Page:The Anabasis of Alexander.djvu/183

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Tactics of the Opposing Generals.
161

up by Darius was afterwards captured. His left wing was held by the Bactrian cavalry, in conjunction with the Daans[1] and Arachotians; near these had been posted the Persians, horse and foot mixed together; next to these the Susians, and then the Cadusians. This was the arrangement of the left wing as far as the middle of the whole phalanx. On the right had been posted the men from Coele-Syria and Mesopotamia. On the right again were the Medes; next to them the Parthians and Sacians; then the Tapurians and Hyrcanians, and last the Albanians and Sacesinians, extending as far as the middle of the whole phalanx. In the centre where King Darius was, had been posted the king's kinsmen,[2] the Persian guards carrying spears with golden apples at the butt end,[3] the Indians, the Carians who had been forcibly removed to Central Asia, and the Mardian archers.[4] The Uxians, the Babylonians, the men who dwell near the Red Sea, and the Sitacenians had also been drawn up in deep column. On the left, opposite Alexander's right, had been posted the Scythian cavalry, about 1,000 Bactrians and 100 scythe-bearing chariots. In front of Darius's royal squadron of cavalry stood the elephants and 50 chariots. In front of the right wing the Armenian and Cappadocian cavalry with 50 scythe-bearing chariots bad been posted. The Greek mercenaries, as alone capable of coping with the Macedonians, were stationed right opposite their phalanx, in


  1. These people were a Scythian tribe leading a nomadic life east of the Caspian. They are called Daoi by Herodotus, i. 125; Dahae by Ammianus, xxii. 8, 21; Livy, xxxv. 48; xxxvii. 38; Vergil (Aeneid, viii. 728); Pliny, vi. 19; Strabo, xi. 7. They are mentioned in Ezra iv. 9 as subjects of Persia. The district is now called Daikh. See Früst's Hebrew Lexicon, sub voce דֶֽה.
  2. A title of honour. Curtius says that they numbered 15,000.
  3. Cf. Herodotus, vii. 41.
  4. This people lived to the south of the Caspian.