Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

294 THE SEASON'S WORK.with a personal heroism beyond what we find in any othersoldier, but shows rare strength, discipline and endurance,and a fidelity without equal in the men who followed in hisfootsteps. Success depended whoUy on the wonderful physicaland moral force of the man himself, and it was he alonewho could evoke from his men such efforts as are implied inthe conduct of some of the campaigns of which we possess butthe baldest outlines.At Soli, Alexander heard that Ptolemy and Asander, Parmenio'snephew, had won a great battle against the PersianOrontobates, in which seven hundred and fifty Persians hadbeen killed, and had captured the Salmakis and royal citadelat Halicarnassus. Other Carian cities, — Myndus, Caunus,Thera, Calipolis, — as well as Cos and Triopium, had fallen,which happy events he celebrated with games and sacrificenot forgetting ^sculapius in token of his recovery. Likelyenough these celebrations had also for object the reclaimingof the Solians to Greek manners, customs and aspirations,which, in the course of many years' subjection to the Persians,had become but a tradition. He then marched to Tarsus andthence along the coast to Megarsus and Mallus, which twocities of Greek oriain he also restored to their old status andabolished their tribute ; and, after sacrificing to the deities ofboth, he sent Philotas with the horse across the Aleian fieldto the Pyramus to reduce the territory of that quarter.The season of b. c. 333 had been expended in the advancethrough, and reduction of, the territory from Gordium toMount Amanus.