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The Seventeenth Book of Diodorus: in Two Parts
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King
Alexander had his siege engines and provisions conveyed by sea to Halicarnassus while he
himself with all his army marched into Caria, winning over the cities that lay on his route by
kind treatment. He was particularly generous to the Greek cities, granting them independence
and exemption from taxation, adding the assurance that the freedom of the Greeks was the object
for which he had taken upon himself the war against the Persians.
[2]
On his journey he was met by a woman named Ada, who belonged by blood to the ruling
house of Caria.1 When she presented a
petition to recover the position of her ancestors and requested his assistance, he gave orders
that she should become the ruler of Caria. Thus he won the loyal support of the Carians by the
favour that he bestowed on this woman.
[3]
For straightway all the
cities sent missions and presented the king with golden crowns and promised to co-operate with
him in everything.Alexander encamped near the city and set in
motion an active and formidable siege.2
[4]
At first he made continued assaults on the walls with relays
of attackers and spent whole days in active fighting. Later he brought up all sorts of engines
of war, filled in the trenches in front of the city with the aid of sheds to protect the
workers, and rocked the towers and the curtains between them with his battering rams. Whenever
he overthrew a portion of the wall, he attempted by hand-to-hand fighting to force an entry
into the city over the rubble.
[5]
But Memnon at first easily beat
off the Macedonians assaulting the walls, for he had large numbers of men in the city. Where
the siege engines were attacking, he issued from the city at night with numbers of soldiers and
applied fire to the machines.
[6]
Fierce fights occurred in front
of the city, in which the Macedonians showed far superior prowess, but the Persians had the
advantage of numbers and of fire power. For they had the support of men who fought from the
walls using engines to shoot darts, with which they killed some of the enemy and disabled
others.
1 Arrian. 1.23.7-8. Ada had been "dynast" of Caria previously on the death of her elder brother and husband, Idrieus (Book 16.69.2) but had been ousted by her younger brother Pixodarus (Book 16.74.2; cp. Strabo 14.2.17).
2 Arrian. 1.20.5-23.6. Diodorus omits Alexander's abortive attack on Myndus (Arrian. 1.20.5-7), and his narrative is told rather from the Persian than from the Macedonian side (W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, 2 (1948), 73 f.).
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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References (9 total)
- Cross-references to this page
(3):
- The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, HALIKARNASSOS (Bodrum) Turkey.
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CA´RIA
- Smith's Bio, Memnon
- Cross-references in notes from this page (3):
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(3):
- LSJ, γύναιος
- LSJ, μεσο-πύργιον
- LSJ, προγον-ικός
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