A prophecy comes true
HIS battle
presently made a great change of affairs to Alexander's advantage. For Sardis
itself, the chief seat of the barbarian's power in the maritime provinces, and
many other considerable places were surrendered to him; only Halicarnassus and
Miletus stood out, which he took by force, together with the territory about
them. After which he was a little unsettled in his opinion how to proceed.
Sometimes he thought it best to find out Darius as soon as he could, and put
all to the hazard of a battle; another while he looked upon it as a more
prudent course to make an entire reduction of the sea-coast, and not to seek
the enemy till he had first exercised his power here and made himself secure
of the resources of these provinces. While he was thus deliberating what to
do, it happened that a spring of water near the city of Xanthus in Lycia, of
its own accord swelled over its banks, and threw up a copper plate upon the
margin, in which was engraven in ancient characters, that the time would come,
when the Persian empire should be destroyed by the Greeks. Encouraged by
this accident, he proceeded to reduce the maritime parts of Cilicia and
Phoenicia, and passed his army along the sea-coasts of Pamphylia with such
expedition that many historians have described and extolled it with that
height of admiration, as if it were no less than a miracle, and an
extraordinary effect of divine favor, that the waves which usually come
rolling in violently from the main, and hardly ever leave so much as a narrow
beach under the steep, broken cliffs at any time uncovered, should on a sudden
retire to afford him passage. Menander, in one of his comedies, alludes to
this marvel when he says,
Was Alexander ever favored more? /
Each man I wish for meets me at my door, /
And should I ask for passage through the sea, /
The sea I doubt not would retire for me.
But Alexander himself in his epistles mentions nothing unusual in this at all,
but says he went from Phaselis, and passed through what they call the Ladders.
At Phaselis he stayed some time, and finding the statue of Theodectes, who was
a native of this town and was now dead, erected in the marketplace, after he
had supped, having drunk pretty plentifully, he went and danced about it, and
crowned it with garlands, honoring not ungracefully in his sport, the memory
of a philosopher whose conversation he had formerly enjoyed, when he was
Aristotle's scholar.
Next chapter: Gordium 
Plutarch: ALEXANDER
