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When his scouts reported that Dareius was only thirty stades away1 and advancing in alarming fashion with his forces drawn up for battle, a frightening spectacle, Alexander grasped that this was a god-given opportunity to destroy the Persian power in a single victory. He roused his soldiers with appropriate words for a decisive effort and marshalled the battalions of foot and the squadrons of horse appropriately to the location. He set the cavalry along the front of the whole army, and ordered the infantry phalanx to remain in reserve behind it.

1 A little less than four miles (Curtius 3.8.23). Of all the historians, Diodorus alone fails to state that Dareius occupied Issus in Alexander's rear, and his narrative is very conventional. Actually, Dareius established a fortified line along the north bank of the river Pinarus, and Alexander was compelled to turn the position by a movement through the hills to the east. Cp. Polybius 12.17-23; Curtius 3.8-11.15; Justin 11.9.1-9; Plut. Alexander 20.1-5; Arrian 2.8-11. The battle was fought in the Attic month Maimacterion, perhaps in November, 333 B.C. (Arrian. 2.11.10), or somewhat earlier (M. J. Fontana, Kokalos, 2 (1956), 47).

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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