How ironically these careful plans now read. All the while, Darius was approaching the plains of Syria, where he would encamp and wait to attack as soon as Alexander came out through the Amanus mountains into the plains. Meantime Alexander marched and countermarched, surely ignorant of the Great King's whereabouts, let alone of his change of plans; otherwise, he would not have dared to divide his troops. To the Macedonians this routine work was to seem like one more stage in the laborious capture of the coast; they delayed till their king felt better, they watched Parmenion disappear eastwards with the cavalry, and in late September, when Alexander had finally recovered, they retraced their path towards the decaying city of Anchialus, unaware of the risk they would soon have to run. In the centre of that high-walled city stood the tomb of its founder Assurbanipal, King of Assyria in the mid-seventh century B.C .,with a carving of the king clapping his hands above his head and an inscription beneath him in cuneiform script. Intrigued, Alexander made the local settlers translate it for his benefit: 'Sardanapalus son of Anakyndaraxes', it was said to run 'built Anchialus and Tarsus in a single day; stranger, eat, drink and make love, as other human things are not worth this', 'this' being a clap of the king's hands. The historian Aristobulus, writing his book in his eighties, took such exception to this blunt reference to sex that he rephrased the advice as 'eat, drink and be merry'. The inscription had anyway become unintelligible and what the locals said was only gossip. Nonetheless Callisthenes's history noted the exact impropriety for Alexander's pleasure, who then marched forwards, a living denial of any such drop-out philosophy.
The next ten days were proof of the king's return to health. Wild tribesmen were routed in a seven-day campaign, a pro-Persian city was fined and the very welcome news arrived that the remaining strongholds of Halicarnassus and its coast, including Cos, had fallen at last to the Macedonians. Alexander was keen to celebrate this first success in the naval campaign, so he offered sacrifice to the Greek god of Healing as thanks for his own recovery, and held a torch race, athletic games and literary competitions. The success, had he known, was short-lived, as Cos and Halicarnassus were soon to be threatened and lost again. Nonetheless, Alexander moved south-east to Mallus, where he stopped its civil strife and abolished its payment of tribute, pleased by its alleged link with his legendary Greek ancestors; generous and moving freely in the world of myth, the king was plainly back into his stride. October was now far advanced, when all of a sudden a message arrived from the distant Parmenion on the borders of Syria and Cilicia: Darius had been seen encamped with a large army only two marching days from the Syrian Gates and the Pillar of Jonah.
It must have been hard to keep calm on receipt of this information. For the past month, Alexander had been lingering along the southern coast of Turkey with his forces widely divided and winter all but upon him; his thoughts had been on the Persian fleet and their dangerously free manoeuvres towards Greece, and he must have hoped for rough autumn weather to close the sailing season early. There were troubles too both within and beyond his high command.
Recently he had received letters from Olympias warning him finally against Alexander the Lyncestian, and it was now, not a year earlier, that he took the step of arresting him in his cavalry command. At the same time, his close friend Harpalus, lame and unsoldierly, had left for Greece across a thoroughly hostile sea to make contacts in the southern Greek harbour town of Megara, presumably to ward off the approaching Persian fleet. Another envoy had gone with him on a still more daring sea journey, across from Greece to south Italy to talk to Olympias's brother King Alexander of Epirus, again no doubt about possible help for Greece by sea. It was a worrying time on all fronts, and now it had been joined by the threat of a Persian grand army.
Never happier than when challenged, Alexander 'assembled his Companion nobles and told them the news; they ordered him to lead them straight ahead exactly as they were. Praising them he broke up the meeting, and on the next day he led them east against Darius and the Persians.' By comparing notes with Xenophon's history, Alexander could calculate that at a reasonable pace, the army would reach the borders of Syria in three days or some twenty-five regular hours on the road. It was not, however, a time for being reasonable and the army was thinned by Parmenion's absence; let the men march at the double and cover the seventy-odd miles within forty-eight hours. The coast road east was level and inviting, and fertile farms lay on either side; where the shore of the Mediterranean bends sharply southwards to Syria, the road hooked round and continued to follow it, with the sea still on Alexander's right and the shadowing Amanid mountains on his left. At the very edge of Cilicia lay the town of Issus, pointing the way to the satrapy of Syria and the south; there Alexander abandoned all stragglers and invalids for whom the march was proving too fast. Meanwhile, Parmenion had come back from, reconnaissance to meet him, and together king and general hurried on to the fortified Gates of Syria, the modem Pillar of Jonah, which the advance force had already captured. A few miles south of this frontier-post they called a halt at Myriandrus, knowing that at last they were within range of the Beilan pass. From here they could cross the edge of the Amanid range and hurry east into Assyria and so, they hoped, into King Darius's encampment before he knew of their approach. By now the evening of the second day was drawing on and the march had stretched the infantry to their utmost; it was a mercy when during the night 'a heavy storm broke and rain fell from heaven in a violent wind. This kept Alexander in his camp.' The implication is that otherwise he would have been back on the road before dawn.
He could not know what a heaven-sent blessing this late autumn gale was to prove. At least four days had passed since Parmenion's spies had last observed Darius to the east in the plains near Sochoi, and the Great King's tactics deserve a closer consideration than any of the Macedonians had given them. He had reached Sochoi, perhaps, in late September and as advised by his officers, he had waited in its open spaces to deploy his full force against Alexander emerging from the coastal hills over the Beilan pass. But he had become impatient. He had detached his baggage-train south-west to Damascus, a curiously distant choice of site but perhaps intended to ease the burden on the food supplies of the Sochoi plain and to put the camp-followers nearer the mercenaries' transport ships which were beached at the nearby harbour of Tripolis; perhaps too, the choice would be more understandable if the ancient city of Sochoi could be located with any accuracy. Having shed his baggage, Darius had begun to move northwards to look for Alexander himself, against the strong advice of the Macedonian deserter Amyntas.
His advance intelligence can only be guessed. Probably he had heard a rumour of Alexander's illness; possibly, scouts or fugitives had already warned of Parmenion's approach down the coast to the Pillar of Jonah. If so, it seemed that Alexander was detained far away in Cilicia and had split his forces most unwisely. The moment seemed ripe to march northwards, on the inland side of the Amanid mountains, and penetrate the Hasenbeyli pass at a height of some 4,000 feet, and then to bring the army southwards and back on to the main road, down the Kalekoy pass into Issus. If Darius already knew of Parmenion's advance, he may also have known that these passes had been left undefended; if he did not, luck was to see him safely through them.