He lost his horse, which was killed by a sword-thrust, and it is said that more of the Macedonians perished in that fight, and that more wounds were given and received, than in all the rest of the battle, as they were attacking desperate men accustomed to war.

The Persians are said to have lost twenty thousand infantry, and two thousand five hundred cavalry.  In the army of Alexander, Aristobulus states the total loss to have been thirty-four men, nine of whom were foot soldiers.  Alexander ordered that each of these men should have his statue made in bronze by Lysippus; and wishing to make the Greeks generally partakers of his victory, he sent the Athenians three hundred captured shields, and on the other spoils placed the following vainglorious inscription:[408] “Alexander, the son of Philip, and the Greeks, all but the Lacedaemonians, won these spoils from the barbarians of Asia.”  As for the golden drinking-cups, purple hangings, and other plunder of that sort, he sent it nearly all to his mother, reserving only a few things for himself.

XVII.  This victory wrought a great change in Alexander’s position.  Several of the neighbouring states came and made their submission to him, and even Sardis itself, the chief town in Lydia, and the main station of the Persians in Asia Minor, submitted without a blow.  The only cities which still resisted him, Halikarnassus and Miletus, he took by storm, and conquered all the adjacent territory, after which he remained in doubt as to what to attempt next; whether to attack Darius at once and risk all that he had won upon the issue of a single battle, or to consolidate and organise his conquests on the coast of Asia Minor, and to gather new strength for the final struggle.  It is said that at this time a spring in the country of Lykia, near the city of Xanthus, overflowed, and threw up from its depths a brazen tablet, upon which, in ancient characters, was inscribed a prophecy that the Persian empire should be destroyed by the Greeks.  Encouraged by this portent, he extended his conquests along the sea coast as far as Phoenicia and Kilikia.  Many historians dwelt with admiration on the good fortune of Alexander, in meeting with such fair weather and such a smooth sea during his passage along the stormy shore of Pamphylia, and say that it was a miracle that the furious sea, which usually dashed against the highest rocks upon the cliffs, fell calm for him.  Menander alludes to this in one of his plays.

    “Like Alexander, if I wish to meet
    A man, at once I find him in the street;
    And, were I forced to journey o’er the sea,
    The sea itself would calm its waves for me.”

Alexander himself, however, in his letters, speaks of no such miracle, but merely tells us that he started from Phaselis, and passed along the difficult road called Klimax, or the Ladder.[409] He spent some time in Phaselis, and while he was there, observing in the market-place a statue of Theodektes, a philosopher, who had recently died, he made a procession to it one day after dinner, and crowned it with flowers, as a sportive recognition of what he owed to Theodektes, with whose philosophical writings Aristotle had made him familiar.