, under orders not to leave the shore.3
Arrian, Plutarch and Diodorus all give Darius a vast army. Arrian reports that the Persian army was said to number about 600,000 fighting men and Plutarch gives the same figure, while Diodorus has more than 400,000 infantry and at least 100,000 cavalry. Modern estimates cited by Wasson run from 25,000 to 100,000 Persians.4
Alexander's Companions crossed the river at a run, Arrian says, to close with the enemy quickly and spend as little time as possible under the Persian archers. The Persian left, in Arrian's words as Lendering quotes them, collapsed the very moment he was on them. In the center things went worse. The phalanx lost its order on the steep banks, which Lendering says recent rain had made slippery, and Darius's Greek mercenaries drove into the gaps. Ptolemy son of Seleucus fell there with about 120 Macedonians of note. On the beach, the Persian cavalry crossed the river and pressed Alexander's Thessalian horse hard.5
Darius runs, Alexander bleeds
In Diodorus's telling Alexander drove his cavalry straight at Darius himself. The king's brother Oxathres rode out to shield him and fought in front of the royal chariot, where the dead piled up around him, and the wounded chariot horses bolted and nearly carried Darius into the enemy until he took the reins himself. Wasson also describes Alexander charging the center toward the king. Arrian puts it more plainly: once his left was broken, Darius fled in his chariot. When the ground grew rough he abandoned it, with his shield, his mantle and his bow, and escaped on horseback, saved by nightfall. Alexander's right wing turned on the Greek mercenaries and took them in the flank, and once the king was gone the whole Persian army broke.6
Alexander was wounded in the thigh. The writer Chares claimed that Darius himself struck the blow in hand-to-hand combat. Plutarch points out that Alexander, writing to Antipater about the battle, did not say who wounded him, only that it was a dagger in the thigh and that no serious harm came of it. Despite the wound, Arrian says, Alexander visited the wounded and later buried the dead with the army drawn up in battle order.7
In the tent of Darius
The Persian camp fell at the first rush. In it were Darius's mother, his wife, his young son and his two daughters. They wept when Darius's chariot and bow were brought in, believing him dead, and Alexander sent his Companion Leonnatus to tell them that the king was alive and that they would keep their royal rank.8
Arrian and Diodorus both tell a story of what happened next, when Alexander came to the women's tent with his friend Hephaestion. Darius's mother, Sisygambis, bowed to Hephaestion, the taller of the two, taking him for the king. Told of her mistake, she was mortified, but Alexander said she had not erred: Hephaestion, too, was Alexander. Arrian is careful to add that he does not vouch for the story.9
Plutarch has Alexander step into Darius's own bath, amid the gold vessels and the scented air of the great tent, and remark, in Bernadotte Perrin's translation: "This, as it would seem, is to be a king".10
The cost of Issus
Arrian puts the Persian dead at about 100,000, more than 10,000 of them horsemen, and Diodorus has more than 100,000 infantry and at least 10,000 cavalry; Plutarch says more than 110,000. Arrian passes on Ptolemy's claim that the pursuers crossed a ravine on the bodies of the fallen. Macedonian losses in the ancient accounts are tiny: Diodorus gives 300 infantry and 150 cavalry killed, and Arrian names about 120 Macedonians of note. Modern historians do not accept the Persian totals, and the estimates cited by Wasson put the Persian dead nearer 20,000.11
"Wherever you may be"
Darius had sent most of his money ahead to Damascus, and Alexander's men went there and seized it. Darius wrote asking for his family back. In Arrian the letter reached Alexander at Marathus and offered friendship and alliance; Diodorus says Darius offered a large ransom and all the land west of the Halys River. Alexander refused. In Arrian's version he told Darius to address him in future as lord of Asia and, if he disputed the kingdom, to stand and fight for it rather than run: "For wherever you may be, I intend to march against you," in E. J. Chinnock's translation.12
Alexander did not chase Darius into the interior. He turned south along the coast, took Tyre after what Plutarch calls a seven-month siege and went on into Egypt. Darius raised a new army and met him again at Gaugamela in 331 BC. For the whole story, see our article on the Battle of Issus, our article on Alexander the Great and our 1 October page on Gaugamela.13
Dating Issus
No ancient writer gives the day. Arrian places the battle in the Athenian month of Maimakterion, which Chinnock's note equates with late October or early November 333 BC. Jona Lendering reconstructs 5 or 6 November from Babylonian astronomical records and normal marching times, and World History Encyclopedia gives 5 November.14
Also on 5 November
In 1757, in the Seven Years' War, Frederick the Great routed a French and Imperial army at Rossbach. His cavalry broke the advancing allies and his infantry completed the rout. John Rickard gives the allied loss as 3,000 killed and wounded and 5,000 prisoners, and Joseph Byrne puts the Prussian loss at 549. The same campaign continues on our 22 November page.15
In 1854, in the Crimean War, Russian troops came out of the mist before dawn to attack the British on the Inkerman heights above besieged Sevastopol. Brad Manera writes that fog and terrain left commanders unable to lead, and the fight has gone down as "the soldiers' battle". With French help the allies threw the Russians back, at heavy cost, and General Sir George Cathcart was among the dead. It followed a first Russian attempt to break the siege on 25 and 26 October, the days of Balaclava.16
Also on this day
- 1757: Battle of Rossbach. Frederick the Great's Prussians met a combined force of French troops and the Holy Roman Empire's Reichsarmee near Rossbach in Saxony in the Seven Years' War.
