2.9
But in the case of Alexander, though I were to mention nothing else, behold his body gashed with woundsFor the wounds of Alexander see the note on 327 a, supra, with the work of Nachstädt there referred to. from tip to toe, bruised all over, smitten at the hands of his enemies Now with the spear, now the sword, now with mighty masses of boulders.Homer, Il. xi. 265, 541. On the banks of the Granicus Cf. 327 a, supra, and the notes. his helmet was cleft through to his scalp by a sword; at Gaza his shoulder was wounded by a missile; at Maracanda his shin was so torn by an arrow that by the force of the blow the larger bone was broken and extruded. Somewhere in Hyrcania his neck was smitten by a stone, whereby his sight was dimmed, and for many days he was haunted by the fear of blindness. Among the Assacenians his ankle was wounded by an Indian arrow; that was the time when he smilingly said to his flatterers, this that you see is blood, not Ichor, that which flows from the wounds of the blessed immortals.Homer, Il. v. 340; Cf.Moralia, 180 e and the note. At Issus he was wounded in the thigh with a sword, as Chares Cf.Life of Alexander, chap. xx. (675 e-f). states, by Darius the king, who had come into hand-to-hand conflict with him. Alexander himself wrote of this simply, and with complete truth, in a letter to Antipater: I myself happened, he writes, to be wounded in the thigh by a dagger. But nothing untoward resulted from the blow either immediately or later. Among the Mallians he was wounded in the breast by an arrow three feet long, which penetrated his breastplate, and someone rode up under him, arid struck him in the neck, as Aristobulus relates. When he had crossed the Taiiais against the Scythians and had routed them, he pursued them on horseback an hundred and fifty stades, though he was grievously distressed with diarrhoea. Cf.Life of Alexander, chap. xlv. (691 a); Arrian, Anabasis, iv. 4. 9; Quintus Curtius, Hist. Alexandri, vii. 9, 13.
