+20.+ Again, he says that Alexander was marching in line when he was about forty stades from the enemy. A greater blunder it is difficult to conceive. For where could one find a ground; and especially in Cilicia, twenty stades broad by forty deep, for a phalanx armed with sarissae to march in line? It would not be easy to count all the impossibilities in the way of such an arrangement and such a movement. One that is mentioned by Callisthenes himself is sufficient to establish the point. For he remarks that the winter torrents which descend from the hills make so many gullies in the plain, that, in the course of the flight, the chief part of the Persians are said to have lost their lives in deep places of that kind. But, it may be urged, Alexander wished to be ready for battle as soon as the enemy were in sight. But what could be less ready than a phalanx in a disordered and straggling line? Is it not much easier to form up a phalanx from a proper column of route, than to bring a disordered and straggling line back into the same alignment, and get it into order of battle on a broken and woody ground? It was, therefore much better to march twice or four times the ordinary depth of a phalanx[35] in good order, for which sufficient ground could possibly be found. And it was easy to deploy his men quickly into the line of the phalanx, because he was able by means of scouts to ascertain the presence of the enemy in plenty of time. But in this case, beside other absurdities, while bringing his men in line across the level, he did not even (we are told) put the cavalry in front, but marched with them in the same alignment. +21.+ But the greatest blunder is still to come. “As soon as Alexander,” he says, “was within distance of the enemy he caused his men to take up order eight deep,” which would have necessitated ground forty stades wide for the length of the line; and even had they, to use the poet’s expression, “laid shield to shield and on each other leaned,” still ground twenty stades wide would have been wanted, while he himself says that it was less than fourteen. [We have also to deduct from these fourteen stades the space occupied by the two divisions of the cavalry, one on the left next the sea, the other on the right];[36] and to allow for the fact that the whole force was kept a considerable distance from the hills, to avoid being exposed to the enemy occupying the skirts of the mountains; for we know that Callisthenes represents the wing to have been facing these, at an angle with the centre. We are also leaving out of account the ten thousand foot, whom we showed to be too many according to his own calculation.