I Will Not Steal a Victory

The story

The largest battle Alexander fought with Darius was not, Plutarch says, at Arbela, as most writers had it, but at Gaugamela. Clough’s revision of the Dryden translation describes the plain at night full of the Persians’ fires, and a noise like a distant ocean. The oldest commanders, Parmenio first among them, decided a daylight attack was too dangerous. They met the king as he came from sacrificing and asked him to attack in the dark, so the night would hide the risk.

His answer, in that translation, is the sentence above: “I will not steal a victory.” Some who heard it thought it a boyish way of playing with danger. Others took it as confidence. He did not want to leave Darius an excuse. After Issus, Darius had blamed mountains, narrow passes, and the sea. If this defeat could be blamed on the dark, he would still have men and country enough to fight again. Alexander wanted a result Darius could not explain away.

Then he went into his tent and slept more deeply than usual. In the morning the commanders had to order breakfast themselves. Time ran out. Parmenio went to the bed, called his name two or three times, woke him, and asked how he could sleep before the most important battle of all as if he were already victorious. Alexander, smiling, asked whether they were not already so, since they had finally stopped chasing Darius across an empty country in the hope that he would stand.

Altdorfer’s great panel of 1529 is titled The Battle of Alexander at Issus. It is the earlier battle, the one Darius afterward blamed on the ground. The night of the stolen victory that was refused, and of the king who had to be shaken awake, is Gaugamela. Another meeting from the same life, years earlier at Corinth, is the one with Diogenes.