hour, Philip and his friends entered the room, bringing the medicine in a cup.  Alexander took the cup from him, and gave him the letter to read, while he firmly and cheerfully drank it off.  It was a strange and theatrical scene.  When the one had read, and the other had drunk, they stared into each other’s faces, Alexander with a cheerful expression of trust and kindly feeling towards Philip, while Philip, enraged at the calumny, first raised his hands to heaven, protesting his innocence, and then, casting himself upon his knees at the bed-side, besought Alexander to be of good cheer and follow his advice.  The effect of the drug at first was to produce extreme weakness, for he became speechless and almost insensible.  In a short time, however, by Philip’s care, he recovered his strength, and showed himself publicly to the Macedonians, who were very anxious about him, and would not believe that he was better until they saw him.

XX.  There was in the camp of Darius a Macedonian refugee, named Amyntas, who was well acquainted with Alexander’s character.  This man, when he found that Darius wished to enter the hilly country to fight Alexander amongst its narrow valleys, besought him to remain where he was, upon the flat open plains, where the enormous numbers of his troops could be advantageously used against the small Macedonian army.  When Darius answered that he feared Alexander and his men would escape unless he attacked, Amyntas said, “O king, have no fears on that score; for he will come and fight you, and I warrant he is not far off now.”  However, Amyntas made no impression on Darius, who marched forward into Kilikia, while at the same time Alexander marched into Syria to meet him.  During the night they missed one another, and each turned back, Alexander rejoicing at this incident, and hurrying to catch Darius in the narrow defile leading into Kilikia, while Darius was glad of the opportunity of recovering his former ground, and of disentangling his army from the narrow passes through the mountains.  He already had perceived the mistake which he had committed in entering a country where the sea, the mountains, and the river Pyramus which ran between them, made it impossible for his army to act, while on the other hand it afforded great advantages to his enemies, who were mostly foot soldiers, and whose numbers were not so great as to encumber their movements.

Fortune, no doubt, greatly favoured Alexander, but yet he owed much of his success to his excellent generalship; for although enormously outnumbered by the enemy, he not only avoided being surrounded by them, but was able to outflank their left with his own right wing, and by this manoeuvre completely defeated the Persians.  He himself fought among the foremost, and, according to Chares, was wounded in the thigh by Darius himself.  Alexander in the account of the battle which he despatched to Antipater, does not mention the name of the man who wounded him, but states that he received a stab in the thigh with a dagger, and that the wound was not a dangerous one.