The Battle of Issus (333 BCE)

At Issus, in November 333 BCE, Darius III led the Persian royal army against Alexander for the first time and lost. The battle was fought on a narrow coastal plain at the corner of the Mediterranean, near the modern Turkish-Syrian border. Darius escaped, but his mother, wife and children were captured, and the road to Syria, Phoenicia and Egypt was open.

The king takes command

After the defeat of his satraps at the Granicus and the death of Memnon in 333 BCE, Darius III decided to fight Alexander himself. He assembled the army at Babylon and marched west to Sochi, an open plain in northern Syria east of the Amanus mountains. There his cavalry, the strongest arm of a Persian army, would have room to move.

Alexander was slow to come. He had fallen seriously ill at Tarsus, and then campaigned in Cilicia. Arrian says a Macedonian exile in Persian service, Amyntas, begged Darius to wait on the plain, but the king’s courtiers told him Alexander was afraid. Darius crossed the Amanus by a northern pass and came down to the coast at Issus, which put him behind Alexander, who had already marched south. The Persians killed or maimed the sick Macedonian soldiers left at Issus. The move cut Alexander’s communications, but it also put the Persian army on a strip of land between the sea and the mountains.

The battlefield

Alexander turned back and found the Persians drawn up behind the River Pinarus, which is usually identified with the Payas, though some scholars prefer the Deli Çay further north. The plain was only a few kilometres wide. The Greek historian Polybius, writing two centuries later, criticised Alexander’s court historian Callisthenes for describing a Persian army far too large to fit on it, which is one reason modern historians distrust the huge ancient figures.

Darius placed his Greek mercenaries in the centre, Arrian says about 30,000 of them, with Persian infantry called Cardaces on either side. Most of the Persian cavalry, under Nabarzanes, massed on the right by the sea. Troops posted on the foothills threatened Alexander’s right flank. Darius stood in the centre in his chariot, surrounded by his guard, as Persian custom required.

The fighting

The battle went well for Persia in two places. On the coast the Persian cavalry crossed the river and pressed the Thessalian horsemen hard. In the centre the Greek mercenaries caught the Macedonian phalanx as it broke formation crossing the stream, and killed one of its commanders, Ptolemy son of Seleucus, along with about 120 Macedonian officers.

The battle was decided on the other wing. Alexander led the Companion cavalry across the river against the Persian left, broke it, and turned towards Darius. Diodorus and Curtius describe a desperate fight around the king’s chariot, where his brother Oxathres led the defence. Alexander was wounded in the thigh. Darius turned his chariot and fled; when the ground grew rough he took to horseback, and Arrian says he left behind his shield, his bow and his royal cloak. Once the king’s flight was known, the Persian cavalry on the coast broke too, and the crowded retreat through the river beds caused heavy losses.

The Persian story of the battle has not survived. No Persian or Babylonian account of Issus is known, so we cannot tell how Darius explained his flight. To the Greek writers it was cowardice; to some modern historians it was the act of a king who knew that his death would end the empire, and who meant to raise another army.

The royal family captured

The Macedonians took the Persian camp, with Darius’s tent, his chariot and his household. Inside were his mother Sisygambis, his wife Stateira, his two daughters and his young son. Arrian and Curtius tell how the women mourned Darius as dead until Alexander sent word that he was alive, and how, when Alexander visited them, Sisygambis bowed to his friend Hephaestion, taller and more richly dressed, by mistake. Arrian is careful to add that he reports the story without vouching for it.

Alexander treated the women as royalty, kept their titles and servants, and later married Darius’s elder daughter. Their captivity gave him a powerful hold over the dynasty.

Soon afterwards Parmenion took Damascus, where Darius had sent his treasure and baggage. Besides thousands of talents in coin, he captured noble Persian women, including Barsine, widow of Memnon, and envoys from Athens, Sparta and Thebes who had come to negotiate with the king. A letter of Parmenion quoted by the later writer Athenaeus listed hundreds of the court’s musicians, cooks and perfume makers among the captives.

Losses and letters

Arrian claims 100,000 Persians died, including 10,000 cavalry, and that Macedonian losses were a few hundred. Neither figure should be trusted. What is certain is that the Persian army as a whole did not survive. About 8,000 Greek mercenaries escaped by sea, some ending in Egypt; Darius crossed the Euphrates with a few thousand men.

From the far side of the river he wrote to Alexander. Arrian gives his letter as a request for his family and an offer of friendship and alliance, king to king. Alexander’s answer told Darius to address him as lord of Asia. A second Persian offer followed during the siege of Tyre.

1. Summer 333 BCE Darius gathers the royal army at Babylon
2. Autumn 333 Persian camp at Sochi; Alexander delayed in Cilicia
3. November 333 Darius crosses the Amanus and takes Issus; battle on the Pinarus
4. Winter 333/332 Parmenion takes Damascus; Darius’s first letter to Alexander

The famous Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii, which shows Darius turning in his chariot as his army breaks, may show Issus or Gaugamela; a detail of it is on the page about Darius III. The decisive battle came two years later at Gaugamela.