The Prophetic Geo-Political||Societal History of the World (Daniel 8:1-6, 7, 20-21)
Note: The present Part A2 (=Dan 8:7) blog post continues its preceding Part A1 (=Dan 8:1-6, 20-21)
[See next its Part B (=Dan 8:8, 9-14, 15-19, 22, 23-26)]
Daniel 8:7 - Then I (suddenly) {naturally} saw him cause to be contacting alongside the ram. Then he (repeatedly) made himself embittered at him. And he struck the ram and shattered his two horns, then the ram had no strength to withstand him. So he hurled him to the ground and trampled on him, and there was none to rescue the ram from his power.
Then - As grammatically possible, the Hebrew Waw conjunction here can translated to reflect the distinct notions of the ensuing statement being: conjunctive =“and”; consecutive =“then” or explicative =“that is”. As it will be seen in the following exegetical+historical interpretation, these ensuing statements are best understood to have a consecutive =“then” notion and meaning.
A plausible, as in possible, claim/argument could (have) be(en) made that Dan 8:7 is just restating in more detail what Dan 8:6 had already introduced, i.e. the male goat attacking the ram, and so the opening Hebrew waw here would be: explicative =“that is”, but, as stated above, exegesis, and pointedly the (as earlier presented and here later continued) historical details of the application of this prophecy (i.e. Greece battling Persia for world hegemony) favors the “consecutive waw” understanding...
I (suddenly) saw him [=the male goat] - The bracketed-supplied word “suddenly” is to reflect the (narratively unnatural) use of a Hebrew Perfect(ive)/Suffix conjugation instead of the (narratively natural) Im-/Non-Perfect(ive)/Prefix conjugation. Succinctly explained: the Im-/Non-Perfect(ive)/Prefix conjugation presents the present action(s)/event(s)/development(s) as a natural consequence of some preceding one(s); the Perfect(ive)/Suffix conjugation instead present such things as “accidental” occurrence, i.e. without a preceding trail. But since the present assaulting actions of the male goat in Dan 8:7 had already been ‘charging set up’ of Dan 8:6, is it really an “accident”, i.e. an unforeseen thing, for Daniel to here ‘“see” what the male goat goes on to do to the ram’??!
Technically speaking, the only way that this “accident” notion would be “narratively natural” is if, as stated above, Dan 8:7 is actually merely restating what Dan 8:6 has already introduced. And so Dan 8:6 would then not be the “precedent” of Dan 8:7, but would effectively be equally presenting what the ‘speedily (over-)running’ male goat “suddenly” does to the ram once it has ‘come up to it” (Dan 8:6a)....But again as seen below, i.e. in the Historical Application of Dan 8:7 Section, history indeed supports more the consecutive view for this verse’s prophetic stipulations, than an explicative view.
So then, Daniel here “suddenly” sees something that does not naturally outflow from what he had been previously seeing, which has been: ‘the male goat having run towards the ram in his strong wrath” (=Dan 8:6b)
{naturally} saw him - Given the overall “accidence” of these developments, it is striking, thus significant, for Daniel to be “naturally” seeing things come to pass = Hebrew Qal verbal form....So something about these ensuing “accidental” developments actually still were, or were made to be, ‘expected’ = “natural” in Daniel’s view/comprehension.
cause to be contacting alongside - A contextually non-sequiturly odd/unexpected couple of key terms and verbal form are used here resulting in this quite “loaded” rendered translation: “cause to be contacting alongside”.
The fascinating thing about translating Biblical Hebrew (and also, but to a lesser possibility: NT Greek), is that there most times comes to be various English words which possibly and plausibly can be used to translate the underlying original text’s language into English. With Greek being a much more expansive and exacting language than Hebrew, those possibilities are lessen, but they still occur as (NT) Greek is less “expansive and exacting” than (modern) English. As seen in the multiple English Versions comparisons for (this statement of) Dan 8:7 here & here translators are variously almost unanimous that this statement is speaking of a:
‘violent point of clash/impact between the (speedily charging goat) [=Dan 8:5,6] and the ram, (in)to its side’
...Morever this was done
‘by the goat, in its great fury/rage/anger’
....and oddly enough:
‘that blow to the side of the ram would have caused the rams horns to break’
The seemingly reversed stated order for the first two developments has led some translations/versions* to first state that ‘the goat got furiously enraged/angered at the ram’ and then it ‘charged/struck it at its side’.
* Specifically 11 out of 51 in the: EXB; ISV; TLB; MSG; NCV; NIV; NIVUK; NLV; NLT; TLV; VOICE.
Having studied out the development details in the Greece vs. Persia Hegemonic confrontation, it variously is seen that the Hebrew is actually speaking of another, even almost opposite in its “force”, development here between Greece and Persia, that the Divine Intelligence both anticipated, and that primarily so, and so depicted that to Daniel. So what is seen in those common “forceful” English translations is merely what people assume must have taken place. And so they do not endeavor to faithfully and accurately render the underlying Hebrew here as then, to them, it would not make sequitur sense.
But yet again here, as indeed typically encountered in my interpreting of Bible Prophecies, the most exact exegetical translation and interpretation is the one that is most robustedly substantiated in its World History fulfillment....and here is indeed another example of this.
“contact” - So first of all: This is the Hebrew term: naga #5060. It is patently rendered here in Dan 8:7 with a hard/“forceful” meaning. But the lexical fact is that, of the 147 times that it occurs in the OT, 64% of the time (=94x), [in the NASB], it actually has a soft meaning, i.e. of/as: touch (22), touched (20), touches (46), touching (6). 11 occurrences have a similar “soft” meaning of: reach (4), reached (6), reaching (1)[18]18; and another 27 occurrences also variously express/reflect this basic soft meaning when an entity ‘is approached’ and/or ‘is made contact with’.[19]19
Only ca. 10% of occurrences [=14x] are rendered with ‘hard/forceful/violent’ meanings, with/in the following [still NASB] expressions: brought them down (1); cast (1); casts (1); plagued (1); pretended to be beaten (1); smitten (1); stricken (2); strike (1); strikes (1); struck (3); threw (1).[20]20
About half of these [8x] involve/implicate the ‘finger/hand of God’*...and so given the inherent all-powerful potency of this Divine & Supernatural intervention into human/mortal affairs, it is rendered as being forceful, when it really is basically just the mere “touch” of God.
* Namely at (Gen 12:17; 1 Sam 6:9; 2 Kgs 15:5; Isa 25:12; 26:5; 53:4; Lam 2:2; 2 Chr 26:20).
Indeed the 2 occurrences within Isa 6:7 clearly show that not every “touch” of God (even upon a human) is not inherently supposed to be “hard/forceful violent” i.e. destructive. Similarly other uses of naga at Dan 8:5, 18 as “touching” and “touched” respectively show it does not need to be involving something forceful/violent. Mere (effectuated) “contact” is intended as the notion.
In fact, “etymologically” speaking, with the (consonantal) root naga formed from the Hebrew alphabet letters: “nun” and “gimel” it can be seen/understood that the derived notion of naga (respectively/orderly) speaks of something that has ‘sprung up (elsewhere)’ and is ‘making its intended way towards reaching a target’ manifestly, I.e. from the absence of third root-consonant without any specifying that this target is tangibly contacted. The context would imply this, but the notion of this (2-consonant) root seems to merely be about the notion of “having come close to (as intended)”
And since the clear Hebrew term for a ‘hard/forceful/violent’ “striking”, including by/from God is nakah #5221 [ca. 461X], the remaining 5 instances of seemingly “hard” renderings of naga #5060 can comparatively be seen to be also be basically involving a mere “(soft) touching”. I.e.:
-‘encountering/coming in contact with (life’s common) hardships/adversities’ (Psa 73.5)
-fake/feigned affliction (thus not really a defeating ‘striking” (Jos 8:15)
-unfairly ”stricken” but since it’s not actually by a just God, it therefore is not a “(judgement) striking” (Psa 73:14)
-withering at the mere light contact of (east) wind (Ezek 17:10)
-‘throwing it close to Moses’s feet’ (Exod 4:25)
The contrasting innate/inherent “soft/close contact” notion of naga #5060 is seen in verses when the “hard/striking contact” term naka #5221 is also found in the same verse: At 2 Sam 5:8 and Isa 53:4 and most determinatively right in Dan 8:7 itself!! I.e. the goat does eventually violently “strike” (=nakah) the ram, but at its horns, which it thus breaks, but here/now it first merely ‘comes in close (but not actually (physically) touching) contact’ with the ram.
So this prophetic statement can involve: ‘coming in contact but not actually physically so.’
Applicable History Hint/Preview #1: This is patently done in remote communications, such as, as it was defaultly common in this 4th century days of Greece and Persia, in letter writing.
“cause to be” contacting - The verbal oddity of this “contact” statement is found in the grammatical fact that a Causitive Hiphil verbal stem was used to expressed it, and not, as it otherwise would be normative/natural/expected, a Forceful Piel verbal stem, or even, if Dan 8:7 was to be understood/interpreted as a restatement of Dan 8:6 as a natural continuance of its Dan 8:5 ‘speedy (over-)running approach/lead up’ towards this ram, which would have been most accurately reflected by a Non-Causitive [=Natural] Qal verbal stem.
So in Dan 8:7 that goat will not now be ‘naturally continuing to speedily run right into (the side) of the ram’ (=Qal); nor will it now be ‘forcedly be doing so’ (=Piel), but it would rather be “causing to contact” , and more specifically so, -as involved with the Hiphil stem: ‘by an agency outside of itself’. So it would be an outside agent to the male goat, i.e. the ram, which would effectuate this contacting that this “coming” male goat, is “causing”.
Indeed the Active form of the Hiphil, i.e. rather than the Causitive Passive Hophal verbal form, shows that the goat would not actually ‘be caused to come in contact’, i.e. in the sense of the goat itself endeavoring to effect ‘what it is “causing”’, -as actually would be the natural expression here, but rather that it would be the outside agent itself would be endeavoring to bring about this contacting.
By contextual process of elimination, if that “(outside) effecting agent” is indeed not the goat, then it has to be the ram.
Applicable History Hint/Preview #2: Given the threatening, overthrowing pressure from the advancing goat (Greece), it would be the ram (Persia) which would be effectuating this Greece-caused contacting, -indirectly, through letter writing.
“be contacting” - The verbal expression here is in the Hebrew Participle form. So it is not speaking of a single, “one and done”, instance, nor something that is recursive, but rather a durative/persisted state of affairs. So this caused contacting will be persisted. “start & stop” recurrence can merely involve re-attempting to do something by using the exact same means and force. But continuing persistence however rather involves, -given the evident resisting push back, the use of increasing force in order to try to prevent the success of this matching push back.
So “recurrent” contacting would only be a similar effort done again, and in the same way/degree, at other times. But a “persistent” contacting is ‘maintaining that course’ but therefore needs to inject/involve increased/added =“greater” force in order to overcome that encountered resistance.
Applicable History Hint/Preview #3: It would be Persia which would be producing the persistence/continuance of this (letter) contacting. And it would be maintaining/sustaining it, given Greece’s resistence/opposition, through the injection of increased/added =greater elements of sufficient force.
“alongside” - If it wasn’t yet (objectively) clear that the goat would not be making tangible, let alone violent/forceful, “contact” with the ram, the added, =qualifying/specifying Hebrew term here: etsel #681a makes this clear. It has the basic notion/meaning “joining together, proximity” Its ca. 45 occurrences in the OT are consistent that this speaks of being “at the side”/“beside” something.
If the goat goes on to (successfully) strike the ram at its horns, then it certainly did not here ‘strike it at its side’, or actually, and even less sensically: “touch/make contact with it as its side”....and even less grammatically incorrect: ‘make caused persisting contact with the ram at its side’.
It rather is the case that the goat caused the ram to come “near” (cf. Dan 8:17), along the side of the ram (really in what is quite a vulnerable/defenseless positioning by the ram), in effected persisted “contact”. So one can “suddenly” see here the goat and the ram virtually walking alongside each other, in effective contact with each other...A state of affairs that the ram was energetically endeavoring to maintain/sustain in the face of the goats manifested resistence.
Applicable History Hint/Preview #4: Persia would, quite submissively, -like a dog rolling over to seem to be self-penitently vulnerable to its angry master, effectuate (=initiate) the caused (soft, =Diplomatic) contact with Greece, given this charging and wrathful approaching/encroaching of Greece. And Greece would surprisingly, suddenly be entertaining of this contact, thus suddenly now coming ‘softly’, =peacefully, “alongside” Persia. But Greece would be resisting these ‘peaceful contacts’, and Persia would be endeavoring to overcome this resistence, thus through enhanced elements in these contacts.
Then he (repeatedly) made himself embittered at him - So here is a question that would surfacely seem unnecessary: Who enraged himself at whom?? I.e. Does the “he” = the “goat” and the “him” = the “ram” or is it the reverse: i.e. the “he” = the “ram” and the “him” = the “goat”. The fact is that the grammar of this phrase allows for such an understanding, thus translational, flexibility, pointedly because both the “goat” and the “ram” are in the Hebrew masculine (singular) form. So the masculine personal pronouns “he” and “him” can technically apply to either one.
Of course the argument can be made here that a sequitur reading of the narrative here, i.e. straightly following the preceding statement that ‘the goat came up to besides the ram’ would naturally suggest that it is the goat (=“he”) which enrages itself at the ram (=“him”)...but the text does grammatically allow for the converse to be validly claimed, and as it will be seen next, seeing how things turned out historically, it is quite fitting that it did...and in fact, it may have been deliberately allowed from by the Divine Intelligence overseeing Daniel’s written/textual recording/rendering of this prophetic vision.
Several other opposingly he/him/his pronouns to be antecedently identified to be either the “goat” or the “ram” occur in this verse. But, as seen in the listed phrases below, in all of these phrases, either: (A) one of the subjects or objects is explicitly named/identified as being the “goat” or the “ram” which comes to force an opposing he/him/his pronoun to be representing the other animal (=Phrase #1, #3, #4 below) or (B) the preceding immediate context does not allow for any other understanding//identification (Phrase #5 - ‘the ram has no strength left’ (= #4)):
5 Phrases of Daniel 8:7 [NASB readings]:
1) I saw him come beside the ram,
2) and he was enraged at
3) and he struck the ram and shattered his two horns,
4) and the ram had no strength to withstand him.
5) So he hurled him to the ground and trampled on him, and there was none to rescue the ram from his power.
And this (seemingly inversing) identification of Phrase #2 actually has the grammatical/exegetical advantage of actually having a natural/immediate antecedent from Phrase #1 [i.e. its “he” has the immediate antecedent of “the ram” from the preceding phrase]; and then in turn itself being the natural/immediate antecedent to Phrase #3 [i.e. its “him” {=the goat} is the immediate antecedent of the “he” {=also the goat} in that succeeding phrase].
Applicable History Hint/Preview #5: The historical factor that confirms that it is ‘grammatically fitting that Phrase #2 above allows for the antecedently sequential, -yet sensically seemingly non-sequitur, understanding that the “he” = the “ram” and the “him” = the “goat” is that, at this point in the War between Greece and Persia, i.e. between the Battle of Issus (Nov 333 B.C. -discussed above) and the Battle of Gaugamela (Oct. 331 B.C. -discussed below/next), it would actually be Persia who would have to renewingly embitter itself against the perpetually-wrathful and war-insistent Greece. I.e. at this point, Persia wanted a peaceful, diplomatic resolution, but Greece was insistent on “all-or-nothing-else”, “Total War”.
‘embittered’ - More accurate than “enraged”, the Hebrew word here marar #4843 actually consistently means ‘bitter”. Bitter implies something which is/has become what it surfacely/visually was not supposed, or known to, be, and that for the worse. In other words ‘something or someone that has soured’ on someone else. So here in Dan 8:7, the ram would have come to “sour” on the goat....
Applicable History Hint/Preview #6: Given that these two entities had previously clashed (=Dan 8:5 + Dan 8:6), with the goat then indeed having had taken a (successful) ‘“wrathful” run at the ram’ (Historically = Battle of Granicus [=Anatolia] + Battle of Issus), then it is perfectly comprehensible that, as Dan 8:7 first speaks of a peaceful accosting contacting between these two entities, then this “embitterment” by the ram would be because his proposals and overtures for a peaceful resolution to the goat did not produce the agreeing response it was (desperately) seeking/expecting.
“repeatedly made himself embittered” - The verbal expression here is in the Hebrew Hithpalpel form. Succinctly summarizing the Hebrew Verbal progression here from an independent/original WBSC re-examination:
-The Hebrew Piel stem is the form which indicates a forceful action, =something that is ‘made to occur’
-When that Piel action is repetitive/iterative, then it is expressed in the Pilpel stem [=48X].
-And when that repetitive/iterative Piel action is reflexive/reciprocal, i.e. the subject perform that action on, or in behalf of, itself, then it is expressed in the Hithpalpel form ([assumingly] a.k.a. Hithpalpal) [=20X] (distinct from the non-repetitive/iterative Hithpael form).
So this all means that this “embittering” (of the ram) will be “repeatedly”, “forcefully” done “upon/by itself”. So either this embittering will have to be forcefully repeatedly done. This implies that several instances will be involved: i.e. several failed attempts at arriving at a non-embittering conclusion.
Applicable History Hint/Preview #7: Persia would indeed try, actually, -as substantiated below: Four!, distinct times to get Greece to end this War peacefully, and each time it failed, it would have to virtually “psyche”/ready itself for the undeterred War.
So, as seen now/next, the translation/reading here of this phrase in Dan 8:7 as: ‘Then the ram repeatedly made himself embittered at the goat’, and that after upon a ‘persisted state of [diplomatic] contacting’, is the one which is indeed perfectly fulfilled by transpired history:
Historical Diplomatic Peaceful Negotiation Proposals of Persia to Greece
In quite a surprising/unexpected, hence manifestly Daniel’s “suddenly” (Dan 8:7a) seeing this, shortly after his, -as detailed earlier, (fleeing) defeat at the Battle of Issus, King Darius of Persia, decided to try to seek a peaceful Diplomatic resolution to this war against Alexander and Greece.
Before delving in the recorded history of these developments, it can be beneficial to first reread the Applicable History Hint/Preview #1-#7 above in order to have the basic prophetic-historical premises in mind.
That Darius repeatedly attempted to seek a Diplomatic/Peaceful resolution to this War with Alexander is indeed a concrete historical fact...but the specific details, (i.e. deeper than just the general comprehensions, e.g. as (customarily) outlined here + summarily-expounded here), as provided by the 5 extant Greek history accounts/sources are rather quite conflictive...and in many cases irreconcilably so...unless a new attempt at a details- reconciling is made... That is what is being proposed as a thesis below, and which is indeed likely to be solidly substantiated by dissertational expounding, but only a succinct thetical exposition will be provided here.
Here is an overviewing summary tabling of the here proposed new accounts/details reconciliation:
| (Proposed) 3(+1) Diplomatic Peaceful Resolution Attempts by Persia |
The underlying reasons from this proposed correcting resolution of the extant historical accounts of these Peace Endeavors will be seen (and documented) as these corrections for those otherwise irreconcilable claims (which were mentioned in here&here) are explained “Entry Line-by-Entry Line” [=A-I]:
A. (End of) Battle of Issus
King Darius lost the Battle of Issus in Nov. (5), 333 B.C. In his “panic-terror’ flight, he had left his wife, mother and children behind at his (luxurious) Royal travel/battle-Camp site. That therefore may explain why very soon after the battle, -(i.e. when Alexander was at the city of Marathus (Arr 2:14.1; Cur 4:1.6), which was before Alexander had even begun subduing the cities in Phoenicia (Cur 4:1.15), culminating in his prolonged standoff at Tyre (Cur 4:2.1ff), he was diplomatically writing to Alexander seeking their release in exchange for a large sum of money.
B. Letter at Marathus
This First Diplomatic Attempt is mentioned in 4 of the 5 extant histories of Alexander. (=Jus 11:12.1-2; Dio 17:39.1-4; [recapsulatingly restated at 17:54.1]; Arr 2:14.1-9; Cur 4:1.6-14). It was made in the form of a “letter” from Darius which his messenger “ambassadors” were “instructed to support this petition by word of mouth” (Arr 2:14.1). Darius “entreated Alexander ...“to give him permission to redeem his prisoners,” offering a large sum for their ransom” (Jus 11:12.1) [=“20,000 talents of silver” Dio 17:54.1]. And also, as per Justin & Diodorus, Darius offered that Alexander accepts ‘all the territories west of its Halys River [=Kizilirmak River]’ (which literally would be half of the Anatolia region) for a treaty of friendship and alliance between them.
A very interesting, and manifestly commonly understated, if not outrightly overlooked (i.e. as unlikely), aspect of Diodorus’ account is that he quite matter of factly states (at Dio 17:39.2) that Alexander here engaged in quite deceptive subterfuge by hiding the actual letter sent by Darius, writing a forgery which was “more in accord with his interests” and plans then, and presented that fake letter to his advisors in their council deliberation. Well as that claim indeed surfacely seems to be highly unlikely from Alexander, even seemingly unnecessary, it has generally been ignored by modern historians...but, upon careful/straightforward examination, the proof of this deception actually can be observed in the various textual accounts of this First Diplomatic exchange:
Succinctly summarily stated, it seems that Justin, Diodorus and Arrian actually related the actual original content of Darius’s letter...which telling enough contained many type of terms, expressions which indicate a (relatively) quite humble and supplicant tone from Darius. (i.e. “begged” (Arr 2:14.3), “entreated”/“entreating” (Jus 11:12.1/Arr 2:14.1) [with the envoys themselves “under orders to beg”], ‘requested permission’ (Jus 11:12.1). And as per Arrian’s account, Darius had claimed that the Persians had no problems with the Greeks until later in the reign of Alexander’s father Philip, and especially when Alexander himself succeeded him. (Arr 2:14.2). Hence Darius was claiming that he was merely fighting a defensive war against Alexander.
But in Curtius account we suddenly/contrastingly find a claim of an ‘arrogantly toned’ (Cur 4:1.7) letter from Darius as substantiated by the content that Curtius goes on to relate. There (at Cur 4:1.8-9) Darius is said to have:
-“demanded, rather than asked”
-demeaningly said that he would provide Greece with “a sum of money great enough to fill all Macedonia”
-effectively ordered that “Alexander should restore to him his family’
-challenged that “as to the sovereignty, he might fight for it, if he so desired, on equal terms [manifestly by having first withdrawn his Persian occupied territories]”
-insinuated that Alexander was not even being presented with the option of “more wholesome advice”, i.e. which he the “could” listen to.
-and such advice would lead him to “be content with his native kingdom, withdraw from lands ruled by another, and be his friend and ally”
The tonal and substantive contrast between those two versions of this First Meeting Letter are evident on their face. So clearly Curtius account contains that forgery of Alexander. In fact, Curtius himself (and/or his sources) manifestly were also duped by Alexander’s forgery, which lead him to straightly state this letter as the original/genuine one. And this strategic forgery would indeed offendingly incite the Greeks to reject these disrespectful, snubbing, faulting and pompous “demands” from Darius of effectively a complete capitulation by them, even despite their now 2 battle field victories.....Clearly indeed, that was Alexander’s deceiving intent.
And what seems to have been true in Alexander’s forgery is that Darius had, manifestly inadvertently, neglected to address Alexander with the title of “King” in the salutations of the letter and that manifestly did indeed ‘especially anger Alexander’. (Cur 4:1.7). This is deemed as likely true as Alexander mentioned that slight, in punctuating closing of his screed-reply to Darius (Cur 4:1.14b), and of course, the clever Alexander would know not to overtly take, and state, offense to Darius for something which he had actually not said or done in his (genuine) letter. But here too it is transparent that Alexander would have been merely itching for a continued-fighting offense because, as per the manifest genuine letter of Darius substantively related by Arrian (2:14.3), Darius had actually made, within the content of the letter, reference to Alexander as king, -and even as a then superior one, by submissively stressing that:
“he [Darius], a king, begged his captured wife, mother, and children from a king [Alexander]”;
Clearly if Alexander presented the original letter of Darius to his advisors, they, and the rest of the army if/when they became aware, might be willing to accept those terms and end the fighting. But Alexander had visions of a complete overtake of the Medo-Persian realm, and so he would not let anything even begin to hinder this ambition...even if it meant having to resort to deception...of his own camp...
Notwithstanding his deceptive purposes, Alexander did have many justified reasons for wanting to overturn the Persian hegemony, (e.g. the fuller/earlier history of Persia’s aggressions and criminality against Greece, ...even to that day), as he specifically details in his reply letter to Darius (Cur 4:1.10-14)
Some miscellaneous key observations about the Alexander forgery letter:
-Arrian’s account of this First Letter (2:14.1-3), which is the account of the genuine letter of Darius had a historical prologue which purported the deemed aggression offenses of Greece towards Persia. In isolated context, those attacks by Greece could be deemed as instigating. [Similar to how the “War on Terror” was deemed by Americans and the West to be justified given the 9/11/2001 attacks, while Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Quaeda network (=God’s GC-Purposeful, Prophetic Militant Islam faction) group were themselves claiming just retaliations of instigating offenses by the West as far back as during the 1982 War in Lebanon and also religious offenses stemming from the aftermath-occupation of Islamic Holy Lands stemming from the First Gulf War (cf. this video)]....Well just like a Westerner typically does not hear of those antecedent claims for justification by Militant Islamists, and conversely, just how current Taliban-supporting fighters in Afghanistan have no idea about what the 9/11 Attacks was, it seems that in his forgery of Darius’s letter (=Cur 4:1.10-14), Alexander chose to completely leave out all of those antecedent offenses claims of Darius. He then still proceeded to allusively address them in his response letter to Darius but not in a directly referencing way which would betray that he had forged a letter which had not made any mention of such claims of Darius, but by simply giving his own self-contained version of such justifying antecedent claims, of course merely focusing of the transgressions of Persia, and those which are earlier, thus (correctly) the real instigations, than the Grecian transgressions that Darius had cited.
-Also manifest in Alexander’s forgery is that he then made sure to not mention that Darius had offered half of Anatolia (i.e. everything west of the Halys River) to Alexander. (Dio 17:39.1) Instead Alexander in his forgery purported that Darius had (sneakily*) suggested a complete withdrawal of Alexander from all of those conquered Persian territories. (Cur 4:1.9)
* Again, making it seem that either Alexander was not being given, or that he was not heeding, such wise advice from his counsellors.
-It is also slyfully interesting to highlight that Alexander, who manifestly was trying to keep his camp hungry for continued fighting and conquering, made sure to purport that Darius had defiantly challenged the Greek to ‘fight for the sovereignty, if he so desired (but on equal terms)’ (Cur 4:1.8)
-In sending his own envoy, “Thersippus”, to Darius with his reply letter (Cur 4:1.14), unlike what Darius had permitted with his own envoys, Alexander instructed him “not to converse about anything” (Arr 2:14.4). This was manifestly Alexander’s way to maintain the secrecy of his forgery as his envoy would not be saying anything, -which would serve to tip off Darius that something had been ‘faked-in-transmission’, nor even have answer about what Alexander had said/read from his forged Darius letter to his advisors in that deliberating council they had held, -if this envoy, Thersippus himself had even been privy to that council meeting.
Darius||Persia “embitters” him||it -self - #1
So, of course, Alexander (and his unsuspecting advisors) rejected these (purportingly) “arrogant” demands from Darius; and Diodorus (17:39.3a) goes on to state that:
“Dareius gave up the attempt to reach an agreement with Alexander by diplomatic means and set to work on vast preparations for war.”
This is the first ‘“self bittering” reaction of the Persian King’ as stipulated in the prophetic text at Dan 8:7.
Diodorus (17:39.3b-c) goes on to cite what these “vast preparations” entailed:
-“He re-equipped those who had lost their armour in the defeat” (see Cur 3:11.12)
-“and he enlisted others and assigned them to military units.”
-“He sent for the levies from the upper satrapies, [listed in Arr 3:8.3-6] which he had previously left unemployed because of the haste of the last campaign.”
Although this transpired in ca. Nov 333 B.C., and the next Battle between Greece and Persia, at Gaugamela, would not occur for another ca. 24 months (in October 331 B.C.), for Darius, another battle against Alexander was actually inherently imminent. Especially given how, as mentioned earlier, that the army of Alexander had engaged in a systematic “better-off-them-now-than-in-another-battle” routing slaughter of the defeated, then fleeing, and largely no-longer-with-arms, soldiers of Darius at Issus, which was when ‘most of the 110,000 Persian army deaths occurred’. So it would indeed seem like it would be naturally logical that Alexander would seek to now immediately attempt to further route the Persian forces while they were in this state of disarray and under-armament, so it was indeed sensical for Darius to engage in these “vast preparations for war” as soon as possible...* And at this first manifestly sign, in the immediate wake of Issus, that Alexander was still intensely intent on ‘Total War’, Darius did indeed surely get back to warring-work.
* Unsuspecting by Darius, despite the comparative smallness of his military contingence, Alexander was actually only seeking a fair fight.-as seen in his refusal/rejection, later at the Battle of Gaugamela (see Arrian 3:10.1-11), of the advise of his General Parmenio/n to ‘do a surprise night attack on the Persian camp when they would therefore be “unprepared and in a state of confusion, and at the same time more liable to a panic in the dark”’#). Alexander, (on top of foreseeing various technical/strategic flaws and likely pitfalls in such a plan/tactic -Arr 3:10.3), was generally ‘more “visionarily” interested in established this prospective hegemony-decisive-battle’s victory on unimpeachable grounds.’ (Cur 4:13.9; Plu 31.12)
# See the manifest Persian-military patent reason why in Xenophon, Anabasis 3:4.34-35
And likewise, at this prior time, Alexander was also “technically/strategically” seeing that: first subduing and controlling the territories and ports of the Persian Empire (e.g. at Phoenicia|Tyre, Syria|Gaza, Egypt|Pelusium) which would be behind him when later engaging the Persian Army in a head-to-head battle.
And to further emphasize how Darius did here indeed, as prophesied in Dan 8:7, contrastingly “embitter himself”, his actual tone and demeanor in that first, also as prophesied: (diplomatic) ‘siding contact’ with Greece, was actually supplicative, subdued, contrite, even conceding (i.e. of a part of his Kingdom). He most seemingly then had no intentions to continue to war against Alexander. So upon that (deceptive) refusal for peace by Alexander, Darius most clearly did go from a congenial state and mindset to now a “soured”/“bitter” one which is naturally required for (further) war.
C. Siege of Tyre
From that first, failed, Diplomatic Resolution Meeting, Alexander went on to continue his campaigning in Phoenicia, and then got bogged down at the challenging fortified city of Tyre. As mentioned above, that Siege of Tyre lasted for 7 month, from January through July of 332 B.C.
D. Letter at Tyre
‘At about the same time of the siege of Tyre, (likely while it was still going on), a (second) letter of Darius seeking a peaceful resolution was brought to Alexander, and, in direct response to the expressed, and manifestly chief/controlling, objection of Alexander [or at least, how he made it to (trumped up) seem], from the prior/first letter, this one was “at last written as to a king”. (=Cur 4:5.1). Upon, a demonstrated later, a valid historical examination, we find the historical accounts of this Second Diplomatic Meeting solely in the accounts of Curtius (4:5.1-8) and Justin (11:12.3-4). [And not also, from a mistaken dating, in/by Arrian 2:25.1-3].
In this second contacting, Darius was tangibly even more giving in his overtures and offers to Alexander. This offer was similar to the First one made, but this time the offer of his daughter, Stateira II, was offered in marriage. [Presumably in a future marriage as she was only ca. 7-9 years old at that time, and the legal marriage age was 13.] And manifestly given that Alexander had priorly snarled at the suggestion that Darius was offering to give him territories West of the Halys River which he already had conquered and presently controlled, Darius still remade this offer, but this time he “packaged”/“couched” it as the dowry for his daughter.
In an attempt to also “sober up” Alexander to reality, Darius reminded/informed Alexander that he still was ruler over an, indeed, vast remaining realm, and also one which had many open plains where he could easily befall upon/engage Alexander’s small forces and where the full features of Darius’s large armies would then/there be able to be fully implemented. (Cur 4:5.4) As the Battle of Issus had indeed be greatly influence by the inadequateness of that Battlefield location to Darius’s military assembly, and given indeed the comparative smallness of Alexander’s army who would indeed have to advanced through the vast, oppositional, lands remaining in Persia, Media and beyond, then all of these details were “sobering reminders” that Alexander should appreciate and wisely be swayed by....But of course Alexander could not be impressed less....
Alexander’s reply, succinctly summarized): “what was offered was his own,”, Darius should “come to him as a suppliant, and to leave the disposal of his kingdom to his conqueror”...and also that he, as already, and indeed throughout, demonstrated in this military campaign, -(and in fact most emblematically just then by his constructed artificial land bridge at Tyre), he was not cowed/daunted by ‘nature’s obstacles’ (see Jus 11:12.4, Cur 4:5.7-8).
-Interesting to me that no explicit response is said to have been made then pointedly in regards to the marriage-offered daughter, Stateira II.
These overtures of Darius may all surfacely seem to be most magnanimous, given that he did still then controlled the vast majority of what had been the whole of the Persian Empire, in the light of now two lost battles, and just by the fact that it was again Darius who, (despite purportedly being in the technical advantageous position), was here seriously seeking a peaceful resolution, and going on to try to offer more towards arriving at this end, it easily becomes transparent that Darius was actually greatly in fear of what Alexander could end up successfully doing to his hegemonic reign.
And there are even subsequent statements ca. up to 1 year later, (i.e. while Alexander was winter touring in Africa, =sometime within Jan-Mar 331 B.C.), that Darius initially had difficulty raising up, this vast army that he needed to challenge Alexander, -to the point where he considered going to those regions himself to be directly influential to the peoples there. (Cur 4:9.1) And then he initially had difficultly adequately re-arming them when they were then merely about half the size of the army he had at Issus (thus then {really} ~156,000). (Cur 4:9.3) So it may have been the fact that he was already encountering these difficulties which led him to try to attempt a peaceful resolution instead.
But whatever was the motivating factor then for Darius, you can be sure that Alexander gleefully was “smelling fear”...So he surely would not be here capitulating, and from a position of power, to a proposal for which would make him merely partially realize his initial hegemonic ambitions and objectives.
Darius||Persia “embitters” him||it -self - #2
So here also, Darius was seriously, even needfully, seeking to try to convince Alexander to come to a peaceful resolution. Thus, naturally he was again greatly disappointed when it again was not successful. Justin (11:12.5a) relates the ‘hopeless’ “bitter” reaction of Darius at this time as he says:
“All hopes of peace being thus lost, Darius resumed hostilities”.
Justin goes on to state next (at 11:12.5b, 6a) that:
Darius “proceeded to meet Alexander with four hundred thousand infantry and a hundred thousand cavalry” and “on his march...” but, as seen later, this was manifestly a conflation of a Second and Third meeting, both occurring at Tyre. The Third Meeting itself is what was the direct precursor of this march (to the Battle of Gaugamela. So upon the failing of the earlier meeting at Tyre, the Second attempt of Darius, Darius would indeed have “resumed hostilities” by continuing the “vast preparations” that he had already started after the failing of the First Peace Meeting attempt. It could also be that Justin is here actually entirely speaking only of the Third Meeting having mistakenly thought that only one meeting at Tyre had occurred, which would be the one when Alexander had returned from Egypt.
Darius “proceeded to meet Alexander with four hundred thousand infantry and a hundred thousand cavalry” and “on his march...” but, as seen later, this was manifestly a conflation of a Second and Third meeting, both occurring at Tyre. The Third Meeting itself is what was the direct precursor of this march (to the Battle of Gaugamela. So upon the failing of the earlier meeting at Tyre, the Second attempt of Darius, Darius would indeed have “resumed hostilities” by continuing the “vast preparations” that he had already started after the failing of the First Peace Meeting attempt. It could also be that Justin is here actually entirely speaking only of the Third Meeting having mistakenly thought that only one meeting at Tyre had occurred, which would be the one when Alexander had returned from Egypt.
And relatedly, with this Second meeting occurring ca. 2-9 months [or more precisely ca. 47-259 days] after the First (failed) one, it would seem to me that Darius here also needed a certainty indication from Alexander for war in order to fully plunge into his war preparations. It clearly would have been advantageous for him if he were to arrive at peace with Alexander, but since that clearly here was not going to be the case, he must indeed fully and properly ready himself for, even “Total”, War....
E. Expedition to Egypt
After the above Second Diplomatic exchange of letters, just after, or while, Alexander was besieging Tyre, Alexander completed his control of all of Phoenicia, and then went on to subdue Syria|Gaza, and then went on to overtake Egypt (unopposed) where he chose to spend the winter of 331 B.C. Then, as discussed earlier, in order to put down an outbreak of rebellion at Samaria, he left Egypt manifestly around the same time that signs of Spring were beginning to appear. So likely around late February/Early March 331 B.C.
And it is some time after this that Darius made yet another self-initiated attempt at peace with Alexander:
F. Embassy at Tyre
Given the quite striking and otherwise irreconcilable claims here about the meeting here, and given, as presented later, the manifest evidence of actually, -as per the WBSC Thesis here: a subsequent 4th and final meeting (=Justin 11:12.6-8, 9-16; 11:13.1), it would seem indeed that pointedly, Curtius (4:11.1-22) himself got confused about having source content of two such distinct (i.e. a 3rd, then 4th) meetings, but manifestly controllingly thinking that ‘there were only 3 Diplomatic Attempts between Darius and Alexander’, he deliberately conflated the substance and circumstances surrounding those two distinct meetings into one “third and final” meeting in his account (honestly/sincerely thinking that he was dutifully correcting the historical record). And there are several indicators of this/his mistaken conflation.[21]21
Compared to the other 4 historical writers about this meeting, (remainingly: Dio 17:54.1-6; Arr 2:25.1-3; Plu 29.7-9; 30.1); Curtius’s account is by far the most detailed, and uniquely inclusive of extensive seeming transcripts of what was mainly said at this meeting. So it would seem natural/logical to fully go with his version of this matter here, but, as stated above, there are several other factors which lead to this WBSC Thesis that there were actually two distinct meetings, -which Curtius conflated as one, including within the “transcripts” of what was said/stipulated then.
Date/Time Period of this Third Meeting
-The sequitur/sequential antecedent narrative of Diodorus (17:52.7ff) & Plutarch (29.1ff) reliably show that it follows that, this, a Third, Meeting took place sometime after Alexander had returned from Egypt. As cited earlier, Arrian (2:25.1) placed this Third Meeting ‘during the siege of Tyre’, but that is seen as quite a gross mis-dating (but a plausible explanation for this gross error can be given, as below). Nonetheless, the content in Arrian’s account is reliable. It generally (i.e. minus certain details) perfectly corroborates the accounts of the other writers except of course for Curtius’ account, given that Curtius’s version also includes additional details which are here understood to be from a later, Fourth (and Final) Meeting.
From examining the pertinent sections of the historical accounts here, it seems that a development in relation to the siege of Tyre is what caused a confusion with these historians as to when the Embassy (=Third) Meeting took place. Manifestly their historical sources stated that it occurred, as Arrian puts it: “while Alexander was still ‘occupied/busied/contracted/burdened’ with the siege of Tyre”. Manifestly Arrian understood this to mean ‘while the siege was still going on’. So he placed/dated this Embassy Meeting during the siege of Tyre itself (i.e. Jan-July 332 B.C.). However either the Greek term used there “cynechomenou” (participle of: synochōka) by Arrian can be understood to be meaning that Alexander was later, i.e. after having returned from Egypt, still ‘contracted’ to completely restore, especially socialistically, the city of Tyre to its pre-siege state and/or that is what the source of Arrian had meant, but Arrian mistakenly understood it to be a ‘binding obligation’ of Alexander while the siege was still going on.
The WBSC Thesis here is that this full restoration of Tyre was still a burden of Alexander even when he had returned from Egypt in the Spring of 331 B.C., which is why, as seen later, he did return to Tyre then and manifestly spent up to 5 months in that city (= from ca. Mar 17-August 26, 331 B.C.). And during that time, Alexander held quite grandiose, lavish and costly regional gymnastic games, music and literary festivals, religious ceremonies/dedications/sacrifices and theatrical contests, all funded by two kings from Cyprus.... (See Cur 4:8.16a; Arr 3:6.1; Plu 29.1-6; =Plu Moralia 334D.2-E). -Virtually his equivalent version of Commonwealth Games; American Idol; Golden Globe -, if not (Oscars) Academy Awards; American Music -, if not Grammy Awards; White House Correspondents [Press] Dinner; etc [Eccl 1:9], one after the other, or all protractingly rolled into one. In fact, these contests were taken so seriously, that Alexander chose his military generals to be the judges, with he himself being the chief judge. Alexander clearly was then doing everything to restore the “life” of this city. And later on, from that city, when, as held by WBSC (detailing below), upon the failing of the Embassy (=Third) Peace Meeting initiated by Darius, Alexander launched his war march against Darius for the Battle of Gaugamela.
-The incident, (discussed later in more detail), of the sudden death of Darius’s captive wife is also pivotal to properly dating this Third Meeting. The accounts of Diodorus (17.54.7) & Plutarch (30.1) have this death taking place after this Third Meeting. (Being wrongly dated long before, at the siege of Tyre, the account of Arrian of course also involves that it took place after). The account of Curtius had spoken about the incident shortly before this Third Meeting (4:10.18-34). So she of course is referred to as dead during that meeting (4:11.4, 9). And in what WBSC itself holds as a distinct, Fourth, Meeting, Justin (11:12.9ff) makes mention of her death before that (Final) Meeting.
Reconstruction of (Genuine) Third Meeting
First of all, as an aiding overviewing of the thesis made here, here is a reconstructing of the timeline of events from the time when Alexander returned from Egypt until the day when the Battle of Gaugamela was fought. The events and details cited here are found at: Diodorus 17:52.7-17:55.6; Curtius 4:8.10-4:13.14; Plutarch 29.1-31.12; Justin 11:12.1-16; Arrian 3:6.1-3:10.4 [22]22:
Click Here to see Charting Harmonization of the Referenced Historical Texts
This charting is not explained here in full analytical/dissertational details, but in mere “sub-thesis” point-statements, and that underlying analysis has indeed produced the following, and some already cited above, pertinent (modern historians/histories)-correcting/improving understandings and propositions/conclusions (“Line #” match the entry number in the charting, [Line # entries also appended with a “D” are entries from Darius’ side of this chronology]; Approximated [dates] are all in 331 B.C.):
Line #1-#3 [Mar 1-Mar 15] = Return From Egypt & Tasks
As already cited above, Alexander hurriedly returned, in a ca. 9-day march, from his then leisure stay in (Nile-)Egypt/Africa, (which happened to be “at the first sign of Spring”, to deal with a sudden murderous uprising in Samaria and set up new regional leadership there.
Line #4-#5 [Mar 15, 17-Apr 27] = Tyre Restoring Work
When that was completed, Alexander then traveled to Tyre again, in order to still deal with the various unrestored aftermath of his prior momentous siege of that culturally and socially potent city. Keeping generally/controllingly in mind here that the ca. 150+ days of the earlier-mentioned “5 months” that necessarily elapsed between the effectively hard date of Alexander’s Return from Egypt in the early Spring (=ca. Mar 1) and the later (chronologically) quasi-literally hard date of his later Battle March Launch against Darius of ca. Aug 26 all have to be accounted for here, it is then proposed that: Alexander end up spending a guestimated ca. 40 days completing the restoring of Tyre back to the state it was before the siege, and likely “Hellenstically” beyond that state.
Line #6 & #7 [Apr 27-May 11-Jun 15] = Grand Festivities at Tyre
When Tyre then would have been restored to his satisfaction, Alexander, after likely a couple weeks of preparations, launched what likely was a deliberately ca. month long of various, regionally-contributed&attended, lavish ceremonies and festivities, -which, -as already equivalenced above, were “his equivalent version of Commonwealth Games; American Idol; Golden Globe -, if not Oscars (Academy Awards); American Music -, if not Grammy Awards; WHCD [Press] Dinner; etc, one after the other, or all protractingly rolled into one.”[23]23
Line #12a [Jun 15] = Manifest Impetus/“Opportunity” for Darius’ Peace Seeking
Now about that famous/pivotal Diplomatic Meeting between Alexander and Darius’s envoys: It would have occurred shortly after the ending of those grand festivities, pointedly as Alexander will threaten to “march at once” against Darius if he didn’t comply with his own ‘peace counter-requirement’. (Plu 29.9) ... And as copious, patently exhibited by Alexander throughout his Military Campaigning here, he was not at all against setting aside his military plans in order to engage in religious and/or cultural observances and ceremonies...Being so quite seriously/sincerely religious about his Greek mythology, Alexander manifestly likely saw the observance and celebration of these as pivotal to the success of his military advance.
Line #8-12 [May 14-Jun 15] - It is firstly manifest that Darius heard about Alexander’s return from Egypt into Phoenicia only after Alexander has arrived/settled at Tyre (cf. Dio 17:53.1a). And so it could be that Darius had had remaining Persia-loyalists in that recently Persia- aligned city of Tyre who were effectively acting as spies/informants, and so who hurriedly) reported to him, likely via Persian Royal/Postal correspondence, that Alexander was literally “partying” and “living it up” in Tyre, -as if he had abandoned, or, at least would now be more likely willing to abandon, his future warring/conquest ambitions. So Darius would have here seen an (better) opportunity to obtain a peaceful resolution, and he then would have sent his embassy delegation to Tyre to try to accomplish this.
Chronologically speaking, it can be convincingly argued that those spies would have decided to inform Darius of this around the 3rd day after the ‘abandoned partying’ had begun. Given the pressing nature of this information/development,-especially as this also could be taken by Darius as an opportunity to attack Alexander when he would be the least prepared to fight...(and that mole built by Alexander linking that island city to the mainland was still there). So the spies sent information to Darius via the Persians “Pony Express” mail service, which, at a speed of between 10-25mph (=ca. 17 mph), they would have taken, riding also through the nights, ca. 2.3 days to reach Darius at Babylon. Darius then took a couple of days to deliberate on this information, and then decided to send a Peace Embassy to Tyre. The embassy caravan itself, would have taken, at ca. 35 miles per day, ca. 26 days to travel the 917 miles from Babylon to Tyre and so they would have reached Tyre around June 17.
Line #12b [Jun 15] = Third/Embassy Peace Meeting
So then, what seems to be the narrative case here, -as per the WBSC Thesis and the proposed “conflation unraveling” and narrative reconstruction, is that, with Alexander now in possession of much more territory of the Persian Empire, Darius here, in a Third Meeting, which would take place between 7-13 months after the (ca. Jan-July 332 B.C.) Second Meeting (at Tyre), now again attempted to come to a truce with Alexander, and this time, one which would be more alluring to Alexander.
For this meeting, Darius manifestly sought to make it more compelling by this time sending 10 “ambassadorial/friends of the king” envoys’, “the leading men of his court” (Arr 2:25.1; Greek: presbeis & Cur 4:11.1). These did not come merely bearing a letter, but were to engage in direct verbal offering and negotiating. Given that only the account of Plutarch mentions the presence of a letter, yet albeit as “a letter and friends” (Plu 29.7) it seems that these special envoys were understood to have had significant authority in attempting to see this offer and effort through. Arrian’s account itself indicates that these ambassadors were ‘announcing/reporting’ the offer and stipulations of Darius. (Arr 2:25.1)[24]24
Darius’s Proposals for Peace
The statement of Curtius that the proposal here involved “new conditions” (Cur 4:11.1), as in: ‘different from those made and rejected in the prior two meetings’, is indeed evident in its substantive details:
-This time, instead of easternly limiting the offer of land to the Halys River, Darius made the significant expansion to the Euphrates River.
-Darius still offered his first daughter in marriage, and again made that offer of land her dowry...
-...but this time, given that increase in land grant, he manifestly for that reason lessened the amount of money offered for the return of the rest of his captive family from “20,000 talents of silver” (see Dio 17:54.1), to now 10,000 “talents [presumably also: of silver]” (=Arr 2:25.1 & Plu 29.7). Diodorus (17:54.2) has “30,000 talents of silver” however as this critical note shows, there are actually several varying manuscript readings for this amount. [As that sum is not actually crucial to best determine at this point, a deep dive by WBSC into the textual/transmission issues here will not be done at this time.] Then Curtius (4:11.6) has the highest claim of all at “30,000 talents of gold”.but this is seen as being from a conflation of what was actually offered in the Fourth and Final Meeting, and is seen as actually matching the amount of “30,000 talents” of Justin (11:12.10) although Justin does not specify if these were of gold or silver. (WBSC’s thesis claim = “gold”).
Alexander, whether generously, transparently and/or seriously, duly considered and deliberated this offer in a Council of his (Royal Court) “Friends”. Given permission to speak freely, all but Parmenion did so, and he is said to have (infamously) advisingly/suggestively intimatingly told Alexander:
‘If I were Alexander, I sh/w-ould be delighted to put an end to the war on these offered treaty terms, and incur no further hazard of success’ (Arr 2:25.2b; Plu 29.8a; Dio 17:54.4b)
To which Alexander is (famously/celebratedly) said to have (dryly) cut in and replied:
“So would he also do, if he were Parmenio, but as he was Alexander he replied to Darius as he did.” (Arr 2:25.2c; Plu 29.8b; Dio 17:54.5a)
Alexander “rationale” was that:
“-he was neither in want of money from Darius,
-nor would he receive a part of his territory instead of the whole;
-for all his money and territory were his;
-and that if he wished to marry the daughter of Darius, he would marry her,* even though Darius refused her to him.”
* Which he would indeed marry her, Stateira II/Barsine, in March 324 B.C. (then likely aged: ca. 14-16); -{reportedly along with Parysatis}, in a grand ceremony of weddings (i.e. of Macedonian companions with Persian women) at Susa. (Arr 7:4.4-5.6) [25]25
Line #13-#15 [Jun 16-Jul13-22-Aug 21] = Allowed Time for Response to Ultimatum
Upon this rejection+counter ultimatum, the Persian Embassy Envoys, made their return to Babylon starting the next day to present them to Darius. It is logical that Alexander gave them reasonable time to make their return at Babylon (=ca. 26 days), and then also some reasonable time (e.g. 10 days) for Darius to deliberate and decide what he will most significantly do here. And pointedly because the general time period of ca. 5 months stay at Tyre allows for it, it is moreover, also reasonable for Alexander to have allowed reasonable time for Darius to make known to him what he had decided, and not merely the time for a letter through a lone envoy via the Persia pony express system, but even via another, or this very same, returned 10-envoy embassy. (=another ca 26 days).
(Perhaps Alexander reckoned that if/since Darius was so leery of engaging him in another battle, he would here be seeking to buy some more time, -(which would actually likely be for his continued need to become fully rearmed for battle). And so Alexander prefer to dispatch another (slower) embassy delegation, rather than send a pony express letter.)
Line #16, #17, #18 [Aug 21, Aug 22, Aug 24] =Battle March Announced and Begun
Of course that answer never came from Darius, let alone one submitting to the demands for a peace resolution of Alexander, so, as warned/promised, Alexander, -then, seeing that all reasonable time had been granted, effectively ‘immediately’ announced that Battle March, to the Euphrates, towards/against Darius. It then perhaps took, or it was allowed, a couple of days for his now long-at-leisure troops to get ready. But by Aug 24 that march was indeed begun.
As mentioned earlier, that date of Aug 24, 331 B.C. ‘chronologically is a “quasi-literally hard date”’, and that is because it is arrived at from back dating the, as repeatedly seen below, various explicitly dated/numbered/reckoned events all along this march to the Battle of Gaugamela, book-ended by the virtually concretely reckoned/known date of the battle itself: October 1, 331 B.C. ...This is a date which further corroborated/confirmed from the discovery of a contemporary Babylonian tablet containing Astronomical Diaries of the times which has an entry mentioning this Battle and provides a dating which converts to October 1, 331 B.C.
Darius||Persia “embitters” him||it -self - #3
Of course, with this offer of peace rejected, Darius himself set his mind on war.
Contrary to the chronology of Diodorus (17:53.3-17:55.1a) it is not likely that Darius had already left Babylon and arrived at the village of Arbela before his Third/Embassy meeting took place, as that would require that he be there a least 2 month before Alexander had even left on his Battle March from Tyre. It is chronologically more likely that Darius only left Babylon for Arbela after he got a reply from Alexander. So it would be then that, as Diodorus (17:55.1a) says:
“Dareius heard Alexander's answer and gave up any hope of a diplomatic settlement. He continued drilling his troops each day and brought their battle discipline to a satisfactory state. ”
So this was the third “embittering” of Darius. And once he had ‘brought his, by then fully armed, troops’ battle discipline to a satisfactory state’, he launch his own march towards Alexander.
Line #13D [Aug 28] = Darius’s Own March Start
Interestingly enough, (as seen in the table above), the logical, parallel, reverse-chronology reckoning for Darius own march from Babylon towards Alexander arrives at a reasonable date of ca. Aug 26 for Darius own launching of his march. And it can very well be that Darius remained in Babylon until he got the message, via his pony express system, which would have taken a couple of days to deliver, that Alexander had just left Tyre (on Aug 24). So those two launch dates do properly match up.
Line #19-#20 [Sep 4] = March+Arrival at Euphrates Crossing Point
Curtius (4:9.12a) states that it took Alexander 11 days to march from Tyre to his chosen crossing point at the Euphrates River, at a town called Thapsacus, famous for its river crossing (but actual location unknown). This chronologically checks out as the place which is understood to be that “Thapsacus”, is, by my trekking, about 363 miles from Tyre (see image below). At his amply/consistently demonstrated pace of ca. 35 miles per day, it would have indeed taken Alexander’s army about “11 days” [=] to cover that distance. Eleven days at 35 mi/day covers a distance of ca. 385 miles. So the actual trekking distance could indeed have been closer to ca. 385 miles.
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| WBSC’s Satellite Image of Greece’s Tyre to the Euphrates March |
Download its Google Earth (KMZ) Mapping File
Arrian (3:7.1) adds that Alexander’s arrival at the Thapsacus was “in the month Hecatombaion” As seen here, this Grecian “Attic Calender” month is typically the equivalent of July-August in the Gregorian calender, but, as stated here, the “loose” correlation with Gregorian calenders months could, in some years, be “off” by over a month. So in that year, (which Arrian goes on to specify was “in the archonship of Aristophanes at Athens”, which, as seen in the year-by-year listing here, was (indeed) the year/time period running from July 331 B.C. to June 330 B.C.), the correlation of the Athenian month of Hecatombaion could have matched up with the Gregorian months of August-September.
With the present timeline having reversed-reckoned the dates of: August 26 , for the start of Alexander’s Military March, and September 4, for his arrival at the Euphrates Crossing Point at Thapsacus, this may be a, valid, quasi-empirical, demonstrating/confirming of a 1-month calenders equivalency shifting that year.
Line #21-#22 [Sep 4, 6, 7] = Short Stay At Euphrates Banks
Alexander had not really been either fatigued, or challenged by that river crossing. The contingent of 6000 (or 3000) cavalry led by Mazaeus that Darius had sent there to guard against such a crossing by Alexander, had actually retreated when they heard that he was approaching. But Alexander is said to have remained at that river bank for “a few days” in order to renew the morale of his troops. As he is said to have penetrated Armenia by the 14th day of the start of his march from Tyre, then his stay there could not have been for more than two days.
Line #23-#26 [Sep 7-17] = Detouring March to Tigris River
Alexander then marched to the Tigris River. As this was ca. 286 miles away, it likely took around 8 days for him to cover that distance. As Mazaeus had actually executed a scorched earth policy to the region/road where he expected Alexander to directly take, Alexander had to make a contouring detour north into more fodder-fertile lands
Line #27-#28 [Sep 18] = Difficult/Hazardous Crossing of Tigris River + Fight with Mazaeus
Crossing the strong-current Tigris River almost proved to be catastrophic for Alexander. He only managed to do so successfully by having his soldiers link arms all across the river. Then once on the other side, he was engaged in a minor skirmish with Mazaeus’s band, who manifestly had opted to try to make his fighting stand after Alexander had crossed the more hazardous Tigris River, rather than at the Euphrates. However Mazaeus squandered a great chance to really inflict damage upon Alexander, and even potentially defeat them, if he had attacked them as they were struggling to make it across the river. But he did not do so, and when then involved in a purely land fight against Alexander’s force, he was relatively easily repulsed.
Line #29-#30 [Sep 18-20] = River Banks Stay; Deemed “Ominous” Eclipse of the Moon
After that harrowing and tiring crossing of the Tigris River, which was then immediately followed by a mini-battle against a contingent of Darius, Alexander gave his troops a break at the river’s banks which lasted for 2 days.
Then he ordered that the march be resume on the following day, and in the night, an eclipse of the moon occurred, followed by a bloodish hue, which literally spooked his troops, almost to the point of a mutiny, as they saw that as a sign of their looming failure in a battle which they assume could/would occur that next day; and also that they felt that Alexander was selfishly leading them to the apocalyptic ends of the Earth. Alexander got his soothsayers to explain the whole thing in their divine-favor...[26]26
The chronologically significant thing about this eclipse event is that it can be concretely astronomically dated. As detailedly seen here, this eclipse is calculated to have occurred on the night of September 20, 331 B.C., and at “22:24:10 TD (18:24:08 UT1)” which virtually exactly equates to 18:24:08 UTC. [Cf. This study of a related Astronomical Diary of the time’s day]. Since then Alexander was located in what is carved out today as the UTC: +3 Time Zone and more precisely, since the location of Alexander’s camp then was at longitude 42°46'37.93"E, it would have been ca. 21:10:46 (09:10:46 PM) when they would be seeing this eclipse where they were. That corroborates/confirms the specification of Curtius that Alexander’s camp began to observe this eclipse during the “first watch” (Cur 4:10.2), if/as that first watch, in a system of three 4-hour watches, lasted from 6PM to 10PM [3-hour system: 6-9PM].
Line #31-#33 [Sep 21] = March Resumed, Minor Skirmish
With his troops having been calmed down and reassured by the spins of Alexander’s soothsayers, and with those troops even now being in “ardour of spirits”, Alexander decided to take advantage of this enthusiasm, and so broke camp during the Second Watch (=10:00 PM - 2:00 AM). Then, scouts which he has sent ahead of them, returned by daybreak to (mistakenly, ‘exaggeratingly in fearful uncertainty’) report that Darius’s camp was not far away. Another group of scouts, having had a better look, correctingly reported that these were not more than 1000 Cavalry “loiterers of the Persians”. Alexander took some of his forces and hurried after them, and manage to capture a few.
Arrian states that this incident took place “on the fourth day after the passage of the river” (3:7.7b) and if/since the crossing of the Tigris took place on Sep 18, then the fourth (inclusive) day since, would indeed be on Sep 21.
Line #34-#36 [Sep 21-24] = Fortified Camp Set Up
From those captured Persians, Alexander learned that Darius’s camp/army was less than “150 stadia” away, which is 14.6 miles. Plus Alexander decided to shift attack policies, to a more leisure one, given that Darius’s dispatches had given up on their scorched earth measure, choosing instead to flee from the approaching Alexander.
So Alexander engaged in setting up his battle camp. Resting his army there, where he had gotten this latest information, he established a fortified camp where he would leave his non-fighting resources/“baggage”, unfit soldiers, and his Persian captives/prisoners. There he spent 4 days. (Cur 4:10.15; Arr 3:9.1-2; Dio 17:55.6c)
And during that time, he intercepted letters sent by Darius trying to sectarianly encourage Greek (i.e. non-Macedonian) soldiers in Alexander’s camp to assassinate him or rise up against him. Alexander was dissuaded from reading these letters before an assembly.
Line #37 [Sep 24/25] = Battle Assault March Begun
Then that night (=Sep 24), at the Second Watch (=10:00 AM - 2:00 PM), Alexander decided to launch his battle assault march upon Darius intending to “come into collision with the foreigners at break of day” (Arr 3:9.2a), and indeed began to do so.
These are all significant detailings here as it goes to corroborate, even necessitate, that, -as sequentially seen in the accounts of Curtius (4:10.18ff) and Justin (11:12.6ff) something unexpected and greatly delaying took place at this point as, despite being less than half a day of marching away from the Persians, the actual battle did not take place until ca. 6 days later. Well the unexpected incident of the sudden death of Darius’s wife indeed perfectly explains this delay.
G. Death of Darius's Wife
Line #38-#40 [Sep 25-28] = Sudden Death; Funeral & Mourning of Darius’ Wife
As Alexander was “on his way for this Battle assault march’ (see Cur 4:10.18-19, Jus 11:12.6), a eunuch who had been in attendance of Darius’s wife Stateira (I), was sent to inform him that Stateira was failing and that she could barely breathe. Then another eunuch came bearing the news that Stateira had “swooned” (lit.: “collapsed” from latin: conlapsa) into the arms of her mother-in-law and died.
Evidently, Alexander halted his assault march and returned back to his fortified battle camp.
(Actual) Cause of Death
The actual cause of death of Stateira is one that begs to be logically explained:
-Diodorus (17:54.7d) simply, summarily states that she died, without mentioning the cause. [Arrian himself mentions nothing about any such incident].
-Curtius (4:10.19), as said above, states “she swooned/collapsed, from “the constant toil of marching and grief”.
That actually makes no sense given that her older mother in law was clearly not so
affected by the same “constant toil of marching” and likely also by grief. Then, since it was quite famous that Alexander made sure not to deprive these royal captives of any of the prior royal luxuries and amenities that they had enjoyed when they were part of Darius’s traveling procession, then how could Alexander’s marching be of any “toil” to her. Indeed she was likely being transported about in a comfortable royal wagon; not to mention also being adequately, if not “royally” fed and hydrated.
-Plutarch (30.1) states (albeit, as per the English translation:) that she died in childbirth. Justin (11:12.6) makes a similar claim by stating that it was reported (by a eunuch who had escaped through the poorly-guarded rear gate of the fortified camp, -Tyriotes by name -Cur 4:10:25ff) to Darius that she had died of (again, as per the English translation:) a miscarriage.
Well that immediately begs the questions, given famously how Alexander was reported to have been most strictly protective of her and her (sexual) purity, and since it now had been almost 2 years [i.e. Nov. 333 to Sep 331] that she had been Alexander’s Captive since her capture at the Battle of Issus: (1) By whom had (recently) become pregnant...and (2) if this was ‘a death during childbirth’ what then happened to the baby?. Did he/she also die then??
For the first question, indeed given how Alexander had taken various extreme measures to make sure she was perfectly respected. E.g.:
-He did not let his soldiers ‘even speak of her beauty to him’ (Plu 22.5), nor ‘make any “shameful sport” of her’ (Cur 3:12.22b);
-He himself had completely abstained from seeing her, only seeing her once, the day when she was captured (Cur 4:10.24, Jus 11:12.7; cf. Ammianus, Rerum Gestarum 24:4.27);
-He even forbade his soldiers from speaking, even to him about her beauty, (‘with her being claimed to be ‘the most beautiful woman in Asia’ (Cur 3:12.22a)... -much of that “voting” was probably due to the fact that she was the king’s wife [actually also his sister].)
-And, as seen later in Darius’s reaction (Cur 4:10.31ff; Plu 30.7, 9) and related communication to Alexander (Cur 4:11.4), while he anxious wails and fumes about how “strangely” Alexander was weeping for her, as if she was his own wife, or, as Darius’s initially suspected, that Alexander had become forcedly romantic with her, when he is then managed to be convinced that Alexander had not had any sexual interaction with her, not once is it said that Darius questioned: ‘how then had she become pregnant’....Surely it wasn’t any of the eunuch men who were attending her which had gotten her pregnant...
And if/since Alexander had given orders to his soldiers that she should not be touched, or even seen/visited, then only Alexander himself could contravene that order. But Darius does not even begin to ask questions about her supposed (death-causing) “pregnancy”. Clearly that was not an issue for Darius....and so it sequiturly, indeed necessarily follows that this is not at all what he heard/understood when this news was reported to him.
Long proposed thesis short here: given the possibility of another translation/understanding here, it rather is more logical that Stateira had died from what outwardly seemed to be complications of a pregnancy, but medically, it actually was not the case. Plutarch’s statement which involves the Greek term odin does not actually have to be “childbirth pangs/pain”, but could generally refer to any ‘agonizing pain/sorrows’, (as seen in its occurrences in Acts 2:24 in the NT (#5604 -1 Thess 5:3 does not actually say in the Greek “upon a woman” but rather specifies: “in the belly”. Matt 24:8|Mar 13:8 is plausibly assumed to (figuratively) be the “pains/sorrows/agony/pangs” of late pregnancy/childbirth). So she could have simply suddenly experienced a sudden agonizing pain which seemed to be like the ones a woman experiences when giving birth...but it was not.....
The wording in the explanation of the escaped eunuch to Darius is also more descriptive of a miscarriage, i.e.: Latin “ex conlisione abiecti partus decessisse” [=roughly: “died from dashing/clash/collision throwing/casting down a pregnancy”], than technically terming: i.e.: “et abortivum”.
So all of the attending factors considered, it seemed that Stateira had actually died of something that, to those who were in the “room”, e.g. that escaped eunuch, resembled a miscarriage; and to those with such “insider” observation, more generally: ‘complications during childbirth’.[...But it, determinatively, cannot be stressed enough that absolutely no one, not even the historians here, give any explanation of how she would have gotten pregnant, or even that she had become pregnant]. It, medically, rather seemed that what Stateira actually died of was the sudden (internal) burst of a/several Uterine Fibroid(s) ..or more protractively: the “Spontaneous Rupture of a Leiomyoma Causing Life-Threatening Intra-Abdominal Hemorrhage”.
In other words, during those ca. 2 years that she was a captive, or especially recently, her abdominal region had being growing, as if she had become pregnant, but actually from the internal growth of a uterine fibroid. Not sure how, or if at all, such a condition in women was medically known back then, perhaps it was, [manifestly also by King Darius himself, given that he did not actually think it was a pregnancy]. But now that benign growth, possibly being indeed exasperated/irritated/frictioned by the, even mere, but constant, rocking of the/a wagon transporting Stateira, had, likely after a bout of most agonizing lancing acute abdominal pain which made it seem like the pangs/pains before childbirth, suddenly ruptured and caused major internal bleeding. The bleeding also probably excreted as if it was a miscarriage, and then that great loss of blood to (first) the brain caused her to swoon/collapse [cf. from a later war wounding of Alexander at Arrian 6:11.2], and then caused her death as it continued unstopped.
So what would outwardly all seem like a pregnancy, then signaling birth pangs, and then a miscarriage, had actually been the rupture of a uterine fibroid. That (medically accurate) explanation makes the best, logically-harmonizing, sense of all of the related historical details here!
So in the two accounts here which specify the cause of death: Justin related that the escaped eunuch had just said Darius what the cause of death had seemed like, -and Darius understood that it actually was not from a pregnancy gone bad, and Curtius would actually have merely said/meant that Stateira had experienced great pain/agony leading to her death, which seemed like the pains related to childbirth.
As mentioned earlier, Darius was informed by an escaped eunuch of the death of his wife and also of Alexander’s candid and magnanimous mournful reaction (Cur 4:10.25-34; Plu 30.2-14) and after having become “at last” convinced that this was not because Alexander had been improperly involved with his wife (Cur 4:10.34; Plu 30.11-14) , Darius then sent a letter to Alexander thanking him for not having acted as an enemy towards his captive family (Cur 4:11.3-4). Alexander’s replied that ‘thanks were not needed as it was most natural for him to not war against women and children’ (Cur 4:11.16-17ff, Jus 11:12.11-13)
H. Letter near Battle Site
Line #41 [Sep 29] = Fourth and Final Peaceful Resolution Attempt
The prophetic and chronologically significant thing that happened here is that, as stated in the accounts of Justin (Jus 11:12.9a), and also Curtius (Cur 4:11.1), -[once Curtius’s manifest conflations are removed], is that Darius then again tried, now for a fourth time (third time by merely a dispatched letter), to come to a peaceful resolution with Alexander. He sent him a letter which proposed the following terms/concessions for peace:
-Manifestly the same offer of a share of the Persian realm up to an Eastern boundary at the Euphrates was restated;
-Another one of Darius’s daughter, Drypteis (then aged ca. 6-8), was offered (i.e. promised) in marriage;
-and 30,000 talents of (presumably now gold) was offered for the other prisoners.
-it is likely here/then/now that Darius said he would allow his son Ochus to be held back by Alexander as a pledge (Cur 4:11.6)
From Justin’s account (11:12.14-15) , and from deconflated gleanings in Curtius’s account (Cur 4:11.19-22), Alexander response manifestly fully was, pointedly in regards to the land offer, that: he was now already (militarily) located beyond the Euphrates River, hence having conquered and occupying it, so he now would have to be driven out by war. (Cur 4:11.19) And he also told Darius that the sharing of the Empire’s hegemony was not an option, just like the universe could not be governed by two suns.
So Alexander clearly told Darius that a decisive battle would be the only solution. And from specifying day-sequence mentions in the two accounts here, it can be validly claimed that this Fourth and Final Meeting actually took place on what possibly could have been the eve of the battle. I.e. “prepare to surrender on that day, or to fight the next” (Jus 11:12.16), i.e. “to-morrow” (Cur 4:11.21). So the armies were then within less than one day’s march from each other.
Given (1) that Alexander would have threatened “to fight the next day” if Darius did not surrender that day, which possibly could have been that same day when he was being informed in this reply letter; (2) being logical that it probably took a couple of days for Darius to first have been informed by the escaped eunuch, and for him to write up and dispatch his offer letter, then this Fourth and Final Peace Meeting most likely occurred just after the wife of Darius had been given her sumptuous funeral by Alexander and her mourning’s period was ended. Thus this meeting most likely took place on Sept. 29.
Darius||Persia “embitters” him||it -self - #4
So the Battle was formerly set. Upon receiving the rejection of Alexander, Darius immediately began to take measures against the possible imminent assault of Alexander. He sent Mazaeus with 3000 horsemen to “take possession of the roads which the enemy was likely to make for” (Cur 4:12.1). Speaking of being “embittered”, which typically leads to irrational, vexatious reactions, this move by Darius was quite useless. Clearly it was not merely a scouting delegation, to see if/when Alexander would be surely approaching, but quite manifestly rather an attempt to engage in a surprise, ambushing, guerilla skirmish with the advancing forces of Alexander. Mazaeus’ contingent of 3000 surely would not dissuade Alexander from taking these roads, let alone defeat Alexander’s army, so this indeed was mere a “bitter” reaction by Darius who surely by now was completely discouraged that he could not convince Alexander to come to a peaceful resolution.
Well Mazaeus himself clearly saw how futile it would be to engage the approaching army of Alexander with only 3000 horsemen, for when he merely “caught sight” of the advance scouts that Alexander had sent (Cur 4:12.4), he retreated back to his camp to merely announce to Darius that Alexander was approaching (Cur 4:12.5)
Line #41-#42 [Sep 30] = Final Battle Advance by Alexander
So the day after their final, failed, peace meeting, on what would now be Sep 30, Alexander left his fortified camp (where now Darius’s wife Stateira had been buried (cf. Cur 4:12.2)), and ‘hastenedly’ approached the army of Darius. He first marched ca. 90 stadia (=8.8 miles (Arr 3:9.2b) to now be within “60 stadia” (=5.9 miles) of each other, but “not yet in sight of each other” ‘given the non-level relief fo the plains yes’. [Not sure if/how they could actually see each other over 6 miles apart even if the plains was completely level.]
Alexander then approached to “30 stadia” (=2.9 miles) (Arr 3:9.2b). From there Alexander, coming down from a hill, caught sight of the Persian camp in the distance. He manifestly set up his Battle Site camp there, and spent the rest that day/evening and night actually worrying about how he would engage and defeat that vast, now non-encumbered-by-terrain, Persian Army. Alexander stayed up so long pondering and figuring out a battle plan that he, -as discussed later, grossly overslept the next morning, which was the day of the battle (See Dio 17:56.1-3; Plu 32.1-2; Cur 4:13.16-20; Jus 11:13.1-2).
Line #43 [Oct 1]
I. Battle of Gaugamela
An in-depth/detailed discussion of the actual Battle of Gaugamela will not be done at this point, but as its pertinent chronology contributes overall corroboration to the prophecy, it will be done later, as the wider context for the time of the turning, and decisive, point of this determinative battle. (And only references to the original historians’ accounts and modern historian resources and discussion about this battle will be provided, as modern historians tend to vacuously speculate/philosophy, thinking that they actual know more than those earlier historians, when they provedly don’t.) But first here, an aspect of this battle that has applicable chronological value at this point, is the most likely (geo-)location of this battle.
As seen in the following, variously detailingly-substantiated studies, the exact location of the Battle of Gaugamela has been claimed to be at:
ca. 36°20'52.80"N, 43°25'12.18"E ~near Karemlesh, Iraq = by Andrew Chugg [2015] here pp.431-435
36°21'36"N, 43°15'0"E = by Sir Aurel Stein in his Limes Report, 127-131 [1938] (=the commonly believed/accepted claim)
36°37'28.6"N, 43°26'50.6"E = by Retired Army Major Stephen W. Richey [2014] (see detailing here [w/military mapping])
??? - The (active) Gaugamela Project at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland) with Dr. M. Marciak as the Principal Investigator [2017]
See also:
The short site-excursion video: Searching for Gaugamela in Iraq
Cf. the PBS America Documentary: Alexander's Greatest Battle {trailer}
WBSC’s site location/identification, based on a harmonizing/correcting of the pertinent historical (itinerary) details in the extant texts is the following site at 36°33'25.30"N, 43°0'17.51"E.
Download their Google Earth (KMZ) Mapping File
The chronological itinerary information discussed in detailed above, i.e. from the approaches of the armies of Alexander and Darius to the Battle’s site do indeed produce, and quite precisely so, and also most determinatively: corroboratingly so across the various sources, this precise location. Then you add to that, the chronological itinerary detailing of Darius flight, and Alexander’s chase, at the end of this battle which further corroborate this location.
The only major chronological/itinerary piece of information that had to be “corrected” was from the account of Curtius who claimed at (4:9.10) that Darius settle on a site for the battle just beyond the camp he had set up after crossing the Boumelus (a.k.a.(?) Bodumus) River [modern day Khazir River] which was (indeed) ca. 80 stadia (=7.8 miles) [west] from the (larger) Lycus [=Great/Upper Zab] River. This battle site location claim is only 28 miles (=287 stadia) from the town of Arbela (modern day Erbil] which is where Darius “left the greater part of his provisions and baggage” (Cur 4:9.9). But Arrian (3:8.7; then 3:15.3) is quite specific in his consistent claim that the battle took place at a site that was “600 stadia” (=59.8 miles) away from Arbela. And this claim is actually (inherently) implicitly corroborated by Curtius account of the post-battle flight of Darius as he relates that the Battle ended just before sunset (=ca. 5:51:36 PM; cf. here), i.e. when Alexander chose to give up his initial (up to 2-mile) pursuit Arr 3:15.1), and that it took Darius, and then later also Alexander, 6+ hours to hurriedly travel from the battlesite to Arbela, which Darius himself reached at around “midnight”. (Arr 3:15.5a; Cur 4:16.9b; 5:1.3).
If the battle had taken place near the ‘Boulemus River’ (thus only ca. 28 miles) from Arbela, then it would not have taken 6 hours to get there. As shown earlier, Alexander’s [and manifestly also Darius’s] marching army which consistently covered ca. 35 miles per day, manifestly over 12 hours per day, thus marched at (the normative walking) pace of ca. 3 mph. It would have taken them ca. 20 hours, over 1.75 days, to cover that distance of ca. 60 miles/600 stadia to Arbela. But horsemen going at a horse-long-distance-sustainable gallop of ca. 10 mph would cover that distance in ca. 3X less time, thus in about 6.7 hours. And it may be because Alexander himself went on a renewed pursuit of Darius sometime after the sun had set, and reached the Lycus River (28 miles from Arbela) by midnight (Arr 3:15.5a), so in less than 6 hours, and so had evidently been pushing the physical capabilities of his horses that it is said by Arrian (3:15.6) within a general summary of the losses of that Battle;:
“Of Alexander's men about 100 were killed, and more than 1,000 of his horses were lost either from wounds or from fatigue in the pursuit, nearly half of them belonging to the Companion cavalry.”
That would explain why Alexander had chosen to pause this critical pursuit of Darius being only 28 miles from Arbela (Arr 3:15.5a) [allowing Darius to make his escape (Arr 3:15.5c)], as his over-exerted horses manifestly just could not go any further.
What seems to have been the (defensible) case is Darius did choose to set up, as per the account of Curtius (Arr 3:8.7), a Military Camp near the Boumelus River, therefore in addition to the one which he had set up at Arbela. As seen from Cur 5:1.10 (cf. Dio 17:64.1), at Arbela, Darius had ‘left his own personal traveling king's equipment and his rich treasure [=4000 talents in money, besides costly raiment], as well as “the wealth of the entire army”’. But at the Boumelus Camp, he left his extra Military “ware” and supplies such as extra ‘baggage, camels and elephants’ (cf. Arr 3:15.4c). That Boumelus (Military) Camp of Darius would be ca. 35 miles away from the Battle Site, but similarly, Alexander had chosen to set up his own fortified military camp on the banks of the Tigris River which would be ca. 15 miles away from the Battle Site. Likely choosing these relatively far away locations for military(&livelihood) camps had become a strategic thing to do for these two armies, seeing the great losses that Persia had suffered, and conversely the great gains that Greece had procured, in the aftermath of the Battle of Issus. So both Darius and Alexander saw that it was best to set up these camps as far away from the battle site as reasonable (i.e. up to 1 day of marching away (=Boumelus Camp); 2 days for the livelihood provisions (=Arbela Camp)), so in the case of a defeat, and flight, the retreating army could manage to salvage as much of their resources as possible before their enemies overtook them.
Then both armies would go on to further set up what would effectively be a “battle site” camp, -i.e. away from the actual battle line, where two armies would sleep and make final arrangements & plannings for the upcoming fighting. As seen above, for Alexander, that “battle site” camp, -(which he would protect by a palisade until just before the battle began (cf. Cur 4:13.26)), was at about 3 miles/30 stadia away from where he first spotted the already arrived Persian camp/army, which would be at Arrian’s “600 stadia/60 miles from Arbela”.[27]27
The two armies then met in what likely turned out to pointedly be “right in the middle” of these two distances as:
(1) the Persian Army itself first, (as Darius wanted to make sure the battle would be fought in “open plains”), advanced, in battleline-ordered array, 10 stadia (=ca. 1 mile) closer. They there lined up in full arms and battle line and also thus awaited overnight for the Greeks. (Cur 4:12.5b-12, 13).
(2) Arrian 3:13.1 then involves that the two armies then further (=subsequently) advanced towards each other for the battle.
-[Pertinently, it is deemed that this, “long standing”, overnight awaiting, and while in full battle armament, thus effectively on a full time “watch”, actually came to “especially”/“more than anything else” be a fatiguing impediment/hampering/detriment to the Persian Army in their fighting the next day. (Arr 3:11.2)]
Click Here to see Charting Harmonization of the Referenced Historical Texts
WBSC Thesis Timeline of Flight, and Pursuing, of Darius
One common/patent claim in the historical account of Darius’s flight from the Gaugamela Battle Site and Alexander’s (initial) pursuit, is that Alexander had reached the Lycus River when he was called back by envoys from Parmenion as he still needed some help on his wing of the then still ongoing battle. And Alexander would have reached that Lycus River location before the sun had set. As seen in the timeline charting about, two possible timelines (=“Time1” and “Time2”) of Alexander’s actions can be plausibly claimed. There are a couple of major logical problems with the claim of “Time1” which will be cited and presented when they come up later. The only quasi-logical issue with the chronology of “Time2” actually is in regards to Alexander somewhat inconceivably, although quite possibly, oversleeping by ca. 3 hours on the morning of the battle.
And then, as discussed later, the one “factual” issue with the “Time2” timeline is in regards to a possibly mistaken/conflating identification of the Lycus River ca. 42 miles from the Battlefield with another (unnamed, and also bridged) River closer (=2 mile) to the Battlefield.
And finally, for the “Time1” timeline to fit, the duration, pointedly from the start of the Battle of Gaugamela until the point when Darius fled, would have to be about 95 minutes (1 hr 35 min) shorter than for the “Time2” timeline. This can technically be done by shaving off some minutes from the various reasonable/likely times claimed for the various developments during the Battle up to that pivotal point, until that total reduction is reached.
Foregoing here presenting all of the dissertational detailing, the following, reconstructing and correcting, WBSC Thesis in regards to the chronological timeline of this pursuit is (succinctly) as follows:
First of all, here is a table of the measured distances from the plotted main locations for this region around the Battle of Gaugamela:
 |
| Measured Distances of Battle Region |
Likely (Start) Time of the Battle :: ca. 10:00 AM [Time1= 7:45 AM]
A first (controlling) question/issue that needs to be answered/addressed is: at what time approximately did this Battle (of Gaugamela) start?? Parameters hints:
Line #1 [04:00] - Alexander Finally Goes to Sleep [at morning watch]
It is said (Dio 17:56.1; Cur 4:13.15-24) that a “never more alarmed” Alexander, uncharacteristically, being quite worried about this Battle, stayed up “throughout the night” trying to think up the best battle plan and strategy against this massive, and now terrain-unimpeded, Persian army. He only went to sleep “in the morning watch”, which was the last [=third, 4-hour {or: fourth, 3-hour}] watch of the night, and around 2-6 AM. {or: 3-6 A.M.} Having been ‘up all night’, Alexander probably went to sleep towards to latter hours of that last watch.
Line #2 [05:47] - Macedonian Army Wakes at Daybreak
And because Alexander went to sleep so late, he, also quite uncharacteristically, grossly overslept, i.e. way past daybreak/sunrise,
Line #3-#4 [06:15&06:17] - Breakfast Order is Given by Parmenion, repeated by Officers
Plutarch (32.2) says that the officers took it upon themselves to give orders for the army to take breakfast. Curtius (4:13.20) himself says that Parmenion took it upon himself to give the order to take food. What seems to have been the “chain of command” case is that it was higher/highest ranking Parmenion himself who made the initiating decision for this Breakfast Order, and the other Officers then, -starting a couple of minutes later, simply restated to their contingents what Parmenion had told them, likely in a private spontaneous council, they could go on to do, -while they were awaiting for their commander-in-chief Alexander to awake.
Surely indeed it is very unlikely that Alexander himself would have ordered his army to start the battle without them having had breakfast. As the saying goes, “an army marches on its stomach”, how much more do they (capably) fight also on their stomach. So it would be an easy/logical/natural/necessary decision for Parmenion to come to, and for his subordinate officers to not find fault with.
It however seems that Parmenion did not actually permit the army to get/become all relaxed here as they got something to eat, -in order to establish their necessary battle-energy, as it is (convolutedly) said in the Latin of that statement of Curtius (4:13.20) that: “that food, in some way, they might take hold of, he himself declared”. Latin: “cibum ut caperent...”. A so-worded directivee would instead be allowing them to do whatever they readily could to now scrounge up some food for a quick meal. Therefore it would only be allowed to be from their pre-cooked/-prepared meals reserves. (cf. the Roman army here) [=today’s MREs] rather than from fresh preparations/cooking.
Line #5 [07:00] - Parmenion Gives Order to get Battle Ready
This other order of Parmenion to “make ready for the battle” likely would have be given after he had priorly also had taken it upon himself to give the breakfast meal order. (Dio 17:56.2b)
Line #6 [09:15] - Oversleeping Alexander is (Finally) Awaken
No one dared to wake Alexander up, until Parmenion finally did so. If Alexander had gone to sleep around 3 or 4 AM, then allowing for a natural/normative ca. 6 hours of sleep, especially if also mentally and/or physically exhausted, then he could/would have easily remained sound (=‘possessedly’ -Dio 17:56.2) asleep until ca. 9 A.M.*
* The History Channel [here [05:40]] deems/claims that it was “high noon” when Alexander was awakened. Originally a similar view was claimed/deemed by WBSC, seeing that it could have been around 11:15 A.M., thus 2 hours later than the current conclusion. And in seeming corroboration of this, the above cited at Line #3-#4 two differing accounts of orders being given to the soldiers to eat, one saying that the officers of themselves gave the order to eat breakfast, and the other saying that Parmenion, of himself, gave an order for the soldiers to take, a (then even more likely ready) meal, would therefore be distinctly applied, with the officers’ orders being about a breakfast meal, and Parmenion’s order being about a later ca. noon meal. But it was instead deemed that if Alexander was actually awakened when the salient time of “noon”, some, or even all, of the historians, especially those who relate these details, would have more explicitly/clearly cited that striking detail. Plus it is (technically) seen from the dictionary entries here|here|here that the description of the time of the day in (Cur 4:13.21) as “broad daylight” from the latin “multa lux” does not reach the lexical/idiom level of meaning “noon”, which is rather the meaning of the latin “meridies”; and comes after the lexical/idiom level of “dawning day” (latin: “prima lux”), and then “claro mane” = “broad (i.e. widespread) day” So “multa lux” actually technically sits in between those two terms of “broad” and “noon” and merely indicates/means that it is “clear-ly day”. I.e. the sun has clearly/fully, though not “noon-ly”, arisen.
The latin term “multa” itself also manifestly etymologically involve something that is lighter/“finer” than a further/higher full blown development, i.e. at a: good-better-best comparative progression level; (e.g. imposing a penalty as merely a “fine”/monetarily versus a higher jail/prison penalty). So the ‘day’s light’ being described with “multa” was actually lesser/not as full blown as that highest day light of/at noon.
So if prima lux=dawning is generally between 5-6:00 AM; claro mane=broad day can be understood to be around ca. 7-8:00 AM; and so multa lux=clear-ly day can be seen to be around 9-10:00 AM; -corroboratingly with 9 A.M. being in our day the normative/natural/common time when/for (most) business/work/schooling (to) start.
Therefore, deeming/claiming that Alexander was awaken at ca. 9:15 A.M. is indeed best supported by the exegetical evidence.
Line #7 [10:00] - Start of Battle of Gaugamela
So the Battle would have begun shortly after Alexander awoke, as the army had already done all its pre-battle preparations then, thus around 10 AM. And it, as analyzed/discussed in detail later, it would have lasted for a grand total of about 8.5 hours, [ca. 12 hours for the Time1 timeline, -which is not being followed here], as its last fighting would not end until about one hour after the sun had set at ca. 5:30 PM.
-As a point of comparison, a later battle of Greece, (in May 326 B.C.), then against the Indians, =the Battle of Hydaspes, (see this documentary), is said to have lasted 8 hours (Plu 60.11). There the forces were numerically almost evenly matched. Alexander had ca. 47,000 soldiers and King Porus’s Indian army had ca. 54,000.
By being outnumbered ca. 5:1 (=245,000 vs. 47,000) in this Battle of Gaugamela, it would logically seem that this battle would have lasted at least that long, indeed to defeat that much larger army, including killing ca. 100,000 enemy soldiers. So it more likely seems that the Battle of Gaugamela was a similar, and even more, protracted grueling slog fight....indeed even continuing after Alexander executed his planned/crafted breakthrough which resulted in King Darius fleeing.
Line #8-9a [14:14-15:36] - Alexander Charges Towards Darius; Darius Flees
Based on the later/below detailed analyze, timelining, of this Battle, it is likely ca. 5.5 hours into this battle, -{which again lasted until after the sun had set: thus for a grand total of ca. 8.5 hours [=ca. 10:00-18:24]}, so at ca. 03:36 PM, that Darius took flight....And Alexander very soon thereafter went after him, but not before Darius could build up a significant headstart-cushion.
Line #9b [15:36] - Darius Flees - Westward
Darius strategically chose to head in the counter-natural, opposite, (=Westward), direction that his own fleeing troops were taking, and so he, firstly, fled straight ahead, thus, behind the Macedonian battleline.
Line #10-11 [15:39-15:40] - Alexander Gives Chase; Called Back to Aid Parmenion
Alexander gave chase, but he was soon called back “from further pursuit” by envoys of Parmenion who said his help was needed back on the battlefield (Arr 3:15.1a). A dust cloud arising from the hooves of the horses of the fleeing Persian horsesmen may have indeed been quite significant to impede Alexander’s pursuit due to ‘not knowing which direction Darius had actually taken” (Cur 4:15.32b-33; Dio 17:60.4c).
Line #5-D [15:41] - Darius Changes Direction
But then Darius thinking that his strategic dust cloud would continue to hide his “strategic” next move,* (necessarily) would have (discreetly) circled widely around to now actually be heading Eastward in the direction of his royal camp at Arbela.
* {It could be that some onsite documenters/historians did not notice this circling back move which led to the (grossly illogical) claim, as found in the account of Justin, that: ‘Darius had actually (continued to) flee in that Westward direction, and the river that he reached was the Cydnus (=Berdan) River in Taurus, Cilicia [=where Alexander earlier had gotten his near-fatal hypothermia-chills fever]}.
Line #12-13 [15:43-16:08-16:53] - Meets with Persian Fleers; Fights with Wheeled Persian Squadron
Alexander did return to aid Parmenion at his Left Wing, =the Persian Right Wing, but on his way to there, he was engaged in a fight first by some fleeing Persian Cavalry; and then by a wheeled-around Persian Cavalry Squadron, -distinct from the one/remainder, that was still fighting Parmenion at the Battle Line. Alexander’s fight with the wheeled around Squadron turned out to be ‘the most obstinately contested cavalry fight in the whole engagement’ (Arr 3:15.1b), but Alexander came out victorious, though losing “60 of his “Companions’” men” then/here. (Arr 3:15.2b)
Line #14 [16:53] - Alexander Resumes Pursuit
As soon as that Cavalry squadron fight, (which manifestly took place as some distance from the actual battleline), was won, Alexander looking forward at the battle line where Parmenion was, and seeing that some of the Persian Cavalry there were taking to flight, likely deemed that he manifestly had put down all of the overburdening, ‘threatened-encircling’, opposition that Parmenion had said he was struggling with, and so he decided to resume his priorly interrupted pursuit of Darius.....and for “as long as there was daylight” (Arr 3:15.3b).
By this time, Alexander would have figured out, or assumed, Darius circuitous, ensuingly doubling-back, dust-cloud-covered fleeing strategy,* and so Alexander now headed after Darius straightly Eastward, in the (logical/likely) direction of Arbela.
* And it could likely have been that Darius had either noticed, or become informed, that Alexander had been called off his initial pursuit, and gone back to the battlefield, and so it was then that he made his circuitous doubling-back veering towards the East/Arbela.
Line #17 [17:23] - Alexander Reaches Lycus||Unnamed River
At ca. 2 miles from the battlesite, Alexander then did come up on a river, but it was not, -indeed far from being, the Lycus River, but another, unnamed, River, located at (e.g.) 36°33'6.07"N, 43°1'51.68"E, which today is barely existent, but traces of its winding small/residual riverbed can still be seen. Back then, clearly, i.e. still visibly, that river was much wider/larger, and so also like much stronger, and so, just like the Lycus River, it could also have needed to be bridged for, particularly, Darius’ forces, and also to likewise allow his large army of now ca . 245,000 to cross it ‘within 5 days’ (cf. Cur 4:9.9b).
So that would explain the confusion of historians here of thinking that this, (also bridged), battlesite-nearby, river was the further away bridged Lycus River. But it wouldn’t be, and would instead, corroboratingly, be the river that Alexander first would have ‘reached close to nightfall’ (Cur 4:16.18) as it would only be 2 miles from the battlesite.
It could also more “naturally” be that this “unnamed” River was actually distinctly named “Bumodos/Bumadus”, as stated by Arrian (3:8.7; cf. 6:11.5) [and which many critical editors today assume is a spelling error by Arrian and so commonly take the liberty to “correct” it by amending the manuscript and/or their translation text:] and it was nominally confused by Curtius (4:9.10) as being the different “Bomelous” river, which itself was (indeed) ca. 80 stadia/8 miles from the Lycus River.
-However since this observation cannot be conclusive claimed/substantiated, this most manifestly distinct River will continue to be referred to as “unnamed”.
And contributing to the confusion was the fact that Darius would have set up a camp by each of these rivers. It could be that he expected to encounter, and thus fight, Alexander long before he would have had to crossed this other, “unnamed = Bumodos/Bumadus” river. And so he had set up a military camp there. Then as they kept advancing without yet encountering Alexander’s army, and manifestly seeing it as beneficial to have a river which needs to be bridged “between” him and Alexander (i.e. in case of a flight), then he also decided to bridge and cross this “unnamed = Bumodos/Bumadus” river and then set up another military camp where he there would leave all but what was going to be of use in the actual fighting; -so nothing that was needed for his army’s marching.
Line #15 [17:13] - Parmenion Still in Trouble
But meanwhile, back at the battlesite, Parmenion was still struggling on his Right Wing against remaining Persians there. Manifestly Darius aptly learned his lesson from a, -as earlier deduced, failing Battle of Issus strategy. Unlike then, when, as fully discussed earlier, had more than half of his ca. 256,000 infantry soldiers (i.e. ca. 150,000-200,000), be stacked to “an un-useful depth” behind the infantry center, effectively as awaiting reserves, and they manifestly did not at all engage in the battle as they awaited either a breakthrough of the Macedonian phalanx beyond the initial frontlines of their infantry, -which never began to come (Arr 2:10.4b-7a), and/or they were awaiting the signal from Darius to engage in the fight, but by then he had fled. This time around, it seemed like Darius decided to make immediate use of his “excess” infantry. Cur 4:12.7 seems to say/involve that when Darius drew up his exactly-ordered battle line array, he mixed the just detailedly, orderedly-listed Cavalry with their respective country’s/province infantry. {Manifestly Darius here keeping people of like regions together was in order to ensure his priorly cited strategy to avoid any language confusion on the battlefield. (See Dio 17:53.4b)}.
So it seems that this time around, rather than just “uselessly” stack up his “excess” infantry behind the frontline infantry, he back up, or even mixed in, the infantry forces with the cavalry, and all up and down his entire battle line. And Darius likely also gave the commanders of those infantry forces the pre-order to engage the battle as they themselves would be seeing the need.
So either it was that this throughout-backing up, or mixed in infantry, first awaited to see how the Cavalry forces which were in front of them fared before they themselves jumped in...or they just also jumped into the fight from the very start.
In fact, since many Persian soldiers would actually continue to fight on despite knowing that Darius himself had fled, this could be indicative that they had been given pre-orders to engage in the fight on their own initiative...although Darius had punctuatingly told them in his own, lofty, pre-battle speech (Cur 4:14.8-25) ‘to feel free to imitate him in his own either courage or cowardice in this battle.’ (Cur 4:14.26)
So giving that sustained, post-Darius flight, pressure, Parmenion then, for what would be a second time (=Plu 33.9), dispatched envoys to again call Alexander and his renewed pursuing troops back to his aid as: “the weight and numbers of Mazaeus's command brought the Macedonian cavalry into difficulties” (Dio 17:60.6b)
Line #18 [17:26] - Messengers Return without making contact
Parmenion sent initial envoys to “beg” for this help. But they actually came back without having contacted Alexander as he manifestly was by then further away than they thought, (or: than they thought profitable) being “at a great distance from the battlefield” (Dio 17:60.7b) (i.e. unlike the prior time when he was nearby to the battlefield, he was now up to 2 miles away at that (unnamed) bridged river).
Line #19 [17:38] - Fresh Horsemen sent by Parmenion
Parmenio, however, most likely sent them, or other, actually “fresh horsemen”, right back, with orders to make sure to contact Alexander wherever he was. (Keeping in mind here that the now up to ca. 2-mile trip here, with fresh horses, which therefore could have sustainedly galloped at ca. 17-20 mph for the entire trip, would have taken them ca. 6.5 minutes (13 min roundtrip)). So Alexander could still have made it back in quick enough time to be a beneficial factor to them on the battlefield.
Note: The chronology of “Time1” which claims that the river where Alexander was reached here is the Lycus River located ca. 42 miles away from the battlefield, only works out here if it is assumed, as quite likely, that Parmenion dispatched his envoys for help shortly after Alexander had started off on his pursuit. The initial envoys of Parmenion returned without contacting Alexander, probably logically seeing that he was way to far away/ahead of them to be of any beneficial aid to Parmenion back at the battlefield. Parmenion then sent new envoys telling them to reach Alexander wherever he was....and they would only manage to do so some ca. 4 hours/42 miles later at the Lycus River.
Line #17a [17:23] - Alexander Encounters Fleeing Persians at Lycus||Unnamed River Bridge
On his part Alexander then had actually stopped by that ‘(unnamed) bridge river’, where manifestly many Persians were tramplingly trying to make their escape, including across the now bottlenecked bridge.
(Surely many fleeing Persians, most of them on foot, had not, ‘before nightfall’, already reached the (actual) Lycus River, even if, as claimed by some [i.e the “500 stadia from Arbela” proponents], merely 32 miles/330 stadia, -let alone the presently claimed ca. 42 miles/431 stadia, away from the battlesite.
In fact, at this location of the pursuit, Curtius (4:16.18) relates that Alexander’s own soldiers balked at his orders for them to keep on pursuing those panic and self-trampling Persian soldiers, pleading that they themselves were “exhausted from so much running” .... and that “the time of day was close to nightfall”. Surely Alexander’s soldiers had up to then not been “running” for 32/42 miles)....For the “Time1” chronology, “Spartathlon/Marathon” speed, i.e. ca. 4.3 mph (=155 miles in 36 hours) would have them cover that distance in ca. 9.8 hours, arriving at ca. 10:38 PPM. So they certainly could not have made it to the Lycus River before sunset, only before midnight. It is only if Alexander’s horse-riding pursuers are here the ones who (first) reached the Lycus River, and so the on-foot infantry caught up with them much later, that the “Time1” chronology can still be sustained.
Line #17b [17:23] - Alexander himself may have been trying to gain that bridge to cross and as his befalling forces was leading these panicked Persians to hazardously try to cross that river and/or push their way across that crowded bridge, he continued this push of his towards them hoping that thus eventually the bridge would have become vacated and thus accessible to him.
Line #20 [17:41] - And in the few minutes that this gradual advance would have been unfolding, it would be then that Parmenion’s fresh horsemen would have here caught up with Alexander and made known to him that Parmenion’s Wing was still under attack and in danger of being overcome.
Note: Now, as per the “Time1” chronology, this contacting of Alexander was only effectuated “at the Lycus River (=42 miles away)”. Would it really make logical sense for Alexander to agree to give up on his pursuit here, to make his way back some 42 miles/4 hours to the battlefield to then try to help out Parmenion. He surely could not expect that Parmenion would still be able to hold his own for then up to 8 hours after he had made this call for help. The only way this return makes sense to Alexander is if he intends to rescue a likely captured Parmenion and his other soldiers.
The correcting “Time2” chronology fits perfectly here as this River where Alexander is contacted for this help is only 2 miles away from the battlefield.
Line #20a [17:41] - Alexander Turns Back to Aid Parmenion
Alexander may have been confidently prone believe that Parmenion would likely fight his way out of that trouble. Parmenion was renownly “aged” by then, and said to have ‘lost a step...and motives-wise worse’ (cf. Plu 33.10), and it could be that Alexander was thinking that he could be overreacting here. In fact, having himself just left the battlesite from that earlier first coming to the aid of a requesting Parmenion, it could be that when Alexander had successfully put down the Persian Cavalry Squadron that had intercepted him on his way, he had scanned the battlefield and seen/judged that Parmenion’s Wing likely could handle those remaining troops and/or that it was equivalently just as significant to catch the fleeing Darius and thus put a more definitive end to this war. So he would have opted to pursue Darius instead of going on to help Parmenion engage his direct Persian’s Left Wing opposition.
Line #20b [17:41] - But when this (now accomplished) second call to Alexander was made, he allowed himself to ‘become anxious about that Left Wing” and so, reluctantly, chose (again) to call of his pursuit and return to aid Parmenion.
Line #22-23 [17:57-18:27] - Alexander Meets with Fleeing Group; then Defeats Irregular Persian Forces
This ca. 2-mile return however was more hazardous as he then encountered some fleeing Persian who found a greater daring/courage then than on the battle field to engage Alexander in a fight here. Manifestly they saw here an achievable means of winning this war by defeating this smaller group of Greek soldiers, and thus also Alexander himself. But Alexander was also victorious in this roadway fight.
Line #24-25 [18:27-18:34-18:37] - Parmenion is Victorious; Alexander is Told of Parmenion's Victory
And by the time he reached the battlefield, Parmenion now had managed to put down his opposition on his own, and so he had sent envoys ahead to the approaching Alexander to announce this victory.
Line #26|#27 [18:39|18:54] - Pursuit of Darius Restarted; Freed Up Parmenion Also Joins in Pursuit
Upon hearing this, Alexander then again resumed his pursuit of Darius. And Parmenion and his troops did the same trailing Alexander by a little distance.
Line #28 [22:54] - Alexander Reaches the (Actual) Lycus River
This time this pursuit of Alexander resumed/occurred now after the sun had set, and was sustained for a horse-exertion extreming 5+ hours, until Alexander reached the (actual) Lycus River some 42 miles/429 stadia away; arriving a little before midnight at ca. 10:54 PM.
Line #29 [23:09] - Parmenion Reaches Boumelus Military Camp
The trailing Parmenion himself had made his resting stop at the Military Camp of Darius, set up by the Boumelus River some ca. 8 miles behind Alexander’s Lycus River location. Perhaps, the camp-passing by Alexander had left messengers at that camp to tell Parmenion to himself stop here and raid&secure the likely many valuable abandoned military resources at that “Military Camp”.
Line #30 [22:54-00:01] - Alexander Rests at Lycus River till Midnight
At that actual Lycus River location, Alexander had no other choice but to rest his horses, as he was manifestly increasingly losing many out of exhaustion (Arr 3:15.6), before he could resume his advance to Arbela, which was ca. 21 miles away.
Line #31 [00:01] - Alexander Starts a Forced Marched to Arbela
But manifestly, as he would resume his pursuit ‘around midnight’ (Arr 3:15.5a), the ca. 1 hour of rest for the horses would not be enough, -and he clearly could not afford losing any more horses, so he decided to, nonetheless, immediately continue on to Arbela, but in a “forced march”.
Line #32 [05:09] - Alexander Arrives at Arbela
He thus reached Arbela some ca. 5-6 hours later, therefore indeed “the next day” (Arr 3:15.5b), =around daybreak. By the time Alexander reached Arbela, Darius was long gone, himself not having stop to rest there upon his own ‘midnight arrival’ (Cur 4:16.9b; 5:1.3 & Arr 3:15.5c) (showing that he all along was merely ca. 22 miles ahead of Alexander).
Summary of (Reconstructed/Corrected) Flight Timeline
So this deconflating and reconstructing/correcting Flight Timeline, (pointedly revolving around the correct, distinguishing understanding the actual Lycus River some 42 miles away from the (actual) battlesite vs. another unnamed, wide/deep/strong, and so also bridged, river which was only ca. 2 miles away for the battlesite), does come to explain the various contradictions in the various historical accounts of this flight, and has the advantage of still validly including and incorporating, in now their proper place/time, most of the various detail/claims made by these (confused) authors.
In other words, (and as with the actually 4 Peaceful Resolutions Attempts of Darius) most of the claims of these historians were actually true/valid, but they were just mistakenly thought to have occurred both at the wrong places and/or at the wrong times, and even conflatingly so.
So, this above was all done&said in demonstrating support of the wider WBSC Thesis Claim for the precise site of the Battle of Gaugamela supportably being at 36°33'25.30"N, 43°0'17.51"E.
-This location site is also “in the vicinity of the city of Nineveh”, being ca. 16 miles northeast of it; and: “in plains of Aturia” (Strabo 16:1.3)
-And this location would seem to actually make the present town of Babirah [in Iraq] to be the (otherwise still unknown/unsure) location of the “Village of Gaugamela”. It could be that manifestly early confusions of reporters/historian about the actual Lycus River with an also bridged river further West, only 2 miles near the battle’s site, that led , to the initial (willful -Strabo 16.1.3) mis-associating, -as expounded by Plutarch (31.6-7) of this Battle as the “Battle of/near Arbela”, with the actual Lycus River being near Arbela. But it was actually close to the village of Gaugamela, which would be Babirah.
-The only seeming opposition to this site location claim would be from the statement of Arrian that Alexander had considered attack the Persian line “from the crest of the mountain against the right wing of the Persians” (Cur 4:13.16). Well there is no striking/prominent “mountain” on that right side at that side, but technically speaking, with that site’s location having a sea level elevation of 302m (991ft) but the elevation suddenly rises to 320m (1050ft) just ca. 2000 ft off to its right side flank, thus producing a significant terrain rise of 18m (59ft), =really a hill. So perhaps this is what Alexander was seeing as a strategically advantageous elevation which could allow him to secretly relocate/amass his army behind in order to surprise attack the Persians from there instead of “meeting the enemy front to front”, as was another, quite obvious, pondered alternative of his. He also then considered attacking from/at the Persian’s Left wing.
And it actually would be non-advantageous for Alexander to try to stage this surprise flank attack from an elevation that was too high, as a “mountain” would, as the Persians would have plenty of time to see him coming as he was making his way down that high-er mountain, and so would have had time to effectively rotate their battleline to meet the flank approaching Alexander. Plus the terrain of “mountain” seems to be impedingly rougher, uneven and perilous for a speedily rolled out army assault than that of a hill.
The latin term here “montis” can also be understood be more dimunitively be a “mount”, or even “mound”.
Download its Google Earth (KMZ) Mapping File
Dan 8:7a Interpretation & Application Summary/Recap
So to summarize and recap the interpretation and application of Daniel 8:7a which came to take the preceding ca. 37 manuscript pages to adequately detailingly substantiate (all due to the fact that many understandings above, as typical, required some original, advancing, correcting, corroborating and/or ground-breaking exegetical, historical and/or chronological studies by WBSC, the following Biblical prophetic statement thus far in Daniel 8:7a of:
“Then I (suddenly) {naturally} saw him cause to be contacting alongside the ram. Then he (repeatedly) made himself embittered at him,...”
Came to be historically fulfilled in Persia becoming so afraid of the “ragefully” hegemonically-approaching and encroaching Alexander, pointedly following their unexpected/stunning, King vs. King, defeat at the Battle of Issus, that they initiated 4 Diplomatic attempts, 3 merely by letter and one also involving an embassy, to try to bring this War to a peaceful resolution. Persia thus vitally exposed itself to be the vulnerable party in this clash, and Alexander certainly could “smell fear & blood”, and so, most resolutely resisted any such attempts to curtail the grand and total victory that he had ambitions of.
Having quite sincerely attempted to so appease Greece, Darius, at each of these rebuffed overtures from their part, virtually would sour and become embittered towards Alexander, and so had no other viable choice but to resume the preparation for another Battle that it, despite its actual greater numbers and other, resources wise, advantages, so wanted to avoid.
“Fortune” sure did not seem to be on their side (i.e. the Persian’s side)...Indeed, the All Mighty Power GC-overseeing the (here: geo-political) affairs of men on this fallen planet had (long) prophetically “declared” (Isa 46:9-10a) that the Persian World Hegemony would someday be overthrown, and replaced by one by Greece (cf. Dan 2:21)....and now the time had come to ‘have accomplished/established, by whatever ordained agency, this Wise (Prophetic) Purpose/Plan’ (Isa 46:10b-11)....
Answer This “Infidels”!!...:
Pertinently here, and merely thus far: if, -as per the patent lazy claim and, (as shown at the beginning of this post), vacuous, vexatious oppositional stance by Skeptics, Unbelievers, Scoffers//Revilers and/or Haters of, the Bible, this, (and the other) prophecies in the book of Daniel, were, -as purported by the Infidel Porphyry (and effectively echoed by Preterists): were all written up by Jews after the historical facts had already occurred...then why don’t Jews themselves present all of these prophecies of Daniel in their, moreover all of their exact and all transpired exegetical & historical details...as thus far done in this interpreting post. Surely those who supposedly “reverse-history” invented these claims of prophecy would be able make such exegetically substantiated and historically validated claims of application..but Jews themselves actually do not even begin to do so...These prophecies are clearly beyond even their level of understanding, despite having been written in their own language and by people of theirs...
...Surely the person, or group of people in a Jewish Religious Sect would know that if they wanted to make up claims of prophecy in order to get their people to adhere to their Faith, they would also have provided the exacting interpretational expositions....[28]28
Dan 8:7b1 - And he struck the ram and shattered his two horns,
As typically not done with all of the Battles between Greece vs. Persia during this campaign addressed in this post, a detailed examination and exposition about the granular internal (=fighting) developments of these battle is indeed not done, as this is typically not pertinent to the understanding of Daniel 8 prophetic statements. But for this Battle of Gaugamela the chronology of the battle is actually very pertinent, pointedly to already presented timelines/chronologies above. So in order to approximate the likely overall length of this battle, its internal developments will be examined, pointedly/especially when/as they have timing-wise contribution.
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-Firstly though, as a facilitating priming overview of this subject matter, see the following various pertinent works of contemporary historians/producers:
Video Clips
-Animation of Battle: Alexander the Great_ Battle of Gaugamela 331 BC
-Documentary Excerpt (Full Doc below): Battle of Gaugmela - Alexander The Great DVD Documentary {alt. post}
-Cinematographic depiction clip of battle’s fighting {from: Alexander (2004) movie}
-Classroom History Presentation: The Battle of Gaugamela
Full Documentaries
Discovery Channel: Ultimate Battles - Alexander the Great
History Channel: Decisive Battles: Battle of Gaugamela
Websites
War History Online: Alexander’s Masterpiece: Gaugamela – Defeating The Persians, 331 BC
Books
Keyne Cheshire - Alexander the Great (2009): Chap.4 Gaugamela to the death of Darius
Edward Shepherd Creasy (2008): The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (=pp.53-77)
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Now, delving into an, as necessary, original analysis of the primary sources: here are the (main) original/ancient historical accounts about this Battle: Namely from {with the (pivotal) moment of Darius’ flight referenced (in bold) in the middle}:
And this was the (general tactical) settings for this Third (and Final) Major Battle:
 |
| Battle of Gaugamela - Battle Line |
| [See this graphically reconstructing animation which represents a realistic approximate view of both the vastness of Persia’s army, plus its dwarfing contrast to Greece’s side.] |
And now, from the above historical accounts, here is WBSC’s arrived at overall timeline of this battle, up until around the development when Darius took flight. From there on, the already presented and discussed “Flight Timeline” above ensuingly here applies/follows.
Click Here to see Charting Harmonization of the Referenced Historical Texts
Line #1 [10:00] - Start of the Battle of Gaugamela
As it will demonstrated/substantiated, the start of this Battle was, -shortly after Alexander was finally awakened, at ca. 10 AM.
Line #2-#3 [10:00-10:09] - Greece & Persia Jockey for Outflanking Position
Having been warned by deserters that Persia had strewn the battlefield with caltrops (Cur 4:13.36-37) ahead of where the Greece Cavalry (manifestly solely at its Right Wing) was likely to gallop over, and also in order to open up an avenue which more readily led to where Darius himself was positioned, Alexander had (1) his Cavalry on his Right Wing move further outside; and (2) ordered his entire army to charge on a slant. (Cur 4:15.1-2) Darius counteringly matched both of these moves/dispositions. (Arr 3:13.1b) The frontlines of these two opposing jockeying contingents came into conflict with one another (Arr 3:13.2a) and when Darius began to fear that his scythe-bearing chariots would become useless if Alexander kept drawing them further away, and onto a terrain that he had not had his army level off to optimize the charge of these chariots, Darius “ordered the front ranks of his left wing to ride round the right wing of the Macedonians, where Alexander was commanding, to prevent him from marching his wing any further.” (Arr 3:13.2b)
-As done throughout this timeline explanations, as indicated in the heading’s time markers above, total of about 7 minutes is given for this repositioning to take place.
Line #4-#5 [10:09] - Greece RW Cavalry Charge; Persian LW Scythians+ Counter-Charge
At this point it is difficult to decipher/reconcile from the historical account the exact order of what took place, but it seems that either all at the same time, or very close to one after the other, Alexander ordered his Cavalry on his Right Wing to charge, but the Scythian Cavalry, and the Bactrians (infantry?) with them, counter-charged, and Greece initially suffered a small setback in that clash, but soon thereafter recovered. (Arr 3:13.3)
Line #6-#9 [10:14-11:59] - Battle Charge Is Sounded. Cavalry Fighting
Then also in this around this time, the general alarm for the advance of the entire army was sounded on both sides (Dio 17:58.1c)...Now was this done after or at the same time as this above-mentioned Greece Right Wing clash with the Persian Left Wing??...Not sure. But it likely was sounded shortly after, and most likely as that jockeying there on the wing had devolved into a fighting clash. So, following the here, “meanwhile” (Arr 3:13.5a), initiating development which saw Greece tactically manage to survive, more than less, uninjured, the onslaught of the scythe-bearing chariots (C 4:15.3-4; 15.14-17; A 3:13.5; D 17:58.3-5), the two opposing infantries began their clash in “hand to hand fighting” (Dio 17:59.1b), while both wings were involved in their Cavalry fighting.
Manifestly, especially as per Curtius’s account, the fighting of the Phalanxes/Infantries, as well as the Greece LW/Persian RW was pretty much uneventful at that time. But on the Greece RW/Persian LW, Greece was actually again being overpowered by the Persians, pointedly due to the formidable fighting of the Scythians and Bactrians who were on that wing. (Arr 3:13.4). But Greece managed to sustain this assault and push the Persian Cavalry there out of rank.
This whole exchange in itself is reckoned to have taken about 1 hour.
Line #10-#12ff [12:00-12:06ff] - Attack Launched on Greece baggage Camp
On Greece’s Left Wing, which was under the command of Parmenion, Greece also did not initially fare well there. Then at one point, Mazaeus, who was leading the Persian Right Wing there, evidently felt free and confident enough to wheel about and lead an expedition charge of ca. 1000-3000 horsemen in a raid of the Macedonian baggage camp. (Cur 4:15.15ff; Dio 17:59.5ff).
Download its Google Earth (KMZ) Mapping File
This Greece Baggage Camp is distinct from the Fortified Camp that Alexander had set up, -now some 12 miles back, a little after having crossed the Tigris River, and where he had left “the more burdensome part of his army”, including his soldiers who were unfit for fighting’ (See Cur 4:10.15, 4:12.2-4; Arr 3:9.1-2a; Dio 17:55.6c).
Evidently, as per Arrian’s account, Alexander initially “intended to leave” {=Greek text’s: “For indeed he had” “come to know/perceive”//“decided” //(~‘purposed’) to “leave” (in/as an Infinitive {of Purpose})} his army’s baggage there (=Arr 3:9.1), (and likely also his Persian prisoners), but apparently then, when, -as discussed earlier, Darius’s wife, who would have initially been left there, had suddenly died, Alexander went back to that fortified camp, held her mournful funerals/rites/ceremonies for a reckoned likely 3 days, and/but manifestly then, (as per Cur 4:12.2-4), when he resumed his battle march, he then/now had changed his mind and carried the baggage along with him, ‘as well as his Persian prisoners, which included the Queen-mother and Darius’s children’. Then, “not far from the field of battle” Alexander set up his baggage camp “upon a high hill” (Cur 4:13.35) and left a “moderate size guard’ of Thracian foot soldiers to protect it. (Arr 3:12.5)
Arrian (3:9.2b-3) states that at ca. 60 stadia/6 miles from each other, the two armies were out of sight of each other because of some hills in between them, but that when at ca. 30 stadia/3 miles and as Greece’s army was beginning to come down one of those hills, they caught sight of the Persian forces. As Google Earth satellite imagery mapping also allows to see terrain elevations, it is seen that along that marching path of Greece, there indeed were 3 elevations of on average: +21 meters|+69 feet higher* than the rest of the/their surrounding, =“valleying”, terrain.
It chronologically/itinerantly works out that the second of these 3 elevations is located at ca. 30 stadia/3 miles from the Persian camp,* and so it works out that it was on the third of these hill elevations that Alexander set up his baggage camp. So the baggage camp was located at (1) ca. 2,100 feet from/behind the battlefield, and (2) at an elevation ca. 16m|52ft higher than the battlefield, and also (3) manifestly a little beyond the north shoulder of the Greece Battleline’s Left Wing. So it was the opposing Persian Right Wing that was the closest to it.
* With this Hill #2 [sea-level elevation: 319m|1047ft] being slightly higher than the other two [i.e. Hill #1 = 316m|1037ft; Hill #3 = 318m|1043ft], Alexander here (technically) could have seen beyond Hill #3 and first caught sight of the Persian camp.# The Battlefield itself was located at a sea-level elevation of 302m|991ft.
# {Which, by the way, actually ‘senselessly’ frightened/spooked his army (Cur 4:12.14-16)...so much so that he had to build palisade fortifications around that overnight camp to calm them down (Cur 4:12.17, 24)}
Given the indeed many persisting efforts from the Persian side to endeavor to have control of Greece’s baggage camp, it likely was a pre-scripted/-ordered tactic of Darius. I.e. his forces were instructed to try to get control of the Macedonian Baggage Camp whenever they deemed that they had become (victoriously) freed up from their battleline fighting.
Line #11-#12 [12:04-12:06] - Parmenion sent messengers over to Alexander to inform him that Persian solider had taken off to go raid their baggage camp (Cur 4:15.6). But Alexander replied by showing that it would be much more successful to win the overall war rather than to secure their baggage which could then later be (mostly) recovered if they won, and/or be added to from the looting of the Persians. (Cur 4:15.7-8)
Line #13-#15 [12:06-12:31] - Persian Raiding of the Baggage Camp
About 25 minutes is given for the raiding of the baggage camp by the Persians once they got there. They had put down the resistance of the protecting guard, being also aided then by the prisoners which they freed up. (Cur 4:15.9)
Notably enough, the captive mother of Darius refused to get up and flee with the other liberated prisoners, either not believing in this sudden reversal of “Fortunes” and/or perhaps feeling indebted to Alexander who had been treating her and her family so respectfully despite them being enemy captives. (Cur 4:15.10-11)
Line #16-#18 [12:31-12:43] - Menidas & Cavalry Futilely Try to Defend/Save Baggage
‘During/among this time’ (Latin: inter haec) a commander of Alexander’s Cavalry named Menidas, -“whether on his own initiative or by the king's order is uncertain” arrived at the baggage camp to try to recover it but could not begin to hold his own against the Persian forces there, and so he returned tot he battlefield being able to only testify/confirm that their baggage was in the hands/control of the Persians. (Cur 4:15.12)
Line #19-#20 [12:43-12:45-13:10] - Alexander Sends Aretes to Defend Baggage
Evidently by the time that Menidas had returned with the news of this loss, Alexander had “already” become worried that this loss of their personal property was being critically demoralizing to his soldiers fighting on the battlefield. And so he manifestly had resolved to fully recover their baggage. He therefore, -and likely as soon as Menidas came back with the negative news, he dispatched the leader his (mounted) lancers, Aretes, to the baggage camp to confront the Scythians who were in control there. (Cur 4:15.13).
Aretes, having killed the leader of the Scythians there, momentarily was managing to put down the Scythians forces, in what is deemed to have been fighting which was then lasting ca. 15 minutes. (Cur 4:15.18a)
Line #21-#22 [13:10-13:11-13:35] - Persian Bactriani Sent to Baggage Camp
Manifestly it was immediately spotted by the Persians, and soon reported to Darius, that Alexander had dispatched a (versatile) Cavalry contingent to the baggage camp. And so Darius himself countered this by sending his Bactriani Cavalry. (Cur 4:15.18a)
And when the Bactriani came upon the camp’s battle scene, they “changed the fortune of the battle” back into the favor of the Persian side. (Cur 4:15.18b).
Line #23 [13:36-14:06] - Macedonians Flee Back to Alexander and cause false fright.
The shocked and increasingly defeated Macedonians at the camp fled back to Alexander. Manifestly their arrival, their manifestly contagious fright and worry, and this relative news of defeat, “confused” the observing Persians on the other side, and they thought that there actually was a general panic and defeat of the Greeks everywhere along the battle field. So they ‘raising a shout such as victors are wont to utter, charged proudly upon the enemy’. “Alexander rebuked his frightened men, encouraged them, and single-handed gave fire to the battle, which had already slackened; and having at last restored their courage, he bade them charge the enemy.” (Cur 4:15.19b)
Line #24 [13:36-14:06] - Alexander Attacks Thinned Persian Right Left Wing
Alexander took advantage of the fact that the Bactriani had vacated the Persian Left Wing, [identified by ‘Greece’s “right” wing’? by Curtius], to go raid the baggage camp, and he ‘attacked the now thinned ranks there “and penetrated them with great slaughter of the enemy.”’ (Cur 4:15.20)
Alexander was then almost defeatingly encircled by the Persians, but his Agriani troops came to his aid and sufficiently compelled to them those who were falling upon him at his rear. (Cur 4:15.21-22a+b)
Line #25 [14:07] - Persian Bactriani Forces Return from Plundering Baggage
During this fighting, the Bactriani forces who were successful at the baggage camp came back to their wing here, but were not able to reform their ranks. In fact, the overall fighting there had now become an unstructured free-for-all. (Cur 4:15.21-22c-d). Manifestly given the general disadvantage of the “divide and conquer” approach, such dispersed/unstructured fighting was not advantageous for both sides. It likely advantaged the better trained Greek soldiers more to become engaged in one-on-one fighting against the Persian soldiers, but given the comparative smallness of their ranks, their soldiers would likely be expending more effort and energy, as well as become much more exposed/vulnerable, in such individualistic battling, rather than fighting in structured formations.
Chronological Reckoning
So this whole accounted Cavalry fighting on the Cavalry Wings, which would have included the event of the raidings of the Macedonian Baggage camp, would have lasted in total ca. 4 hours from the start of the battle, thus from ca. 10:00-11:59, and then from then until ca. 14:07. And during all of this time, the Greek and Persian phalanxes in the middle of their battlelines had been systematically slugging it out, manifestly without yet a clear break through there either way.
Battle’s Final(-izing) Developments
Line #26 [14:09] - Darius Sets His Whole Phalanx in Motion
It is evident that it is at this point, i.e. when Alexander seemed to be bogged down on the Persian Left wing and potentially about to be encircled....and also this could be the point when the Greek Phalanx had managed to get past the first line/wave of the Persian Infantry, that Darius “set his whole/complete phalanx in motion”. I.e. he now also set in motion the rear line/guard of infantry. (Arr 3:14.1a1)
It is because Arrian is also speaking of the encircling move of the Persian Cavalry on Greece’s Right Wing (Arr 3:14.1a2), -which Curtius’, as discussed above, more detailed account places at the end portion of the back and forth action on the wing in relation to trying to save Greece’s Baggage camp, and Arrian then makes mention of Alexander giving fighting orders to Aretes who is then with him on that wing, that it is understood that by then, Aretes had returned from having failed in trying to retake the baggage camp (Cur 4:15.13, 18).
So this move by Darius to “set in motion his whole/complete phalanx” does occur after the above chronologically reckoned 4 hours after the battle had started. So this is indeed not a mention of the initial setting in motion of the Infantry, and their hand-to-hand fighting clash (Dio 17:59.1).
Manifestly the large size of Darius’s army for this battle (=245,000), and pointedly his large infantry (=200,000) had again caused a similar situation as during the Battle of Issus, when, -as discussed earlier, he had a practically excess of infantry soldiers which he then had ‘set at an unserviceable depth’ behind his frontlines infantry’ (Arr 2:8.8). It seemed that, as suggested earlier, this time around Darius chose to “serviceably” spread his excess infantry thin (i.e. all along the rear of the front battleline, including with the Cavalry Wings, =keeping national contingents together) rather than uselessly deep (=stacked up solely behind the middle infantry). Perhaps, as also suggested earlier, Darius now had given default orders to the commanders of this excess infantry to feel free to enjoin the battle as/when they see it necessary, -so not only if they got the order/signal from him to do so, -which at Issus, never came since Darius had by then fled, and the Greek Phalanx had not managed to make an overwhelming breakthrough of the initial/frontlines Persian infantry/phalanx (Arr 2:10.4b-7a)). But that does not mean that Darius could not override, i.e. at an early point, such a default directive during the battle if he saw it fit, and it seems that here, Darius saw an opportunity to be able to tangibly effectuate an overwhelming of the Greek front lines, and so he manifestly here/now decided to also send his then rear line infantry soldiers.
Line #27-#28 [14:14-14:54] - Alexander Executes Decisive Slanted/Wedge-Charge Move
So they did pour into the fighting. And at the Right Wing where Alexander had been leading the fight, these enjoining Persian ‘back up’ infantry seemed to have indeed made a ‘breaking through’ difference (Arr 3:14.2a). So Alexander saw that it was "now or never" time to make what had all along been his strategic pre-planned move of ‘going straight for the jugular’: two historian describe this pivotal move as follows:
“and Alexander saw that it was time for him to offset the discomfiture of his forces by his own intervention with the royal squadron and the rest of the elite horse guards, and rode hard against Dareius.” (Dio 17:60.1b)
“Alexander wheeled round towards the gap, and forming a wedge as it were of the Companion cavalry and of the part of the phalanx which was posted here, he led them with a quick charge and loud battle-cry straight towards Darius himself.” (Arr 3:14.2b)
An interesting question that begs to be asked at this point is: if/since Alexander clearly had always planned to make this move which he deemed would be favorably decisive, then why did he wait ca. 4.5 hours into the battle to make it??...Why not make it right from the start and potentially end the battle much sooner.
Well it would seem that Alexander was trying to recreate the exact same winning, and sequenced, conditions which had brought victory at Issus against a similarly large Persian Army. And back then, it was when he and his Cavalry had become victorious on his Right Wing that he made what effectively was an oblique/slanted charge against Darius himself at the center. Well it is manifest that this move would not have been successful if the Persian forces them were at full strength, and in intact formations, and if the Cavalry on the Wings, especially the one from where this slanted charge would be launched, were not bogged down and pre-occupied and so could come to the aid of the king being charged at in the middle infantry. So Alexander saw that he first had to wear down Persian army, and disrupt their formations, so that his charge would not meet a fresh/strong opposition and also no such rescue move can be made from the nearby Cavalry Wing. And indeed by then, the fighting on the Greece RW/Persia LW Cavalry Wing had devolved into a disorganized/unstructured free-for-all, and so it seemed had the phalanx clashing in the middle, i.e. with the two opposing forces “almost joined as one” (Cur 4:15.23a). Even the recently called forth back up Persian infantry itself seemed to have poured into the fighting not in strict formation but “pluggingly” wherever they spotted a vulnerability/opening. So this was the perfect time and confused/disorganized conditions for Alexander to make his move which would not be met with much less structured opposition.
Interestingly it is said that not only did Alexander here give new impetus to the battle, but also, Darius, by his initial bold and unflinching counter to this direct charging of Alexander. (Cur 4:15.23a; Dio 17:60.2a-b).
And in this clash where ‘hand-to-hand fighting ensued for a short time’ (Arr 3:14.3), “more of the Persians were falling”, although “the number of wounded was about equal on both sides” (Cur 4:15.23b1-2). [29]29
[Keep in mind here what the topographically accurate directional orientation of this (presently North-South) illustration would be if it was rotated 90 degrees clockwise =East (=Persian)-West(=Grecian)]
Persian Horn [=King] (seemingly) “Broken”
Line #29-#33 [14:54-15:04-15:24] - Alexander Approaches, then Squares off on, Darius
Then Alexander literally, figuratively, “went for the jugular”...by (manifestly) hurling a spear like a javelin right towards Darius, who was conspicuously riding on an elevating chariot. He/It instead ‘ran/hurled through’ the chariot driver of Darius who was positioned in front of him, knocking him to the ground (Cur 4:15.28b; Dio 17:60.2b). As “neither the Persians nor the Macedonians had any doubt that the king himself had been slain” (Cur 4:15.28c), it is manifestly/likely that Darius, either when noticing the approaching javelin, or when his driver got hit and knocked down, he self-protectively also “hit the deck” of the chariot...and likely being really spooked now, he did not dare get back up...and so when either the Persians or the Greek look for him on that elevating chariot, they did not see anybody......And so naturally the Persians shoutingly wailed in terror while the Greeks shoutingly exulted of victory, and those further away down the line also became sure that Darius had been killed (Cur 4:15.29a; Dio 17:60.3a), and so this battle was for all intents and purposes, decided...and so these Persian soldiers took to flight. (Dio 17:60.3b).
Line #34-#37-#38 [15:24-15:36-15:38] - Darius Considers Suicide, but then Flees; then Persian’s General Flight
Manifestly shortly after this false alarm had begun to take its “fleeing effect”, Darius popped back up and regained his/an elevated position, but the contagious harm had already been down, and the forces around him were just steadily disintegrating. (Dio 17:60.3b2) And so then/now “drawn scimitar in hand, hesitated whether to avoid the disgrace of flight by an honourable death” “but standing as he was high in his chariot, he blushed to abandon the battle-line of his subjects, who were not yet all leaving the field” (Cur 4:15.30a+b). And while he was “wavering between hope and despair” the floodgates virtually opened up before him as his guarding ranks increasingly gave ground, parted and fled (Cur 4:15.31a), “and already it had ceased to be a battle and become a massacre” (Cur 4:15.32a; cf. Arr 3:14.3d1; Plu 33.8b; Dio 17:60.4a). And so while Darius manifestly would have preferred to “honorably” just end it all and kill his clearly (failed) self/reign*, “he was compelled by his officers to flee.” (Jus 11:14.3c)...and so that he did....And the flight, pointedly “in this quarter” (Arr 3:14.4a) “[locally] became general” (Dio 17:60.4c).**
* Who/Which was probably inceptively doomed in this overall hegemony clash against Alexander given that Darius was [eulogized by Arrian (3:22.2) as being] (re)known to be “a man pre-eminently effeminate [Greek: malthakos] and lacking in self-reliance in military enterprises” whereas Alexander was both a “man’s man” and a(n overly) bold/courageous military genius.
** It is being claimed that a recently discovered contemporary Babylonian tablet containing Astronomical Diaries of the times which has an entry mentioning this Battle is contradicting the common Greek & Roman accounts about this flight by stating, (from a claimed more accurate translation), that it was the Persian troops who (first) abandoned Darius on the battle field, and not vice-versa. Well from reading that contemporary account, it seems to me that it is speaking more widely of what occur around, i.e in the aftermath, of this Battle/Lost/Flight of the Persians, in the sense that it is speaking of the surviving Persian troops who abandoned Darius, i.e. after this (third) lost Battle.
In other words, many of the surviving Persians chose not to follow, or gather themselves to, Darius at Arbela, but instead just further/completely deserted him then. Indeed out of, as discussed later, manifestly 155,000-205,000 Persian soldiers who survived this Battle, only ca. 37, 000 “stuck” with, or returned to, Darius, including during the many day afterwards when Darius was then trying to raise another army to fight another battle.
The storyline/timeline/chronology of the Darius flight portion of this battle was already detailedly hashed out and presented earlier, so here it will be just pointed out that this flight of Darius has been reasonably figured out by WBSC to have taken place at about 3:36 PM. As seen in that earlier discussion about the flight, the fighting of this Battle still continued on the unaware Greece LW (led by Parmenion)/Persian RW (led by Mazaeus), -{actually reinforcingly joined from the complete opposite side by the far Persian LW, who themselves likewise had not become aware that Darius had fled (Arr 3:14.6b)}; and that for about 2-2.5 more hours, i.e. until about sunset at ca. 5:30-6:00 PM.; -(including yet another attempt by Persia to raid the Greece Baggage Camp (Arr 3:14.5); while Alexander himself was trying to sustainedly give chase to the fleeing Darius in order to try to surely put an end to this Persian Hegemony Campaign by killing Darius.
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See the following partial animation of this Battle of Gaugamela....
...As well as these clips about this Battle from the epic 1956 and 2004 movies about Alexander.
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Dan 8:7b2 - And he struck the ram and shattered his two horns,
shattered his two horns - Notice that the prophecy stipulated that the “two horns” of the ram would be shattered.
(And, incidentally, for this to have taken place, the male goat would have had to pointedly charge right at the horns of the ram, which is indeed what eventually decisively happened during that Battle of Gaugamela. So this here would be unlike the sides-goring depiction in this, Maxwell’s God Cares (p.150), illustration:
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| God Cares (p.150) of Goat goring Ram illustration |
As discussed earlier at Dan 8:3 those two horns of the ram were representative of the coalition government established by the then rebelled Persians by including the priorly sole-ruling, then overthrown and subjugated, Medes. So for the power of this Medo-Persian Kingdom to be definitely and enduring put down, all claims of kingship from this people, whether on the Persian or Median side, had to be (decisively) ended and uprooted.
Given the worshipful reverence that people had in kings then, seeing it as a Divinely appointed position, it then would be virtually impossible for an upstart who was out of a regnal lineage from the Persians or the Medes to successfully accede to a, moreover, Imperial Kingship position and be accepted to rule over them by many different nations as the Medo-Persians, and lately King Darius III had managed to do.
The simple killing the ruler in power then was a strident signal then that their god (a.k.a. “Fortune”) was no longer in their favor...so it really would be irrational for these people then to continue to align themselves behind a monarchy/dynasty that clearly “god” himself did not care to protect and sustain their rule. So once the ruling king/emperor was killed, it virtually would be every nation/people/province of that Empire for himself.
So the logical next step/mission for Alexander to cement his victory was indeed to find Darius and put such a striking end to his rule and kingship....And moreover, with the natural and rightful heir of Darius, his (very young) son, already being in the custody of Alexander, this decisive end was expectedly assured....short of course of some resurging upstart Medo-Persian claiming that throne.
Alexander’s Pursuit of Darius
The mission to find & kill King Darius turned out to be a protracted pursuit and campaign in itself as it would take about 10 months to be realized (i.e. from Oct. 331 to July 330 B.C.).
The following is the overview timeline of this pursuit of Darius by Alexander.
Click Here to see Charting Harmonization of the Referenced Historical Texts
Line #2 [Oct. 2] - Darius Rallies Fleeing Troops at Arbela
Upon arriving at Arbela, Darius found there many other soldiers from his army who had likewise fled the battlefield. Curtius (5:1.3) attributes it to “Fortune” that these other fleers had also come to Arbela. But as this had been the place where Darius had left his Royal Baggage and Wealth, it was the most natural place for them to flee to, as clearly seen by the fact that at that very time Alexander himself was making his way to this village where he expected Darius to have (naturally) fled to.
What could be seen as “fortunate” was that Darius, who manifestly had no plans to stay, -as an effective sitting (lame) duck, at Arbela once he go there, but merely “touch and go”, (likely taking whatever he deemed most important to him from his baggage there, which, as he would exclaim later was not, in a time of war, riches/gold (but materials to make weapons e.g. steel)’ (Cur 5:1.8)), had managed to find a relatively quite large contingent of his army either all already there, or arriving in time before he himself soon continued fleeing.
Since Darius had literally been the very first to flee the battle field, and he likely had at his disposal the best resources to sustain that flight, it manifestly was because he had, -as discussed earlier, first executed his flight from the battlefield by strategically heading in the opposite direction of Arbela (thus Westward), but then later clearly had made an unseen circuitous turn about to then head East towards Arbela. It could also be that he had purposely/strategically avoided to take the common/straight road/route towards Arbela, but went about, at least at first, along a secondary/back way, all to avoid being caught up with by his Greek pursuers. So that circuitous flight, and possible alternate route detour may have been the reason why other fleeing Persian soldiers also arrived in time at Arbela to encounter Darius there, and flee with him.
Then, in what many readily saw through as a desperate hope speech (Cur 5:1.4-8), Darius claimed that Alexander would be so desirous to take possession of the vast riches of his Empire (concentrated in his largest/most populous cities: i.e. Babylon, Susa, Persepolis), that he was first seek to go to those places first and he and his army would be delayed and corrupted by indulging in various leisure vices, as well as be extremely bogged down, as he himself had been, by trying to carry about such a vast booty.
Ironically enough, as seen later, Darius was not completely wrong in such a deeming given the various debauch and unruly conduct that Alexander and his army engaged in as they pillaged the riches of the Persian Empire and did indulge in its corrupting vices, but the even more ironic thing is that, if Darius had not been such a fleeing coward and had but some muscle behind these probable expectations of his, -moreover as he would actually direct the rulers of those large/wealthy Persian cities, -manifestly/likely starting with Babylon, to peacefully surrender and welcome Alexander and his army and turn everything they wanted over to them, so as to delay, occupy, corrupt/weaken and burden them (Cur 5:1.6b), Darius could have, as stated by Curitus (5:1.39a), taken advantage of such a critical unpreparedness of the Macedonian side and could have then defeated them in a surprise assault, even with just the ca. 37,300-soldier, mainly residual, army that he went on to gathered to him. (Cur 5:8.3-4) But Darius just kept on running away from another soon confrontation...and really, as later seen, that quite transparent, likely innate, lack of courageous fortitude and military initiative is what both further precipitated his demise during this flight and clearly also prevented him from being able to attract support and recruit new forces in those ample enough 10 months since Gaugamela.
Line #3 [Oct. 2] - Darius Immediately Leaves Arbela for Ecbatana
So from Arbela, Darius headed for the most further away, but still ethnically-“affinitied” region of his Empire, for Ecbatana in Media [present day site of Hamadan, Iran*]. He arrived at that city from the North rather than from simply the East, having opted to travel there through the mountains of Armenia situated along its north. (Arr 3:16.1). At Ecbatana, Darius paused there, making it his temporary/meanwhile, army re-constituting Headquarters, awaiting to first see what Alexander would do...if he would linger in those rich cities of the Empire or immediately pursue after him.
* Which is the city where the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai is believed by some to be.
“Luckily” for Darius, Alexander, clearly either not worried to have to again later confront another large Persian Army on a battlefield, or confident that Darius either could not, or would not, be able to muster up another large force, decided to grant leisure time to his soldiers, especially during this then winter season when typically armies did not engage in major battle confrontations, and so he did spend months relaxing in those wealthy cities of Persia, mainly when he reached Persepolis.
It actually was reasonable for Darius to expect and seek a militaristic resurgence for his Empire from remaining the part of his kingdom as “the remote parts of his realm were still untouched,” and (so) he also believed that “ from them he would without difficulty get together forces for war” (Cur 5:1.5b). As seen in the following mapping, despite Alexander’s significant and rapid conquest of the Medo-Persian Empire over now the past 3.5 years, through 331 B.C., Darius still had territorial holding and control of, roughly calculated, ca. 65% his former total Imperial Realm.
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| Alexander/Greece Advanced by/in 331 B.C. |
Line #4 [Oct. 2] - Alexander Buries His War Dead
On his side, from the ending of his initial, post-Battle, pursuit of Darius, Alexander is (uniquely) said by Diodorus (17:64.3a1) to have first buried his war dead. (Which, mind-boggingy enough, were only up to around 1% of his total forces = 100|300|500 Arr 3:15.6a|Cur 4:16.26b|Dio 17:61.3b). In terms of chronological/sequential/situational logistics which, as demonstrated earlier, places Alexander at Arbela by ca. 5 AM on the morning after his evening and overnight pursuit, and only then seeing that Darius had already fled that village, if Alexander then made sure to provide the due high honor to bury his war dead (cf. Cur 5:4.3; Dio 17:68.4c), he either then traveled back ca. 60 miles to the battlefield and there buried his dead, or, the trailing part of his army, e.g. those who had been left behind at the fortified camp by the Tigris River with the most burdensome part of Alexander army train, and also those charged with carrying the army baggage then located ca. 2,150 feet near the battlefield, had themselves load up the bodies of the fallen Macedonian soldiers and transported them to Arbela, where/when then Alexander buried them. This possible actual development, which therefore produced a Greek Military cemetery near Arbela, could be the pointed reason for later confusion about the actual location of the Battle of Gaugamela, with some then assuming that it must have been near to where these bodies had been buried, and not some 60 miles away.
Line #5 [Oct. 3] - Alexander Takes Control of Arbela
Following the accomplishing of these funeral rites, Alexander is then (accurately) ensued by Diodorus (17:64.3a2) to have “fallen upon” = “thrown himself upon” = “devote himself to” Arbela [= Greek epiballo]. So he did not merely (just) then “enter” Arbela, but now devoted his attention to overtaking it. Pointedly stressing that Alexander had already previously “entered” per se Arbela, i.e. when he arrived at 5 AM and then saw that Darius had already left it, and then, even before devoting himself to overtaking it, or even seizing control of “ the wealth of the entire Persian army that had been concentrated in that spot’ (Cur 5:1.10b), he firstly had turned his attention to given the due funeral rites to his fallen soldiers...and then he devoted himself to taking control of Arbela.
Line #6 [Oct. 16] - Alexander Moves Camp from "Polluted" Region
Now, in what was probably merely superstitious/irrational exaggerating, -especially if the locational/chronological established in this post is, as amply substantiated, (indeed) accurate, it is said that Alexander and his men feared that the vast amount of Persian War dead who had been left unburied on the battlefield would be polluting the air of the region (Dio 17:64.3b1), and/or, as claimed, tangibly “because of the increasing diseases, which the stench of the dead bodies lying over all the plains had spread abroad” (Cur 5:1.11a), including around Arbela, and so they decided to speedily move on from there, onward, first southward, towards the city of Babylon.
Going by, again, the more reliable/trustworthy figures of Curtius, the Persian casualties in the Battle of Gaugamela were around 40,000 (Cur 4:16.26 -which works out to ca. 16% of their initial 245,000 soldiers (Cur 4:12.6-12)). Arrian (3:15.6b) claimed that 300,000 were slain, but he had started out with grossly unlikely initial Persian forces of just over 1 million (Arr 3:8.6). {=29% casualties}. Interestingly enough, Diodorus (17:39.4; 17:53.3) himself also had claimed the unlikely initial number of 1,000,000, however his claim for the casualties was merely 90,000 {=9%} (Dio 17:61.3a), which is actually quite self-commending as being reliable.
However unlike at the Battle of Issus, where, as discussed earlier, it is said that most of the Persian’s ca. 110,000 (D 17:36.6a; C 3:11.27; P 20.10; A 2:11.8) =33% casualties had occurred as they were frantically fleeing and were caught in limited and bottlenecking passes through the nearby mountain range, at the Battle of Gaugamela, there virtually was not such terrain obstruction to impede the flight of the Persian dead. So most of their dead then would have to have occurred right on the battlefield. And given that the fighting at the Battle of Gaugamela, which lasted in total ca. 8 hours, was for the most part evenly match, and actually with Persia holding the upper hand many times, though not in terms of effectuated casualties on the Greeks, the figure of 40,000 would have to be seen as more likely in such a case than the 90,000 as the Persian would have been able to relatively hold their own for the most part, and then had had an easier/less impeded way of escape when the turned to flee. So Curtius’ 40,000 figure would here be deemed as more reliable figure for the total Persian death.....However, as Curtius qualifies that claim by saying that it was “so far as the victors could determine” (Cur 4:16.26), perhaps Diodorus, and his counterintuitive figure/claim of 90,000 was from a source which had been based on a more determinative reckoning and/or Persian account.
All this to state that the Persian deaths, and thus the number of bodies left unburied on that battlefield, were manifestly somewhere between 40,000-90,000....So...was that enough to cause the far-spreading, air-borne disease infecting that the Greeks feared, and that up to 60 miles away from the battlefield??....Likely/Logically, probably not...Then again, Diodorus (17:61.3a) states that Alexander had again killed many of the stragglers from the battlefield, resulting in the Persian unburied dead being found/strewn throughout the region. So that would explain how a trail of dead bodies could extend from the Battlefield towards, and even reach close to, Arbela. Nonetheless, it likely was more from the Greeks being either overcautiously or outrightly unreasonably spooked from this potential infectious fear that they soon moved out of Arbela and headed to Babylon.
-{Notwithstanding, on a much more comprehensive level, -(i.e. given the many times more number of unburied dead bodies, -from both dead humans and animals), following the vast and total destruction from Noah’s Global Flood (Gen 7:20-24); see the Supernaturally-actuated “violent wind” measures that God had to make in order to bury all of those dead corpses in PP 107.4a; -which incidentally is arguably what caused some of the great damage to the Earth in connection with this Flooding Judgement Event.}
It is likely that Alexander expected that the taking of Babylon would be another tough fight in itself and so he first wanted to recollect and rest his troops at Arbela, but this disease scare did not afford them that option, so they marched on.
Corroborating/Anchoring Discovery
Added to this information, the contemporary Babylonian Tablet of Astronomical Diaries of those times gives a date of what converts to be October 21 or 22 for Alexander’s (below-discussed) arrival Babylon. So give that (contemporary) historical claim/fact(?), -(which I am not seeing any reason to doubt/discredit), and given the known/documented (4+1) days of travel from Arbela to Babylon, that would cause the stay of Alexander’s troops in Arbela to be about 10 days longer than what a “soon” departure would suggest (i.e. ca. 3 days).
So Alexander would have actually stayed 13 days at Arbela, and the “soon-est” of his departure would have been relative to the actual time that he probably had intended to stay there, in that captured town, to rest & recuperate, before engaging Babylon.
And if indeed there was a realistic adverse effect from the (region strewn) unburied bodies of the Persian soldiers, then such an effect may have begun to spread and reach/be felt at Arbela some 10+ days afterwards.
Line #8-#9 [Oct. 21-Nov. 24] - Arrives at (surrendering) Babylon; Stays 34 Days
Alexander did indeed expect that Babylon would put up a (formidable) opposition/fight to his arrival as he arranged his troops in battle ready formations as they approached the city (Arr 3:16.3)...However, to their surprised, the city, now under the manifest or effective martial control of Persian General Mazaeus, who just a few days before had been formidably fighting against the Greeks at Gaugamela, literally open their doors wide for Alexander, and with additional pomp, pageantry and circumstance’ (see Cur 5:1.19b-23). That was quite a relief for Alexander because the renown and famous massive walls of Babylon, along with the incorporated capability of the city to withstand a prolonged siege, would have been a feat in itself to break through and overcome if Alexander had to subdue the city by force. (Cur 5:1.17b)
It would be logical to surmise, and although the historical accounts do not claim, or even suggest this, that this sudden radical change of disposition and overture towards the Greeks here, led by Mazaeus, was actually in the express fulfillment of Darius’ strategic policy (see Dio 17:65.5), -which would have been relayed to Mazaeus, to peacefully surrender, especially the large/wealthy cities of the Persian Empire to Alexander, and be most welcoming to him, all in order to delay, even detract, him from pursuing a continued pursuit and fighting course while Darius reformed his forces. On top of, indeed variously corrupting the army of Alexander, this policy also had the Persian advantage of preserving their major cities from incurring physical damage.
Indeed surely the “generous” disposing then of Babylon’s ‘systematic “cottage”/family-business prostitution industry,’ -which itself would even be expected to be scandalous and shocking to people living a few centuries later (such as Curtius and the readers of his account -see Cur 5:1.36-38) [30]30, could easily seemingly not really/purely be out of appreciative hearts of the conquered Babylonian People and former Persian generals...It rather could be out of a calculated plot to corrupt and weaken the Macedonian army...and corrupt them they indeed did...for over 1 month...to the point that, as mentioned above, their readiness to then defeat a surprise attack from the Persian was deemed has highly unlikely...
...And as Curtius adds, their state of unreadiness and weakness was from time to time diluted by the arrival of fresh reinforcements (Cur 5:1,39b), (here, shortly after he left Babylon, of ca 15,000 troops, -Cur 5:1.40-42a; Dio 17:65.1). This would be about one third of his standing forces, and evidently these new arrivals allowed the same number of troops to go back home and/or to be assigned to guarding duties for the increased territorial/city conquests of the advancing army.
And if the surrender of Mazaeus, dubbed “the deserter”, was not genuine, i.e. out of following the policy orders of Darius, it was now furthered as Alexander left Mazaeus in charge of Babylon. (Cur 5:1,44)...
...But all that “logically surmised”, later on (at Cur 5:8.9, 12) King Darius himself does explicitly refer to Mazaeus (as well as Mithrenes) as “traitors and deserters who now rule his cities’....Notwithstanding, if Darius had acted/attacked while Alexander’s forces were, -irrespective of the motives, none-the-different: relaxed/weakened/corrupted, he could have swayed these bandwagon/opportunistic former comrades back to his side.
Line #13-#14 [Dec. 10-17] - Arrives, and Stays at Susa
The next major Persian city that Alexander took over after he had left Babylon was Susa. That important Persian city, which seemed to also be a (lesser) ceremonial capital city of the Medo-Persian Empire, was examined in pertinent detail at the very beginning of this blog post as it was the place where the prophet Daniel was transported in Spirit for this vision (=Dan 8:2).
Again this principal Persian city wholly surrendered peacefully, and now the historian express out loud whether this was of their own volition or out of executing Darius’ strategic policy. (Cur 5:2.8; Dio 17:65.5a). For such a policy to be successful, i.e. get Alexander to unsuspectingly walk right into, and “indulge” in, it, it would have to be a closely guarded kept secret....even from revealed history, and Darius did enlist only “his trusted officials” with it. (Dio 17:65.5b)
At Susa, Alexander took possession of vast Persian Royal treasures. It is not stated how long he stay there, reckonedly probably only 5 days, but Alexander indeed shortly moved on towards the Persian Capital City in the Persis Region: Persepolis. At Susa, Alexander left the captive Royal Family, with tutors to teach them the Greek language. (Cur 5:2.17b; Dio 17:67.1a)
As Alexander made his way from Susa to Persepolis he passed through the natural path through the Uxii Region. It also was more advantageous for him to march his army through a mountain defile passage in their territory. The locals wanted Alexander to pay the same toll that the Persian King did when he passed through this pass. Alexander pretended to agree that he would do so, but then implemented a military strategy to take control of the defile by force, resulting in an easily won battle. (C 5:3.1-11; A 3:17.1-6a; D 17:67.1b-5)
To try to avert the sure punishment that would be inflicted on those who had made this losing stance against Alexander, letters were sent to the Darius’ mother in Susa pleading with her to intervene for them to Alexander and obtain a more merciful fate. At first she refused to inject herself in these affairs, but she was finally convicted to do so. Alexander heeded her plea, and the offenders were pardoned of their capital punishments. (C 5:3.12-16; A 3:17.6b)
To enter the Persia proper region of the Medo-Persian Empire Alexander took part of his army on an alternate path to the main Royal Road which went through a passage known as the Persian Gate. Unbeknownst to him, a Persian military contingent of 25,000 (C 5:3.17c; D 17:68.1b) or 40,000+ (A 3:18.2b), led by Ariobarzanes, was expecting this passing of theirs, and around the area of a walling that had been built to control the traffic through the passage, and which was quite deep in (ca. 3 miles = “half way”) into the rugged, mountains-flanked, narrowest/hardest-part-of-the, passage, Ariobarzanes had his troops hide away up on the higher grounds of the mountains and await for Alexander to arrive.
Download its Google Earth (KMZ) Mapping File
When the Greek Army reached the walling in the pass, the Persian forces launched a devastating ambush on them of mainly various natural/rock and weapon projectiles, including the rolling down of massive boulders on them. (Cur 5:3.18; Dio 17:68.2b) There was nothing the Greeks could do to withstand the attack. They could not even climb up the craggy mountain flanks to engage their enemy personally (Cur 5:3.20), so Alexander, who by this time was really quite embarrassed by his negligence to have known to first have advanced scouted the passage (Cur 5:3.21) signaled a general retreat. (Arr 3:18.3) The Greek forces made their way back “30 stadia” (=ca. 3 miles) out of the passage (Cur 5:3.23b) [not “300 furlongs” = 37.5 miles as Plutarch illogically/erroneously claimed (Dio 17:68.4a)], into an open area and set up their camp there.
Long story short, as seen in the illustration above, Alexander, searching for an alternate route, found a bilingual Lycian captive who said that as a former shepherd in the area he did know of another passage*...but, as he repeatedly warningly insisted, it was quite hazardous and definitely not suitable for an army convoy to pass through. (Cur 5:4.13) Alexander reassured him that his military could handle this....but that was not actually such a sure thing as Curtius relates that some of his soldiers became terrorized when in this dark, harsh, abysmal hazardous passage to the point of shedding tears (Cur 5:4.24-26)...
* It was claimed that this Lycian’s leading of the Greek army against Persia fulfilled a childhood oracle made about Alexander (Cur 5:4.11; Plu 37.2), but that was really whimsically done by claiming that the actual leading “wolf” of the prophecy, which in Greek is lycus was fulfilled by this “lycian”.
Finally they made their way through...Alexander then executed his plan to fall upon the unsuspecting Persians from 3 sides, including from his forces which had been left behind at their retreat camp, (and who had been making it seem, by lighting way more night fires than was necessary, that the entire Greek army was still stationed there (Cur 5:4.14)), and the Greeks manage to put a decisive end to their opposition here.
Ariobarzanes himself and some of his soldiers managed to escape and made their way to Persepolis, but they were shut out from entering the city....Alexander later would encounter them there, (manifestly/logically as they were camping out outside of the city). He renewed the fighting with them and killed them all. (Cur 5:4.33-34)
Line #20-#21 [Dec. 30-31] - Alexander heads for Persepolis
After establishing a camp, manifestly at the very site in the Persian Gate pass where he had put the enemy to flight (Cur 5:5.1), The next major move and gain of Alexander in this dual campaign of pursuing after the fleeing Darius and also increasingly conquering/capturing Persian Empire holdings was to gain control of really the crown jewel of the Medo-Persian Empire: their Ceremonial Capital City: Persepolis [=“Persian City”] {satellite} {photo + gallery}, “which was filled with the spoils of the world” (Justin 11:14.10)... ‘“the richest city under the sun”, both in regards to public and private holdings’ (Dio 17:70.2a). Alexander had received a heads up by the governor of the city, who was in charge of Darius’s finance, Tiridates by name, that the inhabitants and guards of the city, aware that Alexander was approaching and would take over their city, were thinking about pillaging the city’s treasures/treasury. Alexander heeded his urging to come as fast as possible and secure those deserted riches which Tiridates would peacefully turn over to him, and also before others who planned to defend the city arrived by taking with him a smaller and faster military contingent and in a forced march and the bridging the Araxes River, made a speedy advance towards Persepolis (Cur 5:5.2; Arr 3:18.10a; Dio 17:69.1-2a).
Line #22 [Dec. 31] - Meeting with Mutilated Refugee Greeks
Credit to Alexander’s integrity [as this episode seemed to have momentarily stopped his critical approach to Persepolis], he did not allow the prospects of gaining wealth, or even avoiding a battle (i.e. for Persepolis by arrived at reinforcements and/or battle-readying inhabitants) to prevent him from, along the way, and while he was only about 1000 feet (=“2 stadia”) from Persepolis (Cur 5:5.8b), taking care of a pitiful situation (really “a strange and dreadful sight” -Dio 17:69.2b) situation that came up. A group of about 800, mostly elderly, Greeks (D 17:69.3; J 11:14.11) (manifestly from a wider total group of “nearly 4000” -C 5:5.5) who had been, as captive of the Persians, subjected to cruel, bodily-mutilating/amputating and branding, torture, met with Alexander, -who shed tears for them and their suffered ordeal, petitioning him to bring restoring remedy to their misfortune.
Summarily stated: Alexander offered to return/restore them to their homeland Greece. They then momentarily withdrew from the camp to hold a council to debate what would be best for them to request. Some thought that it would be variously better for them to remain and settle in Asia given that they could be individually subjected to implicit, or even explicit, “natural” discrimination and reproach even back amongst their own people in Greece (Cur 5:5.9b-16; Dio 17:69.6b). A few of the opposing view thought that their “good” countrymen could/would be immune to or overcome such natural tendencies (Cur 5:5.17-20). They eventually decided as a group that it would be best for them to band together and seek a home/found a community in Asia. (Cur 5:5.21; Dio 17:69.6c) Alexander was taken aback by the counterintuitive-to-him decision that they had come to (Cur 5:5.22-23), but he pityingly honored their resolved and pecuniarily/materially/fiscally supported it. (Cur 5:5.24; Dio 17:69.8-9).
Line #23-#25 [Jan. 1-Apr. 30-May 30] - Extended (Winterizing) Stay at Persepolis
That Alexander was, of course, merely human was demonstrated by how, -the day after his meeting with the Refugee Greeks, having by then entered the city Persepolis, he allowed himself, and the soldiers was commanding, to be blinded by a lust for revenge. Alexander whipped his troops into a vicious, murderous, booty-greed, frenzy by informing/advising them that:
“no city was more mischievous to the Greeks than the seat of the ancient kings of Persia; it was from there that those huge armies had been poured into their country, from there first Darius, then Xerxes, had made godless war upon Europe; by its destruction they ought to offer sacrifice to the spirits of their forefathers.” (Cur 5:6.1; cf. Dio 17:70.1)
and so:
“The Macedonians raced into it slaughtering all the men whom they met and plundering the residences; many of the houses belonged to the common people and were abundantly supplied with furniture and wearing apparel of every kind.” (Dio 17:70.2b; cf. Cur 5:6.6)
And when the Greek soldiers ‘passion-mad’ pillagers could no longer satiate their “boundless greed”/“exceeding lust for loot” (Dio 17:70.4b-5a1), they actually began to turn on each other by in-fighting, cutting off the hands of those who tried to prevent their loot from being stolen, and even “murdering many of their fellows who had appropriated a greater portion of the loot’. (Dio 17:70.5a2)
So terrorizing was this “orgy of plunder” (Dio 17:70.4a) that:
“many [of the Persians] forestalled the hands of the enemy by a voluntary death, putting on their most costly clothing and throwing themselves from the walls, along with their wives and children. Some set fire to their houses, which it seemed that the enemy would do a little later, in order to be burned alive with their families.” (Cur 5:6.7)
As Diodorus encapsulated this debacle:
“As Persepolis had exceeded all other cities in prosperity, so in the same measure it now exceeded all others in misery.” (Dio 17:70.6b)
Finally some reason dawned/returned to Alexander and he ‘ordered his men, who by then had been “dragging off women, clothes and all, converting their captivity into slavery” (Dio 17:70.6a), “to spare the persons and the ornaments of the women” (Cur 5:6.8a)
Alexander actually had plans to completely strip/deplete Persepolis of its riches, mass transferring this wealth to the citadel city of Susa (Dio 17.71.2) as “he felt bitter enmity to the inhabitants he did not trust them, and he meant to destroy Persepolis utterly.” (D 17:71.3)...
Line #26 [May 31] - Burns Down Persepolis Palace
....Well that would somewhat explain on one hand why, quite a while, -i.e. (ca. 4+1 (‘winterizing’) months, later (=C 5:6.12|P 37.6+C 5:6.19b), while then holding a prolonged, thus resultingly drunken, and debauched, banquet in a palace of the city (Cur 5:7.2), when then he himself had again allowed himself to be corrupted by his “excessive love of wine” (Cur 5:7.1), one of the attending strumpets, “Thais” by name, quite easily goaded him to ‘(indeed -Arr 3:18.12) avengingly set the whole edifice ablaze’...which he proceeded to do (C 5:7.3-5; P 38.2-7; D 17:72.2-6)...Some of Alexander’s soldiers who were stationed outside of the city, on spotting the massive conflagration, thinking that it was accidental, came rushing in, buckets of water in hand to put out the fire, only to be met by a cheerful Alexander piling on the firebrands....so they instead gave an arsoning-helping hand to their king. (Cur 5:7.6-7).
I have always wonder how such palaces, (ditto Temples, such as the (esp. 70 A.D.) Jewish Temple), could be susceptible to fire if, as presumed, they were solidly and preventive built of stone...but Curtius here notes that this Persepolis Palace “had been built largely of cedar” (Cur 5:7.5b; [cf. 2 Sam 7:7]).
...And yet, on the other hand, there are account claims that: “it is agreed” that Alexander “speedily” repented of this act, and even gave orders to have the fire put out (Plu 38.8b); and/or when he awoke, now sobered up, the next morning, he “certainly” regretted to have done this. (Cur 5:7.11). This infamous act of Alexander was actually quite a shame for Greeks so they tried to rationalize/justify it (Cur 5:7.10).
Line #27 [Jun. 1] - Belatedly Rewards Lycian Guide
In reading through this account, I was kind of mythed as to why Plutarch, would, right at this pointed go off on a prolonged, quite anti-climatic, tangent of extolling examples of some various gifting & conscientious acts of Alexander (=Plu 39.1-42.4), and somewhat similarly Curtius at this point in his account mentions that it was only on the day following that Alexander rewarded the Lycian shepherd who had guided them at the Persian Gate embattled impasse...now five months ago... with those gifts that he had been promised (Cur 5:7.12a)...
...Well I’ll surmise to suggest that Alexander had sought to redeem himself of that loathsome behavior/act, and so then, recalling that he had not done so yet, decided to reward that Lycian for his prior crucial help...and Plutarch, perhaps seizing on this manifest sensed need of Alexander to try to redeem himself at this point, -(or even, given the oddity of that wider known fact then that Alexander had only then remembered to keep his promise to the Lycian), himself presented a (relative) litany of examples of how Alexander was actually quite a magnanimous, thoughtful, down-to-earth, person....
Line #29 [Jun. 11] - Resumes Pursuit of Darius, Enters Media
Well, for the ongoing prophecy-fulfilling intents of this Daniel 8 interpretation here,
Alexander at this point, finally go back on the prophetic track by, -after 5 months at Persepolis, resuming his pursual of the still fleeing, but then, relatives only ca. 540 miles away) Ecbatana-dwelling, King Darius.
When Darius learned that Alexander was (rapidly) marching to Ecbatana, and despite having a total of ca, 37,000 troops at his disposal (Cur 5:8.3-4; cf. Dio 17:73.2b), he, Darius decided to flee instead of standing his ground and fight, -as Alexander himself had been informed -Arr 3:19.3a). The added forces of the Cadusians and Scythians that Darius had expected to join him had not yet arrived (Arr 3:19.3b-4a). With Alexander himself having, ca. 47,000 troops in his army [if not by now 53,000 if the reinforcements of 6,000 troops he got as he crossed into Media (Cur 5:7.12b) were pure additions rather than, as possible, merely substitutions], and with Darius having just lost two battles when he twice had over 200,000 more soldiers than Alexander, he surely was not going to try to stand against Alexander with a smaller army than his. So Darius opted to flee with is ca. 37,000 soldiers....
...Not sure what the real motive was of a certain Bistanes, a son of the prior Persian King, -{Artaxerxes III (Ochus) [358-338 B.C.]}, who met Alexander at about 3 days’ journey from Ecbatana, and informed him that Darius had left that city five days before and “with an army of 3,000 cavalry and 6,000 infantry”. (Arr 3:19.4b-5a) That was by far not even close to the actual number of troops that Darius had fled Ecbatana with. Perhaps Bistanes still had an axe to grind against Darius III who had controversially become king following the killing of then ruling brother {Artaxerxes IV (Arses)} followed by the slaughter of all of the rightful-successors regnal line (=Bistanes’ nephews)... So here, he may have deliberately grossly understated the actual forces that Darius had with him so as to impel Alexander to go ahead and chase him down.
Indeed, by saying that Darius was marching with a total of only 9,000 troops, thus a comparatively more mobile/swifter contingent, Alexander would understand that he himself needed to pick up the pace with his army if he wanted to keep pace and make up grounds with Darius.
Alexander was indeed, -47,000//53,000 troops and all, moving with great rapidity. So much so that Darius came to see that successfully fleeing, all the way to the Bactra region of the remaining parts empire, -which was some ca. 1,000 miles straightaway eastward, was neither feasible, nor strategically wise...So Darius now resolved to stand his ground and fight Alexander. (Cur 5:8.1b-2).
Line #32 [Jun. 23] - Rallying Speech of Darius; Beginnings of Conspiracy/Mutiny
Speech of Darius - Well, whatever momentum and loyalty that Darius had with the ca. 37,000 troops and their commanders which were sticking with him, he radically lost it at this point by a speech he gave to his commanders in a council which literally had the effect of the “dropping of a bomb” in his camp. Curtius records this speech in detail in Cur 5:8.6-17. The speech manifestly revealed to all that Darius was rather quite ambivalent to what would become of him, his kingdom and his empire, leaving all in the hands of a “Fortune” which he was not at all confident was favorable to him. Darius even went on to concludingly claim/rationalize that he would still ‘be conferred “eternal fame”’ if his final defeat and end would now come. (Cur 5:8.17)...[Which actually did go on to become the, actually infamous, case, as, of course, the end of the Persian Empire cannot be recounted without making mention of him.]
Treasonous Conspiracy & Mutiny in Darius’ Camp - The speech was more suggestive of a “prepare yourselves to honorably die” resignation. All it accomplished was to ‘cramp with horror the hearts and minds fo all alike who heard it with the thought of the present peril’ (Cur 5:9.1) Clearly most of those with Darius did not have such defeatist plans/intentions/expectations. So the camp then became ripe to fragment and dissolve. Nabarzanes and Darius’s cousin Bessus, the satrap of Bactria, had concocted a plan to get Darius in their custody and later turn in over to Alexander to deliver themselves if they came to be overtaken in a resuming flight....but then, having escaped, later resume an Imperial warring opposition to Alexander, this time with them as the leaders. (Cur 5:9.2)
Of course they present this plan to Darius in a wholly favorable light, -as a temporary ‘King/Throne Trust-ship’, in order to peacefully put him in their custody, (Cur 5:9.3-8)...But the then angered Darius would have had them killed, had they not managed to slip out from his presence and retreat back to the security of the forces they commanded. (Cur 5:9.9-13).
The camp then came to be in disarray and a mutiny, mostly along the national ethnicity of the factions of the army, ensued., (Cur 5:9.14-16). Bessus and Nabarzanes tried to get others to ascribe to their conspiracy, which now could only be executed by force (Cur 5:10.1-9). They even [likely] truthfully/accurately proffered that they had as many men of military age in their region of the empire that Darius had lost during these Battles. (Cur 5:10.3)
Line #34 [Jun. 24] - Darius Is Arrested
Eventually, after some hesitancy (Cur 5:10.4-5:12.14), the conspiracy was executed and Darius was arrested (Cur 5:12.15), ironically “honourably” bound in gold fetters (Cur 5:12.20a). In order to prevent people from questioning them and/or trying to come to the aid of the king as they transported him along their flight, he was placed in a “sorry cart covered all over with dirty hides”, “unknown people drove the beasts pulling the cart’ and “his guard followed at a distance’ (Cur 5:12.16, 20b).
Line #35-#37 [Jun. 27-Jul. 8-13] - Forced March From Ecbatana to Rhagae
After taking care of some military affairs at/from Ecbatana (Arr 3:19.5b-8), -including setting up and leaving a guard of 6000 soldiers in that city, Alexander then set out in a “forced march” after Darius. He reached the city of Rhagae, (=present-day Rey|Ray|Rhages, Iran, the southern district of the Greater Tehran metropolitan area) by the eleventh day. (Arr 3:20.1) Oddly enough the distance between Ecbatana and Rhagae is only 204 (road) miles, which technically, at an already demonstrated capable walking pace of ca. 35 mile per day, the smaller and lighten forces that Alexander took with him on this pursuit which consisted of part calvary and part infantry, could have easily covered this distance in ca. 6 days. However it is not only said that it took them 11 days to cover that distance, but also at a “forced march” pace which, moreover, was so exhausting for the horses that several of them died along the way (Arr 3:20.1b) and then Alexander, once arrived at Rhagae, is said to have given his troops a due rest for 5 days (Arr 3:20.3) .
The only way that all of this could make sense is if Alexander, in his attempt to try to make grounds on Darius who he knew to be potentially at least 3+5 days ahead of him (=Arr 3:19.4b-5a), is if Alexander took his calvary portion of this contingent and rode ahead of the foot-soldiers (or indeed just “left them behind; (Arr 3:20.1b)) at several top speed spurts over these 204 miles. But that still does not resolve the contradictions here...So really I presently am not seeing how to comprehend/reconcile these timing claims of Arrian. (Cf. Plutarch’s (42.6) own wild claim about a ca. 412 mile pursuit over 11 days, presumably from Ecbatana. This claim only begins to be realistic if it is actually speaking generally of the entire pursuit starting from Persepolis.)
Line #38-#41 [Jul. 14-17] - Final Pursuit of Darius
Alexander then resumed his pursuit, heading towards the region of Parthia. (Arr 3:20.3b) He was informed that Darius had been arrested (A 3:21.1; P 42.5b; cf. C 5:13.3). He then, seeing that decisive victory was within his reach (Cur 5:13.4) pursued at an even greater pace (Arr 3:21.2) “as if racing than as marching, not resting even by night to relax the day's toil” (Cur 5:13.5; Arr 3:21.3) covering a distance of ca. 50 miles (Cur 5:13.6). From the capturing Darius’s interpreter, -who had not been able to keep up with his fleeing army (Cur 5:13.7), Alexander learned what had been done [the historical accounts all differ as to exactly when Alexander found out that Darius had been arrested (Arr 3:21.4), and also of Bessus’ ultimate plans from continuing the war (Arr 3:21.5). He therefore took a calvary/horse-mount only contingent and set off after Darius (C 5:13.8; A 3:21.6; J 11:15.4a).
Some deserters, -who were not in favor of the Bessus coup, met him along the way and informed him that Darius was only ca. 50 miles ahead of them, but they would show him a shorter way to get to him (Cur 5:13.9; Arr 3:21.7). About 30 miles later, another deserter, Brochubelus, son of Mazaeus, told him that Darius was only 20 miles ahead and also that the army of Bessus, ‘being greedy for plunder, was marching in confusion and disorder.’ (Cur 5:13.11) Alexander no doubt also saw this as a reassurance that he could make a viable engagement against that “straggling” Persian army with the small-sized contingent that was accompanying him, and so pressed forward at top speed. (Cur 5:13.12; Arr 3:21.9a)
Line #42-#43 [Jul. 17] - Alexander Catches Up to Persian Army, Darius is Wounded
Alexander soon closed in on the fleeing Persian, and when virtually at their heels, he cautiously chose to hold back as the blinding dust cloud they were kicking up prevented him for a while from safely advancing. (Cur 5:13.13a; Arr 3:21.9b) Then when could see the Persian soldiers, he thanked his “Fortune” that Bessus had not chosen to fight instead of flee, since “the Persians were superior both in number and in strength; and besides their fresh soldiers would have entered battle against his own wearied men.’ (Cur 5:13.13b; cf. Arr 3:21.9c) But clearly the fighting exploits of Alexander thus far had traumatized them, so they saw it better to flee. (Cur 5:13.14; Arr 3:21.9d).
Bessus tried to get Darius to mount a horse so he could flee with them (Cur 5:13.15; Arr 3:21.10a), but Darius much rather preferred to take his chances with Alexander than with his betrayers and refused to leave. (Cur 5:13.16a) An enraged Bessus and his co-conspirators therefore resorted to hurl javelins at Darius which severally and severely wounded him. They also maimed the beasts which were pulling his wagon ad killed the guiding slaves (Cur 5:13.16b-17; Arr 3:21.10b). The now murderous co-conspirators then strategically fled in different directions (Arr 3:21.10c; Cur 5:13.18).
Alexander then started overtaking the Persian soldiers, and deliberately capturing alive non-resisters, (Cur 5:13.19) and when informed that Darius was in a wagon, but not knowing which one exactly started searching every wagon they came across. (Cur 5:13.20) Interestingly enough, the fear and panic of the Persians of Alexander was such that, those captured Persians were actually much more in number than this Macedonians contingent*.... yet they did not dare, perhaps even if they had thought so, to put up a [likely successful] fight (Cur 5:13.22).
* With the Macedonians perhaps initially being, “they say”, as little as 60 soldiers as they first attacked the Persian fleers (Plu 43.1), but manifestly the ca. 3000 other troops (=Cur 5:13.21), -still a small number, were able to catch up.
Line #44 [Jul. 17] - Darius Found in His, now straying, Wagon
Meanwhile Darius’ wagon had strayed ca. 2,100 feet [=4 stadia] off of the military road (Cur 5:13.23). One of Alexander’s soldiers, Polystratus by name, who had gone aside to get water from a neighboring spring, spotted the wagon being pulled by animals who oddly enough had been stabbed with javelins rather than carried off, and so he approach it. (Cur 5:13.24-25; Plu 43.3; Jus 11:15.5b). He found the dying Darius, and through a, manifestly also Greek-speaking, Persian captive that was brought forward, he was relayed a dying message of Darius for Alexander (Jus 11:15.6-7a):
He reiterated his thanks for the kind treatment of his captive family, and regretted that he was dying without having had returned such kindness to Alexander. (Jus 11:15.7b-9; Plu 43.4a) He made all of the best wishes he knew of towards Alexander and his newly acquire Imperial hegemony. (Jus 11:15.10) He expressed that “he desired the favour of a decent rather than a magnificent funeral” (Jus 11:15.11). And finally he advised Alexander that, merely for the sake of ruling precedence, -as a fellow king would understand, the conspiracy/betrayal and murder of Bessus should not go unpunished. (Jus 11:15.12)
[Note: The original text of Curtius of this episode is lost at this point, so a (generous) reconstruction is being made here{=italicized text}].
Persian Horn [=King] (concretely) “Broken”
Line #45 [Jul. 17] - Death of Darius
Having expressed all of this Darius then favoringly stretched out his right hand “as the only pledge of a king's faith to be conveyed to Alexander”...and expired. (A 3:21.10d; P 43.4b; Jus 11:15.13) [=(“Hekatombaion”)=July [15+//17?], 330 BC -Arr 3:22.2a)
Alexander was then informed of the king’s death, and went to see the body. He was overcome by emotion and shed (probably genuine) tears for him, and covered his corpse with his own cloak. (P 43.5; Jus 11:15.14a) Diodorus shares the claim that Alexander actually had arrived at Darius when he was still alive and had commiserated with him (Dio 17:73.4a), but none of the extant major historians have ascribed to that claim.
An interesting question here: given this display of manifest genuine sadness of the death of Darius... -(re)mind you, Alexander had himself earlier sought to kill Darius during their Battles- what would have happened if Alexander had captured Darius alive, i.e. not even critically/mortally wounded as here? Would he have actually spared Darius’ life and merely imprisoned him??...Surely Alexander would not have accepted to reconcile with him and allow him to retain control of the remaining parts of the Persian Empire....So, prophetically speaking,
the “horn” of Medo-Persian would still have been “shattered”, although, possibly not actually by the physical death of Darius here, but merely by the official deposing of him as King/Emperor.
Alexander then went on to send the body of Darius away to the region of Persis for a Royal Funeral (A 3:22.1a; P 43.7; Dio 17:73.3b; Jus 11:15.14b), and whether or not he himself immediately launched into a momentary attempt to chase down the murderous traitor Bessus (=Dio 17:73.4b), a little over a year later, i.e. in late Summer 329 BC, he did find Bessus, captured him through deserting generals (Dio 17:83.7b-8), interrogated him, then sent him eventually back to Ecbatana where he was put on trial and then executed... either by: crucifixion (=Curtius 7:10.10; cf. 6:3.14) || mutilation then decapitation (=Arrian 4:7.3) || alive(??)-butchering(?) (=Diodorus 17:83.9)|| or by having him be torn asunder by two bent/recoiled trees (Plutarch 43.6)
Dan 8:7b1 - And he struck the ram and shattered his two horns,
....And so, as prophesied, it indeed is a this point that the “horns” (=kingly power) of the “ram” (=Medo-Persian Empire) were shattered. In fact, the ensuing punishing death of Bessus by Alexander , who had already proclaimed, crowned and titled himself the succeeding king of Medo-Persian (Dio 17:83.3, 7; Cur 7:4.1ff) , and even had taken on the regnal title of “Artaxerxes V” may also be factored in here in the shattering of this ram’s horns. After Bessus, no one made the claim for a Medo-Persian Empire Throne.
Dan 8:7c - then there {surprisingly} came to be no strength/power in the ram in order to stand to his face.
...in the ram... - The “ram” symbol is of course still representing the Medo-Persian Empire...So clearly, God fully expected that the “body”/form/entity of the Medo-Persian Empire would still be ‘alive and well’ even after its (official) king/kingship had been brought to an end. That is contrary to the deeming of both ancient and modern historians who consider/reckon the end of the Medo-Persian empire to have ended at the Death of Darius, or even before, at the ending of Battle of Gaugamela.
For example Plutarch relates the, manifest, general “thought” of the day as he said, upon the end of that Third Battle:
“The battle having had this issue, the empire of the Persians was thought to be utterly dissolved, and Alexander, proclaimed king of Asia, made magnificent sacrifices to the gods and rewarded his friends with wealth, estates, and provinces.” (Plu 34.1-2)
Justin similarly, and actually overstatingly, said
“By this battle he gained the dominion over Asia, in the fifth year after his accession to the throne. His victory was so decisive, that after it none ventured to rebel against him; and the Persians, after a supremacy of so many years, patiently submitted to the yoke of servitude.” (Jus 11:14.7)
And today it is relatedly commonly said/deemed that:
“The Achaemenid Persian Empire is traditionally considered to have ended with the death of Darius.”
But though the Medo-Persian Empire was effectively “utterly dissolved”, -as per
Plutarch’s words, as a single/cohesive entity, now the parts of its former whole, i.e. it’s remaining/Eastern satrapies/provinces would, as begun to be seen above, each in turn be individually set against Alexander and his army as he made his methodological way to them/their region.
See satrapy regions also in maps of Medo-Persia’s:
As seen in the tabulating below, at this point in Alexander’s Medo-Persia/Asia
expedition, i.e. in the Summer of 330 B.C., he had come to take control of 27 of the 42 Persian satrapies. So another 15 satrapy jurisdictions, over a vast and harsh/mountainous region, remained to be subjugated.
[Note: This table is still in development]
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See the following partial animation of the Battle of Persian Gate & the Death of Darius....
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Dan 8:7c - then there {surprisingly} came to be no strength/power... - Because the Greeks had a more advanced society, way of life and standard of living, and also different religious beliefs, than the peoples in the Medo-Persian Empire, they generally considered and called them “barbarians”....Well it can be seen that as one moved further from “the West” and further East into this Middle-East Asia region, the culture of the peoples of this regions was indeed quite different than that of the Greeks. So given these inherent/innate differences/distinctions, it is no surprising to read that these peoples had no plans to peacefully surrender to Alexander and accept his Hellenistic rule over them.
So these peoples in the Eastern Regions of the now former, vast/sprawling, Medo-Persian Empire, inhabiting the present-day regions of countries such as: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other less reknown “-stans”, i.e.: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and who, -as it will be interestingly, prophetically, seen later, nowadays are all Muslim-majority countries, almost “naturally” intended to put up a fight to Alexander, and as boasted earlier by their short-lived endeavoring next Medo-Persian King Bessus of Bactria //“Artaxerxes V”: they had sufficient military-aged men in these remaining satrapy regions to substantiate their will to withstand this planned Greek over-take/rule. (Cur 5:10.3). Similarly Bessus had earlier stated to (the by then effectively “lame duck king) Darius, -even if it was while proposing his conspiratorial/deceptive ‘ kingship trust plan’ to him, that (and as already well-aware of by Darius -Cur 5:1.6):
“Bactra [=ca. (Northern) Afghanistan] is untouched, the Indi [=ca. Pakistan] and Sacae [=ca. the other -stans] are under your rule, so many peoples, so many armies, so many thousands of horse and foot have strength available for restoring our affairs, that greater material for war " is left than has been used up.” (Cur 5:9.5)
But the Divine/prophetic stipulation here, -through the exegetical use of a Hebrew Perfect tense, had fore-planned that despite this natural innate/willed “courage” to fight/resist, and despite the physical/manpower “strength” to exercise that will, ‘there would “surprisingly” come to be no strength/power’ in these remaining peoples of the “ram” entity. In other words, they, satrapy after satrapy, would put up a, more-than-less, forces-matching, fight against Alexander’s army, but would each suffer decisive defeat.
in order to stand to his face - This statement of course completes the understanding that was stated just above, but it is significant to note that the prophecy is here emphasizing a “standing to his face”. The evident pregnant deliberateness of this expression is easily seen by the fact that this statement could simply have been stated with a pronominal suffix instead: i.e. “to [with-]stand against him/it”, indeed just as several Bible versions (e.g. NASB, NIV, NKJV, NRSV) have opted to render it instead.
Even the common translational rendering of “stand before him”, which therefore does explicitly present the underlying “face/front” term as “before” still involves the “pregnant deliberateness” of this expression as this too implies that these remaining ram people/entities would “surprisingly” find out that they actually do not have the strength to stand ‘face-to-face’/openly against this male goat.
...Well that manifestly was all so expressed in order to imply that these peoples would eventually realize that trying to oppose Alexander in open militaristic resistance was just futile....Therefore, if, and indeed as, they innately/tacitly still wanted to resist this Imperial Hellenization, their only possible/effective means would be through a “quiet revolution”. I.e. by still maintaining and practising their former way of life, even if they would come to be under Greek rule.
Well evidently Alexander foresaw such a development, and easily saw it as a looming threat to his capability to maintain control/rule over these Middle-Eastern Asia regions. As he would relate to his soldiers, -(in a pivotal speech discussed below), his own prescient/wise view about their present state of ‘conquered vs. further conquering’ affairs/dilemma was:
“But in a new and, if we wish to confess the truth, insecure a empire, to whose yoke the barbarians still submit with obdurate necks, there is need of time, my soldiers, until they are trained to milder dispositions, and until better habits appease their savage temper.
The fruits of the earth also look forward to ripeness at its appointed season, so true is it that even those things, devoid of sense as they are, nevertheless grow soft in accordance with a law of their own.
Well, then! Do you believe that so many nations accustomed to the rule and name of another, united with us neither by religion, nor customs, nor community of language, have been subdued in the same battle in which they were over come? It is by your arms that they are restrained, not by their dispositions, and those who fear us when we are present, in our absence will be enemies. We are dealing with savage beasts, which lapse of time only can tame when they are caught and caged, because their own nature cannot tame them.
And I am so far speaking as if our arms had subdued every thing that was under the sway of Darius. Nabarzanes has taken possession of Hyrcania, the murderer Bessus not only holds Bactra, but he also threatens us; the Sogdiani, Dahae, Massagetae, Sacae, and Indi are independent. All these, as soon as they see our backs, will follow them; for they are of the same nation, we are of an alien race and foreigners.
Moreover, everyone obeys his own rulers with better grace, even when he who dominates them can be more feared. Accordingly, we must either give up what we have taken, or we must seize what we do not yet hold.
Just as in ailing bodies, my soldiers, physicians leave nothing which will do harm, so let us cut away whatever stands in the way of our rule. Often to have ignored a tiny spark has roused a great conflagration. Nothing is safely despised in an enemy; one whom you have scorned you make stronger by neglect.” (Cur 6:3.6-11; cf. Plu 47.1b)
That is then surely why we now see that Alexander quite disproportionally, -(i.e. compared with what he had done up to now in this military campaign/territorial conquest), engaged in a flurry of newly establishing, and/or reconfiguring existing cities and towns in these regions, -most of which were explicitly prefixed/called: “Alexandria...”, and with most of them being military settlements. Alexander was systematically remaking this “savage/uncivilized/brutish” region into the (“Western”) image of Greece...An overall remaining task which would take Alexander, a tellingly (comparatively) long, ca. 7 years (330-324/23 BC) to accomplish.
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Remaining Persian Satrapies to Conquer from Death of Darius (330 B.C.)
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Historian Plutarch encapsulated this whole development (in Moralia 328E+F-329A [5.1ff]) by more widely contextualizing it:
“Plato wrote a book on the One Ideal Constitution, but because of its forbidding character he could not persuade anyone to adopt it; but Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Grecian magistracies, and thus overcame its uncivilized and brutish manner of living.
Although few of us read Plato's Laws, yet hundreds of thousands have made use of Alexander's laws, and continue to use them. Those who were vanquished by Alexander are happier than those who escaped his hand; for these had no one to put an end to the wretchedness of their existence, while the victor compelled those others to lead a happy life. Therefore it is even more just to apply Themistocles' saying [Mor. 185F{17}] to the nations conquered by Alexander.
For, when Themistocles in exile had obtained great gifts from Artaxerxes, and had received three cities to pay him tribute, one to supply his bread, another his wine, and a third his meat, he exclaimed, "My children, we should be ruined now, had we not been ruined before." Thus Alexander's new subjects would not have been civilized, had they not been vanquished; Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleuceia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city hard by; for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence.
If, then, philosophers take the greatest pride in civilizing and rendering adaptable the intractable and untutored elements in human character, and if Alexander has been shown to have changed the savage natures of countless tribes, it is with good reason that he should be regarded as a very great philosopher.”
By the presently documented/ascertainable count, ca. 27+ of the 35+ of these “Alexandria” cities that Alexander founded were in these remaining “oriental” regions. Plutarch’s claim that it was “more than 70 cities” has been, (in my view) rashly/grossly, tersely deemed/lambasted as: “That in [sic] exaggerated.” {-in an otherwise, (as usual for that antiquities site), substantively good article on this topic}, but this deeper examining study has determined that that was a rather quite accurate/truthful statement/reality.
Dan 8:7d - So he caused him to be thrown to the ground and {naturally} trampled on him,
caused him to be thrown to the ground... - What an odd, counterintuitive and also rather circuitous way to go about to, obviously, endeavor to bring an end to the life of this ram power....That is deemed so because, here is the male goat still with its “large, conspicuous horn”, while the two horns of the ram have by now (pointedly) “been shattered” by the goat...So why not, -as seen in that cited falsely-assuming God Cares illustration earlier above, just simply gore this “hornless”, i.e. (professionally/kingly) defenseless, ram in a vital part of its body and less it die from that fatal wounding. Why instead go through this trouble of first “throwing it down to the ground” and all so, as seen next, so that you can then trample it down...presumably until it dies from this stomping. That indeed is quite a protracted way to bring about the ending of this beast.
Well evidently, as the historians commonly relate, even Alexander’s own soldiers now had begun to “gossipingly/rumoredly” think that Alexander’s desire to continue on this Medo-Persia/Asia Campaign, after Darius had been killed, was no longer/not really an imperative...until (an even tearful) Alexander, in a speech (=Cur 6:3.1-18; -partly posted above) convicted them, -by effective/rational arguments, to devotedly ascribe to his militaristic, nationalistic, agenda. (See D 17:74.3; J 12:3.2-3; P 47.1-4; C 6:2.15-21ff). -[Cf. his passionate speech ca. 6 year later, {=other bookend}, during the Mutiny at Opis].
‘Throwing this ram enemy to ground’, really rather than goring it to death, involved the symbolism of, especially in the understandings of those times, effectuating a form of ‘(forced) humbling and abasement. And it is manifestly significant that the prophetic text actually does not state the this ram was actually put to death, per se, by the ensuing “trampling”, but just that ‘there was no one to deliver him from this trampling goat’.
and trampled on him - There indeed were just two options for Alexander to take control all of the former realm of this “ram” power. He either had to kill of every last one of them, who he knew were innately rebellious towards him [or at least just the men....perhaps also the boys, which then would make this region insolvent], or he could engage in systematically, forcefully, humbling them (i.e. depleting then of their former esteemed identity) to the point where they became subdued to his rule....Well as prophesied, indeed intent on fully taking over and securing this hegemony of Medo-Persia, (also as prophetically stipulated), it is that latter approach which Alexander executed.
It can really be seen that the above-mentioned action of “throwing the ram to the ground”, i.e. before this “humbling/humiliation instilling trampling” began, was fulfilled by the militaristic activities of Alexander where he first soundly and decisively/enduringly defeated whatever militaristic opposition that the people in this region mustered up and threw against him when he approach them. Then followed the “trampling” aspect of this take over when indeed, by such action, those militaristically-vanquished peoples would become subdued to Alexander.
Dan 8:7e - and there came to be none delivering, -in regards to the ram, from his hand
none delivering... - This expression is in the participial form, thus expressing a sustained action/actor. Well, as discussed above, no one from the remaining, nor any other part, of the “ram”/former Medo-Persian Empire, ever came to fulfill such a “deliverer” position....which really could only be fulfilled by someone of kingly authority.*
* This serves to also appreciate the responsibility of a king. For peoples, especially of varying ethnicities, language, customs and religious beliefs to, of course willfully, accept to give themselves over to a king, they actually have to have to ascribe to the validity of a “Divine Right” of that ruler. Which is why kingly authority was only deemed as valid if it was inheritedly naturally passed on. So it clearly was not easy for the remaining parts of the Medo-Persian Empire to reconstitute themselves under another leader. The claim of Darius’ cousin Bessus seemed to be convincing enough, but evidently that reliable “worthiness” belief came to an end with the death of Bessus. So it would indeed for then only be “every province/satrapy for themselves” if an attempt to establish a new Kingdom from themselves, which could grow into another valid Empire, could be achieved...
...But of course, Alexander endeavored to make sure to quash any such “grassroots” resurgence notions/ambitions.
from his hand - So the realm and peoples of the Medo-Persian Empire did come to solidly remain in the “hand” of Alexander and his Grecian Empire.
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See depictions/accounts of these painstaking battling by Alexander to conquer and subdue the remaining provinces of the Persian Empire in the following partially-animated mini-documentaries:
Discussed in the mini-documentary above [at 05:59-09:37], is the account of the, actually historically, -and also Prophetically (i.e. Dan 8:8a; -pertinently discussed in detail in the next post), pivotal incident of Alexander's wanton murder of his friend, -and earlier, Granicus River battle, life saver: Cleitus "the Black". See the cinematographic depiction in the (2004 movie) clip below:
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The Eventual Ending of Alexander’s Asia Campaign
So, long, 7-year, story short, Alexander did go on to systematically and painstakingly subdue the entire remaining realm of the former Medo-Persian Empire...and he even endeavored to go beyond these limits into India, and likely, if he was successful there, on to the Far East, to the realm of China, but his soldiers became really homesick and tired of this seemingly never ending, -at that time, in 326 BC, 8 years ongoing, military expedition, and they refused to go forward.* So Alexander had to resign himself to all that he had already conquered and secured, and so returned to the city of Babylon. (=Arr 5:25-28; Plu 62.1-9; Dio 17:94.1-95.2; Cur 9:2.1-3:19; Jus 12:8.10-17). -(See this pivotal episode in this documentary [18:29]; and see this (poignant) cinematographic depiction)
* So contrary to common, at least earlier, quip made in (esp. SDA) prophetic presentations, it was not that “Alexander had no further world territory left to conquer”, as the vast, growing/coalescing and rivaling realms (in the present-dy regions) of India and China were still out there, -among other burgeoning tribal nations, as seen in the secondary mapping below. It was just that Alexander’s army refused to further support him and this ambition of his.
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| Alexander/Greece Advanced by/in 324 B.C. |
Note: This Part A2 (=Dan 8:7) section is continued in Part B [=Dan 8:8, 9-14, 15-19, 22, 23-26]
[See also its preceding Part A1 (=Dan 8:1-6, 20-21)]
Notes
18. [18] reach (2 Sam 5:8; Psa 32:6; Isa. 8:8; Zech 14:5); reached (2 Chr 28:9; Isa 16:8; Jer 48:32; Jer 51:9; Jon 3:6; Mic 1:9); reaching (Gen 28:12).
19. [19] Namely: add (Isa 5:8); afford (Lev 5:7); apply (Exod 12:22); arrive (Ezek 7:12); arrived (Est. 6:14; 8:17; Songs 2:12; Ezek. 7:12); attained (Est 4:14); attains (Dan 12:12); came (Ezr. 3:1; Neh. 7:73; Est 2:12, 15; Est 4:3; Dan. 9:21); close (Jdg 20:34, 41); come (1 Sam 14:9); draw near (Eccl 12:1); drawn near (Psa 88:3); drew near (Psa 107:18); follows (Hos 4:2); happened (Est 9:26); happens (Eccl 8:14).
20. [20] Specifically at the following verses: cast (Isa 25:12); casts (Isa 26:5); brought them down (Lam 2:2); plagued (Psa 73:5); pretended to be beaten (Jos 8:15); smitten (2 Chr 26:20); stricken (Isa 53:4; Psa 73:14); strikes (Ezek 17:10); struck (Gen 12:17; 1 Sam 6:9; 2 Kgs 15:5; threw (Exod 4:25);.
21. [21] Similarly, as dedicatedly discussed in detail here pivotally in regards to the major Prophecy of the 70 Weeks (Dan 9:24-27), a similar “sincere, but mistaken, corrective” thing was done by later editing scribes of the Hebrew Bible with the historical narrative of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah revolving around Neh 8. But as is the case with the Alexander History here, there are several “loose end” factors also in that case which help to detect, and then unravel/undo, that mistaken “correction”.
22. [22] It is interesting to read the accounts of these diplomatic/letter exchange/negotiation (attempts) between Alexander and Darius in the (in)famous, ca. 4th century AD, accounts which are known as the Alexander Romance. (See pertinent text here||here; {Full TOC/Texts}). While these accounts are clearly known to be versions of the actual historical facts, they are also known to contain a core of truth. So it then is interesting to try to decipher/deem what is probably, actually true, and what is just fictional....
Such “dramatic license” productions is still done in our day, as patently seen in many movies...such as notably, recently, the movie Vice on the (rumored/gossiped/leaked/surmised/supposed/deemed) early/private life and public/political career/tenure of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney* where it is creatively, clearly (even, in double entendre ways: “explicitly/expletively”) disclaimed that:
“The following is a true story.
Or as true as it can be given that Dick Cheney is known as one of the most secretive leaders in history.
But we did our [expletive] best.”
* Uncannily/eerily incarnatingly well-portrayed&depicted by, [moreover British], (famously method)-actor Christian Bale...who, btw, likewise, [ignoramusly] was blasphemously not too fond (cf. here & here) of the “Moses” he [IMO poorly#] had previously portrayed.
# e.g. definitely not Charlton Heston-esque....
FYI: Get the real (i.e. also Divinely Inspired) insight&story about Moses and his life+leadership in: PP 241-480
FYI: Get the real (i.e. also Divinely Inspired) insight&story about Moses and his life+leadership in: PP 241-480
23. [23] By such enduring likeness of such cultural celebrations, that’s how the Greek’s contribution of “Humanism/Humanities” to this God-Sanctioned World’s “Historical/Foundational Order” (=Dan 2) has indeed remained to, and will continue through, this “time of the end”, as impliedly foreplanned in the prophetic expressions in: Dan 2:35, 45 where/when all of the metals (=substance) of those World Ordering Imperial Ages are all “crushed at the same time”; and Rev 13:2 where that First Beast is actually a composite of the prior 4 Hegemonic Beasts; and having its main body be that of Greece’s Leopard Beast representation. (See the explanation of this entities combination in here at its Dan 2:35a commentary section.)
24. [24] Could it be that Darius had become suspicious that perhaps his communications had been, or at least could be, strategically altered by Alexander, (e.g. if it was reported to him that had priorly not permitted them to openly read Darius’s letter especially, to/with other people than/around him). And so Darius decided to carry out this, here virtually last chance at peace, proposal in a way that could not begin to be corrupted. Perhaps he instructed his envoys to make sure to first “announce” out loud, and openly in the presence of many others in Alexander’s inner circle, what the conditions of this offer of peace were, and then present the letter to confirm it. Hence also why Darius now chose from his closest ‘royal friends’ to make this primarily verbal communication.
26. [26] Which incidentally reminds me that, contrary to most of the religious mythologies then, the Bible does not engage in a post-“signs” fanciful interpretations/explanations, but instead patently involves that certain signs and miracles occurred as a response to, or as prior prophesied by, God. In other words, as repeatedly, even expressedly, stated in Isaiah, (e.g. Isa 41:21-23; 44:6-8; 46:9-11), declares beforehand what to look for, or what will take place in the future, and not, this fanciful/whimsical approach of interpreting signs in one’s favor after they manifest themselves. Moreover, God’s miraculous actions are supernatural, and not, as here with an eclipse of the moon, from a natural/scheduled occurrence in nature.
27. [27] Interestingly enough, Arrian (6:11.4-6) later mentions an argument between two groups who had conflicting claims about how far from Arbela the battle site was, but unlike the ca. 287 stadia (=28 miles) vs. his own 600 stadia (=60 miles) difference, the conflict he relates is between merely 500 vs. 600 stadia.
28. [28] ...And to all you various Infidels out there: Instead of expending all of this mental/“intellectual” energy religiously trying to make “realistic/applicable” sense of, decipher, prognosticate childish fantasies like Star Wars, Harry Potter; Lord of the Rings; “Life of Pi” ...and now: Game of Thrones (e.g. here&here, etc) -like psychologically interrupted, repressed juveniles pining to assuagingly indulge, with socially-tolerated abandon, their known meaninglessness existence, while desperately trying to conjure up justifying/worthwhiling true-to-life/history correlation/applications.... why not instead engage Bible Prophecy* (i.e. in its (“apocalyptic”) prophecy books of: Daniel, Revelation, Ezekiel... and look: they too have e.g.: “dragons” (e.g. Rev 12:3-4; 13:1, 11; 16:12-14); pivotal epic/cosmic wars (Rev 12:7-9ff; 16:16; 17:14); and against ‘armies of the (seemingly/resurrected) dead’ (Rev 20:7-9), indeed with just the same seriousness that you regard those man-made fictions/fantasies, and, as being done in this present post, and throughout this blog, and try to see how those prophecies, -which, demonstratedly/documentedly/(scientifically-)verifiedly, factually were all written hundred+ years beforehand, came to be fulfilled in history and are even still being fulfilled today, all as a road map to an end which will actually realistically affect your lives, including your post-death/eternal destiny....
....{Or just study/analyze/discuss/debate World History..period.....as that too will similarly torch many of the straw man premises that you patently require to make your vacuous worldview claims today seem plausible: e.g. you popular false mantra-trope that: “Belief in God is antithetic to “science/discovery/innovation/technology/progress” and “Christians//Theists don’t believe/practice medical science”}
* ...And while on this issue/subject of: ‘Bible Prophecy & the proving/corroborating of God-Bible-Truth’
29. [29] ...Again, I don’t get how an army being grossly outnumbered at least 2:1 can manage to get the upper hand in, moreover, an in-tight, “hand-to-hand”, fighting melee....The Greek soldiers would literally need to have eyes in the back of their heads. Unless, -though I don’t think so, in those times it was the “honorable” norm to, (as patently preposterously scripted/seen in fight scenes in modern movies when the hero character is vastly outnumbered by a gang of bad guys), only engage the enemy one at a time, and not gang up on him (i.e. fight him at all once).
So in such an “honorable” case/circumstance, if/as the (professional) Greek soldiers were much better trained, even “manlier”, particularly against now this group of virtually third-string, rag-tag, amateur Persian soldiers, then it would be understandable if/that they would be able to defeat each Persian soldier which singly engaged them one after the other.
...But it likely was not/never such an “honorable” disposition, and the Greek soldiers were just that much better at taking on multiple assailants at the same time, and/or they were also good at looking out for (the black/“six”) of one another, -as seen earlier when Alexander was spared of a likely death during the Battle at the Granicus River when the arm of a Persian assailant about to seriously strike an unsuspecting Alexander with his sword was cut off by the protecting blow of another Greek officer.
....I am not sure if this would be in contravention of the Movie Ratings in Heaven, but when I’ll there then be cinematographically, (and likely fully immersively....as if I was actually right there), reviewing the history of the Conflict of the Ages, I will need to “see” how Alexander did indeed intrisically manage to not be smothered on these Persian War battlefields by forces up to 6 times larger than his own.
Dan 7:6b pointedly/explicitly uses an Aramaic passive intensive form, the Peil (p.19) (which is equivalent to the Hebrew Pual form) to say that ‘a dominion was given to Greece [=overtaking Persia]’. Well clearly the unstated subject doing this “giving” was the Overseeing God Himself. (Cf. Dan 10:20)...And so, I would not at all be surprised to find out, in fact, incorporatedly see in those documenting Heavenly Movie “reels”, that Alexander had significant angelic protection/assistance...even on the level that Israel itself had in its several battle where it was fighting a physically/trainedly much more competent/capable/numerous enemy army.....
30. [30] In this (Cur 5:1.36-38) historical reporting of how Babylon had become a city of systematic, familially-enjoined, industrious whoredom, I am actually seeing the basis for the symbolizing of a Babylon as such in Bible Prophecy (e.g. Rev 17:2,4-5; 18:3, 9), Unlike in most, if not all, other (civilized) cities where prostitution was at best secretively practiced, and that, provided merely by a few, and with the family unit serving as a shield against its pervasion/influence, clearly in Babylon, and manifestly only after, and during, the time of its Persian Empire rule, prostitution was a normative, and even a lifeblood, to them as was farming, with indeed families sanctionedly setting up their own revenue-generating shops.
If Babylon was known as a city of such systematic prostitution during the time of the Babylonian Empire itself, it likely would have been alluded to, or even produced an object-lesson story involving the Jews living in captivity there (such as the episode in Num 25:1-13ff)...but perhaps either that side of Babylon was also too scandalous to unwarantedly cite in the Bible and/or the Jews then in Babylon were too “defeated” by their current deportation captivity judgement from God to dare to engage in such high-handed further apostasy.
But it could also be Babylon had indeed fallen to this depth of sinfulness after when the Persian had taken it over...Perhaps to sustain its level of wealth as it had now lost the wealth-generating influence from its former Imperial significance and prestige...
Spiritually speaking that would actually be in keeping with how Spiritual Neo-Babylon today, namely the “imaging” Second Beast Power in Rev 13: the United States of America , has, by furthering the prostitution of God’s People to not merely Biblically-illicit Religio-Political meddlings, minglings and ties/unions, but now, through its Protestant-borne&cherished Capitalism Ideology, also Socio-Economical “awhoring” which not only involved national wealth, but was built up from people at the family/household level also participating in this unBiblical Industry. So just like the Medo-Persian manifestly took the innate awhoring of Babylon to a whole lower, and further entrenched and sanctioned level, so did the United States do so with now the equivalent & emulating awhoring of Spiritual Babylon, and that both from, through and to“His [professing NT “Israel”] People”: i.e. (Protestant) Christians....Hence Rev 18:4ff
![Map of Medo-Persian Empire [42] Satrapies](http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/maps/persia.gif){kind=link}
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