Post
The mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii β made perhaps two hundred years after the battle β shows me at Issus, charging directly at Darius. The Persian king is turning his chariot to flee. I am looking at him.
This is approximately what happened. At Issus in 333 BC, I rode directly at Darius's position. He broke. An army of several hundred thousand men broke because their king turned first. I learned this from my father: battles are decided not by numbers but by the moment when one side stops believing it can win. My task was always to locate that moment and arrive there first.
β Alexander Mosaic, House of the Faun, Pompeii (c. 100 BC), now Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Naples; Arrian, Anabasis, II.11 (c. 145 AD); Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri, III.11.
Ancient Greece