# The Anabasis of Alexander/Book II/Chapter XXVII

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CHAPTER XXVII.
Capture of Gaza.
When Alexander heard this, he kept himself for a time near the military engines, out of the reach of missiles. But when a vigorous sortie was made from the city, and the Arabs were carrying torches to set fire to the military engines, and from their commanding position above hurling missiles at the Macedonians, who were defending themselves from lower ground, were driving them down from the mound which they had made, then Alexander either wilfully disobeyed the soothsayer, or forgot the prophecy from excitement in the heat of action. Taking the shield-bearing guards, he hastened to the rescue where the Macedonians were especially hard pressed, and prevented them from being driven down from the mound in disgraceful flight. But he was himself wounded by a bolt from a catapult, right through the shield and breastplate into the shoulder. When he perceived that Aristander had spoken the truth about the wound, he ​rejoiced, because he thought he should also capture the city by the aid of the soothsayer. And yet indeed he was not easily cured of the wound. In the meantime the military engines with which he had captured Tyre arrived, having been sent for by sea; and he ordered the mound to be constructed quite round the city on all sides, two stades in breadth and 250 feet in height. When his engines had been prepared, and brought up along the mound, they shook down a large extent of wall; and mines being dug in various places, and the earth being drawn out by stealth, the wall fell down in many parts, subsiding into the emptied space. The Macedonians then commanded a large extent of ground with their missiles, driving back the men who were defending the city, from the towers. Nevertheless, the men of the city sustained three assaults, though many of their number were killed or wounded; but at the fourth attack, Alexander led up the phalanx of the Macedonians from all sides, threw down the part of the wall which was undermined, and shook down another large portion of it by battering it with his engines, so that he rendered the assault an easy matter through the breaches with his scaling ladders. Accordingly the ladders were brought up to the wall; and then there arose a great emulation among those of the Macedonians who laid any claim to valour, to see who should be the first to scale the wall. The first to do so was Neoptolemus, one of the Companions, of the family of the Aeacidae; and after him mounted one rank after another with their officers. When once some of the Macedonians got within the wall, they split open in succession the gates which each party happened to light upon, and thus admitted the whole army into the city. But though their city was now in ​the hands of the enemy, the Gazaeans nevertheless stood together and fought; so that they were all slain fighting there, as each man had been stationed. Alexander sold their wives and children into slavery; and having peopled the city again from the neighbouring settlers, he made use of it as a fortified post for the war.
* ↑ A stadium equalled 6063/4 feet.
* ↑ Cf. Thucydides, ii. 76 (description of the siege of Plataeae).
* ↑ Diodorus (xvii. 48) says that the siege of Gaza lasted two months. Polybius (xvi. 40) speaks of the resolution and valour of the Gazaeans. We learn from Curtius (iv. 28) and from Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De Compositione Verborum, pp. 123-125) that Alexander treated the brave Batis with horrible cruelty. He ordered his feet to be bored and brazen rings to be put through them, after which the naked body was tied to the back of a chariot which was driven by Alexander himself round the city, in imitation of the treatment of Hector by Achilles at Troy. Cf . Arrian, vii. 14. Dionysius quotes from Hegesias of Magnesia, who wrote a history of Alexander, not now extant. Curtius says that nearly 10,000 of the Persians and Arabs were slain at Gaza. Strabo (xvi. 2) says that in his time (i.e. in the reign of Augustus) the city still remained desolate, as it was left by Alexander.