oxford

2 o 6 The End of the Achaemenids
was it certain that a greater invading force would follow. There had
been plenty of big talk in the previous half-century of which nothing
had come. Prudence would have told him to wait and see. 28 When
Philip was murdered, the crisis seemed to have passed; the youth of his
heir Alexander excited contempt (Diod. 17. 7. i).
During the year 335 Alexander showed himself ever less and less contemptible
and Darius set about preparing a large number of triremes
and assembling a considerable army (Diod. 17. 7. 2). In the spring of
334 Alexander began his march eastwards (Arr. Anab. i. 11. 3) and his
army must have crossed from Sestos to Abydos in May. Parmenion
was put in charge and the crossing was effected by the use of the 'one
hundred and sixty triremes and many merchant ships' (ibid. i. 11. 6). It
was therefore well into the sailing season and if the triremes provided
by the League of Corinth were there, why did the Persians not seek to
prevent or disrupt? Were they so inert, so inept that they would not
even attempt the obvious move?
The question would be the more acute if Diodorus' account of
Memnon's grand strategy were to be accepted. According to Arrian
(i. 20.3), Memnon the Rhodian, brother of Mentor and brother-in-law
of Artabazus, was, not long before the commencement of the siege of
Halicarnassus, appointed to supreme command of'lower' Asia and of
the whole of the marine. He was clearly a man of bold strategic notions.
In the council of the Persian commanders before the battle of Granicus
he had proposed a scorched earth policy (Arr. Anab. i. 12. 9) which was
too much for the assembled generals, but showed the sort of radical
measure which he was capable of conceiving. When Arrian recorded
his death (2. i. 3), he remarked that this above all damaged the King's
cause at that time, and at the start of the same chapter he declared
that Memnon in his supreme command proposed to turn back the
war to Macedonia and Greece (2. i. i). Later Alexander before Tyre
admitted the dangers of leaving the Persians free to operate by sea
and he envisaged that if they regained control of the places on the sea,
while he and his army advanced against Babylon and Darius, they
with a larger force might transfer the war to Greece (2. 17. 2). Consistent
with this picture, Diodorus declared that Memnon's successes in
333/332 caused great expectations within Greece (17. 29. 3), that the
King expected that Memnon would 'transfer the whole war from Asia
to Europe' (17. 30. i), and that Alexander had had reported to him that
Memnon was 'planning to campaign with three hundred triremes and
a land army against Macedonia' (17. 31. 3). So there is no doubt that