wing of the Persian host was a hopeless mass of confusion. [Illustration: The Battle of Issus.] Yet the Persians had a still unbroken strength with which much might have been done, if only there had been a leader to make use of it. The Greeks in the centre stood their ground bravely. They even advanced, charged the left divisions of the phalanx, which had not completed the passage of the Pinarus, and inflicted some loss upon it, killing as many as 150 of the front rank men, and the officer in command. But by themselves they could not hope to hold the field. When Alexander, wheeling round after his victorious assault on the Persian right, attacked them in flank, they were forced to give way. But they retired in good order, and the main body of them made good their escape. The Persian cavalry, too, had shown themselves not altogether unworthy of their ancient renown. They had actually crossed the Pinarus, and charged the Thessalian horse, which had been transferred, it should be said, by Alexander from the right to the left of his army. In the combat that ensued they held their own. But their courage failed when they became aware of the flight of Darius. When their king had given up the struggle what was there for them to stay for? To him they were bound, but they had no conception of a country to whose service it was their duty to devote their lives. They fled, suffering greatly in the pursuit. The Macedonians lost 450 in killed, Alexander himself being slightly wounded. The slaughter among the Persians cannot be estimated. It was put down at more than 100,000. Ptolemy, afterwards King of Egypt, who was one of Alexander's most trusted generals, declared that he found a ravine so choked with dead bodies that he could use them as a bridge. Ptolemy kept a diary of the war, which he afterwards embodied in a regular narrative. Arrian, who wrote the story of Alexander's campaign in the second century of our era, had this work before him. III THE ARMY OF THE HUNDRED PROVINCES